Resources by Mindy McGarrah Sharp

Im/Possibilities of Learning in Crisis Teaching and learning in times of crisis require ongoing recalibrations. In 2020, both teachers and students have quickly implemented new skills, accessing each other and learning activities in new and different ways, trying to plan one step ahead even as fresh challenges emerge. It is difficult to focus. Griefs, losses, and longings multiply. Intentional listening to students and colleagues about learning in 2020 and reflecting on my own experiences, I keep encountering an impossible seeming calculation of teaching and learning + writing + editing + administrative work + service commitments + helping children with online school + yearning to see relatives across quarantines or in nursing care facilities + daily chores, eating well, and exercise + attending to other aspects of life beyond work. All this is unfolding within unprecedented restrictions and constrictions of time, space, and breathing, alongside the blurring lines of work, school, and home. Students and I need more than a workload calculator to recalibrate course design. As we think ahead to another semester of teaching and learning in conditions of raging pandemic, social-political, climate, and economic crises, what would it look like to account more for courage on the front end of course planning? Course Design with More Than a Workload Calculator Course design involves a careful calibration of learning objectives, readings and other learning resources, assignments, learning activities, rubrics, and more. Workload calculations inform course designs that support collective thriving, individual learning, access to and expectation of good work, advancement in a course of study, vocational development, career preparation, exam or credentialing readiness, and academic topics and tools that translate beyond the course itself. A workload calculator estimates the amount of time it will take students to complete assigned course work and, by extension, reasonable workload for instructors. Workload calculators not only account for the volume of reading, writing, and exams assigned in a course, but also difficulty, density, and complexity of each. Newer versions account for more widespread online and hybrid teaching, including discussion board assignments and variable synchronous course contact hours. Workload calculations help teachers design courses that justify credit hour tuition without surpassing the maximum amount of work that it is reasonable to expect for students to complete the course. Reflecting on student and teacher time and energy this year, what is a responsible amount of work to expect for academic credit during the triple pandemic of COVID-19, the unmasking and reorganizing racialized terror, and climate crisis, all in the context of mounting political tensions? Workload calculators support good course design, yet only calculating for number of pages and hours of writing and meeting can neglect context. Teaching online in a pandemic, even using a workload calculator, I am realizing that something else is missing. No one teaches or learns outside of context(s). In addition to accounting for time for appropriate amounts of reading, writing, testing, discussing, and studying that inform good work, course design must also leave room and account for courage. Four Course Design Recalibrations Emergency pedagogical shifts in response to pandemic contexts have uncovered workload factors unaccounted for even when workload calculations are adjusted for rhythms of online teaching and learning. In addition to reading, writing, and assessments, what would it look like to also account for the extra courage it takes to engage the learning process in times of crisis? #1 Acknowledge Griefs: Making Room for Ambiguous Meaning in Course Design Grief is present in and around learning for all teachers and students. In addition to the hundreds of thousands of deaths from and exacerbated by pandemic conditions, grief work is needed to notice, acknowledge, and learn to live with deaths, losses of connections, rituals, traditions, plans, and severely altered mundane rhythms of life connected to both special events and everyday practices, from eating and laughing to moving about the world. Grief takes multiple, often compounding, forms from mourning deaths to deep disappointments to an uneasy, ambiguous depth of longing. Can we add time to the workload calculator to acknowledge griefs and to celebrate the possibility of learning in the midst of loss? Courses are not and should not be therapeutic spaces. Neither are they made up of unfeeling, unaffected partners in the work of school. While stage-theories of grief are both beloved and disputed, many grief researchers consider meaning-making to be a long-term goal of grief work. We are teaching in a time of loss and longing borne of disillusionment, unrest, uncertainty, disease, and division. Neither teachers nor students know yet what it all means, what meaning we will make as we reflect back to this historic and challenging time. Yet, we yearn for something to make sense, words that fit the moment even when there are often no words that feel adequate in the face of temporary and permanently tangible absences. For every assignment submitted late, I have started first with “wow, look what you created in this midst of so much uncertainty and loss!” before other logistical implications. Where in your course design could you make room to name losses and acknowledge longings? Where can you acknowledge and celebrate the miracle, possibility, and power of learning in a context of compounded griefs? #2 Expect Anxieties: Making Room for Purpose in Course Design A recent news headline reads, “Sleepless Nights, Hair Loss, and Cracked Teeth: Pandemic Stress Takes its Toll.”[1] In addition to griefs over specific losses and longings, anticipatory griefs also abound in every class(zoom)room today. Anticipatory grief is an experience of grief triggered by realizing a potential loss or imagined future that is suddenly unstable, cherished dreams and long-held plans that are not going to happen as expected, if at all.[2] Anticipatory griefs compound already heightened anxieties, fears, and rising mental health challenges related to the unending and shifting nature of current pandemic conditions. I asked a colleague how students were doing in their class and they responded that the good students were doing well. Upon further reflection, it seemed that students who were relatively well were doing better, while many otherwise good students were struggling mightily. Many factors compound the already well-founded anxieties students and teachers carry to and from class every week. We know that it can take much more energy to focus when new and old trauma wells up in the body.[3] In the past few months, I’ve received stories from students anxious about GPA- and credit-enrollment-dependent financial aid and other scholarships, ordination or other credentialing processes that remain unpaused, first generation and international students whose sending communities are proudly counting on student success, graduation requirements, internship trajectories, and other concerns about future employment opportunities. Can we add time to the workload calculator for breathing, time for students to muster up the courage to ask for help, and time to model and respond with non-anxious collegiality along the way? I have started each synchronous zoom with breakout rooms asking students to share how they are doing. I have added moments of silence and asked students to share what practices are keeping them going. I designed a credit/no credit midterm meeting in small groups to assess material, review assignments, and take the temperature of the class. Where in your course design could you make room to reinvest in the purpose of learning? Can you plan flexible-yet-framed learning environments with habits of brief checking in and referrals for more in-depth care needs prominently posted on learning management systems? Where can you acknowledge the harm and fear of harm in mental and public health by connecting to resources of sustaining purpose already present in the course subject matter? #3 Support Ritualized Focus: Making Room for Energy Investment in Course Design Crisis conditions challenge structures of time, space, energy, reflection, attention, and collaboration that affect learning environments. It takes longer to focus. Private and public spaces are shared in ever-shifting ways. It takes extra energy to negotiate daily decisions. Thinking out loud now has the added pressure of being recorded in video or posted text. Going to the class or store or dinner is a risk-benefit analysis. How have work-spaces and rhythms changed for you and your students? What is better and what is missed? For courses meeting on campus or outside, new rituals of attention unfold in shifting configurations of social distancing and communication patterns without familiar patterns of facial expression and tone. For courses meeting online, it is both necessary and can be overwhelming to prepare and process one more zoom meeting after another after another, one more discussion board post or response, one more attempt to get ahead of email. Let us add time for the transition into the workload calculator and support the extra configurations of time and space needed to learn. How do your courses support thinking in a distracting context of divided attention? Might you share some of your own practices that support your focused attention with your class and/or invite students to share with each other what is working to help them stay engaged in learning? #4 Invite Translations: Making Room for Connections in Course Design “If we can’t find ourselves in the readings this semester, we just can’t and won’t do it anymore,” students have shared in recent advising sessions, detailing the extra time and labor it can take to translate learning activities into something that matters for their lives in a time where life is unmasked as more precarious than we sometimes feel. In addition to the extra effort needed in times of uncertainty to make space in one’s home for teaching and learning, it can also take a great deal of effort to learn alongside deeply held dreams and visions. It takes effort to weave someone else’s dream into your dream when there is no opening to shared dreams or the coexistence of multiple dreams. Many graduate students have to research words and phrases as new vocabularies accompany advanced study. Some also translate every assignment into second or fifth languages. Beyond literal linguistic translation, reading also requires careful interpretation accompanied by a felt sense of distance from or relevance to the reader’s experiences. Different students often work a lot more or less to translate the reading on these interacting forms of engagement. Twenty pages of assigned reading could take equally bright and motivated students twenty minutes or five hours. Let us add time for translation to the workload calculator and invite every student into this work rather than foisting it as unaccounted-for extra work shouldered by only some learners. Extra effort is worth it to connect the learning activity to the student’s worth as a learner. However, in times of crisis, there is little room for extra and the alternative is often mimicry, an out of body, out of spirit practice of learning oneself into someone else’s dream. bell hooks indicts course design that renders some traditions not good enough to be included, arguing for expansive course design in educational systems mis-oriented toward selective visibility.[4] It is too much pressure to feel the world is on any one person’s back, therefore let us foster opportunities for connection. It is too much pressure to fight for one’s existence or the existence of a particular people, history, or dream, therefore let us foster opportunities for translation within our course design. Who is helping you check your course for opportunities and burdens of translation? How are you responsive to learning and shifting course design in response? Accounting for Courage in Crisis Teaching and Learning When filling out workload calculators for course design in crisis, instructors can’t presume healthy, whole, living their best life, so-called typical students. Rather we are in a time of needing courage and grace with each other. Students and teachers are rightly on the edge needed to be vigilant regarding public health and safety concerns while also not normalizing crisis conditions. In each three-credit hour class, I typically parcel out twelve total hours a week to course-related activities. In addition to time for reading, drafting, editing, attending synchronous or asynchronous class activities, and completing assignments, I’ve started allocating more time for thinking, more time for celebrating creativity in the midst of loss, reminding students and myself to breathe and be as well as we can be while checking on each other, carving out space and time to devote to learning in the midst of chaos, translating content that connects to dreams, and asking and listening to students and mentors on all of the above. The total time devoted to writing and total pages read will be less, but I have already seen that learning that accounts for courage can far exceed expectations. Workload recalibrations that make room for grief, anxiety, ritualized focus, and translation add rigor and support courageous academic work with added opportunities for meaning, purpose, investment, and translation. Courses that merely check off required boxes may have a place in the ecology of credentialled teaching and learning among limited human beings. Some days this is enough, more than enough. However, it’s not enough to fund a vocation. Some days, coursework serves as an escape from the world. However, a course of study also equips students to be change-makers in the world, even and especially in times of crisis. Will we be able to look back at 2020-2021 syllabi and notice that learning is unfolding in extraordinary times? Teaching and learning in crisis are challenging; both teachers and students need courage and support. I believe that making some room for grief, anxiety, ritualized focus, and translation in course design is one concrete way to recalibrate course design for the courage we will need to keep learning through a chaotic time of stress and possibility. Accounting for Courage →    Practices of Recalibration in Workload Planning   Acknowledge Grief name losses, honor longings →    Make Room for Meaning create into felt absence; supply words where needed; acknowledge miracle and power of learning Expect Anxieties acknowledge harm and fear of harm in mental and public health; refer →     Remind on Purpose fund flexible yet framed learning environment with ready referrals; share practices of sustaining Support Ritualized Focus negotiate space, time, and rhythms of attention →    Design for Investment model in class rhythms; invite conversation/check in about what is working (and not) for you and for students Invite Translation account for representation, language, and relevance →    Multiply Connections audit syllabi and check in with students; ask for help; invite all learners to stretch   [1] Aneri Pattani, NPR, October 14, 2020, https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/10/14/923672884/sleepless-nights-hair-loss-and-cracked-teeth-pandemic-stress-takes-its-toll.  [2] Andrew Lester, Hope in Pastoral Care and Counseling, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1995), 51. [3] Resmaa Menekam, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies (Las Vegas, NV: Central Recovery Press, 2017), 13. [4] bell hooks, Teaching Critical Thinking, (New York, NY: Routledge, 2010), 104. Amy Lonetree talks of it as the work of fighting for survivance in a well-supported myth of extinction (Decolonizing Museums [Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press, 2012]). If we’re accepting tuition, but not teaching meaning-making toward more humane human beings, challenges Toni Morrison, then it’s better to stop this business of education (“Sarah Lawrence Commencement Address,” The Source of Self-Regard (New York, NY: Vintage, 2019), 71). Poet Mary Oliver suggests we’d be better off just copying the old books when there’s no room for new comments (Long Life (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2004), xiv). These wise teachers continue to help me reflect on the purpose and possibilities of learning.

Caught In-Between Questions “I always figured my music came from somewhere between,” said singer-songwriter John Prine in an old interview.[1] I’ve been listening to his music as part of praying for health, and now mourning his death to this pandemic. We are in an in-between time, caught in-between mourning and making music, moving through the day and being stopped in our tracks at the sheer weight of the pandemic. Some things are falling apart. Some things are holding steady. Where does the seminary curriculum fall in this spectrum and why does it matter?  Discussing teaching and learning pastoral care amid pandemic, one student asked about the purpose of specialized training in theological education. In this moment of human solidarity does professional training serve to unite and/or separate?  Another student revealed a nagging feeling that seminary wasn’t built for them and that the curriculum isn’t as inclusive as it professes. Now that finishing a semester of disruption is taking so much energy, the student wonders if it’s worth it. Is it? I share such vocational questions: what is the purpose of professional training? To what extent are our institutions exclusive or inaccessible and can this disruption lead to expansive and deep change? What is crumbling? What is holding firm? What does all of this mean for my vocation? To what extent do I believe my courses and teaching and learning practices could resource this moment? Attending Seminary in Pandemic Crisis is an unbidden test. The COVID-19 pandemic tasks the curriculum–assessing all we have learned and taught, drawing sustenance from deep wells of knowledge and wisdom, exposing as shallow what we may have thought was deep. How could theological education resource this crisis moment? Sacred texts and philosophies speak to people across times and spaces, in good times and hard times, and mostly in-between. Text and tradition can both expose and salve wounds, make and undo worlds for whole peoples. Academic practices of digging, studying, connecting, unmasking, lingering with words are staples of theological education across the curriculum that could help give energy and direction on as we move through pandemic. How does my discipline of pastoral care resource this moment? Moving In-Between We are in-between what was and what will be. Human interaction with the novel coronavirus has begun, but not yet ended. More pointedly than most days, in pandemic we linger between life and death, searching for what will give and sustain life while minimizing and transforming, vaccinating against what kills. This is a time of in-betweens. We abide in the middle. School is not what it was and is not yet what it will be next year or in five years. We move through the in-between. Medical care, economies, policies, birthday parties, clothing ourselves for the day, visiting the sick and imprisoned while advocating for health and release, embracing at weddings, births, deaths, and other momentous life occasions–our institutions, civic practices, and religious practices and so much more are not what they were just weeks ago and are not yet where they will be. We abide in the middle. Pastoral care is a discipline that pays careful attention to the in-between that could resource the in-between-nesses of our lives in this moment of crisis and disruption. Pastoral Care Can Resource the In-Between pastoral care in-between selves and communities. It is important to honor the dignity and uniqueness of each human person while also studying the places, spaces, and communities in which individuals live. Pastoral care recognizes individual vulnerabilities and limits. Pastoral care also affirms compassionate connection. Practices of faith and religious experiences abide in-between personal piety and social justice. Practices of self-reflection, communal reflection, and conversation between selves and communities can resource lingering in this in-between. In crisis, we link “how you are, really?” to “what in the world is happening?” pastoral care in-between identity and interculturality. Not only are selves and communities constantly interacting, but identities and cultures constantly interact and affect each other. An intercultural posture recognizes that there is no such thing as an identity or a culture that is exactly one unchanging thing for all times. Practices of bordering and border crossing affect belonging. Much pastoral attention is focused on the borders of identities and the deep interactions of living cultures. Practices of storytelling, translating, learning and listening across cultures, and paying attention to borders and border crossing can resource this in-between. In crisis we link “who am I?” with “how does my story reflect and contribute to a world of difference?” pastoral care in-between roles of different levels of training, authority, and power. Pastoral care practices pay close attention to the character of relationships between parents and children, between teachers and students, between faith leaders and faith community members, between therapists and clients. People with more role-based authority have more responsibility for creating and maintaining good boundaries. We also know that role-reversals can happen where the student becomes the teacher (momentarily or in more sustained way). In many families, children become care takers of aging parents. Practices of collaborating across roles with good boundaries help attend well to in-between that characterizes much of our relational lives. In crisis that crosses borders, we ask what wisdom children bring while carefully reexamining and recommitting to boundaries that guard against abuse of power. pastoral care in-between theories and practices, in-between actions and reflections. Knowing and doing, learning and acting are deeply interconnected. Inseparable. The way we know and what counts as a source of knowledge (epistemology) is affected by and affects who we are and how we engage life practices. Likewise, practices of moving through the world help us understand and evaluate theories, often interpreting or creating new ways of thinking about what it is we do and why. Practices of integrating what we do and what we think about what we do can help to resource the in-between. In this crisis, we link questions about how to lead and teach while staying home with questions about why it matters, and in what ways it is challenging. pastoral care in-between what is and what ought to be. Practices of pastoral care are transformational, not transactional. Chaplains and other faith leaders participate in pastoral care because we believe it does something in the world, something like healing, something like liberating, something like instilling courage into the heart of fear. Crisis times can bring up all the old patterns, coping mechanisms that got us through hard times before, but may not help us be well. Systems thinking helps us recognize both life-giving and stubborn harmful patterns. Crisis times can also make new collaborations possible, help structures of injustice fall away, and fuel energies for deeper transformations. Practicing noticing patterns, remaining non-anxious, and dreaming dreams of possible futures can resource this in-between. This is a time of in-between and it makes sense to be asking questions about what matters, what is worth giving up, what must be grieved, what endures. Is theological education important in-between? To me, it’s not a question of whether, but how theological education can help resource this moment of crisis–not solve it, but help move through it. I am thankful for the ways pastoral care locates study and practices in the in-between. We’re going to need all the resources each other brings as we navigate this in-between. How is your discipline resourcing the moment?  [1] https://youtu.be/x-SKCWXoryU

Interrupting Institutional Patterns of Trauma (Non)Response Moving is difficult. In the past twenty years, I’ve moved fifteen times and I am in the middle of another move right now. Some moves were by choice and others due to unexpected circumstances. Moving is laborious–packing, reimagining space, anticipated and unanticipated expenses, unpacking, broken pieces of cherished material items, revisiting old stuff, exposing the insides of a home to anyone who offers to help at a time when one needs a lot of help, communicating address changes, responding to the questions that arise: now why are you moving? In the academic life, moving takes valuable time away from research and good teaching, service and self-care, thinking and writing.  At least three times at three very different parts of my life, I have been offered the opportunity to move when faced with a potentially traumatic set of circumstances. Someone in the building is threatening? You can move to another building. Something happened that violated the safety of your placement? You can move to another placement. Something in your classroom is disruptive to your teaching? You can move to another classroom. The subtext is often “deal with it or move, nothing is going to change here.” And I have found myself responding on a visceral level: I’m Not Moving, You Move!  I’ve also seen this response given to colleagues and students. Institution is toxic? Go back on the job market or switch schools. Toxic roommate? Move to a different dorm. Toxic work environment? Move to a different floor. Internship is not holding up its part of the bargain and supervisor not supervising? Switch internship placements. Instructor made an inappropriate comment that made a student uncomfortable? Move the student to another section. The subtext remains “deal with it or move, nothing is going to change here.” And still, I hear that visceral voice: I’m Not Moving, You Move! Moving in order to leave a toxic situation can be life-saving and should not be minimized. In my pastoral care classes, for example, I teach students to partner with local domestic violence shelters to know whom to call to help future parishioners, clients, and colleagues be ready to leave (seminary doesn’t train pastors for this, so they need to partner). The underreported statistics are clear: every institution has some history or current instances of violence and, as a leader, you are identified as a safe or unsafe person to consult for help.  Sometimes students can’t believe that it can take an average of seven attempts to leave a dangerous relationship of intimate partner violence. Sometimes students say, why can’t they just move? Survivors in the community know the answer: moving is difficult and intertwined with all kinds of complexities. Moving itself can be life or death. At worst, immovability advocates don’t just tell more vulnerable persons with the least moving expense resources to move, they say, “move or die.” In one of the FaithTrust training videos, an interviewee who left an intimate partner violence relationship and was the pastor’s wife, said that she could have stayed, but then she’d be a dead pastor’s wife.[1]  Moving can be life itself, but who is asked to move? From an interpersonal to a systemic view, why do systems foist all the moving on the more structurally vulnerable party, often requiring nothing of the system? Again, we know the answer--moving is difficult. According to Sarah Ahmed’s research on complaints in higher education around harassment and diversity-related infractions, it is the nature of institutions to put up brick walls where they don’t want to or can’t imagine moving.[2] All the packing, unpacking, exposing, digging up old things, hidden expenses, phone calls to change over all the bills, address changes, explaining the move–in the best of cases, it’s a lot. In more dire situations, it can be so emotionally draining to move. Why can’t the system take on more moving responsibilities? Why can’t the toxicity makers be made to move so that everyone can live in a less toxic environment?  Someone in the building is threatening? Make the building community safer. Revisit policies, revising and setting up new accountabilities. Something potentially threatening is happening in your placement? Take the placement off the list for now and rethink training, supervision practices, and accountabilities for placement supervisors. Something in your classroom is disruptive? Increase reporting and responding channels so that the classroom supports learning and thriving. Instructor made an inappropriate comment that made a student uncomfortable? Believe the student and move the instructor, providing training and counseling for all parties. Use the policies in place for this situation or create them.  Somedays I think I never want to move again. I don’t want anything else to break by accident. I don’t want to fill out another mail forwarding request and hope I remember to move everything over to a new address, finding out months later what I forgot or not finding out at all. You’d think I’d have all this down by now, but moving is exhausting. I have experiences of having been asked to move without any movement on the part of anyone else who could have moved and helped the situation immensely. Other times, it’s clear that I am part of a system that rewards immovability and I must remember the importance of moving together and then move. But I do like the experience of having moved because having moved can restore and create possibilities for new life. Where in your life, work, and institution can you see needs for such restoration? Where in your institution are more minoritized or more vulnerable community members being asked to move and change while the system remains unchanged? What can you do to influence systemic change to flip the script: You shouldn’t have to do all the moving, I’ll move too?  [1] See www.faithtrustinstitute.org [2] Ahmed, Sara, Living a Feminist Life, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017

More than once, a student has reported on a trauma unfolding in real time in the middle of class. Students with laptops open, or phones nearby, have shared breaking news of university lockdowns or school shootings. Just this semester, in the hours surrounding classes, we’ve seen gun violence and middle school walkouts, women’s rights and sexualized violence, police brutality and other forms of racist misuse of power, DACA and the risk and vulnerability of undocumented students, and more.  As a teacher, how does one prepare for what to do next? Part of responding to trauma is preparing to be present in unpredictable moments. Where in the curriculum do students learn whether to interrupt teaching and learning, to rewrite budgets, sermons, pastoral prayers, to scrap programming or lecture content in favor of addressing a trauma at hand?  This year I’ve experimented more regularly with a strategy I’ve used occasionally to structure time and space into my courses for the unpredictable. When trauma interrupts class, I often feel compelled to address it. However, I don’t always know which issues will trigger which students. Disclosing personal histories of trauma is not something I require nor think should be required. Histories of trauma exist, at all times, in visible and invisible ways. Some new trauma will interrupt, a decision is made about whether or not to address it, and unintended consequences may follow.  A “one-layer removed” pedagogical strategy helps me hold space to respond to trauma that interrupts courses while also protecting students from having to disclose their personal histories or being triggered directly. The strategy structures a simulated conversation about having a conversation about the presenting traumatic event. It’s not the conversation per se, but a directed conversation about the possibility of a more direct conversation at another time and place. Thus, the pedagogical exercise is by design one-layer removed from a trauma that interrupts. How does it work?  The one-layer removed practice requires at least 15 minutes of class time on a regular basis throughout the semester. I divide the class into groups of three with a seeker, a consultant, and an observer (a classic role play design). In larger groups, seekers can tag team or consultants can work together, or observers can share unique observations in turn. The seekers are the students themselves in their actual or imagined future vocational setting. The seeker contacts the consultant(s) about how to address a particular trauma in their ministry setting, practicing collegial consultation with a prompt: Seeker: Given the topic of class today and the reading we’ve been doing, I want to respond to (fill in the trauma that has interrupted the class in real time or in the local or global community).  Can you help me imagine how to do so? The consultant and seeker discuss possible conversations they imagine having or not having in their ministry, vocational, or other context at another time and space. After 5 minutes, the observer(s) reports about connections they see to the course themes, readings, contextual factors, trigger warnings or concerns, and more. Then, to debrief, the group can join with another group or the whole class can have a brief or longer conversation. This “one-layer removed” practice highlights three learning goals I have for students in several of my classes: (1) practicing and preparing to remain present when unpredictable care concerns and moral dilemmas arise (2) demonstrating and committing to ongoing courageous self-awareness and leading courageous communal awareness[1] (3) building on this awareness, cultivating a living referral network through practices of relationship-building,  consultation, and networking. When trauma infuses public discourse during a semester or even during a class session, a one-layer removed practice helps the class work on all three of these goals.  Here’s an example. This past fall, the #metoo movement arose with renewed energy[2] in which people, particularly women, disclosed experiences of abuse through social media and public protests. It was hard not to notice. In October 2017, I was teaching examples of trinitarian pastoral theology that took seriously intersectional concerns of gender, class, race, and a history of surviving abuse. There were lots of connections between course requirements and collective trauma being disclosed through the #metoo public discourse.  In a class session, I used previously set aside one-layer removed practice class time: Seeker: Given the topic of class this week and the reading we’ve been doing on taking women’s experiences seriously in our theologies of pastoral care and given the eruption of the #metoo movement this week, I am thinking about quoting this prayer[3] in my faith community’s service this week. Do you think that’s wise and how could I frame it? In the brief but important conversations that emerged, students practiced putting words to something that was painfully very familiar to some and not at all to others. Students considered how various folks with various experiences might receive either these words, other words, or lack of words about #metoo. Students brainstormed the kind of referrals they would need in their pocket that week in their various ministry and nonprofit contexts, no matter what was said or unsaid, about local resources they might print on a service bulletin. We discussed self-care, courageous communal care, and, yes, we incorporated assigned readings on implications for trinitarian pastoral theology and why that mattered. A one-layer removed pedagogical strategy helps students in my practical and pastoral theology and ethics classes prepare for moments when trauma or other dire care needs interrupt their work as a student, minister, nonprofit leader, or even dinner conversations with family and friends. Increasingly in the last year, as a pastoral theologian, I’ve been called by friends and strangers both near and far to support communities regarding various traumas. For example, I’m on a non-profit board whose carefully constructed budget had to be completely rethought when violence erupted in our service population.  Suddenly we needed to fund emergency counseling and care across multiple countries and communities. Here is just one example where my own lived experiences and the learning outcomes I have for my students aligned: the need to create a referral network before you need it.  Trauma will impinge on previously scheduled plans and folks will ask religious and spiritual leaders for advice, expect to hear a word or prayer, and hope to find some assistance in what to do next. I teach graduate students in theological education at the Masters and Doctoral levels and often remind my students that whether or not they see themselves as religious or spiritual leaders, folks who know they are educated in graduate theological education will expect them to be present in significant life and death moments. Where can students practice this in the curriculum? I’ve found that a pedagogical practice of one-layer removed can offer crucial time and space to practice.  [1] This awareness is important for helping students know which issues are too close to their own experience for them to be a care-provider and therefore need to establish referrals for help with these issues before they are needed. [2] Tanara Burke, longtime supporter of social justice for women and girls of color and founder of the nonprofit organization “JustBeInc,” created the “me too” movement to support survivors of sexualized violence a decade before the social media #metoo campaign of 2017 (see for example, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/20/us/me-too-movement-tarana-burke.html.  See also http://justbeinc.wixsite.com/justbeinc/board ). [3] I provided each group with copies of a blog that had been published that week from Rev. Sarah Griffith Lund at https://sarahgriffithlund.com/2017/10/18/god-were-you-there-when-metoo/

There are at least two uses of the phrase “good enough.” One meaning commonly found in public discourse denotes minimal, less than best effort. The other meaning, a more technical one from psychology, requires a focused discipline of self-awareness that guards against unhealthy perfectionism (“I can and I will be perfect”) or academic narcissism (“I can and I will know it all”).  I often hear the more negative meaning in theological education: “I don’t want my students to be good enough,” a colleague said to me after reading my recent blog,[1] “I want them to be better than good enough.” After seeing the course learning goal to “define and give examples of good enough pastoral care,” a student remembered a motivational saying from their childhood that ran “good enough is the enemy of excellence.” These are important concerns if good enough means minimal, irresponsible engagement.  However, taken as a discipline of ongoing rigorous self-awareness, good enough teaching and learning is an important part of pedagogical excellence. I believe teaching and learning must be good enough, in this sense, to support thriving.[2]  Good enough teaching and learning involves identifying and responding to the predictable misconnections in our craft so that thriving is an available possibility for all teachers and learners.  A Mishap in Connecting the Dots I recently made a teaching mistake involving extreme connect-the-dots.  While I was familiar with the burgeoning market of adult mindfulness coloring books, a colleague introduced me to “extreme connect-the-dots” at a theory-heavy small academic meeting. The meeting involved wonderful academic papers and a lot of sitting and listening, and the exercise provided a strategy for mindful focusing. I was surprised that connecting the tiny numbered dots from one-to-seven-hundred-and-something to make my own dot-to-dot “Mona Lisa” did help me focus. Later, I decided to try this in my classroom in a week-long intensive course that met from 8:30 am-5:00 pm for five days straight. I am always up for new strategies for focus and energy in such a setting! In addition to trustworthy strategies like varying course activities and scheduling mid-week field work, I purchased an extreme connect-the-dot book called something like “florals and other calming themes.” I tried out a few and then distributed some pages I had not yet completed myself. This turned out to be a mistake.  During the mid-morning break the first day, a student came up and said that I might want to take a look at how she had connected the dots. To my surprise, once the dots were connected, one “floral and other calming theme” image depicted a human being in troubling cultural stereotype.  Embarrassed, I ended that connect-the-dot opportunity and replaced it with coloring sheets.  After processing the mishap with my student, I decided not to use class time to address the event since other students had not worked on the images. In hindsight, not disclosing what had happened to other students was likely a missed teaching and learning moment that could have benefitted the class. While not perfect, the class went well, overall. An Overall, Good Enough Class Overcoming the felt need for pedagogical perfection is a constant struggle. I am increasingly wary of the word “perfect” in my home or classroom.  When my son was in preschool, one day he said, “my day was good, overall.” Struck by his use of the word “overall,” I asked what he meant.  He said that anyone can make three mess ups and have an overall good day.  He proceeded to tell me about his mess ups that day—not listening, not paying attention to his body in space, hurting someone’s feelings. He explained that tomorrow you can do better if you work on these mess ups today.  As a pastoral theologian invested in good enough teaching and learning, I find the idea of an overall good enough day to be a helpful assessment tool. I hope to train and learn with budding theologians whose excellence includes (1) being aware that they will inevitably make mistakes and (2) practicing the courage needed to address and learn from mess ups in order to (3) be ever mindful of confessing and minimizing harm in the world. A good enough learning environment is not perfect, but rather thoughtful and open to continued learning. One way to connect the dots before class, metaphorically, is to think about the students and teachers who do not have the luxury of making mistakes, not even one minor mess up in a day not to mention three.  Absurd Expectations Academic pressures around perfectionism often have complex aspects.  Immigration, poverty, identity politics, the school to prison pipeline, and uneven preparation for graduate education from preschool to PhD contribute additional stress for some students who have to fight for a place at a table that likely was designed without “them” in mind. These same systemic pressures force some students and teachers to have to be perfect in unhealthy ways – no learning curve, no grace in student evaluations, no wiggle room for mistakes. If only we could connect the dots ahead of time, theological educators could better support colleagues and students who live and learn with such heightened anxiety.  “Would you rather imagine me be in prison or in school,” asked a DACA recipient who was talking with my class about the fragility of his citizenship status that pressures him to excel in all areas as a student. With a high school GPA above 4.0, multiple leadership experiences in school and extracurricular activities, and a model resume already at a young age, he recognizes the absurd expectations placed on him to be able to have a chance at keeping his family together. “Imagine,” writes bell hooks, “what it is like to be taught by a teacher who does not believe you are fully human [and therefore] really believes [you] are incapable of learning.”[3] It’s not hard for my DACA recipient friend and teacher to imagine. With my citizenship and other privileges, I commit to stretch my imagination to connect the dots so that no one is dehumanized in my classes, so that everyone has a chance to be good enough, to have overall good days, to thrive in their dreams. And yet the learning around that must be on-going rather than a static perfection. Dreaming of an Open Invitation to Good Enough Learning Days I’ve been imagining what it would look like to treat my syllabus, booklists, classroom space arrangements, and use of time, assignments, and discussions as working together to open a pathway for belonging when absurd expectations exclude some students from thriving. What does it feel like when everything is instead working well in a learning environment?  For me, on the best good enough learning days (1) I feel prepared enough, (2) students arrive prepared and energetic enough, (3) there is enough of a sense that the subject at hand matters deeply, (4) multiple voices and perspectives are voiced and heard, (5) students and I hear new connections and disconnections verbalized in the learning encounter, (6) unanticipated new insights and questions deepen conversation, (7) we are all still thinking about the class beyond the constraints of our time together in a classroom or online, and (8) something from the class may spill over into coffee conversations, office hours, semester assignments, even program assessment. On your best good enough learning days, what would you add? Indeed, such a day would really be a good enough learning day!  I conclude these reflections with some open questions for theological educators teaching religion in a politically challenging time. Are really good days available to all of the students in my class or the colleagues in my school? How about in your context? On each account, what are the avenues of participation for students and faculty? What are the roadblocks? What collaborations, accountabilities, self-reflection habits, and continuing education will help me connect as many dots as possible in advance of the class? How will I identify and respond to predictable misconnections in real time? How can theological educators work strategically in our own classrooms and across institutions to support dreamers’ thriving? [1] This blog follows from a previous blog entitled “The Privilege of Good Enough? Challenges of Radical Hospitality in Theological Education,” published November 9, 2017, at https://www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/2017/11/privilege-good-enough-challenges-radical-hospitality-theological-education/ [2] I have in mind supporting the thriving dreams of all who embark in teaching and learning in hopes of honing critical tools and collaborative practices to address a suffering world yearning for new ideas and strategies of transformation.  I also have in mind Dreamers as the group of students who seek support for more humane immigration reform. I dedicate this blog to the tenacity of the Dreamers who teach me to work for systems that allow good enough teaching and learning to be available to all. For further information in this historical moment, download a toolkit to support Dreamers here: http://www.scholarshipsaz.org/students/educators/. [3] bell hooks, Teaching critical thinking. New York, NY: Routledge, 2010, p. 2.

Is my teaching good enough? Is your teaching good enough? I believe that good enough teaching and learning are practices of radical hospitality that are needed more than ever today in a political climate of American exceptionalism, increasingly divisive civil discourse, and passionate if conflicting longings to be “great.” While I hope to promote excellence in my work, I don’t ask students for greatness over and above their peers in my classroom; rather, I aim for a learning environment in which every student believes they are good enough to be there. I believe that learning in a group is more possible and probable when the learner experiences themselves not as necessarily better or less than other learners, but rather as good enough, believing that they belong and therefore can participate in learning. However, many students and teachers do not believe they are good enough – a fear that has been communicated through previous learning experiences from pre-school to Ph.D. processes. Believing oneself to be good enough – a requirement for teaching and learning in my opinion – functions like other privileges, available to some more than others and laced with relative power and opportunity. Good Enough? What exactly is good enough? With multiple connotations, this phrase “good enough” is easily misunderstood. In my field of pastoral theology, good enough is a practice of radical hospitality that opens participants to relationships of appropriate support and challenge. D.W. Winnicott, a leading thinker in object-relations psychological theory, imagined good enough practice as responsible and responsive, neither rigidly perfectionistic not negligently unmotivated. Here’s how I explain the concept in my pastoral theology syllabus: “Pastoral theology continues to view the modern psychologies as offering tools for understanding care. One of the most helpful metaphors that pastoral theology has adopted is that of the good enough participant in caregiving. This is not to say that care involves minimal effort. Rather, pastoral theologians have recognized that it is more helpful to aspire to be a good enough pastoral caregiver than a perfect one. This stance requires more effort, attention, and courageous habits of self and communal reflection.” Good enough is also a helpful concept for pedagogical reflection beyond my academic discipline. By good enough, I mean to indicate a deep sense of value, a seat at the table, a voice considered a worthy conversation partner, a belief in oneself as belonging. Is this possible in classrooms today? For students who do not experience believing themselves to be good enough, both perfectionism and apathy are rational responses. However, neither of these responses is healthy for the learning environment not to mention for the learner. Bracketing admissions, financial aid, curricula, hiring policies, tension between institutional traditions and commitments, and more for the moment, when I focus on the students eligible to enroll in my class, if I am committed to good enough teaching, I need to ask how hospitable my teaching is to different learners—especially in this politically divisive moment. Have I designed a class in which students are able to believe they belong? Can each willing participant be good enough? What are some challenges to this kind of radical hospitality in theological education? Which boundaries are required for this kind of radical hospitality and which boundaries must be released? Three Challenges of Radical Hospitality in Theological Education: Room, Representation, and Respect In my teaching, I am confronting challenges to radical hospitality whether newly awakened in this political era, as is the case for many of my white colleagues and students in theological education, or held as longstanding concerns, as is the case for colleagues and students who represent and/or are committed to be in relationship with communities with histories of exclusion from theological education. Specific practices of radical hospitality, such as room, representation, and respect, can dismantle good enough as a privilege in order to invite all students to believe in themselves as good enough participants in learning. I think of these practices as disciplines of inquiry and courageous self and communal reflection. Room: Where is the breathing room in my course design? Is there room in my syllabus for multiple avenues of earning a course grade? Do students have an opportunity to learn how to succeed in the class through assignments that build over the semester? Have I woven enough practice into course time? Is there room in assignments for students to make connections between the course content and what matters deeply to them? Representation: What voices and epistemologies are represented in the course texts and in what order? How might different students feel invited into a conversation (imagined or real) with the authors of these texts? Will all students have to stretch in relation to some readings and feel more at home with other readings? How do I represent, include, and compensate epistemologies, voices, and communities deeply relevant to the course of study but that don’t have access to academic publishing? Respect: Does my syllabus avoid unintentional dehumanization? Do I account for the word “we” and define my authoritative access to speak for groups of people from seminary students to human beings to women? Do I coach students in accounting for their use of pronouns? What structures of accountability have I included in the planning, unfolding, and debriefing of my teaching? Now What? I need to wrestle with the limits of belonging in my pedagogy to consider how to move more deeply into good enough teaching and learning. I do not think that good enough teaching and learning ought to be a privilege restricted to a small group of learners, professors, and learning environments. Good enough teaching and learning are practices of radical hospitality that swing open wide the opportunities of learning. If I want to embrace a good enough pedagogy, I will need to become more aware of and willing to address the challenges of radical hospitality in theological education, especially in my classrooms. I believe theological educators can begin to cultivate pedagogies where all learners have access to being good enough by first recognizing challenges to radical hospitality in theological education. In my next blog, I wonder about dreams, commitments, and strategic practices that invite all learners to believe in themselves as good enough. How have you tried to embody and inspire good enough teaching and learning?

What do you know to be true now that you used to think was false? What do you know to be false now that you used to think was true? What is something you’ve always thought true that remains true?  I once heard a conference presenter ask a version of these questions and now I occasionally use them in my teaching. Such questions suggest that the status of knowing grows and changes, shifts and turns over time. This is good news for teachers and students everywhere!  The pliable character of knowledge is also a political matter. Libraries and lives are filled with stories about the politics of teaching and learning, particularly around matters of deeply held faith convictions and religious practices embodied in various histories, bodies, and communities today.  Learning itself evokes a kind of devotional practice in which the desire to learn and to unlearn are political acts of room-making in the mind, heart, body, soul for more than this moment’s capacity. Deep learning is often accompanied by a desire to be moved, even an expansive desire that surprises us in the learning process.  In and beyond my seminary teaching and learning experiences in middle America in this political climate, I am seeing a troubling divergence around the changing status of knowledge: is learning now less or more important than ever? Do expectations of room-making lean toward being moved or rather thirst for antagonistic encounters? With the striking contrast of embracing the urgency of deepening learning around current social issues such as #syllabi devoted to blacklivesmatter, sanctuary cities, women’s health, islamophobia, refugees, and more on one hand, and abandoning intellectualism in favor of relentless questioning sources of expertise or even verifiable facts on the other, how do we teach into a political moment that threatens the status of learning itself?  Five Threats to Syllabi “It’s in the syllabus” is the punch line to many an academic riddle. Syllabi are blueprints, detailed instructions for shared learning experiences. Syllabi outline plans for the way in, through, and out of the course of study. The best syllabi align student learning outcomes, assignments, and learning activities in clear and compelling ways.  A syllabus can also be open to change and can never be totally locked in from the start if it intends to guide a living, breathing classroom.  Many syllabi thus include a caveat somewhere that goes something like this: “instructor reserves the right to amend the syllabus for the sake of deepening student learning, but not to add unexpected work.” I usually write a version of the first part on my syllabi and discuss the second part in class because change is work, even and especially change for the better amid threats to learning. In this highly charged political moment that pit bodies and communities against each other, I am seeing an increase in five interconnected syllabi threats: (1) Rejecting Close Reading: I’ve noticed increased charges of irrelevance of reading that takes time in favor of a formula such as “I used to believe that doing the assigned reading before every class was important, but now I see that it doesn’t make a difference.” Discourse includes more and more references to headlines and skimmed resources. (2) Retreating from Deep Connections across Difference: As the political moment threatens to recode inclusion as political correctness, the allure of unrestrained exclusion is appearing in class discussions in relation to readings, to other students, to contemporary figures that appear in a posture of “I don’t have anything to learn from you.” I have heard this disturbing phrase uttered in the classroom directly twice recently. (3) Receding Horizon of Moral Imagination: While I think it’s a mistake to see empathy as perfectly achievable, the act of considering the consequences of my words and actions for other people and places is critical. Therefore, I welcome many voices from texts read to voices represented in the class to perspectives notably absent from any class. Learning in conversation with many voices requires sustained willingness to consider familiar and unfamiliar perspectives – a requirement that appears less compelling in much public discourse today as relationships between texts, persons, and ideas lean far toward the antagonistic pole rather than a desire to be moved. (4) Pressuring Quick Undisciplined Performance: It can take more time to write more succinctly, yet the pace of twitter both models and encourages quick, undisciplined performance. Respond now! The pressure is on to shortchange the discipline of public discourse for rapid response. There is an art to brevity and real-time public debate that can be learned, but right now time-pressure is relentless.  (5) Acting Out Around Power: Power always flows through teaching and learning, sometimes in more subtle and sometimes in more obvious ways. This political moment is evidencing more blatant efforts of grasping, hiding, pushing, and pulling people and ideas out of the way for the sake of accumulating power.  These five threats aren’t unique to the moment, but also describe predictable patterns of dehumanization that we can trace over time through resurgences of oppression that depend on these kinds of threats.[i] All five of these threats to learning were sharply evident in the classes I taught during the 2016 US Presidential election.  This semester, several of the same students enrolled in a different seminar class.  What’s a teacher to do to support pedagogical response to these syllabus threats to the promise of becoming?  How could I respond to these threats pedagogically, helping to transform my teaching plans into a syllabus of becoming?  As a scholar discerning which organizations and conferences to attend, writing projects to adopt, I often ask myself, “to what extent does this support my learning and becoming?” A syllabus of becoming opens this question in the arena of teaching and learning: does this assignment, set of texts, teaching practice invite becoming? A moving syllabus transforms predictable threats into invitations of becoming. I am experimenting with the following responses to the above threats to learning: A Syllabus of Becoming (1) Reading More: In my seminar this semester we are reading fewer texts, but more closely. There is much to read. And sometimes, the very texts needed to translate careful study into prophetic and pastoral speech in today’s contexts are not yet written.  So we are also creating original texts that are not eliminating, but beautifully and quite unexpectedly responding to the above threats. (2) Connecting to a Sacred Third Text: Every week, the seminar shares in common assigned reading of published texts and reading of the class itself.[ii]  In addition, I invited each student to choose a third text that they consider sacred in their context. Across the first half of the semester, students have engaged lectionary readings, other Bible texts, a musician’s canon, music in general, visual art, photography, and poetry.  Assigning a search for the sacred without predetermining the form has opened unexpected depth this semester. (3) Imagining Publics, Remembering What’s at Stake: In crafting the short weekly writing assignment, I left open the possibility that the set of texts we produce, or a subset of them, could be assembled as a devotional resource for a larger public within and/or beyond the seminary. Reading the first half of Patrick B. Reyes’s new book Nobody Cries When We Die[iii] early in the semester has provided language for remembering the real lives and loves at stake in reading and writing about human suffering and healing. An imaginary public also joins the room when each student reads their reflection aloud during class each week.  (4) Practicing Every Week: Even though the pace of reading, writing, and conversation is deliberately slowed down with less reading and shorter writing assignments, I am amazed how class time flies by. Instead of the increased resistance and fatigue with many of the same students last semester in which I decided to scale back on practice in class (we were all exhausted and shocked albeit for many reasons), in this seminar, energy is sustained at a high register. Weekly practice with each other is creating room for mutual invitation, calling out profound connections between texts and students. (5) Sharing Voice and Power: Instead of coordinated turn-taking across the arc of the semester with different student presentations different weeks, I am trying a model where everyone shares their brief reflection or summary of it every week. Instead of power-grabbing, there are palpable and powerful moments of power-sharing every week.  Politics are interwoven with personality and it doesn’t escape me that every class is its own microcosm so that what works in one class can be less successful in another and vice versa. However, I am astonished that structuring a syllabus of becoming has not only tempered palpable threats of the contemporary moment, but also made room for invitations of becoming.  When discouraged at the very real threats to learning at this historical moment, I am reminded of the power and promise of a syllabus moving toward room-making. What have you found moving in your teaching and learning in such a time as this?   [i] To interrogate this point with my students, we are reading Beverly Eileen Miltchell’s Plantations and Death Camps: Religion, Ideology, and Human Dignity (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2009).  While Mitchell makes plain patterns of threat that contribute to the violence of dehumanization, books like Angela D. Sims, Lynched: The Power of Memory in a Culture of Terror (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2016) reminds us how taxing remembering these patterns can be, especially for more made-vulnerable communities.   [ii] The field of pastoral theology uses the metaphor of “the living human document” to point to how humans can learn to read (and misread) each other on par with published texts about human experiences.  For a brief overview of this metaphor, see Robert Dykstra’s Images of Pastoral Care: Classic Readings (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2005) or a more recent postcolonial interpretation in my “Literacies of Listening: Postcolonial Pastoral Leadership in Practice(s),” in Postcolonial Practice of Ministry: Leadership, Liturgy, and Interfaith Engagement, eds. Kwok Pui-lan and Stephen Burns (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington, 2016). [iii] Patrick B. Reyes, Nobody Cries When We Die: God, Community, and Surviving to Adulthood (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2016).

Mindy McGarrah Sharp, PhD Assistant Professor of Pastoral Theology and Ethics Phillips Theological Seminary As I followed the #FergusonSyllabus twitter conversation just before this semester began, I considered ways to address race in a new way in my pastoral care course. Unmasking structures of suffering and developing anti-racist pastoral care practices are already important to both my research and my pedagogy. What is different about race matters this semester? With only one required pastoral theology class in the curriculum, I take seriously my moral obligation to prepare students to be present and responsive to the personal and structural dynamics of...