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You know the feeling.You have watched your students survive it. You have survived it yourself, many times. It is that shift from knowing to not knowing; from confidence to uncertainty; from expert to novice.Learning so often begins with a jolt of disorientation. It is uncomfortable. It can be exhausting. Over time, with patience and willingness, that discomfort usually gives way to new learning, relearning, even transformation.If you have ever wondered whether your body is part of the learning process, think back to how your body responds when you face something truly new: the queasiness, the sense of being under attack, the way fear can freeze you in place. For many of us, our bodies announce the loss of old truths long before our minds catch up. Disenfranchisement, feeling misplaced, confusion—these are not just ideas. They live in our muscles and our breathing.The disorientation of learning can be severe.I have come to believe that this disorientation is a signal. It tells us that we are entering a space of possibility, wonder, and generativity. That uneasy feeling is a sign that we are exactly where we are supposed to be. Pay attention to the breakthroughs when they come—because they do come.The most sensitive teachers stay in touch with what it feels like to be a learner.Some students greet new learning—or the loss of old knowing—with resistance, refusal, distrust, anger, or deep skepticism. Sympathetic teachers remember what it is like to move from being a competent, confident adult with swagger to feeling like an uncertain beginner, without the vocabulary to join the conversation. Learning can be emotional and unsettling. It can feel grief-stricken, like a small death of who we thought we were.I hold deep respect for adults who decide to learn new things. Those who dare to pursue degrees, learn new software, or tackle baking bread from scratch are risk-takers. I admire risk-takers, dreamers, disruptors.Stepping into classrooms, reading substantial books, participating in weighty discussions, exploring new worldviews, and encountering unfamiliar cultural knowledges—complete with assignments, deadlines, and grades—places learners in terrain marked by misunderstanding, uncertainty, surrender. These are not small shifts. They are life-altering, identity-reforming changes.Many students begin their studies assuming that coursework will affirm what they already know. Instead, they discover that genuine learning asks us to move from knowing to unknowing to new knowing. Few adults are prepared for this destabilizing journey.Deep study challenges what we assumed was settled and agreed upon. That cognitive dissonance is both disruptive and life-giving. Learning can be powerful.We need teachers who recognize how difficult learning is and who sympathize with their students, even as they gently invite them to lean into the formation of a reordered identity.Think about learning to ride a bicycle or surf a wave or drive a car. Fear was high and ability was low. What helped you push through was knowing that others had learned before you. You wobbled. You fell. You practiced—again and again—just to gain a small measure of proficiency. You strengthened your determination. And when the new skills finally took root, your confidence returned. Your swagger came back.Over the years, I learned to notice when my students’ swagger disappeared and disorientation set in. I watched their breathing in class. By mid-semester, their breath usually slowed; their bodies relaxed. I listened to how they used new vocabulary and interacted with unfamiliar concepts. By mid-semester, many of them were incorporating new words into their conversations—sometimes tentatively, sometimes playfully.I became a cheerleader for their attempts, even the unsuccessful ones. I designed assignments that did not assume students already knew what they had come to my class to learn. I created learning activities that acknowledged struggle and disorientation, then coaxed students toward deeper, richer, more flexible knowing. I learned to honor and even celebrate confusion as part of the process.The best teachers cultivate a desire to learn and build spaces for community. New learning is best done not in isolation but together.Do not be alone when confusion gives way to reorientation. Surround yourself—and your students—with people who will not be embarrassed or shamed, who will not humiliate others for not already knowing. The heart is too tender in the midst of learning to bear ridicule or blame.Classrooms need clear rules of engagement that foster community, make room for mistakes, and celebrate the courage it takes to learn.Making space for students to imagine new ways of living through engagement with new knowledges is both daunting and exhilarating. It is risky work. And it is worth it.Happy New Year! 

Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe  impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day.  Why,  sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”  -- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass   The matter-of-factness of the Queen’s statement about believing impossible things is her formidable strength. My contribution to a society that must take seriously its issues of inclusion, equity, eradication of poverty, economic justice, and ecological ruin is showing my students that belief in impossible things is their prophetic obligation. I want to teach my students to be more like the Queen, and less like Alice. The current hegemonic reality would have us believe that the current state of things is all there is. And, how it is now is as it should be – and anything else is impossible. We are distracted from imagining a world of communal mindedness and cooperation. We are taught that justice is impossible, improbable, and, I dare say, imprudent. For some students, the challenge to believe impossible things is the immediacy of being taught by an African American, female professor who has, by the position she holds in the school, authority over them.  “How is it possible,” I hear them attempting to reconcile their cognitive dissonance, “that a person deemed by society to be inferior can be in this place of higher education? She must be a credit to her race; She must be an Affirmative Action hire; she must have slept with somebody to get this kind of job.”  For other students, the challenge to believe impossible things is when they see someone like themselves–same racial identity, same gender, same hair texture, and possessing the same ability to suck my teeth and roll my eyes like a champ. “How is it possible,” I hear them attempting to reconcile their confusion, “that a person like Her can be in this place of higher education? She must think she’s white. She must have left the church–she ain’t Christian. She must be sleeping with somebody to get this kind of job.”  If I can press past the immediate narrowness of some students when gazing upon my Black, female body in my own classroom, I am eager to get to deeper urgencies of believing impossible things for social change.  The politics of inferiority, the oppressions of white supremacy, white nationalism, and the current state of misogyny would have us believe, require us to believe, that the current reality is all that is possible. The status quo truncates the imagination as a way of maintaining control. Unimaginative students routinely resist learning about social transformation and the creativity necessary to disentangle and revision society without systemic oppressions. Every teacher, if you get to teach long enough, develops a shtick. The word “shtick” comes from the Yiddish language meaning “bit”–as in a “comedy bit” performed on stage. If you are not sure if you have a shtick or if you are not sure what it is–ask your students, they know. Or attend the annual end-of-the-year skits where students gleefully parody the faculty.  Keep in mind that imitation is the greatest flattery and smile during your moments. One of my many classrooms shticks goes like this: With a wry smile on my face and beginning with a dramatic pause I pose this question:  Which came first – race or racism?  Some students recognize my wry smile, become cautious--suspicious that this is a trick question. Some students hesitate to answer for fear of getting the answer wrong. A silence wafts through the classroom. I then answer my own question: Racism birthed race and not the other way ‘round.  Students’ faces signal more suspicion, disbelief, and occasionally . . . curiosity.  The silence moves deeper into disbelief and some low-grade fear (like something dangerous is about to happen). Feeling a teachable moment potentially approaching, I keep going: It took the depravity of racist hearts to construct race and not the other way ‘round. Race was created as a social/political system whose ultimate and exclusive aim is to create a permanent social under- caste of human inferiority.   (Dramatic pause, I breathe deeply so students can breathe also.) I continue: Given the spiritual evil necessary to maintain the system of patriarchy, white supremacy and white nationalism, it would make sense to assume that the victims of this social system (all women and children, people of color, the poor, LGBTQ brothers and sisters, disabled folks–for example) should be, and many are, either annihilated, embittered, or paralyzed with fear . . . . Yet, the African American men and women I know, while they have suffered tremendous hardship, oppression, and loss, exemplify a story other than defeat.  When you are a people who know how to believe impossible things, the reality of a situation does not keep you from freedom. I ask for questions and comments, linger only for a little while, and then continue with discussion questions such as: What would it take for you and your people to be able to imagine a more just society-a world without racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, ableism? What obstacles make imagining this society difficult? What is at stake for your people if you do not imagine this world? What is the role and responsibility of church leadership in the more just society? What skills, capacities, and know-how do you need to assist your people in transitioning into a more just society, church, and world? These are not questions proffering a utopian society, nor are they questions for idle flights of fancy or busy-work. Believing in the impossible as well as teaching belief in impossible things is what it will take in order to save the racists and the victims of racism. If we are to teach our students, in the words of Bishop Desmond Tutu, to endure hardship without becoming hard and to have heartbreak without being broken, then they have to have an imagination that can conjure that which evil says is impossible.