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The Transform your Teaching podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. Join Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles as they seek to inspire higher education faculty to adopt innovative teaching and learning practices.
Hello, and welcome to the Transform Your Teaching podcast. Today, we've decided to re release one of our episodes from 2023 because as the podcast has continued to grow, we know some of you weren't with us in 2023. We thought this episode on the philosophy of servant teaching would be helpful, particularly because that's really at the core of this podcast. So thanks for joining us, and I hope you enjoy listening.
Narrator:Welcome to the Transform Your Teaching podcast. The Transform Your Teaching podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. We seek to inspire higher education faculty to adopt innovative teaching and learning practices. Thanks for joining our conversation.
Jared:Welcome to the second episode of the Transform Your Teaching podcast here at Cedarville University. I'm Jared Piles, and with me is Doctor. Rob McDowell. We both work at the Center for Teaching and Learning here on Cedarville's campus. We're thankful that you joined us to talk about some innovative teaching practices that maybe you can employ into your teaching or maybe just confirm or affirm what you have already done in your teaching.
Jared:We are starting a series today on servant teaching, which comes from a little bit from servant leadership. It's kind of, that same idea. We have a definition for it that we've used and our definition of servant teaching is empowering learners by removing barriers, building on their unique strengths and providing opportunities to succeed. So based off of that, we're going to be talking with some experts in the field that have put servant teaching into practice. But before we do that, we wanted to give a philosophical underpinning, a different perspective, kind of setting a groundwork, a foundation to servant teaching.
Jared:And for that, we turn to doctor Rob McDowell.
Rob:Well, thank you.
Jared:You're welcome.
Rob:So maybe one of the questions that people will ask is, why start with philosophical foundations for servant teaching? Well, what we know is that everyone has a philosophy of education. Whether they can articulate it or not is another question. And then oftentimes, what we find, even in ourselves, in our own teaching, is that we tend to do what was done to us. We tend to reproduce those methodologies, those strategies of teaching that we experienced.
Rob:And why we wanna start with this is to ultimately, what I like to say, make the implicit explicit. So we really wanna talk about what are those things that I do and why do I do them? So when we talk about philosophy, we're really talking about what's real, what's right, and how do we know it's right, what's the right thing to do, And yeah. And then what's what do we do with that? So from an educational perspective, we're constantly asking that question.
Rob:And we have our own ideas about those things. Again, either implicit, things that we just do because that's the way it was done. And then we have those things that we do because we've really thought about why we're doing it. We have specifics as to what we think is real, what we think is wrong with the world, how we can change those things. That is all consistent within philosophy.
Rob:Probably the two big things for us in terms of CTO and in terms of this podcast are really evaluating educational solutions. So that's, you know, how do we fix things? What are the things that we do? Well, that's going be based on what we think is real and how we can know that and and where we can find that information and know what's true. But probably the big one that we're really hoping to help with and provide some thinking around is creating a consistent personal educational framework or a philosophy.
Rob:Philosophy can scare people. So for those who are the philosophy professors and faculty that are listening to this right now, please be patient and kind. For those who, when I say the word philosophy, it frightens the fool out of you, please be patient and kind. But really what we're talking about is just what's the nature of reality. I'll say it again.
Rob:What's true and how do we know it? And then what do we do with what we believe? What's really true? What's valuable? And how should we behave?
Rob:So for us, for CTL, I would say Cedarville as a whole, we use the word servant teaching. And what we really mean by that is that what God has done in our lives because we start with scripture. We start with, you know, his word. We start with the fact that we believe he is a a living being. We start with the fact that here I am saying fact, but we start with these things that he created the world and that he has given us his word.
Rob:And in that word, we have the instructions that we need to live out the truth because we believe his word is truth. We believe he is true. So that belief is where we start, and everybody starts somewhere. Even if you're not here on Cedarville's campus, even if you don't call yourself a Christian, you still start with a philosophy. You believe certain things about what's real in the world.
Rob:You believe certain things about what's true. Right? Like, all you have to do is take something from someone, like if they're sitting down and I just say it's you, Jared, your phone's on the table and I decide I'm gonna just take it from you and walk out the door. There's a sense in your being where you're like, that's not right. And even if you don't believe in God and you're not a Christian, guarantee you would see this across the board.
Rob:You take somebody's stuff, they're going to react in a way that you may see as negative. Like, why did you just take that? Come back here. Give it to me or even worse. So we all start somewhere.
Rob:For me personally, and I would say for the CTL as well, we start with Philippians two three to four. Think more highly of others than you do yourself. So that's that's really where servant teaching as a name comes in. And we want that mind of Christ because as you read down through there, it says, have this mind in you that was also in Christ Jesus. And it's that mindset where Jesus made himself a servant.
Rob:He, you know, took on the form of a servant, made himself obedient to death, even the death of the cross. That should transform our lives. That should transform our lives as faculty members. That should transform us no matter where we're at because that's what we're called to. If you have the Holy Spirit living within you, you can't avoid it.
Rob:He's not gonna give you any kind of moment of rest if you just continue to think life is about you. Right? You can't follow Christ and follow yourself at the same time. It just doesn't work. So when you talk about philosophy and what we really want to get to here in the interviews that we do, in the message that we really put forward, it's the mind of Christ applied in this specific sense to education and how we do it.
Rob:And then, you know, we want to get into questions of, okay, well then, what's next?
Jared:Practically speaking, what does this look like?
Rob:First step as a believer is to seek wisdom from God. James chapter one says, if anyone lacks wisdom, he should ask of God. God holds everything. Everything exists in him. And we see that Jesus Christ as well in John one.
Rob:In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. And everything holds together with him. Practically speaking, it's go ask. Ask him for wisdom. Lord, what do I do about this content that I'm teaching?
Rob:Or what do I do about this tough subject? The second one would be ask why. Ask why you do what you do. And it doesn't have to be every single thing because I think that could drive us all crazy. And some of us who are more analytic can get stuck in our own heads.
Jared:Yes. And I was thinking of myself. Yes.
Rob:So just choose one thing that you do and say, why did I do that that way? There's a tool called the five whys, and some may have heard of it, some haven't. It's really simple. You ask the question, why did I do x a certain way? And then you answer that with hopefully, just a sentence, maybe two.
Rob:Then you ask yourself, why is what I'm saying true? And you just keep iterating over that why until you really drill down to the bottom of what's foundational as to why you're doing it. And some will some might say or might be thinking, how would I know when I reach the bottom? You'll probably figure that out pretty quick. Five is just a generalized term.
Rob:Usually, you can get to the bottom of it in five five why questions or less. And then thirdly would be ask others. Ask other people who have experience in that. You know, we're gonna have some really great guests on in in the future podcasts, and they're going to have some really good insight that you and I don't have. So super excited about what's gonna come out of that.
Rob:But I you don't have to wait for a podcast to do that. You you can identify people in your vicinity and just say, I know I see Christ in this person. What is it that they're doing that I could benefit from? To me, I think those are three quick ways that you could put it into practice.
Jared:So let's apply this idea of philosophy and perspective to our servant teaching. As we transition now into our first series of episodes talking about servant teaching. There's an element in which, you know, servant teaching isn't necessarily a one and done thing for us. It's kind of the underpinning of everything that we do.
Rob:Well, servant teaching, especially if you you go back to Philippians two three to four and you look at John chapter one, you're gonna see definitions of what's real. You're gonna see definitions of what's true. And you're gonna also see things in scripture as well that that tell you these are the ways that you act. These are the ways you behave. And that goes directly to servant teaching.
Rob:So really, philosophy is, at least from our perspective, is really, truly not filtering, but Lens? Yes. I would say a lens that you could and should see think see things through, especially your educational endeavors. I mean, is it a strategy? Yeah.
Rob:You could say it's a strategy, but it's more than that. It's it's gotta come out of you as a person. It's a lifestyle. It's a belief. And it directly is tied to what you believe about, again, your philosophy of life, really.
Rob:So your philosophy of life, what you believe is true. Do you believe there's a God? Do you believe there's a problem in the world? You know? What is the solution to that problem?
Rob:How do you know it's true? And then if that's true, then then how do we how do we operate differently? And so scripture most certainly has a lot to say about that. Right? We apply that.
Rob:We should be living that out. Those perspectives, we should be living those through that lens in our teaching.
Jared:Well, we're excited that you're joining with us as we go through this, starting this podcast, but also as we transition into servant teaching. Our first guest has written a book on servant teaching, Doctor. Quentin Schultz, and we're going to have him on over the course of a couple episodes to talk about his book on servant teaching, but also get his philosophy and his practical ways of using servant teaching in his, instruction. So we hope that you'll join us for that. Thanks for listening.
Narrator:We'll see you next time. Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Transform Your Teaching podcast. Please subscribe or follow us on your preferred podcast platform. For more information, you can email us at ctlpodcastcedarville dot edu. Please consider subscribing to our blog, Focus, found at cedarville.edu/focusblog.