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The narration below is my recollection of a typical interchange between my mother and my father when I was a child. Be mindful that we lived in a large home and invariably during these conversations my father would be on the first floor and my mother would be on the second floor.  So, as you read their exchange imagine loud voices between two people who cannot see one another.   “Nancy, where is the wah-wah-wah!” said my father standing at the bottom of the staircase. My mother, likely sewing, or making beds, or doing some household work on the second floor, answered, “Look in the kitchen; in the drawer under the cabinet with the water glasses; it’s on the left-hand side.” Dad goes to the kitchen, opens a drawer, and rummages around the drawer, but cannot locate the wah-wah-wah. Dad returns to the bottom of the stairs to ask to my mother again. “Nancy, I don’t see it. It is not there.” “Yes, it is! Look in the drawer – the one with the red handle; the wah-wah-wah is on the left-hand side.” said my mother. Dad returns to the kitchen. He checks to see if he had previously opened the correct drawer. He had not. This time he locates the drawer with the red handle, opens it and rummages around in the drawer, but does not see the wah-wah-wah. A third time, he returns to the bottom of the stairs and in a louder, frustrated voice says, ‘Nancy! It’s not there. I can’t find the wah-wah-wah!!!” My mother, in a calm, and loud voice replies, “Keep looking!” My father, convinced my mother is mistaken about the location of the wah-wah-wah, gives up. Acquainted with my father’s sensibilities, my mother stops the work she is doing, and goes downstairs to the kitchen. Hearing my mother’s movements on the stairs (and our dog running ahead of her as she walks), my father waits in the kitchen for my mother – glad she has come to find the wah-wah-wah for him. My mother walks past my father, pulls open the drawer under the cabinet with the water glasses, the drawer with the red handle. Seeing the jumbled contents of the drawer she makes a mental note to reorganize the drawer at dinner time. She reaches into the drawer, near the left-hand side, and pulls out the wah-wah-wah. Shocked, my father takes the wah-wah-wah and contritely kisses my mother on the cheek as a thanks for finding it for him. My question for reflection is not so much about my mother’s skills of household item curation, but about my father’s inability to see. Why could my father, even with the most specific directions, not see that for which he was searching?  Or, why cannot our students, even with detailed syllabi, thick instructions for assignments, accomplish assignments? In other words, what does it take to see when searching?   One answer is perseverance. Keep looking! My experience is that adult students want to Google once and call it research. Or they want to read once and expect to understand dense materials. When my mother instructed my father to keep looking! she was calling for skills of perseverance. “Keep looking!” means that even if it is not in your experience or imagination, (or the drawer you are rummaging through) it is in the imagination and knowledge of your teachers, so endure until you get to the end. As teachers, providing opportunities for our students to develop perseverance – the ability to keep looking until you can see it, find it, know it, understand it, get insight from it - is invaluable. The inability for students to see is often vividly expressed in introductory classes. Teaching introductory courses often means that newly matriculated students’ conveyance of what they know and the ways they approach the course is primarily through life experience or learnings from other degrees in other schools. New students grappling with new materials, new approaches, new vocabulary, and new praxes often make for frustrated learners and fearful adults. Adult learners, for the most part, do not like attempting the new. They prefer being affirmed for what they already know. For some, learning anew feels insulting, uncomfortable – as if it is personal judgment for not knowing what they should know. Studying religion and theology exacerbate these feelings of judgement – woulda’ known, shoulda’ known’, and coulda’ known - are haunting experiences which free float in classrooms. For students who come from traditions steeped in particularly exacting ways of knowing sacred texts and sacred ways, the experience of not knowing can be devastating. There were semesters I would assign one critical essay to be written over the duration of the entire semester. Incrementally, students would need to turn-in drafts of the essay. Without assigning a grade, I would edit the draft then return for further research, thinking and rewriting. At the end of the semester, the essay, now polished by the drafting process, would be submitted for grading. Many students let me know that this iterative process was emotionally very difficult. They did not want to keep “re-doing” the essay.  They saw little value in moving from a weak version to a stronger version, especially if each version did not receive a grade. They found it challenging to keep looking for the same thing until it was found, created, written - well. This assignment exposed the narrow edges of their skills of perseverance. At the risk of overworking an illustration, the previous scene of my parent’s typical conversation has its limits concerning teaching and learning. Consider that my parents, as spouse of one another, did not have the contract of teacher and learner. A contract between student and teacher is a different contract than between husband and wife, parent and child, employer and employee. The contract between teacher and learner has its own distinctiveness. The contract between teacher and learner is meant to create space so the learner can disclose, be vulnerable, expose their curiosity, and their want to expand and find insight. In return, the teacher provides opportunities for new knowledges, and maturity. So, here is the judgement call unique to the teacher/learner contract and the notion of perseverance. In the moments before sight (understanding) by a learner, in the moments of frustration when what is searched for cannot be located or seen, the teacher has got to allow the learner the honor of the moment of not-knowing – the moment of struggle. For the teacher to rush in with the answer (rush in to rescue) is to deny the learner the moment of ah-hah! The ah-hah! moment of magic, achievement, and growth when what was searched for is found is why, in part, students want to learn. Teachers must be willing and able to stand in the moment when the student is frustrated and not act. In this moment it is easier to simply rescue them from the pain of learning, but resist. This is a truly difficult moment for teachers to hold. In these moments, we must learn to persevere.

Listen to Dr. Westfield read this blog in an audio format. My mother was deeply loved. She and my father came to live with me in 2008. Mom and Dad became known in the school community as they regularly attended chapel services, lectures and community dinners. Students who were my research assistants and teaching assistants were invited to dinner by my mom who still cooked dinner for our family. When invited by the Dean, Mom and Dad attended one faculty meeting (!!! Sweet Jesus!!! – a story for another time!). My mother, Nancy Bullock Westfield died on December 7, 2010. We funeralized her in the chapel of Seminary Hall. Many students and colleagues attended the service. I felt an outpouring of love for my family.  Mom’s homegoing service was a celebration of her life well lived. The celebration highlighted mom’s 81 years of service, artistry, nurture and audacious acts of justice on behalf of poor children and Black children in Philadelphia. And, the homegoing, like so many funerals, was the beginning of my family’s long-walk-through grieving our beloved. In the spring semester of 2011, I was teaching my introductory course. Amy, a brilliant doctoral student, was my teaching assistant. One day while class was convened, Amy, with reticence, asked if she could talk with me in the hallway. I had divided the students into small groups with reflection questions, so the class was, in this moment, on task. I said yes, let’s talk now. Amy looked untypically pensive as we walked into the hallway and away from the possibility of our conversation being overheard by our students.  Amy said, “Dr. Westfield…” (full pause; and holding her breath). “Umm…” (empty pause; and still holding her breath) Concerned, I asked, “Amy, what is it?” Amy said, “Dr. Westfield…” (taking a breath to gain courage) “Dr. Westfield, you’ve given that assignment before.” (looking me in the eye for the first time) I did not understand what Amy meant; I frowned to express my puzzlement. My thoughts raced in preparation to disagree. In nano-seconds, I recalled the week before, but I could not recall the learning  activities. I turned a half-pivot from her and looked away as I tried to remember, tried to think. Amy, in a gentle, low tone, said, “Last week you divided the students into conversation groups and gave the same reflection questions.” My immediate reaction was to be defensive and tell her that she was mistaken, but before speaking I looked at her eyes filled with such empathy that I knew she was trying to be helpful. My pause created space for her to speak again, “Remember. …. last week you gave the same assignment … and then the students reported in.” “Actually….”  Amy went on, “…. this is the third time you have asked them to reflect upon these questions.” As she said these words, I began to remember. I began to orient myself. I began to realize that, indeed, this was the third time I had given the same assignment for class discussion. Without allowing my body to flinch, I jolted from the realization. In exasperation and embarrassment, I whispered in a quiet and defeated tone, “Amy.” With a warm smile, Amy said, “It’s ok – the class understands you’re grieving.” Amy and I returned to the classroom and I called the class out of their small groups. When we gathered, I apologized without giving a reason for the thrice redundant learning activity. I quickly reminded them of the assignment that was due the next week, asked for any questions, then dismissed the class about thirty minutes earlier than our scheduled dismissal. Walking with my mother through her illness and then to her death had been one of the most difficult journeys I have ever taken. Even so, I underestimated the power of sorrow and the ways it can (and does) effect all aspects of life – even the teaching life. My mother’s death had taken a toll on me. Thankfully, Amy had my back. The vaccine for the COVID 19 virus promises an ease to the suffering in our country and around the world. Many of us, faculty, administrators, and students, have personally lost loved ones during this scourge. We grieve. Others will not have had family and friends who died, but will be part of the overall experience of malaise, communal loss, and shock that continues to grip the nation. We grieve. The Black Lives Matter movement’s demands go unanswered. We ring our hands, pray and grieve. The insurrection at the Capital Building on January 6 sent a renewed wave of fear, frustration, and the anxiety yet ripples through our nation. The feelings of loss, terror, and anxiety continue to pierce our awake and our dreams. In our uncertainty, we grieve. We have to acknowledge that we are, all, teaching while grieving. Who is the self who teaches? In this moment of loss, our corporate answer is that we are the people who are seized by sorrow, hurt, and anguish. We are people who are grieving. Teaching as usual is not possible! In recollecting this classroom experience I am not trying to be confessional - as if I had done something wrong. Rather, I tell the story to convey that  grieving necessitates additional support and care. Even the most seasoned and conscientious teacher, while grieving, needs help. I am appreciative to Amy for pointing out  that I was stuck. Had she not told me, my realization would have been much more painful and embarrassing. Or worse yet, I would not have ever realized. In teaching while grieving, who has your back? Who is your brave Amy? For individuals who are in touch with their grief, what grief counselor, spiritual director or therapist will you meet with regularly as you process the effects of 2020-21 upon your teaching? For learning communities who possess a depth of communal awareness and a sense of togetherness, what rituals, rites, and conversations will you design for this sad moment? What blues songs will you compose? What lamentation will you paint, sculpt, write, create? What new habits will you acquire to honor the dead and the dieing? In what ways will you take your grieving and be inspired, be made brave, be summoned to a deeper, more meaningful call of teaching? What new insights on teaching will you incorporate? Perhaps there will be new ceremonies for graduations, commencements and baccalaureates? Maybe new liturgies or rites of passage will be included in the senior send-offs, the spring dances, and the year books? Perhaps you will begin or end each class with a moment of silence, or of music, or ask students to plan a community-wide protest as a course assignment? Sometimes grief prevents reflection, prevents action – only affords paralyasis. Sometimes while we are grieving all we can do is the little bit we can do; one day at a time. Perhaps, simply keep a journal on your teaching until the grief subsides enough to reflect and plan for change. The courses I taught in the Spring of 2011 were not my best, but they were the best I had to offer at the time. I hope that the little bits I had to offer my students were enough. Thank you, Amy, for your care and support.

How can theological education help students deepen their empathy for people who lack permanent homes even while a pandemic makes face-to-face conversations on streets and in shelters unsafe? Dr. Mitzi J. Smith of Columbia Theological Seminary and I have reflected on that question together with Drs. Marcia Riggs and Mary Hess as part of a small grant project funded by the Wabash Center. This post contributes to our answer by reviewing another resource that Dr. Smith employed effectively in her August 2020 intensive course on African American Interpretation and the Gospel of Luke.[1] The resource is Lost Angels: Skid Row Is My Home, a 72-minute documentary directed by Thomas Napper in 2010 and available on YouTube.[2] Based on students’ survey responses, this film was very effective in deepening students’ empathy for people experiencing homelessness (ave. rating of 3.9 on a scale of 1 to 4, n=14). It also effectively informed students about homelessness, including its causes, consequences, and possible solutions (ave. rating, 3.7). The documentary describes the Skid Row neighborhood of Los Angeles through interviews with eight residents interspersed with video footage of those residents negotiating life on the streets. Also included are interviews with researchers who have studied the neighborhood and with leaders of local nonprofit agencies and ministries. The documentary makes a strong case that Skid Row “is an endangered low-income residential community”[3] where many people struggling with poverty, addiction, prior incarceration, and mental illness have found the only housing options they can afford. Gentrification is the principal threat to the availability of affordable housing. The city government supports gentrification through discriminatory policing that essentially criminalizes homelessness. The Safer Cities Initiative, which began in 2005, was proposed as a solution to crime but in practice functioned as an effort to displace poor residents. Much money was spent on policing but very little on the social support that had been promised for residents. The added officers confiscated property and harassed residents with fines for such crimes as jaywalking, carrying alcohol, or possession of illegal milk crates. Resident Kevin Cohen (called K. K.) observed that poor people cannot survive on Skid Row without breaking the law, whereas in richer neighborhoods police smile and wave at people who are doing similar things. K. and his close friend Lee Anne are among the most sympathetic people interviewed in Lost Angels. Lee Anne, who had lived on the streets for twenty-four years, appeared elderly and walked with a stooped posture. Her mission was to make sure that the neighborhood’s cats and birds had clean water and food. K. K. empathized with her love of animals and never judged her other eccentricities, such as collecting and storing trash. In addition to accompanying Lee Anne, K. K. often welcomed homeless friends to shower and eat in his apartment. It was, he said, “how I get my blessings from God.” Another Skid Row resident who impressed our students is General Dogon, whose story in some ways mirrors that of Malcom X. While spending eighteen years in prison for armed robbery, Dogon formed a commitment to work against injustice. He became a human rights organizer for LA Community Action Network and a bold prophet against abuses by the police. Residents like General Dogon belie the title of the documentary. Although “Lost Angels” is a clever play on the city’s name, it wrongly implies that the people featured in the film were “lost.” Most of them were working, despite many challenges, to make Skid Row a better place to live. To illustrate the impact of Lost Angels on students’ learning, let me refer to Hope Staton’s excellent paper on Luke 6:37-42. Hope is an MDiv student at Bethany Theological Seminary who has given me permission to discuss her work. She interpreted the Lucan text against the backdrop of judgmental stereotypes that are rooted in racism, sexism, and classism in too many white middle-class Christian communities. One of the logs that we may need to take out of our own eyes is a tendency to judge people experiencing homelessness as lazy or sinful. Hope also engaged in critical dialogue with the good-evil binary that appears right after her passage in 6:43-45. As part of that effort, she used General Dogon and K. K. as counter examples to the idea that people can be classified as either good or bad trees who consistently produce good or bad fruit.[4] Citing a comment in Lost Angels, she asked, “What does it say about the state of the church that those in situations of homelessness often find more comfort and welcome with less judgment on the street than they do in our congregations?”[5] Although several students addressed judgmentalism, issues of personal safety were not as prominent in their writing. In a post-pandemic context when we can again require face-to-face interactions with people experiencing homelessness, discussions of safety might surface more readily. While continuing to prioritize physical safety for everyone involved, we could ask more explicitly how racism and classism influence the ways we, our students, and our institutions perceive danger. Lost Angels would be a useful resource for addressing such issues. For example, a critique of the Safer Cities Initiative could include a conversation about whether “safer” is code for “whiter” or “more affluent.” We could also ask to what extent fearful but false stereotypes keep us from engaging in meaningful ministry with people like Lee Anne, K. K., and General Dogon. Notes [1] See also my review of Matthew Desmond’s book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (New York: Broadway Books, 2016), at https://www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/2020/11/a-resource-for-building-empathy-and-understanding/. [2] Thomas Napper, director, Lost Angels: Skid Row is My Home (Cinema Libre Studio, 2010). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB_P3eljq1Y&feature=youtu.be. [3] Alice Callaghan of Las Familias del Pueblo offered this description in Lost Angels: Skid Row Is My Home, minute 41. [4] Hope Staton, “Removing the Log of Systemic Racism, Sexism, and Classism from the Eye of the Church to Enable Healing for the Homeless” (unpublished paper, August 28, 2020), 10. Staton is an MDiv student at Bethany Theological Seminary. [5] Staton, “Removing the Log,” 13.

I have been a consultant for the Wabash Center for more than a decade now, and I still often wonder what I am supposed to be doing when I consult, and how I should be doing it. Supporting colleagues in the intimate and courageous act of opening up their teaching to other colleagues’ input is often an uncharted journey. I think it’s even more challenging in an era where the primary pandemic I worry about is the one having to do with discerning what is true and real, and what is not. I think you can talk about this in any number of ways—COVID-19, racial injustice, climate catastrophe—but at heart the question is how we navigate the complex and multiple realities we and our students are inhabiting. I have had the enormous privilege of walking alongside two gifted colleagues these past few months—Dr. Mitzi Smith and Dr. Dan Ulrich—as they took on the challenges of designing and leading a course together, where one of them was the expert and the other was the learner, all the while walking alongside their student learners. Drs. Smith and Ulrich are Second/New Testament scholars, teaching in two very different seminary contexts. Dr. Smith is an African American woman, and Dr. Ulrich is a white man. This last sentence is at the heart of the project they took on, within the Wabash Center’s grant program, to imagine and embody what it can mean to develop a pedagogically effective and ethically responsible trans‐contextual online intensive course. They set out to bring into focus African American and womanist approaches to sacred texts—both those of the Bible, and those of the lives of women and men whose struggles are part and parcel of having no permanent shelter. Dr. Smith was the formal teacher, Dr. Ulrich the formal learner. And I was a listener, a learner, and perhaps a cheerleader as they tried to walk this walk. I think I know a lot when it comes to designing learning in digital spaces—but much of what I know is not relevant when trauma is the essential ecology in which we are living. Here are things I learned: Teaching and learning are thoroughly relational, and this moment in time requires us to face that reality directly and intentionally—it is no longer possible to pretend that what we do is purely cognitive. It’s really difficult to be trained as an expert in your discipline, and from that training demonstrate being an active learner. Humility and openness are key to navigating this terrain, but they are rarely the skills or capacities we are rewarded for in our scholarship. Empathy, not sympathy, is essential in this work but the difference between these two abilities is not generally taught in higher education. Certainly our students find the distinctions very difficult to parse. Structural and systemic racism are so much a part of higher education that it takes a lot of effort simply to discern the “next right step” in resisting them. Teaching together needs to begin in relationship-building long before a syllabus is written, let alone implemented. There is a necessary balance to be found between the improvisational nature of teaching when you are doing it alone, and the shared work of collaborative pedagogical design. Institutional constraints will force certain problematic compromises to be made no matter how committed you are to justice. Here are questions I still have: What kind of authority is it necessary to have in a class? With a colleague? As a consultant? How do you say “I’m sorry” in a way that matters? What does it mean to be an “expert” in an academy so riddled with injustice that the very performance of “expertise” may be re-inscribing that injustice? What degree of transparency is important for students gaining a sense of the power dynamics embedded in specific academic disciplines, and when might it be better to obscure them? I am left with a profound gratitude that there are scholars in this world who are seeking to break down some of the power dynamics of the academy. I remain thoroughly committed to the search for a “pedagogically effective and ethically responsible trans‐contextual” way of teaching even if I’m still not sure what that looks like—at least this project has offered me a hopeful glimpse!

The notion that learning is not an outcome of teaching is a challenging conundrum to those who teach. Perhaps for two reasons, first, it’s counter intuitive, and second, it begs the question, “Well then what am I teaching for if not to bring about learning?!” While teaching and learning are two sides of the same coin, the reality is that it is possible that what learners actually learn in a given lesson or course has little connection to what the teacher does or is trying to teach. We can imagine that some of this has to do with poor teaching. But some of it has to do with other complex dynamics of learning, including motivation, confirmation bias, attentional states, and capacities. A teacher who does not understand principles of learning, neglects to prepare well-designed learning outcomes, fails to ensure student engagement, and fails to apply sound instructional practices will likely not bring about meaningful learning. But the concept that “learning is not an outcome of teaching” goes deeper than that. The idea has to do with the fact that learners need to be, and are, active participants in their own learning. Regardless of our particular educational intent as teachers, students bring to the learning experience their own expectations, felt needs, goals, assumptions, frames of reference, and limitations related to the learning experience. Those factors often are more determinative of what will actually be learned than will anything the teacher intends or works toward. Experienced congregational ministers are familiar with this phenomenon. Regardless of how well they craft a sermon and despite how intentional they are in being clear about the purpose, function, and objective of the sermon, the fact is that the “real” sermon is the one that is heard by each parishioner in the pew and not the one preached from the pulpit. The preacher may be preaching the one sermon he or she prepared for Sunday, but there will be as many sermons heard as there are people in the sanctuary. This phenomenon always makes for interesting conversations at the door as the pastor greets the parishioners. If five people comment on the sermon on their way out, the preacher will be left wondering how and when it was that they heard those five different things in the sermon! The concept that learning is not an outcome of teaching can challenge certain educational approaches, like “teaching by telling,” lecturing, or an exclusive diet of direct instruction. If learners are active agents in their own learning, then we need to use those educational approaches that tap into what students bring to the learning experience. Ways to Ensure Better Outcomes The best way to ensure better learning outcomes is to design for student engagement. • Facilitate ways for students to discover their own learning and insights • Allow students to negotiate their own learning goals and facilitate ways for them to achieve them • Focus on problem-posing (which requires data gathering, observation, analysis, and interpretation) as well as problem-solving • Cultivate student's capacity for learning how to ask questions rather than getting good at answering teacher’s questions • Facilitate ways for students to construct their knowledge rather than providing them with information • Help students articulate their prejudices and bias • Help students uncover and identify their misunderstandings • Help students identify their resistance to new ideas • Allow students the options of approaching learning in the ways (modalities) they need. • Ensure that students apply knowledge to demonstrate learning, including through non-academic venues.

The Liberty Bell. The Franklin Institute. The Betsy Ross House. The Philadelphia Zoo and Botanical Gardens. The Art Museum (infamous for the Rocky run up the stairs). Boat House Row. The Library.  My brother and I attended public schools in Philadelphia, and these were some of the places we visited on trip days. These days were marvelous! Each trip brought great anticipation. We were thrilled about going, doing, being outside of the school building and away from the routine of the classroom setting. Our excitement, and the excitement of our classmates, was palpable. The excitement burst from the classroom into our household. There were permission slips to be signed, brown bag lunches to be packed, and outfits appropriate for the trip to be laid out the night before. Once we returned from the trip, the stories of what happened and what we experienced carried us for days.  Certain people and some kinds of experiences cannot and should not be brought into the classroom confines. Certain knowledge is best encountered in community, in neighborhood, in museums, in parks, and even on rivers and while crossing over oceans. Taking students to new lands, to meet new peoples, to encounter new smells, tastes, sounds, sights, feels and ideas summons the imagination which is too often dampened in classroom spaces. My hunch is that there are mysteries, experiences, knowledges, and truths which refuse to enter into the classroom; these understandings require learners to participate in excursions, pilgrimages, and field trips. In other words, some of the best learning happens outside of the classroom.  Learners must leave home to learn. If done correctly, excursions guarantee a decrease in a teacher’s control of learning and an increase in a student’s control of learning. Many teachers who, for example, have taken learners to the zoo to view the new born panda only to have little Jane or Johnnie be fascinated by the flock of pigeons and never once pay any attention to the pandas. Pigeons were not on the syllabus and will not be on the test! What if learning resists domestication? What if the better learning does not tame us, but instead makes us wild, unruly and free? What if, when given the chance, learners set their paths in such a way as to render our established curricular choices as being contrived and unhelpful in the landscape of the 21st century? What if the roads discovered while learning are more interesting than the roads mapped by teachers? The longer I teach adults, especially scholars, the more I work-at giving up control of their learning and allowing them to “go” by themselves into learning experiences.  In several classes, I required students design their own excursions based upon the themes we were studying in my course. Students were instructed not to go anywhere alone; they had to take someone from class or from their family or friends or church members. I required that the student facilitate a conversation with the accompanying persons and include the comments and impressions (based upon course learning outcomes) of their companions in their excursion report. Some of the most successful learning of students happened when they went into the world with their teenaged children or their church deacons - going together to places they had not been and talking with persons they had previously had no discussions. I learned from my colleague, Heather Elkins, that some excursions are pilgrimages. Sometimes, leaving the classroom requires the search for and journey to holiness and wholeness. I have had the privilege of witnessing the movement of the Holy Spirit with my students in New York City, Newark, Maui, Accra, Dublin and Long Branch, New Jersey.  Sometimes we were in a retreat setting – there for an intensive course. And other times we were traveling together for weeks – crossing borders, visiting our global neighbors in their own homes, mosques and shrines. Pilgrimage learning takes ahold of entire groups and brings expected and unexpected lessons for teacher and learner, alike. My advice is to resist trying to orchestrate trips which demonstrate the theory you are teaching in class as if the theory is in action in the world. Teaching and learning is much more complicated than this - learning defies this mundane dichotomy. Instead, ask yourself: Which colleagues’ work is best encountered, viewed, and metabolized in a visit to their studios, offices, shops, pulpits, and places of business?  What trip will best assist students with connecting the knowledge they have with the knowledge they need?  What experience will challenge the normative gaze of students and allow them a new vantage point upon the complexity of a craft worth seeing differently and better? Then - design a trip. Excursions, field trips, and pilgrimages must not become logistical nightmares; teachers are not travel agents nor concierges. And, refrain from trips where the passivity of the classroom is duplicated in the field.  Students leaving the classroom to sit in different chairs to hear someone else lecture is not optimal. Take students, body-mind-soul, into the world so they can encounter the unknown and the previously misconstrued. My most agile traveling students have always been my international students.  I suppose it makes sense.  If you are courageous enough to leave home and settle in a new country to learn – going to NYC is welcomed – journeying to learn is your motif. My most fearful students were those who had never traveled on urban public transportation and wanted me to rent a bus from New Jersey to New York so they would not have to bump-up-against the peoples. I paired the fearful students with the international students and off we went to see what there was to see (via NJ Transit and NYC subway). We all survived! Sometimes, mystery tiptoes around pedagogical mundanity and refuses to reveal its riches until we take or send our students out into the world. Avoid the mundane and design encounters for your students which will surprise, delight, befuddle, and amaze. What my brother and I remember most about our childhood field trips is that they were days of fun. Learning moved from the daily routine and became enjoyable.  Plan experiences for your students and for yourself which bring fun and joy into the collective learning. I have just returned from my annual pilgrimage to the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference (SDPC). It was great fun and much joy! SDPC convenes leaders from the academy, church and community to discuss issues of justice. This year more than one thousand persons attended the Washington DC conference.  Also present were two hundred fourteen seminarians attending the conference for academic credit.  This excursion keeps me informed and reminds me of the critical importance of partners and collaborators. The plenary speakers, workshop leaders, preachers and musicians assist me in thinking through the social, economic, and political realities which so greatly impact the teaching and learning in colleges, universities and seminaries. Like the trips in elementary school, my excursion to SDPC renewed my spirit and sent me back to the Wabash Center with new questions and refreshed curiosities. The Wabash Center is a destination for those teachers who want to leave home in order to learn. We are an excursion, a field trip, and in many cases, a pilgrimage. What would it mean for the Wabash Center to expand and deepen the experience of learning by teachers? If the better learning requires leaving the familiar for the unfamiliar, in what ways might the Wabash Center became “unfamiliar” even for the most seasoned teacher? In what ways might the Wabash Center pitch a wider tent for more pilgrims who fear domestication and who are willing to risk gathering and scattering to kindle and rekindle the delight of learning while a teacher?

With the possible exception of Drew University Theological School where I was on faculty for twenty years, the Wabash Center has been the most influential institution to my vocational formation.  I participated in my first Wabash workshop in 2000 and received my first grant in 2001.  Since then, I have worked as a consultant, workshop/colloquy leader, blogger, and committee member.  For twenty years, I have been a stalwart fan of the Center’s important mission.  I have regularly traveled to and from Crawfordsville, Indiana – but never thinking, in my wildest dreams, that one day I would call C-ville home.  Peering out of the van windows as I was being comfortably driven to and from the Indianapolis airport, the sight of confederate flags made me uneasy.  I have noticed on many occasions the gun racks and guns in the pick-up trucks parked in the drug store parking lot.  Like many towns in America, racial/ethnic diversity is still a contested issue in Crawfordsville. The Wabash Center staff has learned to be conscious of the racist climate and prejudicial views of some members of the Crawfordsville community, and they make every effort to limit negative interactions and foster hospitable space for participants when we leave the campus and venture into the town.  The generous hospitality of the Wabash Center always seemed to over-shadow the backdrop of its location in small town middle America.  However, visiting, even regularly, is quite different from taking up residence.  I have become a resident of 47933! How did this happen?  The Tuesday before Thanksgiving 2018, my phone rang.  When I answered, my enthusiastic colleague informed me that the position of director for the Wabash Center had been posted.  The friend was calling to encourage me to apply for the position.  I asked smugly, “Is the Center going to still be in Crawfordsville, Indiana?”  With the response of yes, I changed the subject.  I had no interest in living in a small, rural town in Indiana.  The call ended with my friend asking me to consider applying and me saying, unequivocally – no!  Over the next weeks, my rigid response gave way to a full-blown process of vocational discernment.  During the weeks, I quickly learned, again, that vocational discernment is not for the weak hearted, cowardly, or those who give a hasty “no.” As I pondered the possibility of the move, the new job, the new responsibility, the new reality, many people, trying to assure me that I should consider the position, reminded me that the most stressful times in life are divorce, death of a loved one, and moving across country.  I cannot say I was grateful for the data.  My discernment churned deeply – unearthing unfamiliar, difficult, and at times exhausting, questions.  To lighten the burden of the challenging discernment process, I turned to read the masters.  In this instance, the masters I read for guidance, wisdom, and strength were Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison. When you put Maya Angelou in conversation with Toni Morrison – you get inspiration and more to the point – you get trouble.  In my case, tectonic plate shifting trouble!  Toni Morrison spoke first as I wrestled with whether or not to make application for the job of director of the Wabash Center.  Morrison spoke to me directly, personally, through her novel Home. In the novel, after the character Cee has gone through a long regimen of prescribed healing, Miss Ethel talks to her about freedom … Look to yourself.  You free.  Nothing and nobody is obliged to save you but you.  Seed your own land.  You young and a woman and there’s serious limitation in both, but you a person too.  Don’t let Lenore or some trifling boyfriend and certainly no devil doctor decide who you are.  That’s slavery.  Somewhere inside you is that free person I’m talking about.  Locate her and let her do some good in the world. As I reflected upon Morrison’s lesson, I was confident I had accomplished a modicum of the work of freedom in my 57 years on the planet and in my womanist approach to teaching.  Yet, in considering if I should make application to the post at Wabash, I was being asked to do it again, some more, but deeper and with more tenacity.  I was haunted in my discernment by the notion of re-locating and getting re-acquainted with my inside free person. I did the work of conversation, meditation, and prayer; she found me. This time she informed me that we were moving to Crawfordsville, Indiana.  I cannot say exactly when in this discernment and transition that Maya Angelou reached out to me and joined the conversation – but she did.  Through her poem entitled “On the Pulse of Morning,” Dr. Angelou spoke into me to… Give birth again To the dream…. Each new hour holds new chances For new beginnings. Do not be wedded to forever To fear, yoked eternally To brutishness. The horizon leans forward, Offering you space to place new steps of change. Here, on the pulse of this fine day You may have the courage To look up and out upon me, The rock, the river, the tree, your country…... In my big scary move toward freedom in, of all places, Crawfordsville, Indiana, I am placing new steps of change, giving birth again, and eager for the pulse of the fine day.  I have moved to Crawfordsville, and, so far – I like it very much. I am not suggesting that anyone else uproot their lives and move to unfamiliar spaces.  I am bearing witness to my experience from which I have learned  that the work we are about as teachers committed to being free people and committed to the work of freeing others has chasms, demands, and opportunities which, regardless of how long you have done this work – will surprise and disorient.  I am learning anew that the work of freedom requires new-fangled excavations, renewed explorations, and new ideas about old thoughts for the doing of good in the world.  I’m thinking about buying a pick-up truck. To say that I tumbled into Crawfordsville is an understatement. Like most cross-country moves, there was stress, distress, decision fatigue and moments of utter confusion. As well, there were experiences of family, friends, and strangers helping in my uprooting and successful replanting.  I am soundly in this new place, in this new job, in this new phase of freedom and free-ness, of being free and of teaching freedom in new ways.  I am especially grateful for new friends, and new fictive kin who are helping me get oriented, set-up and settled in. My big scary move was met by folks with large hearts and willing hands of compassion and care.  The Wabash Center will be celebrating twenty-five years of service in 2020 - at the same moment I am assuming the position of Director.  I am humbled and glad to be part of the staff in this celebration.  My blogging will continue under the moniker Teaching on the Pulse as homage to my wise-ones, Morrison and Angelou.  In my blogs, I will keep you updated on the work of the Wabash Center as well as provide my observations and testimony to the goings-on in the religion academy and world. I am pleased that the Lilly Endowment, Inc (our exclusive funder) will be conducting a year- long program assessment.  This program evaluation will allow us to dream about future directions and foci of the Wabash Center.  During the year of assessment, our programming will not be curtailed.  Also, the staff and I are adding a few items to the program planning for which I am focusing. I will be convening a group of senior African American women colleagues to write a second volume of the anthology Being Black/Teaching Black.  This second volume, written in creative non-fiction, will focus on the ways the cultural, intellectual, racial, and spiritual formation of African American women shaped their classroom teaching.  We are partnering with the Malcolm X Institute on the Wabash College campus to celebrate their fifty years of service.  This blog will keep you informed as we move forward with assessment, the typical programs, and these new initiatives. Loosing my free person from inside me has begun in Crawfordsville, Indiana and at the Wabash Center!

You may have heard the announcements that the Wabash Center has launched a new open-access, online journal, The Wabash Center Journal on Teaching. The entire contents of the inaugural issue of the journal is now available for free download online. For twenty-two years the Wabash Center has been publishing Teaching Theology & Religion (TTR), owned by Wiley-Blackwell. Now we’ve moved our whole editorial team from TTR to this new publishing venture in order to make our efforts available digitally without subscription. Although the Wabash Center will no longer be involved in the publication of TTR, Wiley-Blackwell intends to continue publishing it with a new editorial team beginning with volume 23 (January 2020). When we started TTR as a new and unknown center for teaching in the 1990s, we needed the prestige of a major publisher in the field of religion and theology to lend gravitas to the emerging field of the scholarship of teaching and learning. But for many years now we have regretted the paywall our articles have lived behind, limiting our ability to promote this scholarship, support authors, and inspire readers. The Wabash Center Journal on Teaching will continue publishing the high-quality, peer reviewed scholarship on teaching in the fields of theological and religious studies that has been the hallmark of TTR for over two decades. The new journal carries forward the same scope and focus of scholarship – but now our efforts will be freely available online. In the new journal you’ll find the popular Teaching Tactics. In addition to Forums (with contributions now listed individually) we will also highlight Special Topic sections. And the new journal reintroduces Book Reviews, which were removed from TTR in 2015 to allow more space for articles in the print journal. So while you’ll find The Wabash Center Journal on Teaching familiar, you will also begin to notice new developments. The open-access online platform allows us to provide convenient links to sources on the internet and links back to previously published articles. But more than that, the new platform provides the opportunity for The Wabash Center Journal on Teaching to become more than just a print journal available online. It’s easy to insert links to video clips, graphics, or sound files – although these links must be found on the web or created by authors. It takes a leap of imagination to conceive how teaching issues and contexts, arguments and evidence, could be represented graphically, in motion, visually. Until now, the written word would have seemed to be the distinctive home for sustained rigorous, reflection on teaching. But we’re moving into a new world in which the “text” that creates and makes legible academic thinking needn’t be limited to words on a page. So we issue this challenge to our readers and authors: send us sustained critical reflection on your teaching practice and context that explores the boundaries and possibilities of representational forms and genres available on an open-access online platform. 4 Highlights of the Inaugural Journal Issue 1. “State of the Field” essays by: Frank M. Yamada Eugene V. Gallagher and Joanne Maquire A Conversation with Maryellen Weimer (longtime editor of The Teaching Professor, and leading authority on disciplinary based scholarship on teaching) 2. Reflections on the teaching legacy of Dr. Katie Geneva Cannon by several of her former students: Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas Karen K. Seat Miguel A. De La Torre Angela D. Sims Edwin David Aponte 3. Special Topic:  Threshold Concepts in Biblical Studies (with contributions from John Van Maaren, Tat-siong Benny Liew, Richard A. Ascough, and Jocelyn McWhirter) 4. Teaching Tactics Zoom in on Interpretive Skills by, Amy Beth Jones, Stephanie Day Powell The Buddha's Positionality, by Christina Anne Kilby Maximizing Engagement between Online and On-Campus Students Via Zoom, by Daniel Orlando Álvarez Does This Sound Religious?, by Amy DeRogatis, Isaac Weiner

When it comes to effective teaching, “less is more.” While the brain is an amazing information and multi-sensory processor, research suggests it can only effectively learn one new thing (concept) at a time. The maximum number of “bits of information” the brain can process at any given time is eight (like in the “eight bits” of a computer chip), or, as sometimes notated “7 +/- 2″ (seven plus or minus two).* When it comes to teaching, we do well to focus on teaching one new concept at each learning session (that’s one new concept per class session!). That guide can help inform the structure and scope of your course. It's a helpful corrective to the common anxious temptation of trying to cover too much during a course. So, for a twelve-week course, teach twelve interconnected or derivative concepts! No more! How much information are you trying to pass on to your students in one sitting? How effective are you in focusing on the single most important thing you want your students to learn during a single class period? To be more effective in your teaching, try these suggestions: • Aim at teaching only one thing at a time (one concept, one principle, or one big idea) • Focus on teaching a central concept and no more than two derivative concepts • Spend time on rehearsal of the concept (define it, clarify what it is and what it isn’t, provide examples and non-examples, illustrate it, apply it) • Test for comprehension • Correct misunderstanding(s) of or about the concept • Provide an opportunity for learners to apply the concept. The truth is that learning is a complex enterprise and we are not very efficient at it. Learning involves multifaceted and interrelated processes like attention, motivation, comprehension, concept attainment, rehearsal, reinforcement, acceptance, valuing, accommodation, and application. In order to teach effectively we need to facilitate the learning process for our students as much as possible. Two guidelines that will always serve us well in teaching are: (1) less is more, and (2) K.I.S.S. ("Keep it simple, stupid"). *See George Miller, “The Magical Number 7, Plus or Minus 2: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information,” Psychological Review 63:81-97 (1956). More current literature on learning that takes into account brain research supports this concept.