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“What are you working on these days?” the President asked. The setting was a professional meeting. I was on the Board of Directors of my professional society, and I was at my first meeting. I discovered that we begin each meeting with this same question. Everyone went around the room to talk about the book, the essay, the project they were working on. Then, it was my turn. I changed the focus away from my own work to the work I did for our professional society. I was brief, and then the person next to me picked up the question.The others at the table didn’t know me; didn’t know the anxiety I was feeling. Given all the work that these professors had published, many I had read, a few I regarded as superstars, I wondered what I was doing in this room. How did I get on this board in the first place? I had no brilliant book that is a must-read for anyone in the field. I had not garnered a prestigious NEH grant worth thousands to my institution. I was just one of the worker bees – chairing a committee where people often ask, “What is it your committee does?”I am a poor kid from the projects who went to a small, little-known church-related college with an open admissions process, not Harvard (although I did live just up the street – a “townie” I am told, often with an air of condescension). My neighborhood was where the Harvard students would come when they wanted to “give back” to feel good about themselves; noblesse oblige I later learned. I was a charity case; I needed their help to succeed – at least that’s what I was told.Yet there I was, sitting with them steering the future of the academy, or at least our part in it. Who was I to be giving suggestions? What the hell did I know? So, at first, I didn’t say much for fear that I would be found out for the imposter I was.I remember completing coursework in grad school and having an obligatory meeting with my advisor. Apparently, the department had conversations about me and my performance to date. My Ivy-League-bred advisor began the conversation, “In truth, we were not too sure what we would be getting with you given your background. We decided to take a chance, and we have been pleased with your performance.” Did they really think that the preparation I received in my previous schools was that poor? I wondered if he had the same conversation with my peers, all of whom had graduated from prestigious schools, one of whom had already received a Fulbright. I knew I wasn’t as polished as they were. Did they think I even belonged in the program with them? Perhaps not.After I graduated, I was not sure I wanted to go into academia, into a profession where I felt –  where I was often made to feel – inferior. I had been working as a community organizer in public housing projects like the one I had grown up in. I felt at home there; I knew their struggles and they appreciated the work I was doing.I taught part-time jobs in prisons and in the historically black colleges in the area. Most of my students came from similar backgrounds to me and I found joy in teaching them, which was the reason I pursued a PhD in the first place.I ultimately decided to go on the academic job market and surprisingly landed a job as a “teacher-scholar” at a small, church-related college, much like the one I had attended. My department welcomed me, offered me help as I started my teaching career. This too felt like home, but I was still nervous. The research and publishing requirements were not overly burdensome, but research and writing were not my passion, at least not in a joyful sense; writing was torture save for those times when I could write on behalf of the poor, the unemployed, or about baseball.I poured myself into teaching. I spent countless hours researching and conversing with colleagues at the college and the academy about pedagogy and the best ways to engage students who were in my classes because they were required. I experimented with and developed some competence in active learning and nontraditional adult learning theories and practices even though I knew it limited time for other research. My students appreciated my efforts, nominating me for a teaching award. Had I “made it”? Did I now belong to the academy? My confidence was bolstered by invitations to write about my classroom experiences, to engage in what became the scholarship of teaching and learning. My peers welcomed my contributions at professional societies’ presentations and eventually through the nascent peer-reviewed publications that were emerging in the field. I added a teaching professorate, staff positions on faculty development programs, and several other teaching awards to my resume, including an academy-wide excellence-in-teaching award.The highest achievements in the profession, however, were still measured by and given to scholarship. I could work for my professional society but could never be nominated for its presidency. My contributions to my field of religious ethics have been much less successful. My rejections outnumber my acceptances three to one for both presentations and publications. Was I really a teacher “scholar”? I had earned a place at the teacher table. But I was still a stranger at the table of scholars who gathered at the board meeting. Would this ever change? Does it really matter?After thirty years, definitive answers to these questions elude me. The imposter syndrome still feeds on my soul, periodically eating away my confidence when a student writes he didn’t learn a thing in my class (even though he was only one of thirty-five), or my proposal or paper is rejected. But its meals are less frequent now: in part because I am a tenured full professor; mostly because I have embraced the imposter within. I have learned to use the angst it generates to propel me forward, to become the best teacher-scholar I can be, however limited – just like so many of my imposter colleagues, who I have discovered make up much of the professorate.I still feel uncomfortable at times sitting at the boardroom table, especially with the superstars of my field. But I am no longer quiet. My experiences, my insights into the world in which we work and the struggles most of us endure, are valuable, perhaps even the norm. Imposter or not, I would be irresponsible if I kept quiet. After all, most of the higher education world is filled with “townies” like me. 

Diversity is the standard for theological education. One of the dimensions of courage that we must have in our classrooms is the ability to see multiple perspectives. To word it differently, we must have the ability to put ourselves in another person’s shoes. I am reminded of the poignant song and video by Everlast, “What It’s Like.” Part of the problem in religious circles and in society in general is the complete lack of empathy. Empathy is defined simply as “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.” It contrasts with sympathy, defined as “feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else’s misfortune.” Empathy means you are in (em) their suffering (pathos), and not only with them (sym) in their suffering (pathos).In online environments it is difficult to create empathy. After all, we are not in brick-and-mortar classes. We sit comfortably behind a screen and are not interacting in person. However, there are still opportunities to create a sense of empathy, and consequently being present, with one another – even if we are from different walks of life and from different parts of the world. In one of my classes I had students from Africa, Latin America, and the US. The students from the US in this class also reflected an incredible amount of diversity. My students are Black, Caucasian, Hispanic/Latin@, and of mixed race heritage. We are challenged to walk with one another and, at the very least, to understand each other’s perspectives.On the first day of class I strive to help my students get to know each other. Knowing is not merely knowing information about one another, but to enter into a relationship with one another (an affective move). The best way to do so is to listen to each other’s stories. For the last few years I have asked students to post a video of themselves in which they show an object that represents their personality and the significance of faith in their lives. I learned this tactic in a Wabash Workshop for early career faculty. Since then, I have found it to be a very helpful exercise. Most students have discussed a Bible that was gifted to them. Others post pictures of significant family members.This tactic presents opportunities to enter into another’s reality. One of my Black students posted a video where he quietly and soberly described the only gift he ever received from his father when he was three years old. It was a small jacket his father bought while stationed as a soldier in Vietnam in 1966. It had a map of Vietnam with place names and surrounding countries embroidered on the back along with the year, 1966. The student’s name was on a front pocket of the jacket. Except for occasional visits and this lone gift, his father was completely absent from this student’s life. For my student this reflected a lack – of stability, of responsibility, of keeping one’s own word, and of a loving family.My student later shared that when his dad passed away his thoughts toward him changed. He started missing him. He also started thinking about the opportunities he had missed with his father. The father’s own racial background and his experience in Vietnam meant his life had been marked by trauma, instability, and many struggles. Somehow, this jacket created an opportunity to empathize with his dad and to forgive him. My student stated that because of this experience, he desired to be a present male figure in his own son’s life.Two things stood out to me. First, I thought of all the pressing contextual issues in the life of my student’s father. The country was going through the Civil Rights movement (1954-1968). His father had been shaped by segregation, Jim Crow laws, and all the psychological harm of racism.[i] Black colleagues have shared that due to moving and different circumstances they cannot trace their ancestry back for more than one or two generations. His father was also a soldier in one of the most unpopular wars. The year 1966 was marked by mounting casualties and a sense of futility as superior US firepower could not break the resolve of the Vietcong. To create a sense of community and empathy in class, I encouraged my students to think of the trauma that this father had endured and of the courage that it took for the student to be transparent and vulnerable enough to share about this object.Second, I thought of the courage it took my student to forgive his father and to deal with this trauma as he built his own family. I thought of the resilience he demonstrated to be able to make sense of his own situation even though he may not have fully understood his father’s situation. Faith has played an important role in my student’s life, giving him language and ideas to deal with his own difficulties, and with his absent father. It also empowered him to take ownership of the situation and to pour out what he never received into the life of his own son.My student is a living testament to the courage reconciliation requires. The classroom made us walk together with this student who had a very different history from all of us. The online classroom required us to be present with him. My comments and responses were paths to give him necessary attention and models for how to respond to those who reveal trauma and become vulnerable to us. Most importantly, I, a Hispanic/Latin@ faculty member from a different generation, was able to empathize with this student. Hopefully, this distinct affective move was able to model a way forward in our conflicted cultural milieu. Notes & Bibliogrpahy[i] Robert T. Carter and Thomas D. Scheuermann, Confronting Racism Integrating Mental Health Research into Legal Strategies and Reforms(Routledge, 2020).

Watching news of ICE arrests and protests in Los Angeles, I cannot help but think how we have got here. The perception of many people who voted for President Trump is that there are too many “illegals” in this country. The reason for this impression, perhaps, is that the Latino presence in some states has increased exponentially in the last few decades. Towns with minimal or no Latino presence now have significant immigrants. The image below demonstrates this change in non-traditional Latino states, where the unprecedented growth has taken place.[i] According to the U.S. census bureau, between 2022 and 2023, the Hispanic population accounted for just under 71% of the overall growth of the United States population.[ii] Hispanics of any race grew to just over 65 million, an increase of 1.16 million (1.8%) from the prior year.[iii] This growth significantly contributed to the nation's total population gain of 1.64 million in 2023.[iv]I live in the small town of Cleveland, TN. I remember first arriving in Cleveland when I was in the first grade. I have been in and out of Cleveland since I was six years old. Back in those days—and aside from my sister—I was the only “Hispanic” kid in the school. No one knew much about me except that I spoke Spanish and that I was learning English. I may not have been fluent in English, but I was good at learning things and came to the classroom with strong abilities. Though I did not have the language skills to keep up with my peers at the beginning, a particular instance let me know that I could do what my peers could do. I remember the teacher gave out a math worksheet on my first day of class that I finished before all my peers. I also got all my answers correct. Later, I steadily learned English and spoke it fluently within a year. In fact, I spoke English with a southern accent. One time, my parents recorded a greeting to send to my grandmother on a cassette tape. When I visited my native Honduras in the late 1990s, my sister and I found the exact cassette tape with the recording on it. When we listened to it after all those years, we laughed because we had a thick southern accent.            I am now in my 40s, and the school system has changed. There are many more children of Latin American descent, as well as other heritages. My son’s middle school has a lot of Hispanic students. He played soccer on his team with children whose parents were 1st generation immigrants of Argentine, Chilean, Dominican, Honduran, Guatemalan, and Mexican heritage (among many non-Latin American backgrounds, of course). He would sometimes come up to me and ask me questions about what certain Spanish words meant. Here I am, nearly forty years after I first arrived in Cleveland and things have changed in this small town. But even though all the children I have met here have arrived through the proper channels or are born U.S.-citizens, there is a strong anti-immigrant sentiment in my community.            This is xenophobia: the dislike of or prejudice against people from other countries. Just because a person is brown, it does not mean that they were or have been “illegal.” Seeing ICE arrest U.S. citizens even after providing proper ID is a clear sign of racial profiling by those who are supposed to keep us safe. Seeing the military deployed at protests is a politicization of the military. The way that these politics are working out makes me wonder if brown people will ever be perceived as true U.S. citizens and equal. The Latino community has increased exponentially. It is nothing to fear. And even if one day they were to become a majority in the U.S., like the case of Blacks in South Africa, it appears they would still be a minority in terms of economics and/or power. I am a Christian and there are two important elements of faith that are important for us. The first is hospitality as a qualifier for leadership in the local church (1 Peter 4:9; 1 Timothy 3:2; Titus 1:8). I would also argue that it is a mark of a true Christian and a Spirit-filled life (Hebrews 13:2). The other element is compassion. If we remember the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10), good will and compassion extend beyond cultural, ethnic, racial, socio-economic, and nationalistic barriers. The radical nature of the Samaritan’s aid to the Hebrew man cannot be understated. The immigrant—whether legal or “illegal,” documented or undocumented—is our neighbor. We must now consider what it means for them to be our neighbor and what hospitality requires of us. Notes & Bibliography[i] US Census Bureau, “Percentage Change in the Hispanic or Latino Population by Country: July 1, 2022 to July 1, 2023,” https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2024/comm/hispanic-population-change.html, last accessed June 19, 2023.[ii] US Census Bureau, “New Estimates Highlight Differences in Growth Between the U.S. Hispanic and Non-Hispanic Populations,“ June 27, 2024, https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2024/population-estimates-characteristics.html (last accessed June 5, 2025).[iii] Ibid.[iv] Ibid.

In a previous blog, I highlighted courage as a a key factor in teaching. It ultimately pointed to a struggle for the affections of our students. I discussed the importance of winning their affection as a key component of my work as a teacher. It is a valuable step to gain credibility in the classroom. Below, I continue addressing this battle for the affections.I teach at Pentecostal Theological Seminary. Many of my Academy peers at non-Pentecostal institutions, in Wabash workshops, and in other settings have expressed their interest in Pentecostalism. It is like a hobby or curiosity due to the perceived eccentricity of Pentecostal belief and practice. I have also met many in the Academy who grew up as Pentecostals but are now a part of other religious traditions. Somehow, their experience still informs their identity and they now work in theological education even if it is through different lenses. Others hear the word “Pentecostal” and just raise their eyebrows because of the many misinformed stereotypes.Perhaps the most groundbreaking work for Pentecostals was Steven Jack Land’s Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom (1993). To this day, I understand that it is the all-time best-seller for the Centre for Pentecostal Theology. Land’s title is descriptive for Pentecostalism.[i] Land connects systematic theology and spirituality. For him, Pentecostals are a Wesleyan form of religion similar and different from other streams of Christian thought in that their theology stresses the affections. Post-Land, Pentecostals understand that theological education is about “knowing in one’s mind” (orthodoxy). It is also about “knowing how to do” (orthopraxis). Yet, education also involves feeling or aligning one’s affections or disposition the right way (orthopathos).My tradition points to the importance of winning and molding the affections of the human being.[ii] This is something that can help us as we teach. Theological education most certainly includes the mind; however, it is much more than rational assent. Theological education is concerned with the student engaging in the right practices, but that is not its end. Theological education is concerned with things that are at stake in our culture and are of utmost importance; as such we are in a struggle for the heart of our generation, for the affections. Nonetheless, the affections must also involve the mind and our practices. Too many Pentecostals love God, but they do not love God with their minds or with their practice. The three (orthodoxy, orthopraxis, and orthopathos) go hand in hand as a perichoretic philosophy of learning, if you will.My concern is with this latter orthopathic dimension in theological education. Let me clarify, Pentecostals are known for “tongues and drums.” In what I describe I am always conscious of the mind and action. However, religious or theological education must be concerned with orthopathy. This term comes from the Greek roots, ortho and pathos. Ortho refers to the “correct manner” or to a “proper way”; pathos refers to suffering, or in the literal sense, a quality that evokes pity. Theological education must not only be concerned with the right information about God or the right practice. It must also be concerned with producing the right passion, or the right affections, concerning the things of God.Let me provide an illustration. A person may not know about justice in Scripture or in a particular religious tradition. We do the difficult work of presenting students with this hard intellectual fact. Second, a student may be acquainted with the notion of social justice and may even participate and engage in activities promoting justice or the right social action. However, even in my intellectual knowledge of justice and the right practice of social justice, I must remember the underlying need to love my neighbor as myself – even when this neighbor may not think or act like me. This is a profound affective move that conditions my relationship to all human beings, even if I rationalize that they do not deserve to be treated as such. Thus, orthopathos refers to a gut check about being invested in the right way of being in the world or feeling in the world towards God, neighbor, and self – vertically, horizontally, and dispositionally.I know this is a brief essay and I may not have time to write more about this. But in my particular tradition (wesleyan-pentecostal), any writing about teaching must include these three dimensions: orthodoxy, orthopraxis, and orthopathy. As a result, theological education must include those elements that evoke the most poignant affections, such as (but not limited to) music, poetry, dance, art, and other media. People wonder what makes Pentecostals grow. It is this radical inclusion into liturgy and beyond (such as the world of the Academy) of this oft-forgotten part of our humanity – the affections. Orthopathos is a powerful composition that produces lifelong learners that are passionate about theology, education, and God. Teaching seeks to live out these vibrant vertical and horizontal relationships.  Notes & Bibliography[i] There are many different types of pentecostalisms. There are charismatic Pentecostals, third wave Pentecostals, reformed Pentecostals, and anabaptist-like strains of pentecostalism. But I teach at Pentecostal Theological Seminary, a school that traces and articulates the development of its Pentecostalism to the nineteenth-century Holiness Movement (i.e. Phoebe Palmer, Charles Finney, etc.) and eventually to John Wesley (pentecostalism’s grandfather). It is known as “the Cleveland School” for its Wesleyan-Holiness-Pentecostal perspective.[ii] Jonathan Dean, A Heart Strangely Warmed: John and Charles Wesley and Their Writings (Canterbury Press, 2014).

I hinted in my previous post that maybe I should do an illustrated version of my in-process book, Zen and the Artful Buddhist: Asperger’s, Art, and Academia. I have illustrated a few pages, but it’s taking far longer than I imagined it would. This book idea has been percolating for a few years. Some days I want it to be published by an academic press, but now that it’s morphed into an illustrated book, I’m not so sure about an academic press. The book meanders. As does my mind. All the time. Illustrating the book feels right: it’s creative, innovative, and will illustrate (literally) my evolving understanding of how I’ve been impacted by learning late in life that I have Asperger Syndrome (now, a part of ASD, Autism Spectrum Disorder). One need not have Asperger’s to reflect on one’s life, to be sure. Yet this is the lens through which I see more clearly my years as a professor.Before starting to illustrate the book, I was working on and off on another large (31x51 inches) painting. I only work on the painting an hour or so at a time, since it requires intense concentration and it is physically demanding. It requires standing, and the more I paint, the further I have to reach to complete rows higher on the paper, creating strain on my back, eyes, and wrist, to name a few. This current painting is precisely what I have been working on at various points for the past several years, namely short, parallel lines in multiple rows. While working on the piece, I thought a lot about my teaching style.So far, my illustrated book project shows various connections between my art, Asperger’s, Buddhism, and academia – all large topics themselves. I’m not an expert on Asperger’s, but what I’ve learned provides insight into my art-making. And insofar as any artwork contains the “fingerprints” of the artist, my pattern-heavy, highly-repetitive paintings also connect to themes I recognize in how I taught my courses. Of course, I could add much more nuance, but here is a short list of Asperger-related traits that run through my art and teaching:Detail: I always thought it was normal to focus on details, but I see now that I was having students look at the trees so much that we sometimes would miss the forest;Precision: accurate pronunciation of foreign terms (e.g., Sanskrit);Repetition: similar assignments, just different material;Nuance: overall picture shows nuances, but one still needs to look intently at the details first;Plans: agonizing over planning the syllabus every semester.My latest large painting contains roughly thirty-one thousand parallel lines, each one fitted within a half inch band of parallel lines. Like my teaching, it contains lots of details, all of which are necessary for building the overall painting. Looking back on my teaching, I now wonder what sort of balance I struck between looking at the individual lines/trees and making clear the connections that were being constructed throughout the course/forest. While illustrating my book project, I see similar challenges emerging. My next (illustrated) post will delve into more nuances about my progress.

In the previous blog in this series, we learned from Ramona Quimby’s kindergarten teacher, Miss Binney, that there is value to connecting with students. To writing them notes. To communicating that they matter in the classroom. To giving a shit.But sometimes we just have no shits left to give. Miss Binney was an unseasoned pedagogue. She possessed the eagerness of youth. When she printed Ramona’s name, she, like Ramona, always added kitty-cat ears and whiskers to the Q. “That was the kind of teacher Miss Binney was.” One who still had many shits to give.Mrs. Griggs, Ramona’s first grade teacher in Ramona the Brave, does not. And I don’t think we should begrudge her for it.The narrator describes her physical appearance as such: “Mrs. Griggs, older than Miss Binney, looked pleasant enough, but of course she was not Miss Binney. Her hair, which was no special color, was parted in the middle and held at the back of her neck with a plastic clasp.”Mrs. Griggs’s unremarkable appearance matches her no-nonsense pedagogical vibe: she is in the classroom to guide the students in the hard work of the first grade, which she consistently reminds them is not, like kindergarten, a place to play.Part of the hard work of the first grade is becoming literate. Ramona’s burgeoning literacy is one of two pedagogical themes that punctuate Ramona the Brave. When the first grade begins, Ramona can read three grown-up words that she taught herself from road signs: gas, motel, and burger. She is consistently disappointed, as they rarely appear in literature.The other recurring pedagogical theme in the novel is the big emotions that Ramona brings to the classroom. These begin on day one of first grade. Ramona has been eagerly awaiting the start of school. For once she has something really interesting to share with her peers during Show and Tell: at the end of summer, some workmen came and “chopped a hole” in her house.This revelation does not receive the reaction Ramona anticipated. Rather than being amazed, the class laughs. The laughter stings, but insult is added to injury when Ramona’s best friend, Howie Kemp, who himself had jumped through the hole in the house, refuses to publicly confirm the hole chopping. As Ramona’s rage boils, Mrs. Griggs addresses the situation: “‘Ramona,’ said Mrs. Griggs, in a voice that was neither cross nor angry, ‘You may take your seat. We do not shout in the first grade.’”Ramona seethes at the injustice of the situation and refuses to participate actively in the class the remainder of the day, “even though she ached to give answers.”Things get worse over the next month. Ramona remains despondent. Mrs. Griggs has said every day since the first grade began, “We are not in kindergarten any longer. We are in the first grade, and people in the first grade must learn to be good workers.” Mrs. Griggs does not seem to recognize what a good worker Ramona is. She has learned the words bunny, apple, and airplane, along with all the others in her new graduated reader.And then come the paper bag owls. Ramona constructs a perfect bird: bespectacled with eyes peering off to the side and covered with little Vs to make it look feathered. But, to Ramona’s horror, Snoozin’ Susan Kushner’s owl looks just the same as Ramona’s. Mrs. Griggs holds up Susan’s owl for the entire class to admire. Knowing that her teacher will tell her “Nobody likes a tattletale” and the class will call her Ramona Copycat instead of Ramona Kitty Cat if she narks, Ramona says nothing about Susan’s academic dishonesty. Instead, she crushes both her and Susan’s owl and slams them into the trash can.The behavioral snafu is addressed by Mrs. Griggs at parent-teacher conferences, which Ramona is absent from. She remains at home, feeling proud that she could read bits of the evening newspaper, learning that the z-z-z-z-z-s were going to play the z-z-z-z-z-s in z-z-z-z-ball.The Quimby family debriefs the conference and reports that Mrs. Griggs expects Ramona to apologize to Susan. Ramona’s older sister, Beatrice, who was also in Mrs. Griggs’s class in the first grade, recalls (interrupted by Ramona feeling frustrated and screaming the most-vulgar word she can possibly think of: “guts!”) that Mrs. Griggs was always big on apologies. She also reports that Mrs. Griggs operated with a monotonous, consistent curriculum: “We just seemed to go along with our work, and that was it.” Beatrice got along well with Mrs. Griggs because she was the kind of student that she liked: neat and dependable, very un-Ramona.The report indicates that Ramona is progressing well with her reading and math, but that she needs to work on exhibiting self-control in the classroom. Ramona thinks the feedback unmerited and asks why she cannot change to the other first grade class. In response, Ramona’s father, Robert Quimby, drops these golden nuggets of pedagogical wisdom:Because Mrs. Griggs is teaching you to read and do arithmetic, and because the things she said about you are fair. You do need to learn self-control and keep your hands to yourself. There are all kinds of teachers in the world just as there are all kinds of other people, and you must learn to get along with them.As teachers, we bring not only our methods but our persons to the classroom. Who we are matters there. Not all humans get along swimmingly with all other humans. That’s okay. Not all professors get along swimmingly with all students. That’s okay.It is a kindness to ourselves to find out what works for us in our classrooms and repeat those things. If we are constantly reinventing the wheel, eventually we will run out of inventions.It is a kindness to students to find what works for the widest variety of students and repeat those things. It is also a kindness to students to have some flexibility with respect to some course policies, practices, and assignments. A bend-but-don’t-break model of teaching.Just as students, like Ramona, must learn to get along with all kinds of teachers, so also teachers must learn to get along with all kinds of students. Because, to echo the wise Mr. Quimby, there are all kinds of students in this world just as there are all kinds of other people.And Mrs. Griggs learns to get along with Ramona, big personality and all. At the end of Ramona the Brave, Ramona loses one of her shoes on the way to school (she had to throw it at a ferocious, sharp-toothed dog). Rather than make a paper turkey, Ramona requests that her teacher allow her to make a paper slipper. Mrs. Griggs begins to balk, “We always—”, before changing her mind and allowing an educational audible. This is much to Ramona’s delight, who now feels she no longer needs to dread turkeys or her teacher.

My road trips contain a heavy dose of Beverly Cleary audiobooks. Traipsing around the midwestern United States, my family of six fills the time by listening to the antics of Henry Huggins and Ramona Quimby read aloud by Neil Patrick Harris (quite frankly, it’s his very best work) and Stockard Channing.The fourteen-book literary universe constellates around Klickitat Street, nestled in the shadow of Mt. Hood in Portland, Oregon. The books are filled with stories about nothing, like Seinfeld. Being about nothing also makes them about everything: transitions, family, friendship, middle-class America, financial precarity, elementary romance, death and new life, divorce and marriage, budding independence, sibling rivalry, and, most importantly for our purposes, education.My family is particularly smitten with Ramona Quimby, who first appears as a minor character in the Henry Huggins series. She takes on a larger role as Beatrice’s exasperating younger sister in Beezus and Ramona (1955) before becoming the eponymous protagonist of seven novels that chronicle her elementary school years. Throughout the Ramona series, readers are offered a window into the family life of the Quimbies and the early public-school education of Ramona first at Glenwood Elementary School and then Cedarhurst Primary.In this blog series, we take a close look at the fictional educators and experiences that shaped Ramona’s life and mind during her most formative years. From these we will glean pedagogical lessons, from the effects of rituals and social dynamics in the classroom to the importance of deconstructing the threshold between the classroom and the real world.    KindergartenAt the beginning of Ramona the Pest (1968), we are introduced to Ramona’s young and unseasoned Kindergarten teacher, Miss Binney. To Ramona’s mind, “she could not have been a grownup very long.” Over the course of the novel, what we learn about Miss Binney, above all else, is that she cares deeply for her students. The very first thing that Miss Binney does after introducing herself to Ramona, is to affirm her presence in the classroom: “I am so glad you have come to Kindergarten.” Ramona knows that she matters in this space.As the novel progresses, Ramona’s varied experiences in the kindergarten classroom are narrated. She learns the puzzling ritual of standing up straight, facing the American flag, and singing the “dawnzer” song. Ramona figures this must be about a lamp because the dawnzer gives off a “lee light:” 🎶“Oh, say, can you see by the dawnzer’s lee light.”🎶 She brings her doll Chevrolet, who is named after her aunt’s car and has green hair from an unsuccessful attempt to blue it like her best friend Howie’s grandmother’s, to show and tell.Through her Kindergarten experiences, Ramona comes to find that Ms. Binney truly understands her. She asks all the right questions and affirms Ramona in all the right ways.Until the fateful day that Ramona loses her first tooth. At recess she is on cloud nine about her plan to use the tooth as bait to catch the tooth fairy. Almost unthinkingly, she pulls the curls of her rival, Susan Kushner, just to feel them boing. Miss Binney, looking out for the physical and emotional wellbeing of Susan, tells Ramona that she can only return to the kindergarten classroom if she commits to not pulling Susan’s curls. Stubborn and despondent Ramona, forgetting her tooth in the school building, returns home where she vows to stay until Miss Binney forgets who she is, feeling that her teacher does not care for her anymore.  The Quimbies, apparently very committed to developing their child’s autonomy, allow Ramona to remain absent from kindergarten for several days. On the third day of absence, Ramona receives a letter from her teacher. The prized tooth is Scotch taped to the top of it. When her mother offers to read the letter because Ramona’s literacy is still developing, Ramona snatches it away, declaring, “It’s my letter!” She glances at the first line and can make out the first words: “Dear Ramona Q” (the Q decorated with cat ears, whiskers, and a tail, just the way Ramona herself styles it). Though Ramona can’t actually read the lines of print that follow, she vocalizes what she imagines to be the letter’s content:“‘Dear Ramona Q. Here is your tooth. I hope the tooth fairy brings you a dollar. I miss you and want you to come back to kindergarten. Love and kisses, Miss Binney.”In reality, Miss Binney’s letter reads:“Dear Ramona Q. I am sorry I forgot to give you your tooth, but I am sure the tooth fairy will understand. When are you coming back to Kindergarten?”What is written in the letter matters far less than what the letter communicates. It is a token of Miss Binney’s affection, and it makes an instantaneous and profound impact on Ramona. Miss Binney does care for her. She cares enough to write Ramona a note in her own hand.One’s handwriting, especially in personal letters, is a representation of their person. Miss Binney is able to cross the void of Ramona’s physical absence and demonstrate her care for her. A small part of Miss Binney is present in the letter, forming a connection with Ramona and reaffirming their relationship.This is the pedagogical lesson we can learn from Ramona’s Kindergarten teacher: the simple act of giving students a handwritten note is pedagogically a/effective because it affirms the unique relationship between teacher and student.Following Miss Binney’s lead, I have made it my ambition to write every student in my classes at least one handwritten note per semester. At the beginning of the semester I make a simple spreadsheet that lists each student, indicates the date on which I gave them a note, and what the note was about. The contents of the notes range from simple affirmations of something that a student said in class to congratulations about their team’s athletic victory or an individual accomplishment.What is written in the letter matters far less than what the letter communicates.Watching students’ reactions to receiving an envelope with their name on it at the beginning of class is a great joy. They discreetly open the note and furtively take in its contents, unsure what they have received or why. Even more joyful is seeing how students respond in the days and weeks that follow. Some explicitly offer thanks for being written to, saying that it means a lot. Others change their posture in the classroom, becoming more attentive and more joyful at being greeted at the beginning of class. And it has been enough for some to take additional courses with me or with colleagues in my department, a select few students taking on our department’s minor or major.At the end of the day, a simple handwritten note, which takes me or Miss Binney approximately two minutes to compose, communicates to a student that they are seen, known, and cared for. One of my colleagues once memorably said, “These students just want to know that their professors give a shit about them.” Giving a shit is a pretty low bar, but it sure goes a long way.

At the end of semesters, I often share a joke with my colleagues: “I love teaching – except for the grading!” There’s a truth hidden in that humor. Grading involves a host of emotions: joy, frustration, pride, disappointment, even confusion. Then, once we’ve finally completed the grading marathon, another emotional rollercoaster begins: student evaluations of teaching (SET).The Emotional Weight of Student FeedbackPlease don’t misunderstand. I genuinely appreciate constructive feedback from students. Their insights reveal my blind spots, push me to be more creative, and encourage me to grow. However, there are also times when I’m unsure how to engage with critical remarks, which can sting and leave me feeling disheartened. In these moments, I worry that my passion for teaching might be overshadowed by hurt or frustration.You’re Not AloneDo we, as faculty, have a safe space to process our emotional responses to student evaluations? How do we take care of ourselves – and each other – when we feel vulnerable? How do we hold on to our calling and commitment to our students during these tense times?During my days as an adjunct faculty member teaching at multiple institutions the anxiety over student evaluations often kept me awake at night. A string of negative comments could threaten my already precarious job situation and some remarks carried undertones of bias regarding my accent or background. I often wondered, “Will these comments jeopardize my chances of being hired again?” and I even tried to guess who might have written them. It was tough not to take things personally.Later on, as an early-career professor, I spent countless hours designing courses, clarifying assignments, and perfecting deadlines. So when a student mentioned that my instructions were confusing, I felt deeply frustrated. I asked myself, “Where is this coming from? Did I overlook something in my teaching?” I ended up spending even more time reflecting, revising my approach, and working hard to address any real gaps in my pedagogy.Finding Balance Amid CriticismSometimes I notice only the critical comments, letting them overshadow the many notes of affirmation and thanks. Other times I skim over the praises too quickly, missing opportunities to celebrate successes and build upon effective practices.If you’ve ever felt torn about how to use student feedback constructively – without losing heart – please know you’re not alone. Feeling this tension can actually be a sign of how deeply you care about your vocation and your students. Many of us go through these emotional swings but remain silent for fear of appearing unprofessional or overly sensitive.Seeking Support and Sharing StoriesAt this moment, I hope you seek trusted colleagues, mentors, or friends to debrief painful comments and interpret them with empathy and deep care. Allow yourself to feel the disappointment without dismissing it. Processing these responses can bring perspective and prevent lingering resentment or burnout.Engaging with feedback can be an opportunity to refine lesson plans, improve communication, or sharpen pedagogical skills. It’s not easy work! But sharing our stories and learning from one another is one way we can practice self-care as educators. We stand in solidarity with each other, striving to grow and thrive in our teaching.I remember a conversation with a first-generation Korean scholar with over thirty years of teaching experience. She confessed that she still faces hurtful biases in student evaluations. After honest reflection, her final piece of advice was: “Sometimes, you just have to delete it and let it go.” We both recognized we had already processed and learned from the feedback. Knowing when to let go continues to be a meaningful form of self-care.Moving ForwardDear colleague, when you next receive that email with student evaluations, take a moment. Recall your passion for teaching, your calling, and your commitment to growth – both your own and that of your students. Let all those emotions guide you toward reflection and learning. And remember, once the feedback has served its purpose, it’s okay to let it go (yes, you can delete it!).

We are teaching through a polycrisis – a situation in which the problems we and our students are facing in the world are complex and interpenetrating, increasing the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity of our lives in the world.Many of our students went to high school or college, raised children, or cared for dying parents through the thick of the COVID pandemic. Now these students are moving through our classrooms during the most socially and politically disruptive era many of them have ever lived through.Add to this the wildfires and flooding and hurricanes that have increased in frequency and intensity due to anthropogenic climate change. Add to this persistent attacks on structures of care for trans people and their erasure from public spaces. Add to this ICE raids in all our communities, deporting the family, friends, and neighbors of our students and colleagues (or our students and colleagues themselves). Add to this…everything else.The reason these realities land so heavily on educational institutions is not just due to the targeting of schools, professors, DEI, and curriculum by the current administration. It is also because our institutions are one of the scant few intact-yet-precarious structures of community and support some of our students have in their lives.Not only has the individualism of our society gradually eroded collective structures we need in times of crisis – those which help us to hold our grief, our uncertainty, and our fear within caring community – but our current US political regime is also engaging in a process of “organized abandonment” that is systematically stripping away the supportive structures that our students and their communities depend on.We will increasingly see collective trauma showing up in our classrooms and on our campuses. Trauma is the bodymind’s response to events and not the events themselves, so personal experiences will vary along a stress-trauma continuum. Be aware of how differently students may be experiencing this moment depending upon whether they are LGBTQIA+ or BIPOC or immigrants.Polycrisis experiences like we’re facing become traumatic when there are not adequate support structures within which to hold our experiences of grief, fear, anger, and uncertainty. Adequate supportive relationships mitigate the effects of a crisis from becoming traumatic, though they’ll continue to be very stressful.Dissociation and inaction can be defense mechanisms against the overwhelm of collective trauma. We may feel this. Our students may exhibit this. We need to subvert this collectively through our actions as professors and administrators to meet this moment with robust forms of care for our campuses and the communities our students belong to.Anger and reactivity can become attempts to restore a fracturing status quo. We shouldn’t be surprised at the anger. It’s a signal about what’s going on in student’s lives. Your institution may be the only relatively safe place for a student to even direct their anger, misplaced though it may be at times. Take anger seriously and treat it with care. Remember: you can’t argue people out of a trauma response. We need to be mindful of the ways that focus is going to be fractured for many of our students in the coming months.(Oh yeah... ours likely will be, too!) Students may fear falling behind, so some supportive and encouraging messages addressing this may be helpful from time to time. Additionally, faculty productivity may fall behind as more of our time is directed to supporting students in ways we may not normally have needed to in the past.A few things are key to our response in meeting the moment’s critical needs: Trust takes time and relationship to build and many of our institutions are starting behind in this regard with many students for a wide variety of reasons. Whatever we can do to cultivate trust and build relationship will be critical. Time for open processing of student experiences of this this era will be vital. Subjugating these painful and fearful experiences into silence will mean they’ll be processed in much less helpful ways that will ultimately create more disruption to students’ education and formation.Our expressions of leadership need to exhibit consistency and congruence, both critical in crises and amid pervasive uncertainty. We don’t need to have all the answers, but we need to listen carefully and take all the pertinent questions seriously.How we engage in this moment as educators is teaching students something, and we need to be sure it’s teaching what we really hope for them to learn when they’re leading communities in the larger world.

Teaching. Is there a greater thing to fear? For those of us in religious education, the “straw epistle” tells us that the teacher will be judged more strictly (James 3:1). These words on strict judgment are a source of meta praxis reflection for me. Irene Orr defines meta praxis as: “the potential for human flourishing through an awareness of practice and the value of making craft as an explicit knowledge pathway. Within and beyond the practice, this pathway has the potential to put us in touch with the essential vitality of life and its human value.”[i]Below, I focus on my meta praxis with the idea that the craft of teaching requires courage. This courage reflects on the essential vitality of life and its human value. Furthermore, it requires us to make a serious connection between what we study and how we live it out. In Spanish we say, “Del dicho al hecho hay mucho trecho” which means something like “From saying it to doing it there’s a big stretch.” It is similar to saying, “It is easier said than done.”Teaching is a task that is undervalued in our cultural milieu – and especially in fundamentalist circles it is seen with suspicion. I live and work in fundamentalist circles in the Southeastern US. Fundamentalism loves the end-time prophets, the soothsayers, and the showmen. In the classroom, it prefers indoctrination and rote recall. For example, it took a solar eclipse in 2024 to generate speculation about eschatological events and a lot of misinformation pouring into the livelihoods of people of faith. True education involves so much more than fear mongering. It engages people where they live. Otherwise, there can be no authentic reflection or flourishing.In my experience, writing about teaching requires us to have the courage to be human. For example, in my classes I have experienced that it is important to build and establish a rapport with students. In building a rapport, the teacher must engage the students right where they are at, wherever they come from, and with the baggage (for better or for worse) of their religious background. It is here that being human involves a level of relatability. Griffiths states that being relatable can help to create an appetite for learning.[ii] As a person with a PhD, I am an expert on the content. I have studied it and know that the material I teach is potentially life-changing. The difficulty arises because as a teacher I engage the learner at the mundane level of everyday reality. The journey towards the deeper layers of cognition and the underlying base epistemology is quite daunting, particularly when my students are not asking the questions I want to answer. Furthermore, the age of disinformation complicates my work.[iii] I have had several students who have no formal theological training in my classroom. They are usually content to compartmentalize the grammars of theology from their lived reality. Quite simply, some students just want to know how to make their church grow numerically, how to increase donations, and about the latest eschatological theological fads. It is taxing to engage them in the everyday visceral reality with the deeper theological grammars that powerfully shape and mold human beings.I have found that an effective way of demonstrating humanity is by incarnating my deepest values in the classroom. Much of what I teach about is modeled in the classroom. The values that I hold dear are more often “caught” than they are taught.[iv] For me, it has become imperative to establish some sort of relational connection with my students. As a teacher, I find myself carefully observing the world around my students. I become a student of my students. It is similar work to that of ethnographers when they enter a group and establish a rapport for their task of observation. I have heard many of my peers criticize this by saying that our students don’t need their hands held, but when looking at different academic studies about the classroom, the most common denominator in retention success is a human connection.[v]And when one considers that the number of students specializing in religion is actually decreasing, this becomes even more important. Ultimately, it is a battle for the affections of our students, whether they are undergraduate or graduate students. I recognize that this affective work cannot be readily quantified as the affections are an elusive but very real element of our humanity.Having courage means that I must create a hospitable environment – even with the fundamentalists. I have found that teaching works best when I create a hospitable environment, even when we vehemently disagree. However, students desire a “relationship-rich” experience in their journey through higher education.[vi] It requires courage because quite honestly, my time is filled with faculty meetings, committee meetings, personal research, writing, and the search for creativity – the temptation is to let contact with my students slide and limit my communication with them to terse sentences via email (if I respond at all). This press for time means that my contact with students must be intentional and meaningful. The teacher must have the courage, even in asynchronous online interactions, to establish quality contact with students.I am convinced that being courageous yields positive results. It ultimately means that my voice, a Honduran-American mestizo voice, is at the very least respected because I have shown hospitality when many students merely think of me as just “the Hispanic professor.” This hospitality transforms me from a stranger (read: a “Bad Hombre”) into being able to engage my students, even with the insertion of a dissonance of perspective. It is this relationship with them that allows me to introduce them to a new thought or a different pattern of living (meta praxis) that can alter someone’s life journey. My mere presence has a new sense of authority that can possibly create enough ripples at the edges of life experiences so that I might alter the web or system of beliefs.[vii] I engage the teaching discipline to discover ways to alter webs and engage my students as I further embody concepts and the dense stuff in the clouds and give it traction in their daily lived experiences. We agree, disagree, and yet ultimately strive for synthesized solutions on our journey together. Notes & Bibliography[i] Irene Orr, “Meta Praxis: Craft Praxis: A Way of Being,” (Doctoral Thesis, University of Dundee, 2020).[ii] Paul J. Griffiths, Intellectual Appetite: A Theological Grammar (Catholic University of America Press, 2009), 2, https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=b3a0cf3c-9a8b-3131-b54f-14e766e41a5e.[iii] W. Lance Bennett, The Disinformation Age (Cambridge University Press, 2020),https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108914628.[iv] For an example see Ronald Allen, “Is Preaching Taught or Caught: How Practitioners Learn,” Theological Education 41, no. 1 (2005): 137-152, https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=5e35cd3a-845e-389c-bddd-d72efdd95eb0.[v] Rebecca A. Glazier, Connecting in the Online Classroom : Building Rapport Between Teachers and Students, (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021), https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=b7ecbdd5-70bf-3ed1-9f85-342d7e4829bd.[vi] Glazier, Connecting.[vii] Brett Topey, “Quinean Holism, Analyticity, and Diachronic Rational Norms,” Synthese 195, no. 7 (July 2018): 3143-3171; 3144, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26750351.