Resources by Melisa Ortiz Berry

It’s no fun lecturing to blank stares. As a church historian in an undergraduate institution, I teach quite a few general education classes to students who come to me ready to “do their time.” Thankfully, I stumbled upon a unique learning aid that has helped me bring to life some previously disengaged students The Reacting to the Past (RTTP) historical role-playing games have been all the rage these last few years in higher-education and have helped radically increase student engagement in my own courses. There are a variety of games available, many of which are well-suited for religious studies and Christian higher education. While studies show increased overall student engagement, it’s the games’ effect on student leadership that caught my interest this semester.[1] With student permission granted to share this story, I’d like to talk about how playing the RTTP game helped “Sam” transition from passive to active learning through his leadership role in Rousseau, Burke, and Revolution in France, 1791.[2] Leadership Self-Assessment Let me start by saying that I was not expecting Sam to become our RTTP star player. While he made a few insightful comments during the class, he struggled with turning in work and general participation. I had quite a few blank stares from Sam from the back of the class. This semester I had my TA choose who would play what role in our RTTP game. Each student completed an online questionnaire that helped gauge their interest, experience, skills, and limitations. They had the opportunity to state if they would be open to a leadership role or had experience in a range of areas such as student debate, event planning, or gaming. This TA had no knowledge of the students in the class other than what she found on these sheets, which allowed her to make an unbiased choice of who would receive what role. The crowd leader in our game was the historical character “Danton,” a key role that needed a strong leader. Based solely on his self-assessment, my TA assigned Sam this part. It was a risk for me to let it stand—the game really needed this character to shine—but I trusted Sam’s self-assessment and I am so glad that I did!        It turns out that the blank stare from the back of the class was masking a passionate leader. My previous lectures elicited a few comments from him, but nothing substantial. Now, all of a sudden, I had an excited student—when he received his role, he literally bounced out of the classroom. Moving forward, he came to class prepared, rallied his faction, made strategic plans, and worked outside of the classroom to meet his faction goals. His speeches were passionate, logical, and contained the necessary primary source material. He brought his “A-game” and helped lift the rest of the class with him. At the end of the game, his classmates voted for him as the strongest player. Removing Teacher Bias There’s a lot that could be said about how this highlighted Sam’s natural leadership abilities and buoyed his self-esteem, but teacher-to-teacher, I want to share this: Sam was able to lead and shine because my own potential bias was removed. He said he was a leader, my TA believed him, and that was that. There was no checking of attendance or grades, no memory of how often he had engaged in classroom conversation. The whole class benefited when I trusted the student’s self-assessment. The heart of RTTP pedagogy is pulling the professor into the background and letting students take the lead. However, we still steer things from behind the scenes, perhaps most importantly in role selection. Some professors just pull names out of a hat, while others hand pick roles. For myself, it was through the adaptation of another professor’s student pre-game questionnaire that I was able to land somewhere between these two options. Previously, I had used the questionnaire and selected roles based on student responses and my own knowledge of them. This made for some active games; however, with my TA assigning roles based only on student self-assessment, it created our best game yet. Sam’s success has taught me to release my own hand even more from this aspect of the game and is pushing me to reevaluate all of my courses beyond the game. What can I do to offer students an opportunity for self-assessment of their own leadership abilities and then honor it in the classroom? By finding ways to further reduce my own potential bias, I hope to cultivate a greater diversity of student leaders in the classroom. [1] Julie C. Tatlock and Paula Reiter, “Conflict and Engagement in ‘Reacting to the Past’ Pedagogy,” Peace Review 30, no. 1 (2018) and Matthew C. Weidenfeld and Kenneth E. Fernandez, “Does Reacting to the Past Increase Student Engagement? An Empirical Evaluation of the Use of Historical Simulations in Teaching Political Theory,” Journal of Political Science Education 13, no. 1 (2017): 46–61. [2] Mark C. Carnes and Gary Kates, Rousseau, Burke, and Revolution in France, 1791 (New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 2013). “Sam” is an anonymous name given to my student and with his permission.

It was Christmas break 2019 and I was exhausted. I had just finished my first full-time semester. I was frantically composing new lecture material during the day and at night nurturing twin toddlers. There was little self-care happening in my days, let alone a dynamic spiritual life. After losing myself in the holidays, as January came closer, my mind turned back to refining my spring classes. With the pedagogy of “workshops past” swirling in my head, it suddenly occurred to me: “Could I ‘backward design’ my life?”  For a refresher or introduction to “backward design,” I recommend Grant P. Wiggins and Jay McTighe’s chapter “Backward Design” in Understanding by Design.[1] Their “what,” “how,” and “client centered” emphasis helped me frame my own journey of self-care below. Transitioning my thinking from the classroom to my own life, I found their quote from George Pólya’s 1945 work insightful, “We concentrate on the desired end, we visualize the final position in which we would like to be. From what foregoing position could we get there?”[2] That December I began a thought experiment, seriously asking myself where I wanted to be at the end of my life and how I would get there. Imagining myself as an elderly woman, I saw myself seated—peaceful, wise, and smiling. It was “quality” that I wanted out of life, not “quantity.” For me, a successful life could be measured through my relationships and my state of being.  In a backward design (from here forward, I will italicize the pedagogical elements), I would need a measurable outcome. For myself, I want my state of being to begin and end with a life lived richly in the Spirit, cultivated in peace, while having discipled others to find that peace, too. This was all very abstract and lovely, but my life in the present was hectic and over-full. What attitudes or actions would I need to cultivate or accomplish in the present to help me get there? How would I be able to assess if I was more peaceful at the end of the year? A yellow sticky note on my computer reminded me of a previous insight: “Time with God refuels my day.” I desperately needed to refuel, and I also wanted to work toward my end goal of being a woman at peace, but what could I do now and why? The only thing that was going to make me prioritize time spent reading my Bible was a public commitment. To this end I made a watershed decision: I went on my personal Facebook on January 1, 2020, and told “everyone” that I would go online daily to read the New Testament through in a year, and I would love it if they joined me. To my shock and relief, they did! What would I do? Read and pray each day on Facebook. Why would I read the New Testament online? As accountability to actually do it, trusting the work of the Holy Spirit to cultivate peace within me. How would I assess my growth? At the end of the year, am I more at peace? Had I discipled anyone else along the way? The result: It worked! Not only was it intellectually stimulating to track repeated themes in the New Testament, but it did indeed produce the spiritual strength I needed for a challenging year. Reading the Bible online in community brought me and others both peace and joy, which served as the evidence for this effective activity. The key to the success of this backward design was that it was “client centered,” and I was the primary client. This activity was about my own spiritual growth, centered on my own journey with God, with discipling others simply being a joyful expression of that and not the primary exercise. I share this in hopes of cementing the practice of backward design in my own life and to offer it to you. If this sounds intriguing to you, may I invite you to consider: What is the desired outcome for your life, year, or day?       How will you help yourself get there, through the years and today?  Where will you find evidence for the effectiveness of your choices and activities in your life?  May this journey of faith and life be one in which self-care is at the heart of the activities that help us achieve our life goals.   [1] Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, “Backward Design.” Understanding by Design. Vol. Expanded 2nd ed. Gale Virtual Reference Library (Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2005). [2] George Pólya, How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1945) 230.

I took a deep breath and stepped out of my office dressed as the Greek goddess Athena. My historically inaccurate Amazon purchase had me in a “Roman Spartan Costume Helmet,” a “Roman Empress” costume over my clothes, holding a large plastic spear and a “Wonder Woman” shield. It was the best I could piece together online, and it would have to do—and this was for fun! In our Reacting to the Past (RTTP) game, The Threshold of Democracy: Athens in 403 B.C., the students had to self-start their first Athenian Assembly debate by reenacting a pig sacrifice (pig picture torn in half) while priestesses of Athena offered prayers. The president sat at his table, ready to start the proceedings. They were nervous. I was nervous for them.  So, in a flourish of polyester and plastic I stomped into the classroom. I banged my spear on my Wonder Woman shield and stood behind the shocked priestesses. I whispered, “Go for it!”  Student faces were a mix of shock and amusement; I was certainly not cool enough for a couple of them. But who cared? My priestesses pulled it off, the pig was sacrificed, and the president called the meeting to order. They debated and voted. The next week I gave extra credit for showing up in a toga, and about 20 percent of the class came wrapped in random bed sheets. In preparation for our five-session role playing game I told them repeatedly to “just have fun with it!” and fun was had! At the end of the game I had students fill out a “Win Sheet” where they discussed what they accomplished and reflected on their own game play. Paraphrases of some responses ranged from “I didn’t think that this would be fun, but it was,” and “I have never liked history before,” to “I normally don’t speak up in class, but this helped me overcome that” and “I met new people and made friends.” I took that for a win. For this church history professor assigned to teach Western Civilization, the RTTP role playing game provided a way to make a notoriously boring class engaging (for all of us). As it turns out, I had stumbled upon a “ludic pedagogy” or the “pedagogy of fun”: Sharon Lauricella and T. Keith Edmunds’ post, “A Serious Look at Fun in College Classrooms” discusses how the rigor of education is not lost in a fun environment, rather it lowers the cognitive load and increases intrinsic motivation and learning.  It is probably no surprise to you that studies show that by making learning fun, student stress decreases and learning increases. The bigger question most professors ask isn’t, “Should I try this?” but rather, “What would this look like in my classroom?”  Here are some ideas that I have tried: We reenact a house church with dollar store decor and food. During review week, students write either three church history characters or the attributes from them that they want to have in their own life on a dollar store Christmas ornament.  At the end of the class around a common question, “Why do we have so many denominations?” I have students create their own church with their denomination of choice, or none. They design a building, pick a symbol for the logo, choose the music, governance style, etc. They are creative, and they enjoy the in-class activity “for fun.”  When studying the Desert Fathers and Mothers, we learn to make prayer ropes from a YouTube video. The joy in this is that the knot is almost impossible to make, so we have a good laugh trying. Pre-pandemic, we went for pizza and then visited a Russian Orthodox Church together. A class did the Reacting to the Past’s “Trial of Anne Hutchinson.” (There was burning at the stake!) The Reacting to the Past “Council of Nicaea” role playing game is on my radar for the future. NOTE: These RTTP games are not intuitive to lead, you’ll need all summer to prepare. I highly recommend joining the association and the Facebook group for help. Plan on the game taking four to eight weeks of your semester.  Clearly this is not an exhaustive list and many of you have your own successes to add. If you could take a moment to write down some of those in the comments, this could make it a very helpful space for all of us searching for new ideas.