Tonight Dr. Wentzel spoke at Concordia's seventh annual Poehler Lecture, and he spoke on the process of Christian Education. When beginning his speech, Dr. Wentzel told everyone that it was his goal to change each and everyone within the hour. He also talked about how learning is the process of change, and teachers and administrators are the people who start the process of change in students. The biggest point that Dr. Wentzel talked about was his theory for helping students change and learn.
Dr. Wentzel had a great impact on me, especially in the context of being an education major. He has see the changes in education over the past 50 years and have seen the good and bad effects they caused. Because of many teachers like him, our schools are now changing once again. (I had the privileged of sitting right in front a education professor). Because these teachers have spoken up the government is seeing that just plain testing is not actually giving them the full evidence of a students ability or "smartness."
One of my favorite parts of the lecture is when he talked about forgiveness in the classroom. In todays society it is taught that once someone cheats, especially on a paper, they will be suspended or expelled from the school. According to our Christian beliefs this is not right at all, because we are taught to forgive and to give second chances. Also, it is proven that people learn better by their own mistakes than the mistakes of others that are just talked about. So, giving a student a second chance is giving the student yet another opportunity to learn.
In conclusion, I really liked Dr. Wentzel and I learned a lot from him lecture. He is a very smart and caring man, not only when associated with his faith, but also when he is talking about education.
