It was forty summers ago. I was a first-year student at a teacher-training college in England. I was relaxing in the student common-room when one of those life-changing little events occurred. A magazine lying on a table caught my eye. The title was Spectrum, but it was the words of the subtitle that had leaped out at me: 'A magazine for Christians in education'. I picked it up eagerly and leafed through it, breathing a prayer of thanks to God for this eureka moment.

In 1972 a young Irishman arrived with his family at Churchill College, Cambridge, to complete his degree and gain a qualification to teach mathematics. Formerly an insurance clerk in Dublin and subsequently a missionary teacher in Somalia, John Shortt was to have his lifetime vocation shaped by the two years at Cambridge that lay ahead.

THIS PAPER CONTRIBUTES to a Christian hermeneutic of special education by suggesting the biblical concept of hospitality as a necessary characteristic of classroom and school environments in which students with disabilities and other marginalized students can be effectively incorporated into the body of the classroom. Christian hospitality, seen in the teacher’s attitude and approach to students and in the milieu of the classroom, conveys welcome, acceptance, and belonging. Rather than seeing diversity as a threat to community, hospitable classrooms welcome and seek to build relationships among all the students.

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THE MEDIEVAL MONASTIC movement preserved and developed reading practices— lectio—from ancient Greek pedagogy as a slow, mindful approach to reading for formation. This ancient way of reading, now better known as lectio divina, challenges the fast, pragmatic reading so characteristic of our time. We propose that the present moment may be ripe for educators to appropriate again lectio-style reading as an educational counterpart to the Slow Movement, whose growth in recent decades may indicate cultural openness to the recovery of more reflective and located practice. We begin by noting tendencies in the academy and the culture as a whole that indicate the need for slower, more thoughtful reading. We then note the attention that several authors have recently paid to reading with attention and thoughtfulness. After reviewing the elements and purposes of lectio divina, we provide brief narratives of our own attempts to implement and assess more thoughtful reading practices in education and Bible courses, suggesting ways that others might realize more fully the principles of slow reading in their courses.

THIS PAPER REFLECTS on a visit by Christian poet John Terpstra to the final class session (on a Maundy Thursday) of my Literature and Environment course, to read his poetry suite on making a cross for his church out of a fruit-tree in an orchard being ploughed under for construction. Terpstra plays on the Stations of the Cross by interweaving the story of his own cross-making with the narrative of Jesus’ crucifixion. The quasi-liturgical event of this reading created a profound stillness in the classroom, generated an animated discussion following, and raised important issues about the relationship of liturgy to classroom and of affective to cognitive learning.