Archives for 2022

WHAT DIVERSITY IS DOING If you are on the underside of it—on the wrong end of the seeming hospitable invitation—you are likely surviving diversity. Diversity is hardly a cordial experience. It is tolerated, lived through—sometimes agonizingly. To understand this sentiment, we must center the recipient of such ...

It’s a heavy time at our university. The pandemic is still with us (a funny/not-funny tweet I read recently said, “i didn’t realize 2020 was gonna be a trilogy”). Within the first few weeks of class, I had six students from my Religion and Pop Culture class out ...

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds…   Romans 12:2a (NRSV) Students are stressed today, and Omicron is not the only culprit. Twenty-four-hour access to social media and our preoccupation with it has proven to be both a blessing and a curse. ...

Every now and then I read a book for which I have such resonance and affection that I wish I had written it. One such book is The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life, by Parker Palmer. Parker Palmer teaches that the bad days ...

At the heart of Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy is the dictum of “reading the word and reading the world.” As a literacy specialist who worked with Brazilian peasants, Freire learned from these students the necessity of making the connection with their lived experience. Teaching for social change takes participants ...