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How many "friends" in the old ministry..


Ham
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I don't think it's fake. If the spirit of God is real and everybody has the same spirit, then it's not fake. We did our protocols and sometimes it was awkward, but the friendships weren't fake.

Even in the drug culture, we were supposed to see everybody else as a "brother" or "sister". We felt like we were part of something special. Those friendships sometimes dissolved when people moved on to other things, but they weren't fake, either.

Even the schools we attended. First day of Kindergarten. They herd you into this classroom with this teacher and all these other kids you don't know and wouldn't ever know if your parents hadn't all bought real estate in the same general area. And you're supposed to get along with these other kids. That's more fake than twi or drugs. At least I got to choose those things.

Pretty much everybody I interact with is ex twi. Doesn't bother me a bit.

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But as far as interacting with ex-way, can you honestly call them friends?

I'm also thinking of old "leadership". A general observation is that they do not have any real friends. Many have an audience. They have a microphone. Other than occasional nods and amens from the audience, there is no exchange, no dialogue.. maybe some in the audience like it that way, I dunno.

The only thing personal I can remember about the minister in the church that I grew up in, is that he was long winded. Same for F*nnegan, C*mmins.. Tow*send.. I remember more from what I read in their class syllabus. I could not cite much more than two or three personal facts about any of the above individuals.

CD's and youtube make the "relationship" even more impersonal. I suppose that works, if you have a product to sell.

Most likely they would not recognize me on the street.. or even pick me out in a line up as somebody they were even aquainted with.

Ralphie might. It would not surprise me if he knew me by name if we had a chance encounter.

As a class instructor, I almost demand students to engage in dialogue, and to ask questions during lecture time. Usually it is a small group. Twenty, thirty, thirty five. If they are too quiet, sometimes I ask them why.

It is far too easy for some to get up front, and simply show everyone that one knows how to do the work, solve the problem. .

Edited by Ham
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...snip...

As a class instructor, I almost demand students to engage in dialogue, and to ask questions during lecture time. Usually it is a small group. Twenty, thirty, thirty five. If they are too quiet, sometimes I ask them why.

...snip...

When I became an actual teacher in an actual school, I followed the same policy. There is no real learning in canned presentation. That comes in dialogue.

Love,

Steve

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As a class instructor, I almost demand students to engage in dialogue, and to ask questions during lecture time. Usually it is a small group. Twenty, thirty, thirty five. If they are too quiet, sometimes I ask them why.

I remember one of my classes in college. P Chem, I think. The professor asked if there were any questions. When there were none, he asked, "Do you all understand what I just said, or don't you understand enough to ask a question?" Every head started shaking, "Don't know." He explained again, in a way we better understood. :)

George

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I've done something similar.

They seem afraid to ask questions.. explain it all a different way. Still no questions? try another strategy.. if it is a fundamentally important enough concept I'll keep going at different angles until the students get it. I seriously don't see how someone can really learn something with questions being held for the last day of class. "most of your questions will be answered as we cover the material.."

I had to teach myself the same way sometimes. One book not working for me? Try a different one on the same subject..

Its still the same. I'm working through two different books on differential equations at the moment. One of them works with analytic methods, the other one works more with graphing, phase lines..Euler's method..

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One book not working for me? Try a different one on the same subject..

I've found this approach to be very effective over the years. (as a student, not a teacher) Something I've discovered by doing this, also, is that, often, textbooks contain inaccuracies and contradictions that contribute to confusion.

edit: This is one of the reasons why it is so academically dangerous to put so much stock in PFAL materials alone as a sole source of Biblical reference.

Edited by waysider
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As a teacher, or instructor it works as well. Sometimes the current book has methods or explanations that appear more like chaos than mathematics..

The worst is explaining undefined slope as "no slope". No, it is not No Slope. It is undefined slope.. undefined, because if you try to calculate the slope by formula, you encounter an undefined operation, dividing a real number by zero..

Students take the book to extend undefined slope to zero slope. Which is something entirely different..

Every line has a slope.

Only one person came this Saturday for free wine, beer and chili. But.. this was the person who needed to come..

People don't have a clue of what I am trying to offer. Maybe they don't need what I have.. I dunno. One person did. And the concept reciprocates..

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They need what you have to give, but they don't know it yet. I don't understand the math anymore....but a 0 slope is a slope and it has the definition which is 0 (zero)

I don't understand how you can have anything "undefined".....but in math you can do that. You can have a slope which you can't give a definition to.....that would be an undefined slope. There is a difference.

Can you give them a visual with, for example, a file folder. Hold it in several positions and ask simple questions...does this have a positive slope....a negative slope....a zero slope. Maybe if you showed it to them that way they would understand and make the connection.

Ham, you are doing such a good job. The students you're getting aren't prepared well enough for you because of the watering down of all kinds of education. Sometimes they are taught right out of the book, which isn't necessarily bad, except if the teacher cannot provide additional samples.

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I guess you just need to say that if a line is "straight up and down" (or parallel to the Y-axis), its slope is undefined, because slope = (delta Y)/(delta X), but between any two points on the line, delta X = 0. Just as the term 5/0 is undefined (there is no number X such that 0X=5), so is the slope of a line parallel to the Y-axis. I could see how one might call that "no slope," although that would be an imprecise description. This is, of course, different from zero slope, which would be a horizontal line (parallel to the X-axis), since for any two points on the line, delta Y = 0.

George

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  • 1 month later...

The only reason I got involved at all was a woman! I met her while she was working in a Radio Shack store, & I was in there to buy parts. I heard her talking about God to the customer at the counter while I shopped, and somehow I was attracted to her. We met later, and we went to Twig, I took PFAL, an we fell in love. Three years later...I'd had enough and left the area.

That was 1982, and we're still in touch a few times a year, and...Wait for it...She is still in a splinter group! Glad I left, but there is still a place for her in my heart.

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Living in a commune type of setting (FellowLaborers) drove this idea home for me. There were several awakening moments, moments when you seem to be an outside observer of yourself, baffled by what you see, wondering how you happened to be there.

Reminds me of sitting in Wierwille Library on the Emporia Campus in an afternoon class, looking out the window at the trees and thinking, "Who am I and what am I doing here?"

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