In an attempt to have students piece together the
biblical story for themselves, Grace
Yeuell, assistant professor of Christian
education, has developed several creative writing assignments
for her Old Testament and New Testament survey courses. "In
a Bible survey course my driving motivation is for folks to get
some sense of the story," she said. "I'm trying to encourage
students to make mental pictures, to grab images [of the biblical
story]." To achieve this effect, Yeuell uses assignments
that allow students to take a character from the Bible and tell
that character's story either through a first-person narrative,
a monologue, or a third-person account. In each case she also
emphasizes the idea of creativity. In some assignments students
take the story of a character and are allowed to add to it, expressing
what they think might come next in the character's life after
what one reads in the biblical account.
Yeuell also encourages poetic writing and has students write cinquain
poems as well as haikus based, again, on the biblical story. By
offering a wide range of writing activities and assignments, Yeuell
hopes that she is empowering a wider range of her students to
see exactly what the Bible says and how it relates to their lives.
"Some people's brains work in a linear fashion, [while others']
are more abstract," she said. "I want to offer [both]
kinds of folks an entrance into the story."
So far, Yeuell reports that her students have been enthusiastic
about the opportunity to write in a more creative style than the
traditional essay format. "The only resistance to [the assignments]
is that, at first, the students aren't quite sure I really mean
it, that I really want them to do a creative writing assignment,"
she said. "After they get over the surprise . . .their response
has generally been, 'That was really great; I learned something
from it.' That's not necessarily what you get after you have a
student take a test."
Yeuell also stated that she has been overwhelmed by some of the
finished work she has received."The wide range of writing
abilities [of students] has been eye-opening for me," she
said. "There have been a couple of papers that were so powerful
that they brought me to tears."For Yeuell it is a reward
that her students get the essence of what they are reading in
Old and New Testament Survey, that they realize that the people
of the Bible have a story that still has an impact on the way
one sees the world today.
In summing up this idea and her methodology, Yeuell said,"
So much of knowledge is very fragmented, I think it's really important
to pull together the story. Content and methodology need to go
together. If the content is a story, then the methodology needs
to be a story."
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