Suzanne Ehst
Professor of Education, Director of Secondary Education
Education
- B.A., Eastern Mennonite University, 1997
- M.A., Goddard College, 2005
- PhD, Western Michigan University, 2017
Contact
- sehst@goshen.edu
- (574) 535-7875
- Church-Chapel 115E (map)
E. Suzanne Ehst and Brooke Lemmon (2021). “From Resistance to Commitment: Shifting Dispositions in Secondary Preservice Teachers.” IACTE Newsletter 1(1).
E. Suzanne Ehst and Lewis Caskey (2018). “Writing Toward Democracy: Scaffolding Civic Engagement with Historically Marginalized Students.” The English Journal 107(7).
E. Suzanne Ehst (2018). “Vouchers, Anabaptism, and the School Choice Movement.” The Mennonite 21(1).
E. Suzanne Ehst (2016). “Parent-Teacher Conference.” (Poetry). The English Journal 106(2).
E. Suzanne Ehst (2015). “I Love the Country, but I Can’t Stand the Scene: Teaching Literature to Examine and Complicate Adolescent National Identity.” The Hilltop Review 7(2).
E. Suzanne Ehst and Jill Herman-Wilmarth. (2014). “Troubling the Single Story: Teaching International Narrative through a Critical Literacy Lens.” The Alan Review 41(3).
Allen Webb, E. Suzanne Ehst, et al. (2013). “#Occupy Literature: Lasting Lessons of the Occupy Movement.” Language Arts Journal of Michigan 28(2).
E. Suzanne Ehst. (2012). Book Review: Healing the Heart of Democracy by Parker Palmer. The Journal of Education and Christian Belief 16(2).
Karen Vocke, E. Suzanne Ehst, et al. (2012). “Grammar: Navigating Teaching without Crashing and Burning.” Language Arts Journal of Michigan 27(2).
“Toward a Unified First-Year Seminar: Lessons from a Decade of Tweaking.” Invited workshop, Alma College, 2022. In my role as Core Curriculum Director, I oversee the curriculum of our first-year seminar titled Identity, Culture, and Community. As Alma College shifted from a menu of seminar options to a unified curriculum, they invited me to lead several workshop on curriculum design and discussion facilitation.
“Putting Interdisciplinarity in its Place.” Marpeck Dean’s Conference, 2022: With two colleagues, we chronicled the revisions to our Core curriculum at Goshen College with an emphasis on where interdisciplinary teaching and learning worked well, and where we revised curriculum toward the single-discipline model.
“Teaching Tools for Church Contexts.” MennoCon, 2021: Many people end up teaching in their church contexts with no teacher education. For this session at the biennial conference of Mennonite Church USA, I presented various research-based tools and frameworks that could be adapted to teaching all ages.
“Dungeons and Dragons and Standards: Gamification to Spark Joy in the English Classroom.” Indiana Council of Teachers of English, 2020: In collaboration with two former students, I planned to present at ICTE on gamification in general, and specifically how these two teachers used Dungeons and Dragons to gamify their English classes in a public and private school context. This presentation was cancelled due to Covid 19, but we plan to present in the future.
“The Impact of Anabaptist Liberal Arts Teacher Education on Beginning Teachers’ Practice.” Maple Scholars, 2019: In the summer of 2019, I collaborated with an undergraduate student to explore the impact of our general education curriculum and institutional core values on beginning teachers’ practice. Through an extensive literature review and interviews with beginning teachers, we traced distinctive themes in our undergraduate education program through the practice of early career teachers. One of the strongest findings was that our alumni are exceptionally strong in the area of diversity, equity, and inclusion, specifically their ability to promote intercultural understanding, teach inclusively, and integrate principles of nonviolence into their classrooms.
“Critical Inquiry Circles.” Indiana Council of Teachers of English, 2019: Critical inquiry circles are a structured small-group discussion method that equips students for conversation by having them explore different texts on a common topic. Specifically, I focused on applying critical inquiry circles to a college writing class where students’ research-based argumentative essays grew out of critical conversations with peers.
Core 110: Academic Voice
Educ 321: Curriculum and Instruction I: Middle School Emphasis
Educ 324: Curriculum and Instruction II: High School Emphasis
Educ 325: Secondary English Methods
Educ 403: Senior Seminar
Educ 405: Student Teaching: Secondary English