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I spent my first week as an assistant professor contending with what I have deemed the “Dropocalypse.” My Introduction to Judaism class was full before the ink on my contract was even dry, and I was eager to teach students at a new institution. I posted the course website several days before classes began. As I checked the roster the morning of my first class, I was disconcerted to note that four students had dropped. Had my course site frightened them? Was my workload unreasonable? I shoved these questions aside as I walked nervously to the classroom, putting on my friendliest face. After what I thought was a good class, I vowed not to check the roster until the add-drop period had concluded. My next course, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, had similar positive energy on the first day.Despite my resolution, I checked the roster that evening. Two more students had dropped my Introduction to Judaism class, and one had dropped the other class. By the end of the week, ten of the thirty initially-enrolled students had dropped my Intro to Judaism class, whereas only two had dropped my other one. No other teacher in my department had more than three students drop.When I saw my chair in the hallway on Friday, I nervously confessed that a troubling number of students had dropped my class. Was I in danger, he asked, of falling below the minimum number of students? Thankfully, I was not. He tried to comfort me, reiterating that students drop classes for countless reasons and that it wasn’t a reflection on me as a teacher.As I spent the weekend refreshing the enrollment page, scared that if I averted my gaze for too long more students would escape, I replayed the classes in meticulous detail. What had I done, I wondered, to alienate students? What could I have done differently that would have kept them enrolled? The colleagues I asked for advice, sensing my rising panic, reiterated my chair’s perspective: students drop for inscrutable reasons that are not a reflection on the instructor.Despite these kind words, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the preponderance of drops was my fault. If I gained a reputation of alienating students, I wouldn’t last long at my institution. The fact that I had so many drops in one class but only a few in the other class helped me to pull back from the despair of the Dropocalypse. It was clear that many students who enrolled in Introduction to Judaism claimed Jewish heritage and, consequently, might believe that they would have a head start in the course. If that expectation was shattered, perhaps they would leave? In contrast, students who enrolled in a course on Abrahamic religions might have less of an expectation that the course would be easy for them. Or, it could have been that the Judaism class was at 10 a.m. whereas the Abrahamic class began at noon.Whatever the answers, a fundamental question remained: Did my actions, while preparing the course or during the class, alienate them? If so, how could I improve? This gave rise to another question: Is it a bad thing for students to drop my class during the first week? I had assumed that it was, feeling the institutional pressure for high enrollments. But if students would have a bad experience, it was better for them and for me for them to find a more suitable class.I weathered my first semester and, despite the turmoil of the first week, received generally positive student evaluations. In subsequent semesters, I continued to try to make the first week of class fun and intriguing, hoping to show students that the academic study of religion was worth their time and effort.This experience showed me that checking the enrollment vicissitudes would be deleterious for me. At best, I would feel the relief if no students had dropped. At worst, I would feel creeping panic if students had dropped. The difficult truth is that I’ll never know why those ten students dropped my course and why future students will, inevitably, switch out of my classes.As instructors, we need to balance the ability to be self-critical while not letting perceived concerns about student satisfaction guide our practices. No matter how many students drop, my job is to teach the students who stay in my class; worrying about the ghosts of students who dropped does a disservice to them.

In a previous blog, I surmised that the diversity of students within theological education is one of its greatest strengths and one of its deepest challenges. One reason that theological institutions comprise among the most diverse student populations in higher education is access. Comparatively speaking, theological schools have fewer barriers to enrollment versus other graduate schools in terms of acceptance rates and tuition costs.In 2023, the average acceptance rates for Master of Divinity and Master of Arts admissions across all member institutions of the Association of Theological Schools was 68 percent and 72 percent respectively. In the same year, the average acceptance rate for law school admissions in the United States was roughly 42 percent. Some law schools, such as Yale and Harvard, had acceptance rates under 10 percent. The cost of theological education is also significantly lower than many other graduate programs. For example, the annual tuition of Harvard Law School ($77,000) is more than double the annual tuition of Harvard Divinity School ($31,000) and more than triple the annual tuition of Columbia Theological Seminary ($22,000), the school where I teach.Theological schools therefore enroll students of all ages, races, ethnicities, abilities, genders, and nationalities. Over the past twenty years or so, many theological institutions have also taken further steps to include a wider range of students through the implementation of additional learning modalities, such as fully online degree programs, alongside in-person education.I have witnessed several evolutions in my seminary classroom over the last dozen years. The first change largely consisted of more diversity across race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and denomination. Straight cisgender white Presbyterian students comprised the majority, but I was teaching more students of color, more LGBTQ+ students, and more students from various Christian traditions.The second change entailed increasing generational and vocational diversity alongside the ongoing demographic shifts due to the first change. There is now no one clear and discernable identity marker that represents the majority student population in my classroom. In terms of age, some students are in their twenties and thirties and others are in their forties, fifties, and sixties. Some will preach their first sermon at my seminary whereas others have been preaching for years. Some are working full-time in congregational ministries and other professions as they study at my seminary. Some are from the United States and others are from Brazil, Ghana, India, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, and other nations. Some belong to theologically liberal and progressive denominations whereas others worship in conservative and fundamentalist churches.These differences present rich opportunities for mutuality and reciprocity as well as potential pitfalls of misunderstanding and conflict in theological education. I plan to further engage these matters in future blogs, but I want to conclude this reflection with one aspect of diversity that I find simultaneously inspiring and perplexing: The rise of multivocational students who are pursuing their seminary education while also working full-time as well as caring for their families and fulfilling other important obligations.I am grateful that these students are in my classroom, and many have joyfully shared with me that my seminary’s commitment to greater access has made it possible for them to enroll. Because these students carry multiple responsibilities, some understandably struggle to complete assignments on time and adequately prepare for class sessions. Nearly all my students take three or more courses in our fall and spring terms because my seminary’s most generous scholarships covering the entire cost of tuition (and the entire cost of tuition and fees for African American students) are not available with part-time enrollment.When encountering unsteady student performance, it would be immature and harmful for theological educators like me to respond with petty expressions of anger and annoyance. Yet I also feel that it is my pedagogical imperative to effectively manage class participation and course engagement. I am keenly aware that a good number of my students, including some with the busiest schedules, are faithfully doing their work, and they are rightly discouraged when some of their peers are ill-equipped for face-to-face discussions and absent or perpetually tardy in online forums. Small group activities are probably the most dismaying and frustrating when there are varying levels of student preparation. I continue to grapple with how to lean into access and compassion without compromising my standards of academic integrity and excellence.

I was the only Hispanic student in my elementary school. In high school I was always in some kind of conflict because I was still the only Hispanic. My whole life I have had to learn to navigate a culture in which I stood out for various reasons. This in-betweenness has characterized my life since then. It is like living in the hyphen between Hispanic-American.[i] I have studied and gained my education where I was a minority. I have dealt with microaggressions and full-out aggressions of various sorts since I was a child. So now that I have a PhD and am a Director at the institution where I am employed, have things changed?No. I am now the “Hispanic Professor.” Some students come to my class guarded and assume that I am “liberal” just because I am Hispanic. Some people have the audacity to think that I am a “token” professor and am here although I really did not earn my place. As Hispanic/Latin@ my point of view is not the same as theirs and naturally, since Hispanics do not have education and are not educated, my viewpoint carries less weight than that of other professors. As a corollary, my judgment as a program director is faulty since Hispanics don’t think. People come to my office and are surprised that I am “tall for a Latino.” I have been asked “Are you really Hispanic?” simply because I speak English relatively well. However, the question I am most often asked is, “Where are you from?” Like, “Where are you ‘really’ from?” It is as if people just want to pigeonhole me, label me, and keep me in their neat little place in their social constructs, especially that social construct that sees Hispanics as wetbacks, illegals, foreigners, and not truly American.I read The Merchant of Venice in High School. The lines I remember most in this play are when Shylock the Jew states,Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?[ii]Shylock was making an important self-discovery. Was he a villain just because of his Jewish heritage? Did he not also have feelings, passions, and senses and live like everyone else? These lines help us understand Shylock’s posture throughout the play. But for me, they point to something that I have longed for since childhood. At some point, I want to be known by everyone as a fellow human being. I do not wish to be limited by my bronze skin, ethnicity, or the nationality of my parents and grandparents.I am always mindful of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech, “I Have a Dream.”[iii] Please do not misread me, I have not faced any of the cruelties that he or those in the Civil Rights struggle did. Nevertheless, his speech is a constant reminder that our mental schemes need transformation. What hits home with me are these lines: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.”This is the cruelty of our own society. We assume all kinds of mental and social constructs based upon the mere outward appearance of a person. The outward appearance is but one of the many dimensions of a human being. It does not account for the mind, the psyche, the spirit, or the soul of a person. It does not take into account the personal story of that individual and the experiences that have shaped him or her. It does not take into account the spirituality and faith of these people and the beauty and creativity of the Black Church, or the Latina Church.[iv] While a person’s phenotype may reveal some things, a common history, a common ancestry, it does not in and of itself define the totality of that human being. And as those who study humans know, humanity has a powerful soul that dares to dream, that challenges the status quo, that questions the way things are, that invites the divine to enter their lives to rearrange our brokenness into the image, likeness, and goodness of God.So, I am one of the most educated Hispanics/Latinos in my community. I still am reminded on a daily basis of the need for humility and patience with my fellow human beings, who, having much less formal education than me, have pigeon-holed me into the mold of “the Hispanic professor.” Notes & Bibliography[i] Sarah Menkedick, “Living on the Hyphen,” October 14, 2014,https://oxfordamerican.org/magazine/issue-86-fall-2014/living-on-the-hyphen. See also Justo González, Santa Biblia: The Bible Through Hispanic Eyes (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 79.[ii] William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice,” 3.1.57-66. References are to act, scene, and line. https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/the-merchant-of-venice/read/3/1/#line-3.1.57.[iii] National Public Radio, “Read Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ Speech in its Entirety,” https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-speech-in-its-entirety.[iv] Church in Spanish is iglesia, a female term, hence “Latina.”

Like so many others during the pandemic I picked up a new hobby. Breadmaking was already claimed by two others in my family, so I decided to turn to houseplants. Gardening has always been therapeutic for me, so I sensed I would like getting my hands dirty indoors as well, and I had always found beauty and a sense of peace in homes filled with a variety of plants.I began pretty haphazardly, just buying plants I found on sale and watering them when they looked bad. I soon learned that water isn’t always the best solution for a dying plant. There is such a thing as overwatering, and I learned that lesson the hard way—by killing a lot of plants.It probably took me a year or so to learn the needs of different plants; for example, how much sun, humidity, and water they require. Now almost four years into my new craft, I rarely kill a plant. My eight-year-old daughter even recently declared: “Mommy, it’s starting to look like a jungle in here!” That’s when I knew I was getting good and that I had achieved the aesthetic I was going for.I’ve learned a lot of good lessons in becoming a plant person. In fact, I was reminded of my deleterious overwatering the other day, when I was making plans for my sabbatical this coming fall.This sabbatical will be the first one I’ve ever had the luxury to take, and to say that I’m looking forward to it would be an understatement. I’ve been teaching for fourteen years, and for the last two years I have been increasingly involved in administration.My fairly new administrative work has not left me much time for research. And when I think of that area of my academic life, I think of a wilted, dried out plant. I’ve pulled as much life out of my previous research as possible, and it’s parched.Always an overachiever, I know my tendency will be to over-plan for and overschedule my sabbatical time. I intend to write a new book. I want to read, research, and write; and I want to travel in Europe for my research. I also want to take pictures and videos during my travels for my classes.When I was charting this all out the other day, I was overwhelmed. My (too-high) expectations left me feeling panicky. I also started feeling the pressure of thoughts like: “Given the landscape of higher education, this might be your first and last sabbatical.” In short, I was setting myself up for burnout!Of course, this defeats the point of sabbatical. Isn’t it supposed to be a magical time in which one can finally achieve the sweet balance of rest and productivity?But how does one achieve this? I suppose the answer is different for everyone. It’s like caring for the different needs of different plants.Taking a tip again from my plants, I reflected on the following questions:1) What do I really need right now?What I need is some time to slow down and rest. I need some time to breathe, to re-center myself. I need to establish a new workplace (away from my institutional office), where I can be free from distractions. I need an easy routine with the time to be creative and to explore new ideas.2) What do I really want?What I want is to have some new life breathed into my intellectual project. I want to use the privilege of this precious time wisely. A semester free of classes and meetings provides me with the opportunity to travel for my research. I’ve always wanted to visit the monastic sites and places in Germany of the medieval writers who I study, and to talk and pray with the contemporary nuns that currently live there. Now I can!I also want to get several chapters of a new book written. This “want” competes with the other. Of course, planning for a trip and taking it will hinder my writing productivity, at least in the short term. I’ve had to come to grips with that fact, and remind myself that I can write anywhere and anytime. I can get some writing done on sabbatical, and continue the rest later.3) What will sustain me?What I need for my scholarly labor to be sustained, during this sabbatical and going forward from it, is for it to engage my intellectual passions. My last book was published four years ago. The world has changed since then, and so have I. One of the first things I need to do before starting in on a new research project is to give myself some time to reflect on some perennial questions. I have bookmarked Dr. Nancy Lynne Westfield’s blog “Articulating Your Intellectual Project,” which contains questions like:     What is the intersection of your gifts/talents with the mighty needs of the world?     At the end of your life, when you look back over your long and illustrative career, to what did you say yes?I plan to use the questions she provides therein to help encourage and bring about clarity for the focus of my project and its intent.And then I plan to get to work (at a restful pace)!

As a seminarian in Louisville, Kentucky, I was challenged to discern what kind of ministerial vocation I wanted to pursue. I felt my “calling” was to teach, but even teaching, if done with care and concern for the students, could in some ways be “ministerial.” My greater concern was with what model my teaching or “ministry” would follow. Would I be the sage on the stage (or in the pulpit), imparting words of wisdom and knowledge? Or would it be more organic, flowing from the relationships I developed with my class or my congregation? Eventually, the model I chose was one I found in the gospel of Mark when Jesus encounters the blind man Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46-52). Jesus comes upon this blind man, one of the countless beggars asking for handouts at the gates of the city, and he asks him, “What do you want me to do for you?” Are your serious, Jesus? It is obvious to everyone there what Bartimaeus needs. He’s blind, and because of his blindness he has no way of making a living and must beg to survive. He needs to be cured of his blindness! But instead of assuming Bartimaeus’s need and helping him based on that assumption, Jesus, by asking the question, gives Bartimaeus a voice in the form and direction Jesus’s ministry (or teaching?) will take. And this experience, this opportunity, so empowers Bartimaeus that Jesus proclaims, “your faith has healed you.” This model has been crucial for me ever since, never more importantly than when I was a student chaplain at University Hospital in Louisville. One evening I was on call in the emergency room, my favorite place to work, when I received word from the delivery room that a Seventh Day Adventist woman who had just delivered a stillborn child requested that a chaplain come and baptize her child. I was the only chaplain around, but at the time I was a Baptist. You may or may not know that Baptists don’t believe in infant baptism, only in believer’s baptism. (Baptists still find a way to welcome children into the community—they just call it a baby dedication.) Moreover, I had never done a baptism before. How could I in good conscience baptize this infant? When I arrived in the delivery room, I explained my dilemma to the nursing staff, who, despite listening sympathetically, dressed me in a surgical gown and provided me with a basin of water. Apparently, they had done this before, and they needed the delivery room again for another delivery. Nurses are amazing at finding ways to get you to do the right thing even when you don’t want to. Upon entering the room, I saw a tired African American teenager lying on a birthing table lovingly caressing a fully formed, beautiful but lifeless, little girl. The woman’s older brother was there mumbling something about it probably being God’s will because the child was conceived illegitimately, which was clearly causing emotional pain for the girl. What is it with self-righteous older brothers? Why do they think they can speak for God words of judgment and condemnation to their siblings who are experiencing grief and despair (Luke 15:29-30)? Whispering to the nurse, I asked her to find a way to get the brother out of the room which she did with great skill and grace. Thankful for his departure, I came to the young woman’s side anxious about what to say, unsure of what to do, angry at her brother’s rantings. Yet as I looked into this woman’s tearful and soulful eyes, all I could think of was to ask, “What do you want me to do for you?” She looked at me and asked me to baptize her child so that her spirit and her daughter’s spirit could be at peace with God. Full of uncertainty and doubt about what I was doing, I took the child in my arms, asked what her name was, dipped my thumb and forefinger into the basin of water, and anointed her head with the water saying, “I baptize you in the name of the Creator, Christ, and Comforter.” Then I placed the child back into her mother’s arms. Baptists say there is nothing sacramental about the ritual of baptism; no saving grace comes from it. Perhaps. In that ritual act in that delivery room, however, I experienced the presence of God in a way I have seldom since, an experience I can only describe as grace. As I looked at the woman, I could see that she had experienced it as well. The peace the woman requested had come to her, hopefully to her daughter, and, unexpectedly, to me. And this experience enabled me to proclaim confidently to this young woman, “your faith has made you, made us, well.” Through this and countless other experiences, I have learned that if ministry or teaching is about enabling others to find wholeness, whether intellectual, social, or spiritual, then that work will best be accomplished when we take seriously the voice of those with whom we work. When we intentionally ask the blind, the homeless, our students, “What do you want me to do for you?” and respectfully incorporate their responses into our work, we affirm their worth and dignity, and empower them to have faith in themselves, in us, and perhaps in their God. And this faithfulness will go a long way to meeting human need and enabling all of us to become whole.

My last blog was about the power of immersive classes to foster attention and presence in students. Here I want to focus on another aspect of learning that immersive classes are uniquely suited to produce: a community of learners.Let me set the scene: A group of hungry undergraduates and I have arrived at our campsite for the night and set up camp after ten miles of trekking with full packs. Because they’re perpetually hungry and I believe in luxurious trail meals (ask me sometime about our Mediterranean quinoa and Thai curry dinners), our food bags are full: enough for ten people for five days. And because we are in bear country, we have to hang the bags from a tree limb before we sleep. Not even the most macho of the students can pull the bags up on his own. (He tried. His name was Joel.) We need every person pulling on the rope. Or, on different trip, in an Arizona slot canyon, hanging our food away from bears was not an issue, but sleeping warm on a twenty-degree night was. We all snaked into our sleeping bags and then piled together like puppies snuggling against one another for warmth, never mind that most of us were strangers to each other that first night.Wilderness trips are by nature and necessity participatory ventures. Everyone is essential for a successful trip, at the level of making sure everyone eats and keeps safe as well as at the level of maximum enjoyment and meaning. It’s not unlike the most effective classrooms, where everyone’s voice is essential for everyone’s learning. The reality is just more obvious on the trail where you might genuinely need someone else’s warmth beside you on a cold night.Because of the visceral need for one another in daily chores or while crossing a river, students rely on each other much more quickly than in a classroom, and their physical need quickly becomes a need for one another’s ideas at class discussion around the campfire. Students see each other as human beings, as comrades, as companions, as fellow community members, because of the way of life on the trail. They have had to be vulnerable with one another and recognize their limits, ask for help, and so when they talk with one another, they already have a foundation of some trust. Plus, when we hike with someone side by side or one in front of the other, we can say more meaningful things because we don’t have to look each other in the eye. So students listen to and learn from one another, unthreatened by one another.I saw this on an immersive Jan-term that didn’t involve backpacking too. I took students to a monastery for three weeks for a class on the history, theology, and spirituality of monasticism. There they also had to rely on each other and on the sisters. The need was less immediate, but it was there in the shared work of washing dishes and shoveling snow. Then when a stomach bug ravaged us one by one we needed each other for basic things again. The bug hit me first, and I had to rely on the students too, just as I do on the trail. That example of dependence—of asking for help getting food or reaching out for a hand up a steep embankment—is something my students mark as invaluable. If their leader and professor is willing to throw in her lot with them, they can drop their guards and do the same with one another.Often this reliance on one another not only persists as we return from the trail and finish the immersive course (the rest of the Jan-term) at a monastery or retreat center, but even when students are back on campus the following semester. I see them around campus and hear how they are still talking together about course ideas. This spring my Jan-term group were competing together to see if they could collectively keep their screen time below a three-hour/week average. Building a community of learners on an immersive trip builds a community of learners beyond that trip. Certainly, students in the group are that for each other, but hopefully they are also able to see their next set of classmates as a community and be willing to risk needing them, transforming that classroom and their learning experience into something more than a grade or a checkbox.What kind of risks can you introduce in your classes that require students to need each other and so build a community of learners? Can you create a classroom that is by nature and necessity participatory? Better yet, can you begin class with an immersive experience that does this and binds students to one another in ways that will change their experience of your classroom for the rest of the semester? May you find experiences that do this, and may they transform your students’ learning.

  For two years I planned my full-year sabbatical, something colleagues said would be a life-changing experience. My sabbatical days were filled with research and art-making. By spring, making art nudged research out of the picture. I was transitioning from an art hobbyist to an art professional. The thought of spending my days teaching made me physically ill, despite the fact that I had poured much of my time into continually improving my pedagogy. This change of attitude was not due to boredom, burnout, or frustration over university politics. I was an artist, full stop, so that’s how I chose to live. Two years later, I took an early retirement package. I have wanted to write a book about these developments, something I might title Zen and the Artful Buddhist: Asperger’s, Art, and Academia. But I don’t have the time, energy, or inclination to write a book. However, creating an illustrated version does appeal to me, and I’ll say more about that in another post. I’m more realistic, and more selective about how I use my time now that I’m retired. A friend commented last week, “I’m not surprised that you have found new things to keep yourself busy.” My days are now spent in my art studio or at my part-time job at a local art gallery and framing shop. Down the hall is my former colleague, who, during a sabbatical, said to herself “I’m done with teaching.” She was my department chair for ten years, and she is my best (artist) friend. We regularly critique each other’s work and go for beer at 3:30 (aka “beer:30”) in the afternoon because we can. Plus, the pub is on the ground floor, two doors down. She moved out-of-state two weeks ago, and there’s now a feeling of loss each time I enter my studio. I’ve started painting a lot of intricate, repetitive patterns lately, something I was doing regularly a few years ago. People often comment that my art and art-making processes must be spiritual and/or meditative. With my pattern-heavy art, I can see what they mean, but I still refuse to use the word “spiritual” in general or in reference to my artwork. Something about the repetition of patterns calls for deep concentration. It’s also very soothing, calming any Asperger Syndrome-related anxiety. I often tune out my surroundings by putting in my earbuds and listening to my “liked songs” playlist. My music is not soothing to most people, but repetitive sounds soothe many folks with Asperger’s. My days are spent either working in a place that is part of the art community, or in my studio making art. As one of my art mentors used to say in figure drawing class — I took a few summer courses — “This is the hardest thing you are going to do today.” Art making is hard work. It calls for constant decisions, corrections, redirections, planning, and more. And then there are all the questions about why you made those choices. It never ends. And I’ve said nothing about all the other aspects of being an artist, like marketing your work, and so on. I suppose I will say more about living as a full-time artist in another post.

My absolute favorite way to teach is sitting around a camp stove on a bed of pine needles with students eating mac and cheese and laughing about the day’s challenges. If I’m lucky, my favorite wool socks are on my feet and the hat my friend Tess knit for me is on my head. If I’m really lucky, the students have moved from “That canoe carry was so hard!” to “I was thinking this afternoon about the point Belden Lane makes in the chapter on struggle as teaching us attention and indifference…”As much as I enjoy taking students outside for my regular semester classes, taking them through immersion courses—usually a week backpacking, sometimes canoeing—is a whole other level. All the good that happens in an outdoor session on campus is enhanced by being outdoors for a whole week or more. Students forget that they’re in class, become curious, and learn rather than ask me repeatedly if they’re doing the paper “right.” Students are less distracted on these trips, more able to focus on readings, reflections, experiences, each other. We all feel like we’re getting away with something, and we play, which makes us even more curious and open to learning. We are all more alive in the world. My teaching and my students’ learning becomes more attentive, more responsive, more active, more unpredictable in the best ways because that’s the reality of life on the trail: wild, unpredictable, active, requiring attention and response.All of these things happen, but for this post I’ll focus on just one aspect of the immersive experience: how present students become and how much that positively affects their learning and, more significantly, their lives.Two aspects of immersive outdoor trips especially facilitate students’ presence in their own lives. First, the places I backpack with students usually have no cell service, and I take their phones anyway, requiring them to go screen-free for the duration of not just the trip but the Jan-term (three weeks). Many of us make rules about devices in our classrooms and enforce presence for three hours a week, but imagine how the extended absence of their devices, the immersion into the non-virtual world, brings students into a more sustained experience of attention and therefore a deeper experience of presence. Students are not distracted by people who are not physically present. They cannot spend time staring at a video, leaving their reality behind. The things that distract them from their learning must be more interesting than those on a screen. Students tend to be much more engaged in their reading and read with more focus and depth on these trips, too! Without the numbing kinds of distraction available, students find themselves paying attention to their world and their community—each other. Their minds might wander, but they wander in ways our minds were meant to wander, making connections and noticing the world and the people around them, discovering the humanity of others and reaching out to meet needs they wouldn’t otherwise notice. They may even perceive internal movements of their own souls.The other aspect of the immersive trips that makes students so present is the pace of the trail. We are only ever doing one thing at a time. We’re hiking or sleeping or cooking or eating or playing or sitting around a campfire with one another, but never two of those at the same time (well, we can eat and do most of the other things at the same time, but these are undergraduates we’re talking about). Those are also the only things we do each day, every day, day after day. The pace and the rhythm slows us all down. We can focus. There is nothing vying for our attention. We just have to walk awhile, attend to our feet, attend to the person beside us.What happens when students are present, then, is an exponential increase in learning. Imagine conversations that last longer than thirty seconds because students have read deeply and brought questions and thoughts about the text. Imagine real conversation with real listening to one another and building ideas together because they are not wondering in the backs of their minds about who is texting them or what other conversation they are missing out on. Imagine a full day to ponder and digest the ideas of the previous night, a whole week for the course material to sink deep into students’ bones as they engage it with different people in different conversations over and over with nothing else to do but go for a walk and chat about it.Perhaps backpacking with students is not an option for you, but I imagine some kind of immersive experience is. Could you require a weekend retreat without phones and with a manageable amount of reading you do while at the retreat? Could you schedule even a single day immersion with students? Could you take them to a museum, take their phones, and give them a single task they have to do for several hours, slowly? Could you assign them a weekly meal where they have to be present to one another? May you find your immersive classroom and come to know your absolute favorite way to teach, with or without the wool socks.

Multicultural school events have become a global phenomenon, offering schools a platform to showcase the diverse cultures and languages within their communities. These events typically feature ethnic food, performances, and presentations from various cultures, serving as important spaces for fostering intercultural understanding and celebrating diversity among students, teachers, and families.However, despite their widespread adoption, researchers have critically questioned the efficacy of these events. They argue that when reduced to one-off occasions, without integrating multicultural perspectives into everyday activities, they may inadvertently reinforce existing power dynamics and boundaries. By treating multicultural education as isolated events, schools risk overlooking power relations and hierarchies, potentially reinforcing the borders they intended to dissolve and negate.In her series of blog posts “What Ritual Does”, Itihari Y. Toure reminds us about how rituals may help people to respond to change, not by reinforcing the status quo but in ways that facilitate transformation. Rituals help us navigate uncertain times; they provide a means for individuals to manage overwhelming circumstances and regain a sense of control. As such, rituals can help us feel closer. They create community and help us build an inclusive culture of belonging. From this perspective, multicultural events look different.Toure’s reflections make us pay more attention to the consistent effort that teachers, school leaders, parents, and students put into these events. As a ritual, such events can be interpreted as a continuous resistance against the spread of xenophobic attitudes, prejudices, and behavior that characterizes political flows in many countries. The participants’ engagement in multicultural school events can be seen as a persistent contribution to reducing prejudice in school and cultivating greater tolerance of cultural, linguistic, and religious differences.Furthermore, interpreting multicultural school events as a ritual reminds us of the dynamic character of such events. In a classroom study I conducted in Norway, the school had organized a group of key teachers who were responsible for planning and evaluating the event every year. The group was strategically balanced with a wide representation of teachers who were collaborating closely with the parent board. In this way, the school had reached a level where most parents expressed a sense of ownership of the event. For the coordinators, the event was seen as a work in progress that had developed continuously throughout the years. Setting aside time for an open and self-critical discussion of the event had helped the group to develop the practice from a top-down organized event that started off with only enthusiasm, to build a broad basis of participation and involvement. Critical reflections also helped the organizers to avoid identifying students and families with a particular essentialized background. Instead, the event was created as a social space where marginalized voices became the center of attention, enhancing the participants’ awareness of what it means to be diverse school.As Toure emphasizes in her series of blog posts, every teaching moment offers an opportunity for transcendent learning. Viewing multicultural events as rituals, I believe, can help us recognize more of these opportunities. Instead of simply dismissing multicultural school events as exotic happenings, we are challenged to consider how they can foster meaningful connections and inclusive practices.