Biblical Foundations

What is the Bible? Is it a guidebook, a legal text, a book of poetry? The simple answer is that the Bible, in its entirety, is none of these. Perhaps, then, the better question is what can the Bible do? In this sense, while it's not a guidebook, it can guide us. That is, the Bible can help us reflect on our lives—our personal lives, our work lives, our church lives, etc.—and rouse a productive surprise. Such a productive surprise causes us to rethink our practices, opening up the possibility of doing things differently instead of unthinkingly pushing on ahead.

This course will explore the Bible by examining selections from across the canon, reading thought-provoking secondary sources and learning hermeneutical strategies along the way. We will read these selections with two competing emphases: consonance and dissonance. In terms of consonance, we will examine how the Bible is the story of God's presence in the world for and through his creatures. In terms of dissonance, we will examine how we cannot distill the Bible down to one single narrative. In this way, when we read Scripture, we must be open to being surprised. When we find ourselves surprised, we can respond to the call of surprise: to rethink our assumptions and think differently. Accordingly, our approach to reading Scripture, we will find, is the same as our approach to relating to Scripture in our various practices; responding to Scriptural surprise prompts us to follow the implications of that surprise into all aspects of our lives.

Dr. Nik Ansell, and Mark Standish
ICSD 1108AC/2108AC S22*
Blended (Online Asynchronous/Synchronous)

(MWS, MA-EL)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:
To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register April 19, 2022. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*Approved for Area 1 of the CSTC

Cultivating Learning Communities of Grace

Cultivating Learning Communities of Grace is a course for instructional leaders and school administrators in the consideration of both school and classroom cultures. Course content will include attention to social and cultural contexts, racial justice, indigenous perspectives, human sexuality, and restorative practices and how these topics impact and form school and classroom cultures.

This course seeks to help students find clarity in answers to the following questions:

• What is the relationship between the daily behaviour of educational leaders and the cultures of schools?

• How do we awaken our students’ knowledge, creativity, and critical reflective capacities in our schools and classrooms?

• How do racism and other forms of oppression underlie achievement gaps and alienation within our schools?

• How can classroom learning be linked to larger movements seeking to effect change in the community?

• How can school culture be a vehicle for social change?

• How do we cultivate learning communities of grace in our schools?

Course Format

This course is an online course consisting of six synchronous discussions and ten weeks of asynchronous online interaction. Specifically, participants will:

• Write weekly reflective responses to the assigned readings (April 25 - June 30)

• Participate in ten weekly forum discussions (April 25 - June 30)

• Participate in six 3-hour online, interactive Zoom sessions (starting late in April and concluding in an intensive series of sessions on three consecutive days early in August)

• Zoom 1: Thursday, April 28

• Zoom 2: Thursday, May 19

• Zoom 3: Thursday, June 16

• Zoom 4: Tuesday, Aug. 9

• Zoom 5: Wednesday, Aug. 10

• Zoom 6: Thursday, Aug. 11

• Complete a project that applies their understanding of Cultivating Learning Communities of Grace (Final draft due September 2);

• Provide feedback on the projects of other course participants;

• Share their project with an authentic audience; and

• Post their project in an e-portfolio.

Dr. Edith van der Boom
ICSD 260008 S22*
Blended (Online Asynchronous/Synchronous)

(MA-EL)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:
To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register April 19, 2022. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*Approved for Area 2 or 3 of the CSTC

Lead From Where You Are: Making a Difference in the Face of Tough Problems, Big Questions, and Organizational Politics

Leadership is not about personality, authority, position, influence, or power as such. Leadership is an art, a craft, a practice, to which everyone is called sometime or other, in widely different situations. Leadership can be practiced with varying degrees of authority, from any position, at varying scales of influence, and with varying access to different sources of power. Leadership is the work of motivating a group of people to act in certain ways as they shape what they share.

In this course we will explore two kinds of leadership, positional leadership and contributory leadership, and two kinds of leadership practices, algorithmic leadership practices and heuristic leadership practices. Positional leadership is the kind of leadership that comes with a particular, recognized position in a group, and contributory leadership is the kind of leadership that you can contribute regardless of your position in a group. Algorithmic leadership practices are those leadership practices for which there are clear, commonly agreed-upon procedures and goals, and heuristic leadership practices are those leadership practices for which there are not (or not yet) clear, commonly agreed-upon procedures and goals and that demand imaginative discernment. We will attend to leadership with regard to both making beneficial change happen and ensuring needed maintenance.

Participants in the course will read from a carefully curated selection of texts on the practice of leadership, will engage one another in asynchronous online forum discussions about their own leadership experiences in relation to these readings, will meet in a series of six synchronous online video sessions (starting late in April and concluding in an intensive series of sessions on three consecutive days early in August), and will draft and workshop two papers on topics selected from a set of options but all oriented towards the leadership practice and professional development of the participants. Participants are encouraged to take a complete break from coursework during the month of July. The course will conclude with each participant organizing and reflecting on a celebration of learning done in the company of their own confidantes.

Dr. Gideon Strauss
ICSD 132504/260003 S22*
Blended (Online Asynchronous/Synchronous)

(MWS, MA-EL)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:
To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register April 19, 2022. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*Approved for Area 2 or 4 of the CSTC

The Visible, the Invisible, and the Revealed: Phenomenology and Christianity

“Christian philosophy,” writes Jean-Luc Marion, “dies if it repeats, defends, and preserves something acquired that is already known, and remains alive only if it discovers what would remain hidden in philosophy without it.” Is “Christian philosophy” simply the practice of thinking, from a Christian perspective, about problems and data independently available to philosophical consideration? Or, as Marion claims, does Christian philosophy “invent…—in the sense of both discovering and constructing—heretofore unseen phenomena”? Guided by these basic questions, this seminar offers an advanced introduction to the phenomenology of religion, focusing especially on the unique and decisive contributions of Christian life to our understanding of the nature of human experience as explored in phenomenological description. We will explore philosophical innovations—such as love, faith, grace, Word, and incarnation—that a phenomenology of Christianity makes available to thought, as well as other philosophical themes—such as attention, embodiment, language, and community—that are enriched by the intersection of phenomenology and Christianity.

Dr. Andrew Tebbutt
ICS 153302 / 253302 S22

Intensive, June 13 - July 22, 2022

Remote (Online Synchronous)

Tuesdays & Thursdays, 10am - 12pm ET

(MWS, MA, PhD) Syllabus

Enrolment Notes: To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register is June 15, 2022. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations. *Attention TST students: if you are interested in taking this course for credit, you must petition your college of registration to count the course credit toward your degree program.