Beginning a new semester

The fall semester started yesterday. The class on religion and HIV/AIDS that I'm team-teaching with another religious studies grad student and two grad students from health sciences met for the first time yesterday morning. I was very impressed with the students (it's a first-year honors seminar). We had a great initial discussion, very engaged.

Back when I taught at the University of Utah, I used to go around to all my classrooms a couple days before classes began, when the campus was basically empty so I could be alone, to say a prayer of consecration in each room as spiritual preparation for the semester. I had to discontinue the practice because the university began tightening up security and doing a better job of keeping classrooms locked when they weren't in use. But I'd like to take a few moments now to do something similar in this online space.

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God of light and knowledge—

You have taught your children to seek learning by study.
You desire to enlighten our understandings and teach us wisdom.
You have promised to pour down knowledge on our heads.

You have taught me to serve you with all of my mind.
You have taught me to consecrate my talents, my energies, and all I do to your service.
You have taught me that I serve you by serving my fellow beings.

I ask you to consecrate my teaching this semester for the benefit of my students.

Help me and my fellow teachers to create an engaging classroom environment.
Inspire us with ideas for faciliating effective, active learning as we prepare for each class session.
Help us create an environment where students feel confident to speak up, to explore and wrestle with difficult or challenging ideas.
Guide us to be fair, encouraging, and helpful as we evaluate students' work.

Bless the students to learn.
Guide them as they develop their intellectual capacities and their thinking about the particular issues we'll be examining this semester.
Our class deals with a pressing social issue. Let this class be, in some small way, an instrument for making a difference.

In Christ's name, amen.