Resources by Nancy Lynne Westfield, Ph.D.

In the family waiting room at Abington Hospital, a nurse delivered news to my father and me. She informed us that my mother’s second surgery in four days had been a success. After her announcement, the nurse seemed confused when my father did not react. My father’s mental condition was not evident to most people. His dementia did not allow him to react.  I thanked the nurse, patted my dad on his hand, then went out into the hallway. About three steps out of the room I collapsed against the wall.“Are you okay?” asked a stranger. I was leaning, dazed with eyes turned down at the floor, trying to decide if I was going to cry or keep holding back the tidal wave of tears. Without meeting the caring stranger’s eyes, I replied, “Yes.”Taking me at my word, the man dressed in blue scrubs and black sneakers continued down the corridor and disappeared through the double doors.“Are you okay?” I found it quite easy to lie. In the moment, I did not know what I needed, but I knew I was not okay. I knew I needed help, but I was the one who was the help provider, the caregiver, the only child. I was a kind of tired I had never been.During their last years, both of my parents experienced dramatic health issues. I cared for both, first in their home, then I moved them to my house. While caregiving, I experienced a kind of weariness that I had never before felt. I was on faculty trying to meet all the obligations of a tenured appointment while navigating the doctor appointments for two elderly people. I was tending to household chores for two homes, writing a second book, and accepting consultations to make extra money. I was worn-out. In retrospect, I am surprised exhaustion did not debilitate me into  my own sickness or death. When I was a child, I was raised to be helpful. In elementary school I was proud when my teacher reported to my parents how helpful I was in class to her or to other students. In our home, being helpful to our neighbors and church was a glad obligation. My brother and I were taught that helping would provide meaning and purpose to our lives. Mahlia Jackson, part of the soundtrack of our household, reinforced this faith stance with her rendition of “If I Could Help Somebody.” She sang, “…. then my living will not be in vain.” My parents made it quite clear that the strength and health of our church and neighborhood depended upon our interconnection, interdependence and the support provided by those who were able to help. Our family was a helping family – capable of being of service. Lending help was a bedrock value of our family’s life. This communal ethic of helpfulness was now stretched so thin it was harming me. By the time I was leaning against the wall in the hospital corridor, our family’s code of helpfulness had deteriorated into my collapse. In retrospect, I had befriended my fatigue. On the few days I did not feel tired I wondered why. As I write today, I thank the man in the hospital for inquiring about my state of being. I can only imagine what kind of help I might have received if I had answered truthfully and told him, “No, I am not okay.” Each summer Wabash Center hosts groups of colleagues. Most arrive exhausted. I suspect many colleagues are the kind of exhausted I was in the hospital corridor. Over the days we are convened, my staff and I watch as participants rest in clean beds, eat balanced meals, hydrate, distance themselves from agitations, and engage in heaping portions of play and fun. We witness the exhausted slow their pace and refocus. By day three or four we can see that clinched jaws have loosened, furrowed eyebrows have unstacked, and previously shallow breathing has deepened. The fatigue gives way to vitality.  People unfurl, unknot, unwind. We watch as colleagues who arrived vacant and mere shadows of themselves return to themselves. I am glad Wabash can provide a space for renewal and restoration – at least a little bit.My concern is that when colleagues return to their institutions they return to the patterns of overwork, grind, fatigue and exhaustion. They use the experience of our cohorts as an oasis then return to the desert journey of the academy. Exhaustion should not be the norm for faculty. I suspect that most colleagues have not taken the time to get to know the kind of tired they are living with and the ways their tired is limiting their teaching, dangerous for their health and welfare, potentially death dealing for themselves and their families. My concern is colleagues answer “I am okay”—even when they are not. ReflectionPlease take time to check in and ask yourself:Do you know the warning signs of burn out, depression, and high anxiety?How will you take advantage of the services of therapists, clergy, spiritual directors, or coaches?How will you create routines to help you manage your work, so fatigue is not standard, not normative?What help you will get for yourself? What help will you be to yourself?  What routines, rites, rituals, habits and practices will bring work/life balance?Are you okay?  

Below is the jargon which has pervaded our conversation. I call this the “re-” lexicon:re-designre-inventre-arrangere-imaginere-createre-thinkre-conceivere-examinere-visionre-considerre-workre-coverThe call to “re-” the system of education has been in response to shrinking student pools, dwindling tenure-track positions, collapsing denominational structures, tightening budgets, rising awareness of student debt, curriculum misalignment, and the mounting backlog of deferred maintenance on aging buildings. Even before the shift in the federal government’s relationship to education, theological education needed an overhaul. The list of words entered our discussion but their potential nor their aspiration has not been fully realized.Many schools have taken on the task of rethinking their institutions – most in reaction to crisis. Many of the “re” processes assumed that what has served well should be mended, fixed and pressed back into service. Administrators, in planning institutional changes, started with strategies to restore what had served admirably in the past. Many schools rethought their curriculum for existing degree programs, added certificated programs, replaced tenured faculty positions with the hire of contingency faculty, sold land, increased their endowment draw down, and hoped for increased student enrollment. These strategies, depending upon the context, have had a modicum of success. Indeed, some vulnerable schools have prolonged their demise. Other schools are announcing downsizing and closings. Our attempt at “re” is faltering.Not only have leaders failed to figure out a way to revitalize theological education as an enterprise, the patched-together strategies are likely not to be sustainable 5, 10, 20 years into the future. There is palpable fear that given the new realities of the digital age’s influence on teaching, exacerbated by the lack of crisis management skills of deans and presidents, schools will not accomplish the hoped for “reset” in theological education.We are confounded. Yet, we are persuaded.Theological leaders are convinced that our society—now and into the future—is better with a vibrant and thriving theological education enterprise. Leaders believe that the societal need for educated faith leaders—clergy and laity—has increased and will continue to grow. We believe theology and religion will prove more, not less, relevant in the digital age. We know that the church as well as all forms of organized religion are the major stakeholders in theological education. Our work is paramount—if only we can figure out how to craft new, accessible systems.Given the severity of the situation, what if it is ultimately detrimental to repair or restore our current paradigms of education? What if fixing the current system is tantamount to patching bicycle tires only to return to riding on nail-riddled roads? From my vantage point, our challenge, rather than repairing the current, is to let go of the past. We must freshly build, compose, make, and design news systems of theological education based upon a future we do not know but that is coming quickly.What if the solutions lie in building new systems from scratch? What would it mean to compose brand new approaches to educational needs? How can we fashion new pedagogical apparatuses? What would it take to manufacture the new and the needed educational models?Leaders have, in the past, relied on institutional traditions and strategic planning. Those tools were helpful, but no longer sufficient. Now is the time for a creative process. We must ask ourselves not about repair and retrench, but about the new. What new - that is yet to be realized -will be the very thing to produce the next educational system?This is not a call to be creative as much as it is a call to create.[caption id="attachment_253985" align="alignleft" width="300"] Najee Dorsey (BAIA) Nancy Lynne Westfield and Rachel Mills (Wabash Center)[/caption]The Wabash Center has partnered with Najee Dorsey. An exquisite artist in his own right, Najee is the founder of Black Art in America (BAIA). Under Najee’s leadership, BAIA is a community art gallery and garden dedicated to teaching art, creativity, and artist advocacy. BAIA hosts our cohort groups as part of an effort to expose our faculty to artists, the creative process, and imagination. Najee and the artist colleagues guide scholars in future-building ways of thinking. Participants engage directly with artists about their work and lives—as creators, producers, and visionaries. At BAIA, scholars encounter colleagues whose careers are devoted to building and making. The shift from being creative to becoming a creator requires tactile, embodied learning. Najee knows this terrain.In the conversations between the BAIA artists and our participants, I have noticed consistent themes in the conversations. Artists wake up each day with the question of What am I going to create? in the forefront of their minds, then align their schedule to accommodate time for creating. Creatives are not afraid to be wrong or make mistakes. We must consider that unless educational systems celebrate rather than stigmatize risk-taking, failure, and experimentation, no new systems will emerge. A creative process causes you to change what you can see and challenge what you have previously seen. Creatives do not believe dreams are ancillary to the process. They embrace visions, daydreams, visitations, nightmares, wishes and messages from earth, wind, fire and water. They inhabit many worlds. What would it take for us to, collectively, think in these modes and frames?Exposing theology and religion colleagues to the profound understandings of artists, artists’ lifestyles, as well as providing colleagues with a glimpse of the creative process is a way that the Wabash Center is championing the need for leaders in education to build, craft, make a new paradigm of theological education that is original and sustainable.I do not believe the future of theological education to be condemned nor foreclosed. Our future is, however, dependent upon our willingness and understanding that the new is needed and that we must, together, create the new if it is to exist. Who among us has the guts to proceed?ReflectionWhat would it mean to use the creative process to design and build new educational structures?What would it take to collaborate with artists in developing new educational structures?In your context, who are the conversation partners for the shift in mindset to a lifestyle and daily practice of building, composing, and making?

If I have learned anything in this life of teaching, it is this: the emotional labor of teaching is genuine. Routinely, class sessions left me exhausted. After most sessions I would need to sit in silence for an hour to regain my energies or have a meal to replenish my body. The depletion was never from a lecture, but from the intensity of conversation with students. The emotional labor of teaching occurs due to the full engagement of body, mind, spirit, guts, wit, intuition, intellect, and humor, all summoned in the teaching encounter.When we do our teaching work well, classroom conversation can be powerfully interactive—for students and for us. Teaching religion, in confessional or non-confessional institutions, can stir up cultural tensions, stretch personal beliefs, raise consciousness and reenforce ethical obligations. Classrooms where the pursuit of truth is passionate, enthusiastic and exciting can take an emotional toll on the teachers because of the emotional investment in the endeavor. Interactions with students are often fulfilling but never neutral. The intensity of the conversation when students are expressing curiosity, thinking deeply, connecting previously disconnected ideas, and experiencing new insights can tax our emotional reservoirs.Emotional labor in the classroom is not a flaw, nor a side effect. Teachers who extend themselves, make themselves available, and open their hearts to students must realize that emotional presence—from delight to disappointment—is part of the work of teaching. Regardless of the season in one’s career, navigating identity, belief, and culture without falling into advocacy or detachment is hard. Vulnerability can be costly.For those of us who must contend with the disrespect, disregard and indignity foisted upon us by students who judge us as inferior due to our gender, race, nationality, age, or physical ability, the emotional toll assumes the jagged dimensions of discrimination and injustice. Classroom spaces riddled with unfair bias can be debilitating.To further complicate the challenge, students’ habit of coaxing teachers into boundary-blurring or insisting upon role overload can be aggravating. As an African American woman, students would treat me like women in their families or in their churches. Too often I was relegated to the status of deaconess, mother of the church, pastor’s wife, auntie or favorite cousin. Students, because of their lack of familiarity with an African American woman as a professor, and to appease their nervousness, would think of me as their counselor, lover, therapist, or friend. Many students would signal that I was like a familiar TV character—Florence Johnston, Oprah Winfrey, Aunt Viv or Clair Huxtable. I refused this status. I rejected the blurring and projection of these roles. I was their teacher. Being a teacher is a status, role, and an obligation worthy of pursuit and needs no appendages, additions, or attachments.The emotional labor needs to be monitored, nurtured, and attended to. Over long periods of time, the labor can erode us. Burnout, disengagement, cynicism, ill-health, or depression must be avoided.  Here are some strategies I have learned over the many years.Practical StrategiesPractice Grounding Ritualsmeditate and pray before class to center myselfstart class with breathing or meditationPlan the emotional rhythm of the semesterplan for low intensity class sessions, e.g. a trip (on or off campus), showing a film, guest speaker, art activity, playing a gameplan for time during the semester for rest and reflectionParticipate in peer support groups or professional support sessionsroutinely talk with colleagues or friends throughout the semestercontract a therapist, spiritual director, cleric, or counselorBe aware of burnout symptomsknow the symptoms of depression, burnout, fatigue and monitorjournal concerning your emotional health as pertains to teachingBe mindful of your own humannessmake sure you do not teach while over-tired or sleep deprivedbe well hydrated and not hungry in the classroomdress in clothes that make you feel confident and that are comfortableWe must find ways to stay emotionally connected while attending to our own needs. The emotional strain of teaching is part of the job but does not have to be a detriment of the job.Reflection QuestionsWhat are the moments that renew you in teaching? How can you plan for those moments?How do you plan your sessions so there is a rhythm to the semester?What conversations or practices help you stay grounded?What habits, practices and behaviors help you sustain your truest self in the classroom?What toolkit can you build for your emotional health and wellbeing?

The task is impossible, yet ours to accomplish. Our students need us to shape our classrooms for a future we cannot foresee or anticipate. In the courses we design, our students need us to hone their voices, imaginations, and problem-solving abilities for a future that is unmappable yet will require their navigational skills for survival of our families, neighborhoods, and nation. The world powers are shifting before our very eyes, and we must teach to prepare our students for this change.  A call for agency is not a call to act out or act up. Agency has more to do with activating the responsibilities and powers which came with faculty hire when we joined an institution with a commitment to mission. We are bound to the promise of educating – come what may.Typically, the mission of the school has to do with educating for the moment at hand, and with an eye toward the coming future. Faculty, as stewards of knowledge production, have a professional obligation to adapt, pivot, adjust so that education remains future minded – especially in a moment when the future will not look like the past. We are teaching in a moment when we do not have the luxury of thinking that adhering to established traditions will save schools or educate our people into the next fifty years. While we need those with agency to guide us into the new possibilities, the new approaches, the new sensibilities of education, too many school contexts have punished, jettisoned, or abandoned those with agency.Agency, or lack thereof, is one of the perennial themes discussed in gatherings of early career colleagues at Wabash Center. Colleagues invariably bring to the discussion their fears, misinformation, unarticulated needs, desires, and hopes. They disclose their disappointment and misgivings about institutional citizenship and the lack of ownership they feel for their own professional duties. When asked by the workshop leaders why they feel so disregarded, they say:“I assumed that my needs are just like everyone else’s. They (the administration) should know what I need without me asking.”“I don’t ask questions in meetings because I do not want to appear stupid.”“I don’t like to ask too many questions because I am new.”“I really think someone else knows the curriculum better than I do, so I leave it up to the senior scholars.”“I have decided to wait until I am – [tenured, promoted, finished with my book] – THEN I will start speaking up about the workings of the school.”“I do not want to ask for a faculty handbook because they might think I am causing trouble.”“When colleagues ask me to lunch, I say no. I don’t want the department head to think I am colluding with them.”“I say “yes” to every extra assignment. I don’t want colleagues to think I am unavailable or lazy.”“I don’t make use of the teaching center. I don’t want my colleagues to think I do not know how to teach.”“My only mentor is my dissertation advisor who retired three years ago. I do not want colleagues to think I need advice.”“I am going to pitch my idea for a new class after Dr. XXXX retires in two years.”“I do not vote in faculty meetings because I do not want colleagues to think I take sides.”“I wanted to say something, but I did not know how the colleagues would react.”These are the kinds of responses given by the fearful and the distracted. The lack of agency signals that there is a denial of authority, an abdication of responsibility, a giving away of power, a squandering of opportunity. As some of the most educated people on the planet we are asking permission to do the jobs for which we are depended upon. My fear is that now, in this crisis, we are incapable of shaping our classrooms for the unknown future — we might be, as my father would say, “a day late and a dollar short.” As educators, we are in a reckoning moment when we must take agency if our craft of teaching is to be relevant and worthwhile.  Moving forward, we know that higher education will need to imagine, invigorate, and conjure up new schools as well as establish new approaches for entire systems of education. Professional timidity will sabotage these efforts. Faculty colleagues who have no agency, no forthrightness, no vision for the new, and who refuse or are unable to take authority for the job will only serve to further compromise the system and foreclose the freedom and creativity needed now and in the future. Leadership that is flexible, resilient, imaginative, and willing to convene open dialogue and struggle with challenging questions is what is needed as we press onward through the fog! Reflection QuestionsWhat are the obstacles to your own agency?How has your agency grown with the seasons of your career?What is at stake should your leadership go unvoiced?Who are your conversation partners for discussing this moment of crisis and the ways it is affecting teaching?Where are the open dialogues that address the new possibilities for the coming future?

The Wabash Center teaches toward freedom in hopes of liberation and healing. We have learned that acts of freedom occur in many forms, and occasionally involve receiving permission. Since 2019, I have had the honor of reading the feedback forms completed by participants at the end of events and programming experiences. In addition to reading the feedback, there are regular occasions of extemporaneous comments from participants about the insights they have gained during the convened conversations. There is a reoccurring theme: the experience of having been given permission. They have reported having received permission to move towards new habits, practices, attitudes, approaches, and aspirations. Permission to strive for improved teaching is a key theme. Permission to expect more care, consideration and regard from the institutions by which our participants are employed is often mentioned.Much of this feedback comes from early-career colleagues for whom learning to navigate faculty culture is new. Similarly, there are a significant number of seasoned colleagues for whom the Wabash Center sponsored conversations are lifegiving and permission providing.I hear gratitude in this feedback. More importantly, I hear that the giving of permission has been moments of empowerment, agency, healing and inspiration toward freedom. I want to share with you a list of the kinds of permissions that are reported in hopes that you too might be encouraged towards new freedoms.Participants have said that, I received permission …….to develop my own voice, to speak up and speak out without embarrassment, fear, or guiltto take the authority given me by my role and responsibility through hire, tenure or promotionto think differently about the established traditions or about the outmoded presumptions of my institution or academic fieldto, rather than give my power away, make decisions that are faithful to my values and ethicsto command and adjust my own syllabus in my own coursesto act as a good citizen in my institution in ways that align with my own needs, wants, aspirations, desires and longing; to work in integrityto prioritize my mental or physical health and the wellbeing of my familyto teach across disciplines for the benefit of my students and in ways that meet their expressed curiositiesto strive for a work/life balance and maintain that balance over my careerto say “No” to requests which do not suit me or which would overload or overwhelm meto ask that I be called by the name of my choosing (with or without title) and that my name be correctly pronouncedto report acts of bullying and aggression against me or othersto seek counseling, coaching, mentoring, spiritual direction throughout my careerto take the time and needed psychic space to grieve over the failure of a significant achievement or the loss of a belovedto be creative, imaginative, and wonder as an approach to teachingto pursue outside interests, hobbies, and playto resist grind culture, to resist productivity at the expense of my own wellness or the wellness of my familyto communicate when acts of violence like racism, sexism, classism, homophobia occurto parse between the obligations of my scholar/teacher identity and my employment dutiesto rest.The list is in no way comprehensive or exhaustive. I give you the list so you can see the kinds of issues which need to be attended to so that a healthy work environment is created and maintained. It takes hard work to move from a toxic and unhealthy culture to a culture of care, belonging, and justice. Perhaps giving permission to individuals to make healthy communal choices is a start.

Fear is the anxiety that you are about to lose something you love, need, have rightfully earned or deserve. Fear will make you hurt yourself, silence yourself, edit yourself in ways that contradict or disavow your own best pursuits. Since we teach who we are, showing up afraid will only serve to distort your teaching, raise the apprehension in your classroom and model a sense of distrust. While I understand the impulse to be afraid, we must choose to live unafraid, especially in our own classrooms.Uncertainty has been weaponized. Random acts of callousness have been normalized. Scarcity is being orchestrated. Universities are being pressured in strange and unpredictable ways. The enterprises of education are being guillotined. If there was ever a time that provoked fear, anger, and confusion for those of us employed in higher education — now is that moment. Even so, my hunch is that it is shortsighted to expect that preemptive acts will rescue anyone from the strategies of demolition and anarchy. It is not likely that the fight can be avoided—particularly for those trying to skirt it. While cowering from the fight is an option, we would be foolish to think that cowering from the attack will lessen the challenge. Fear will drive you to attempt ineffective strategies.The other day a colleague emailed the Wabash Center asking that we remove their syllabi from our online collection. They were afraid the contents of their courses would be read as diversity, equity and inclusion materials and did not, given the political climate, want to risk being castigated. I can understand their desire to avoid worry, but removing syllabi from the internet, at best, is misguided. The fact-of-the matter is that nothing is ever actually removed. Why would the colleague think that hiding materials would make them safe? In this climate, compliance has not been met with a cease fire. I recognize that the fearful colleague is following suit with many prestigious universities who have performed an audit of their own websites, purged language of welcome and belonging, then re-languaged their program descriptions for public consumption.  I suspect our safety will depend upon the capacities of our intellectual leaders to decide not to be intimidated. Harvard is leading the way.Today, a colleague teaching at a state university reported that their department chair announced that she had recommended to the provost a 60% cut in the department’s budget. The department chair stated that she hoped that by volunteering the massive budget cut that she would avoid the impending budget fights. Once colleagues were clear that this recommendation was made to preempt the department head from having to fight for their department’s budget, the startle of colleagues shifted to rage. They felt betrayed. When the faculty pressed the department head for a rationale, the department chair explained that because they were close to retirement they were entitled to choose “peace” and avoid the impending university wide budgetary conflicts. Now, the department is waiting in fear. They are afraid that the department head’s wanton actions communicated to the university the lack of importance of the entire department. Wittingly or unwittingly, the timid department head chose to conspire in her own demise. She had not considered the welfare of the community over her own fear-driven impulse to preemptively concede—or maybe she had. Evil takes advantage of self-absorption and is intensified.We do not have the luxury of being afraid if it allows avoidance, silence, or being untrue to our central aims. Values which are easily discarded to avoid a fight might need to be reassessed, but now that crisis is upon us, conceding seems reckless. Safety is not ensured. We must know where we stand before the fight comes.If we are doing our jobs of good teaching, teaching religion and theology inherently cultivates voiced students who critically and imaginatively critique the status quo.  We know there are no dangerous thoughts; to those who would squelch wonder, imagination and freedom, thinking itself is dangerous. If in this moment we waffle on this rudimentary aim of teaching — why did we choose teaching in the first place? And why do we remain in higher education classrooms? Certainly, the individual and collective answers to these questions will matter as we decide our engagement in the vitriolic challenges of this moment. May our fear not become our hallmark. The worst thing we can do is panic and allow our fears to be the guiding force. This morning, I emailed my Associate Directors a copy of Audre Lorde’s The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action. Lorde's speech sheds light on the factors that may cause, in times of trouble, some people to remain silent while enabling others to speak an act. At our next director’s discussion, I am going to begin the dialogue with this Lorde quote:“For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for the final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us."Together, we will discuss the ways Wabash Center will stand firm in our commitments, and the ways we will steadfastly emphasize our mission of improving teaching, knowing that the aim of good teaching is to provide radical hospitality, to create space for open dialogue and to encourage creativity and imagination for future building. Reflection Questions for Leaders in EducationWhat do you do when you do not know what to do and you are afraid to do anything?What habits and practices (sacred or otherwise) will calm you during extended crisis?Who is your wise counsel in the season of doubt and distrust?How do you work through experiences of unprovoked or unforeseen change?What if the challenge is bigger than your capacity to lead, to teach, to serve?

Our attempts to teach towards openness, towards possibility, towards new glimpses of an uncharted future mean that teaching can be demanding, even confounding. One way I learned to embrace this approach was by incorporating rituals in my course designs.The use of rituals in classrooms allows students an experience that moves them into realms where meaning-making requires imagination and vision. Rituals can provide provocative and creative ways for students to enter and inhabit course content that otherwise would go overlooked, under-investigated, or ignored. Rituals create space for learning through intrigue, encounter, and invocation.Below, I recount a class ritual I designed to coax students into claiming more power, agency, and voice in their own learning. Here is my key ritual.Ten graduate students and I went to a retreat center by the sea for an intensive 4-day course focused on the notions of mystery and imagination. At our first session, we gathered in a large room and sat on folding chairs arranged in a circle. The all-purpose room had a wall of glass windows with views east toward the Atlantic Ocean. From the circle, we could not hear the waves, but we could see the sea stretching out. The afternoon sun gently setting into the horizon was lovely and the perfect backdrop for our key ritual. It was a beautiful place to learn together.I sat in the circle holding a black, beaded purse.In preparation for the first session, I had collected an assortment of keys. My collection included skeleton keys, hotel room digital keys, metal house keys, roller skate keys, safety deposit box keys, padlock keys, piano keys, house radiator keys, clock keys, keys for maps, a thumb drive with Stevie Wonder’s “Songs in the Key of Life”— as many kinds of keys as I could find. The black, beaded, drawstring bag with long strands of fringe on the bottom was a treasure I had since my junior high school days of boho fashion.  I was delighted when I found it in my closet. It was the perfect vessel for the ritual.Holding up the bag in front of the class, I jingled the contents so the learners would hear noise. Over the sound of clinking and tinkling, while using a suspenseful and serious tone of voice, “I am going to bring the purse to each of you. When I come to you, reach in and select one object. Just one—you cannot handle two!” I chided. “When you pull the object out, this object becomes yours. Its power will become your power. Do not let anyone else view your object. Keep it concealed in your hands. Hold it to your bosom. If you want, glimpse at it through your interlaced fingers or turn your back for a peek. Do not let anyone see your object.”Some students became reticent. Some looked a little hesitant. I was having fun.I passed around the circle taking the open purse in turn to each student. I held the purse high so the contents could not be viewed. Each student, following directions, reached in, retrieved an object that was some kind of key. As instructed, students took care not to show their key. Some students used both hands to keep the key from view.  Once everyone had a key – I asked, “Before we show what we have chosen, or more to the point, what has chosen us, does anyone want to give back what you took from my bag? Does anyone want to return their choice? Or does anyone want something different?”These questions brought a thick, full silence into the circle. I waited for their decisions. Everyone signaled that they wanted to keep what they had chosen.“Very good, then. You can reveal what is in your hand. You can reveal what has chosen you,” I said.Students unfurled their fingers revealing their gift, revealing their key.Some looked happy – had smiles on their faces.Some looked quizzical – had arched eyebrows and squinting eyes.Others looked confused – they looked at their key then around at the keys of the other students as if they had received something strange.I continued, “For the duration of our course you will carry your key with you. You will get acquainted with the power of your key. Remember—keys open doors, providing access. Keys also lock doors, providing safety and protection. This key will give you power that you already possess but have not accessed or for which you have not been disciplined. Your key will help you become more of who you already are. With your key you have the power to open and close at your behest. During this class get acquainted with your power and use it wisely.”I instructed that the next step was that each student would take their keys and a notebook to a quiet spot inside or outside of the retreat center. Each person was to find a comfortable and private spot to converse with their key. For an hour, each student will interview their key; contemplate their key; draw their key; write a story, song, or poem with their key in the starring role. Get to know your key and record what your key tells you about its purpose, power, history, and value.To my surprise, these instructions were met with eagerness.An hour later the group returned to the circle. Each student told a fascinating narrative about what they had learned from and about their keys. The reports were in the forms of drawings, lyrics, journal prose and poetry. Each was beautiful in its own way. For the rest of the course students explored the power of their own agency and imagination and how those attributes were symbolized and animated by their key. At the last session of the course, I brought the drawstring beaded purse back to the circle. I asked if anyone wanted to return their key to the bag. Everyone kept their power.This is what I learned. When courses are more than spaces where information is memorized then regurgitated, students who are unacquainted with self-reflection and possess little self-knowledge feel lost or are easily overwhelmed. When classes are spaces of wonder, curiosity, and deep deliberation students must be acquainted with their own power to question. They must be willing to bring their own agendas and to consider a wider way of being. Too many students are unaware of their capabilities and capacities as learners. They are unacquainted with their own genuine. Adult learners who enter classrooms with little self-knowledge are often skittish, suspicious, and ill-prepared for the challenges of classroom endeavors. This lack of knowledge makes it difficult to teach.  It takes some modicum of self-awareness and clarity of purpose for learners to take hold of courses at a level of depth worth pursuing. Learning requires students to have agency – to have keys to their own power.Our job as teachers, in part, is to assist students with un-learning the ways which dampen their voices, and which keep them afraid of new learning. We must assist them with cultivating agency so they are less encumbered during their pursuits. Rituals in teaching can move students past their fears and into their power, courage, and commitments. Giving students keys was my way of ritualizing my expectations that they would use their power to learn, to come to voice, to tap into their own desires and yearnings. Reflection questions:What rituals can we lead so that students feel more themselves in our classrooms – i.e. empowered, voiced, and capable?What does it mean to teach toward possibility and how do rituals make the impossible possible?What rituals assist in creating a learning environment where students learn their own value and worth and dignity?

My friend Kenneth Ngwa and I have ongoing conversations about impossible questions concerning the current malaise of education. How do you make your way and guide others when there is no clear direction, when what is next is unclear? How do you do what is needed when you do not know the sure pathway or route? In a world where change is constant and the future feels unrecognizable—what does it take to find/make your way through the shadows, past scary monsters in spaces without light? When traditions are no longer relevant, when established paradigms are no longer dependable, when infrastructures are shifting and crumbling, causing more uncertainty—which way should we go?  In our attempt to answer these kinds of questions, my discussions with Kenneth are often saturated with stories meant to illuminate possibility and point toward our building a new future.In a recent exchange between me and Kenneth, I told him this story…When my brother Brent was in the 5th grade (I was a 4th grader), he announced at our family dinner that his homework assignment was to look at the stars. My father was intrigued. Dad asked Brent what he was supposed to look for. Dad was asking which constellation or planet, or star pattern was being studied and observed. My brother reported that he was just assigned to “look at the stars.” Dad looked suspicious. Brent said that after dinner he was going outside to look up. My father, in an impatient tone, said, “You won’t be able to see the stars.”“What do you mean? I’m going outside to see the stars!” my brother insisted.My father said, “There is too much light in the city to see the stars at night. You can only see the stars when there is enough darkness.”My brother looked quizzical. So did I. We did not understand what my father knew.After dinner, with Dad, we put on hats and coats, took flashlights, and headed to our front stoop. Standing on the stoop of our rowhouse in North Philadelphia, we looked up. All there was to see was dark sky. No stars. Or so we thought.Dad drove us to Fairmont Park—about 3 miles from our house. We drove past the reservoir, past the playground, past the baseball field—all familiar places. We drove another mile then Dad pulled over on the lawn and turned off the engine. We were in a remote part of the park that I had only seen from the comfort of the car window. It was not a location where we played. Dad got out of the car. He said, “Come on.”  My brother and I were hesitant. We had been taught that isolated spaces in the city were unsafe. We had been taught not to venture too deep into the woods or away from the known spaces. Brent and I were fearful. With hands tucked into our pockets and our breath freezing in the cold air, we had less excitement about this adventure. Dad told us to look up.Shocked! We could see stars! It was amazing. There was a sprinkling of stars in the sky that were not evident at our house. Then Dad said, “Follow me.” With our flashlights turned on, we followed. We walked across a meadow, ducked under the low hanging branches of Weeping Willow trees then down a short, rocky path. As we walked, without talking, the chilly air stilled and the noise of the city quieted. We were still only three miles from our house, but it felt like a different world.Dad walked over to a downed tree, sat down and turned off his flashlight. So did we. Dad looked at us then without saying a word pointed to the sky. To our astonishment the night sky was dazzling with stars!Dad pointed out the north star, the big dipper and the little dipper. We learned about Earth’s place in the solar system and that the moon is as critical to our life as the sun. He told us about constellations, comets, planets and meteors. This was the first time the story of Harriet Tubman making use of the north star to guide herself and others to freedom made sense.On the way home we stopped for a half gallon butter pecan ice cream. When we got home, mom dished up the ice cream. Brent and I recounted to her all that we had been shown. Dad was pleased.Kenneth’s pristine insight of my story:Connecting the search for the stars with the wisdom of the trusted savant who is not reduced to a "tour guide" (which I often felt my colonial-type education was at its best) but rather is respected as a companion for whom the stakes for the journey are as high as the sight to be seen—the stars and constellations might be a way to rethink our educational system.The question that bedevils the teacher in the classroom is whether the current stakes and questions of the learner are compelling enough to get the instructors out of their comfort zones and on the road to see/show the stars. Can we teach beyond our current constellations? Can we let the questions (and even the desires) of the student guide our journey? Are the stakes high enough that even when the students ignorantly (in a neutral sense) assume they can see the stars in a highly lit space, they won't be dismissed and instead be taken on the winding journey to the place where they can see the stars?To teach effectively, we must move to the courageous position where the hermeneutic of distrust (well earned) is turned around by a hermeneutic of trust. When dad turned out the lights, you and your brother did not panic. What is more, you also turned out yours. Why? Because of the trust that held the journey together. There is something more powerful and lasting than the lights that brighten our pathways, and that is the lights that brighten our imaginations - the lights that connect us to constellations. Some lights must be turned off to see other lights. But and I think this is the critical epistemological and pedagogical line, we must be the ones who decide it is time to turn off the flashlights.  Our liberation and educational freedom are found not just by overcoming the darkness of isms that limit our minds but also in recognizing that sometimes the hindrance to our thriving is our focus on the smaller lights. To see the bigger lights, we must not be distracted, not even by the smaller lights. We need to learn how, when, and where to turn off the smaller lights. And that is something only the ancestors can teach us. That is how education connects story to imagination. Why? Because the best kinds of education bring us to encounter the big lights where we see constellations but do not feel lost.Who among us knows that just three miles from home lay a different world of stars, right past the playgrounds and familiar spaces? Whoever has this kind of knowledge, let them be our teachers. Henceforth, let those with this knowledge teach so that we come to know how to see the galaxies and the biggest lights necessary to uplift a community that has been trying to see the stars with the flashlights turned on. Let us trust the teachings of those who are trustworthy. Indigenous epistemology may yet save us. Impossible questions feel less daunting when friends, ancestors, stories and stars guide the way. Our responsibility as committed teachers is to meet the challenge of becoming better teachers by learning how “to go and see” while at the same time learning to turn off the light. Onward through the fog!

If you teach long enough, you will teach a course that feels flat, has low morale, or even fails.  While a totally ruined course is rare, there are moments when the sinking, the malaise—yours and that of the students, happens.  We all know this experience.If you have never taught a course that has tanked, then you have likely been a student in a course that has. No real need to recount or describe all the ways a course can fail—the ways a course can “go south” are legion. The more important emphasis is to know that when a course is collapsing it can be rescued. When you feel the course sinking …...do not blame yourself.do not blame the students.do not blame the administration.do not blame your family.do not blame your pets.do not blame the moon phase.do not blame the state of the nation.do not blame the national economy.do not blame climate change.Blaming is ineffective. Finding fault, placing fault, shaming, guilting or scapegoating rarely corrects the problem. Sinking courses are not saved through blame.Do not ignore the situation or pretend that, without adjustment, it will mend. If you sense that there is trouble with the course, the students know there is trouble with the course. When you find yourself watching the clock during your own class session – this is a clue that something needs to be adjusted, altered, changed.Resist the impulse to knuckle down, grin and bear it.Resist the impulse to stay-the-course, stick to your guns!Resist the impulse to “right-fight” and believe whatever you planned, how you planned, is best and “be damned!” anyone who will not comply with your plans.Consider that rescuing a course might take a multi-pronged approach. The recovery of the course might need support from others. Don’t be a hero - please ask for help. If you feel as if the course is weak, ask for help. If you feel lost or disoriented, ask for help. If you do not know how you feel or what to do, ask for help.What help?Get a new perspective, fresh eyes, a more seasoned approach, an empathetic listener. Talk to colleagues. Talk with a trusted colleague at your school, or a trusted colleague beyond your school. You might talk just once, or you might talk several times. Describe the incident or incidents and ask them to listen to what might be changed to strengthen the course.Consider asking a trusted colleague to observe your teaching and then assist you with reflection. These talks are not for confessing to being an imposter. Resist reducing these conversations to disclosing your deep-seated anxieties about public performance (save that for your therapist). Use these conversations to troubleshoot, problem solve and strategize for better teaching and strengthening of your course design.Consider, at the beginning of the semester, creating a small reflection group of colleagues (3 or 4 people) for a semester long conversation so when the course feels like it is not going well you have established conversation partners. The group might be organized around studying teaching resources, together.Talk with a trusted student to get feedback. Talk with a small group of students and ask their opinion. Perhaps, take class time to ask the entire class for feedback and suggestions.Talk to human resource personnel, consult the faculty handbook, know your Title IX procedures. Sometimes bullying behaviors are the culprit in troubled classroom environments.What might be needed?Consider that you might need to recast elements of the syllabus. Consider creating different assignments, adjusting timelines, subtracting some readings or adding new kinds of readings. Add a field trip. Invite a guest speaker.Ask yourself about yourself. Are you too tired to teach well? Are you bored in your own course? Are you anxious? Are you distracted? Are you disappointed, grieving or just sad? Do you have an experience of belonging in your institution and in your own classroom? Your vibe radiates to the students and permeates all aspects of the course.Are the materials in the course too advanced for the students or too inconsequential? Are the materials culturally aligned and relevant to the students’ experiences and expectations? What story are you inviting the students into—is it a story of their imaginations and aspirations?What are the larger happenings of the school, community, region and country that are affecting your classroom? What would it mean to weave these happenings into the conversation?Perhaps it is the students - by which I mean – perhaps you do not know the students and their lives well enough. In what ways can you get better acquainted with your students. Do your students come to class tired after a long day of work? Are your morning students tired after having worked all night? Are they taking too many courses? If they are rested, are they hungry while in your class? Awareness of the conditions of your students might help with addressing some of the malaise.Do not be surprised when a course tanks. It happens to the best of teachers. When a course is “not going well,” do not abandon it or your students. Learn, by experience, how to adjust and adapt to create a meaningful experience for your learners and for yourself.

(And audio recording of this blog may be found here.)Creative teachers are sometimes labelled as people who run wild --- meaning we are people whose boundaries are too wide, whose disciplinary habits and practices are too flimsy, whose appetites look beyond what is safely seen, commonly known, or conventionally acceptable. I am a creative who has, for many years, made a practice of fostering wildness in my classrooms.I believe that the invitation of teaching is for students to join-in with running wild, i.e. create new worlds, grapple with unsolvable problems, cross boundaries as a gesture of connection and justice seeking, build stairways as we climb to uncharted heights. I have met many colleagues who concur with the aspiration of running wild! - but who are too afraid, too anxious, too self-conscious, too hobbled to risk shaping classrooms from this vision. Teachers fear that if they move from a content driven classroom to a classroom which is learner centered that then the students will run wild over the teachers! The fear is that the wildness will make a shambles of the intellectual endeavor, embarrass the teacher, and shame the institution. This fear can be tamed.Before joining a seminary faculty, I worked for many years as the minister of Christian Education at a NYC church. I revamped their large Sunday School. In this seven year process, I learned about teachers’ eagerness to teach freely, with creativity and openness and the ways that that eagerness can be snuffed out by fear of losing control of the classroom.Before the start of our fall classes, the church school teachers participated in three weekends of teacher-training using a laboratory method. During this training, we rehearsed the curriculum through practice sessions. This allowed us to get acquainted with one another, do lesson planning, develop new skills, and have fun. We learned to teach by teaching.At the first teacher meeting of the fall, I gathered the teachers to discuss their work and to reflect on the first three Sundays of teaching. After having observed their teaching for the first three Sundays, I had an overall negative criticism of their teaching. I was nervous about giving this feedback. I was anxious about their reaction. I decided to be straightforward. The eighteen of us were seated together at the table. I spoke in a warm but firm tone. I said,When I walk the halls listening to your classes, I mostly hear your voices. This means that, primarily, you are learning the materials you are teaching by rehearsing the lesson – out loud to the students. Remember our teacher training  sessions? We do not want classrooms filled with your voice. We practiced activities that invite the students into energetic lessons.(I paused in hopes they would remember the training and practice)I want to hear the voices of the students. I want to hear the children’s voices engaging the lesson with their questions, concerns, laughter, reading aloud, talking to you and one another. When the children are the primary speakers and doers in the classroom, they are more likely to learn, retain, and be engaged with the lesson.I felt the nervousness in the group rise. Two teachers pushed their chairs back from the table. One teacher folded his arms across his chest. The 5th grade teacher spoke up,Lynne, I need to be honest. You give us creative activities to do with the children, but I am afraid of losing control of the classroom if I let the children do too much talking or move around the room too much. If I do the talking, I am in control. I’m afraid they will run wild!I threw up my arms like someone had made a touchdown and shouted,YESSS! Thank you! You are exactly right! Thank you for your honesty and good observations. Thank you for disclosing your fear.This playfulness lowered some of the tension in the room. The 10th grade teacher still sat with his arms folded across his chest, and now a scowl on his face.I continued,You are right. We do not want chaos in the classrooms with children running amuck. Nobody learns when students are out of control. But we know that students learn best when they are the ones engaged in activity. The various learning activities allow them to take hold of the stories and learn by participating. Sitting quietly teaches them to sit quietly, and that Sunday School is an uninteresting and voiceless place. We want children to learn by doing, interacting, questioning, exploring, investigating, wondering, and playing. And I need you to teach in these ways.I paused for pushback. But no pushback came. I continued,Please, try some of the more creative activity options in the curriculum. I assure you that chaos will not ensue. The children will have fun and so will you.The fears articulated by the Sunday School teachers are the same kinds of fears I hear from colleagues about their adult students in college, university and seminary settings. That is, teachers fear that if they loosen their grip on a session that the students will say or do something Wild! - something unanticipated, unwanted, unhelpful, unplanned that will embarrass the teacher or show the lack of a teacher. Teachers fear that loosening control will put them in danger of being exposed as frauds or imposters. These fears are real. Sometimes these fears are paralyzing or debilitating. These fears can be calmed and overcome.Teaching, with practice, can be improved if you are willing to give up control. For many professors, this teaching tactic feels counter-intuitive and too risky, but my experience knows it to be true.If we surrender content driven approaches – then what will happen?I am pleased to report that none of the Sunday School teachers stormed out of the meeting that day. Each teacher, in their own way, slowly over the years of their commitment, learned to select the learning activities that involved arts, crafts, a wide assortment of storytelling methods, and even trips to other parts of the building. I noticed that the primary motivation for their risk taking was the feedback they received from their students.When the learners were invited to become the story tellers replete with costumes, paints, and instruments their glee was palpable. Enthusiasm grew when the students knew the lessons could include map making, puppet designing, interviews with pastors or baking the communion bread. Excited children began arriving at Sunday School before the start time and asking to stay after the end time. Teachers moved from being reticent to feeling confident when they discovered learners were not there to judge their efforts but were there to benefit from their teaching.Over the seven years, we moved away from being a place of instruction and toward becoming a community of learning – the teachers were the agents of that wild move!Consider these reflection questions:What are your creative or artistic interests and how might you bring those interests into your classroom’s learning activities?What amount of time do you need for course preparation when planning for learning activities that are multidimensional and creative?What funding is available for supplies, resources, excursions, and exhibits?Who can you partner with to create a more vibrant experience for your students?