L-R: Club President, Steven Utroska; Oxford University Professor, Dr. Anthony Clarke, and William Carey University Provost and Hattiesburg Club Past President, Scott Hummel.
President Steven Utroska presided over today’s meeting. Mike Ratliff gave today’s invocation. Joey Johnson led us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Thanks to Mark Killingsworth, Shane Germany and Steven Utroska who served as our greeters today.
Brandon Hodges thanked those who helped with today’s meeting and introduced our guests. Scott Hummel has today’s guest speaker, Dr. Anthony Clarke as his guest. Jerry Gilder has his wife, Nancy Gilder as his guest.
Steven thanked those who signed up recently to assist with our Meals on Wheels delivery. More volunteers are needed in the coming weeks. Steven also noted that the board is cancelling all 5th Tuesday meetings for the remainder of the year. The effort is to try and cut costs where possible. The April 30th meeting will be cancelled.
Shane Germany reported that he is assuming programming duties from Erin Granberry. He is asking Rotarians to adopt a month and provide speakers for that month’s programs. He also noted that programming information has all now been digitized and is available on-line for those who need it.
Lynn Walton reported that she is participating in a walk to help raise money for the Hope Clinic. If you are interested in helping, please see Lynn.
Scott Hummel then introduced our guest speaker today, Dr. Anthony Clarke. Dr. Clarke is a Fellow at Regent’s Park which is one of 44 universities associated with Oxford University in United Kingdom. He is a Senior Tutor for Regents and a UK Baptist minister. He was born in Brazil but moved to the UK with his family. His primary mission at Regents is to teach and oversee their ministerial students. His goal is to start with the student and not the tutor and teach the students how to think critically. He says it is important that students own the responsibility for their learning.
According to Dr. Clarke, there are three primary methods of teaching in the UK, which are not that uncommon with the American system. Method one is focusing on education as a production line. Teachers provide students with the information they will need later in life and the students can then pull that information forward when it is needed.
A second method is the garden model. Teachers plant seeds of thoughts in their students and help them grow those seeds into meaningful thoughts and opportunities.
The third method of education described by Dr. Clarke is the Education is a Journey model. In this model the tutors do something with the students that give them challenges and makes them become more creative thinkers and problem solvers.
The tutoring system which Dr. Clarke is involved in takes a very limited number of students, perhaps one to three, and spends a great deal of time with those students. He attempts to find out what experiences the students bring to their education, challenges them to write essays about those experiences and then try and resolve the conflicts they produce between their experiences and their theories. His students are required to read about six books per week for three-eight-week semesters. Although a successful instruction method, it is very expensive because of the staff time necessary for each student.
Since Dr. Clarke works primarily with ministerial students, his education goal is to teach them some academics but also to shape them for their future challenges. He says you can’t just teach a ministerial student theory and then expect them to manage a church with all of its challenges.
If he has any advice for the American educational system, he says he would recommend that we define our goal for education in this modern era. He suggests beginning with a student’s experience rather than their theology. He suggests that teachers and instructors should be asking how, what they are doing, might shape the student as a person rather than just give them skills and knowledge to get a job.
Steven thanked our speaker and then adjourned the meeting with our motto, “Service Above Self.”