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Growing up, my family loved playing games. We played with seriousness and delight.In our basement playroom, there were cards, ping pong, knock hockey, and many other board games. Our yard was regularly used for croquet, horseshoes, badminton, and volleyball. When enough family gathered, there were glorious, unruly games of tag.I assumed every family played games the way we did. Then some of my older cousins came to visit.Somewhere along the way my brother and I had quietly rewritten the rules of Monopoly. Whenever someone paid money to the bank—taxes, fees, penalties—that money was tucked underneath the Free Parking space. Whoever landed there collected the whole pile. Free Parking was transformed from an uneventful square into a moment of possibility, a financial windfall.Our cousins were scandalized."You can't do that.""Those aren't the rules.""Get the instructions."They wanted the official rulebook. They wanted Parker Brothers to settle the argument.My brother and I had no interest in consulting the rulebook."It's our board," we insisted. "Our house. Our rules."What began as a disagreement about Monopoly quickly became a struggle over authority. Voices rose. Feelings swelled. Nobody was changing anybody's mind. Somewhere in the middle of our family constitutional crisis, my mother appeared at the doorway and announced that ice cream and cake were being served in the kitchen. Looking back, I suspect she was rescuing us all.The game ended.The argument did not.Years later I realized that we had not really been arguing about Monopoly.We were arguing about power.Who gets to make the rules?Who decides when rules can bend?Who benefits when they do?Who pays when they don't?Rules are never neutral.Every rule privileges someone. Every rule protects something. Every rule imagines an outcome worth preserving. Rules create order, certainly. They also distribute power.Breaking rules carries consequences. Punishment. Exclusion. Suspicion. Labels. Sometimes criminalization. Sometimes silence.Teachers know this. Every syllabus is a declaration of values. Every classroom policy tells students something about what matters here. Every deadline, attendance policy, grading rubric, participation expectation, and late-work penalty announces not only how learning will happen but also who has the authority to define learning.When do I enforce the rules? When do I quietly overlook them? For whom? What assumptions shape those teaching decisions?Which students receive grace because they remind me of myself? Which students receive rigidity because they challenge my expectations? What conflict am I avoiding when I pretend consistency is the same thing as justice?These are not administrative questions.They are the moral questions of pedagogy. ***Ariel was an M.Div. student.He worked full time as the executive director of a denominational agency while carrying a full graduate course load. He came to class prepared. He asked thoughtful questions. He lingered after class to continue conversations. By mid-semester he had completed two major writing assignments, and both were excellent. Ariel was an exemplary student. After class one afternoon he followed me to my office.I set my briefcase on my desk. Ariel settled onto the couch while I sat across from him. We talked casually about the day's discussion. But something in his posture told me he had come for more than this debriefing conversation.Finally, after taking a long breath, he smiled."I have a proposition."I was curious."Tell me."He began carefully, "I've done well on the first two assignments."I nodded."I'm keeping up with the reading. I'm learning a great deal."Still, I waited.He took an anticipatory breath. So did I."I'd like to skip the last two papers."I felt my eyebrow raise and my lips purse. I folded my arms over my chest. "Skip them?""Yes."There was no arrogance in his voice. No manipulation. No entitlement. Only a tired honesty from someone trying to make impossible responsibilities fit inside twenty-four-hour days and this academic semester."I've demonstrated that I'm doing the work," he continued. "I'd like to keep learning without writing two more essays."I admired his audacity. Most students spend energy negotiating for higher grades. Ariel was negotiating for a different way to demonstrate learning.I uncrossed by arms and leaned forward. "We have a syllabus," I said gingerly. "It's our agreement. How do I assign a final grade if you don't complete the remaining assignments?"Without hesitation he answered, "I'll continue being an A student. You give me an A." I snickered. "So, you've come to negotiate?""If I have to.""I need to think."That answer surprised him.It surprised me too.I wasn't ready to say, yes. But I wasn't ready to say, no. I am the girl who put money on Free Parking.We agreed to have lunch two days later.***By Thursday I had a counterproposal. I laid it before him over sandwiches in the campus café."You may skip the remaining essays." His eyes brightened. "...if..." His smile disappeared. "...you tutor the students who are struggling."Silence, but he did not look away. I continued, "One of the deepest ways to learn is to teach. If you help your classmates wrestle with the ideas in the course, you'll understand them even more deeply."He considered it. He was thinking while listening. Weighing his options."How many students?""Before we count students," I said, "there's one more condition."He grimaced.I chuckled."Just hear me out.""There are three other students earning similarly high grades. If I make this arrangement with you, I must offer the same opportunity to them. All four of you become tutors. If everyone agrees, we have a deal. If even one person declines, everyone writes the remaining papers."His response was immediate."That's not fair."I shrugged my shoulders the way you do when you are done talking. "What if they prefer writing essays?""Then," I replied gently, "you'll have to persuade them."Ariel turned his attention to his turkey sandwich and chips—still thinking.We talked about other things. I enjoyed our conversation. Walking back across campus, he finally spoke."Okay."A pause."If I organize the tutors...the essays disappear?""Yes."Within days Ariel had recruited the other three students.Not one of them wanted to write two additional papers.Together Ariel and I organized tutoring sessions throughout the remainder of the semester. Students who wanted help received it. Conversations multiplied. Learning deepened. The strongest students discovered that explaining difficult ideas required even greater mastery than writing about them.By semester's end, the lowest grade in the course was an A-minus.The syllabus had not collapsed.Learning had expanded.***That semester Ariel taught me something I have carried ever since.Rules matter.Justice matters more.The goal of teaching has never been perfect compliance.The goal is transformation.Sometimes the deepest integrity lies not in protecting every rule exactly as it was written, but in asking whether the rule is still serving the learning it was created to protect.The best teachers are not simply rule keepers.We are stewards of learning.That stewardship requires flexibility, discernment, humility, and imagination. It requires us to know the difference between a rule that safeguards community and a rule that merely preserves our comfort. It asks us to remember that equity is rarely achieved by treating everyone exactly the same. Equity grows when every student has a meaningful opportunity to flourish.Perhaps the real question is not whether students should follow our rules.Perhaps the deeper question is whether our rules are worthy of the students who entrust us with their learning.Thank you, Ariel.  Reflection QuestionsWhich classroom rule do you enforce most consistently and with the expectation of uniformity? What fear, hope, or value lives beneath that rule?Recall a time when you bent a rule for a student. What informed your decision, and would you make the same decision for every student?Imagine your students were invited to rewrite one policy in your syllabus. Which policy would they change first? What might their proposal teach you about your classroom?Where have you mistaken consistency for justice? Where has flexibility created deeper learning than compliance ever could?If your syllabus were read as a theological, ethical, or moral document, what would it reveal about your understanding of authority, grace, accountability, and community?

“With A Little Help From My Friends” was composed by John Lennon and Paul McCartney in 1967. The familiar song pronounces the power and necessity of friendship: What would you think if I sang out of tune, would you stand up and walk out on me? lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song and I'll try not to sing out of key. Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends mm, I get high with a little help from my friends mm, gonna try with a little help from my friends . . . The week after graduation, I got a call from a dear colleague. He was working on his syllabus for the upcoming summer semester. Having been in conversation for twenty years, he and I “get by with a little help” from each other. My colleague is a brilliant, multi-disciplinary scholar. Unlike me, he reads deeply across several academic fields - both domestic as well as international literature. He brings that expansive knowledge to our collaboration. I bring to our collaboration my scholarly knowing and, more important, my know-how in creativity, imagination, and the ability to make unorthodox connections in pedagogy, cultural politics, and beyond. Our phone conversation was “as usual.” My friend began by describing the focus of his upcoming summer course as well as the theory he was emphasizing in the course. He quickly summarized the required readings. He reminded me that it was a summer intensive, so he needed assistance in making good use of the time format. I asked if he needed to talk about assignments or learning activities. He said both. I took a few deep breaths, considered his topic, then intentionally imagined the graduate students in his course. Half of the enrolled students would be students of many races born in the USA, who will likely go on to serve communities close to home. The other half would be international, coming from countries in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, who might either serve white churches in the USA, or return home after graduation. My friend waited patiently as I thought. After my long pause, I asked, “Are you ready?” He said yes. I launched in by asking questions of clarification as if I were a student in his course. During that part of our conversation, he could hear the gaps in the course objectives and learning outcomes and he began to strategize ways to narrow the gaps and more directly address the student’s likely curiosity. Then, I brainstormed out loud about possible classroom activities that could take him and students out into the community near the theological school. We talked about possible resource persons to be brought into the classroom to make vivid the need for praxis-thinkers and doers. Once I got all my initial ideas spoken, I stopped. I asked if he wanted more. He said yes, so I continued until my imagination had run its course. Next, we turned to possible assignments as well as ways to elicit questions from students which would help them to bridge theory with community. By the end of our conversation, my friend had more than enough material to finish designing his summer intensive. The course was going to be brilliant! Our conversation was so well choreographed because of our reciprocity. I assist him with course development, and he helps me with editing and thinking more deeply about my publications. He has read and commented on almost everything I have published. I strengthen his work and he strengthens my work. We know our work is better because of the input of the other. “lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song and I'll try not to sing out of key.” Beyond the necessity of collaboration to strengthen and deepen our work, I would suggest networking is an under-utilized aspect of teaching and friendship. A little over a year ago, an alum from my school called me and asked if she could put me in touch with a friend of hers who was working on a new project. I said yes, only because of the respect I have for the former student. I was not, at that time, looking for any new projects nor was I looking for a consultant. Now, two years later, the person she put me in touch with, who is neither an educator nor a theologian, has become a consultant for our seminary and we are doing innovative programming in new areas. Had the consultant “cold called” me, I would have brushed him off. When a person I knew and trusted asked me to give time for a conversation, it was because of her influence that I paid attention and opened doors. Making use of our networks is opening ourselves to possibilities beyond ourselves. Making use of our networks entails that many of us must come-to-grips with the cachet and influence of our roles. So many of us undervalue our social position and make little use of the societal, intellectual, and material capital which we are afforded in our positions as teacher/scholars. We are people with juice! Making use of that juice for other people is part of our jobs. A new friend, who I met a year ago, told me that she drives her son to New Haven each morning for school. Since the commute is almost an hour, she stays in New Haven and writes at a local coffee shop, then picks up her son from school and returns home in the late afternoon. She is a professional writer so writing in a coffee shop is OK. I frowned at the thought of her working daily in a public coffee shop. The next day I phoned a colleague at Yale University. I asked him to take my writer friend to lunch because I thought they would enjoy each other’s company. I also asked him to give her whatever he could. I told my writer friend to expect a call from this Yale professor and accept the lunch invitation. They had lunch, and she now has access to the Yale University library where she works each day. He got a new and needed conversation partner for writing, editing, and publishing. All I did was recognize that I knew a guy who could help my friend, then I made the phone call. “Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends” The project I direct called the Social Justice Leadership Project was sponsoring a weeklong conference on our campus for spiritual writers about improving writing and getting published. We believe that public theology is, in part, about getting new voices into the market place. The weeklong conference has several worship services built into the schedule. I called a friend and asked her to plan and lead the worship services. She agreed, but asked why I did not do them myself. I said because you will do them better. The participants at the conference marveled that, during worship, we focused contemplatively upon the lives and prophetic witness of Toni Morrison, Mary Oliver, and James Cone. My friend, by way of liturgy, juxtaposed the ancient prophet Habakkuk’s text which reads in 2🔢 And the LORD answered me: “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it” – with the lives of the prophets Morrison, Oliver and Cone. The final movement in every worship service was then to challenge the conference participants to align with these great persons in their own work of writing the vision. By the feedback and reports, the worship experiences for the aspiring faith writers had mystical, transformative qualities. “mm, I get high with a little help from my friends” So much of scholarship is constructed upon the flimsy falsehood of individualism, isolation, and self-aggrandizement. We make a mistake when we keep our work and our wants in isolation – hiding our light under a bushel. Our fears of having our ideas stolen, or having people turn down a request, or of opening up to the possibility of ridicule and shame must be overcome. Our work as scholar/teachers is best done in community, in conversation, with other people. Yes, I could tell you of a few incidents when my ideas have been stolen or simply attributed to someone else. But, these derisory experiences do not keep me from the joy and accomplishments which can only be realized through collaborating, networking, and using my cachet to facilitate the ideas and dreams of others in my community. My greatest successes have been due to the love, support and generosity of people who have helped me elevate my work, rise to the challenges of certain projects, and who have seen greater possibility in me than I saw in myself. This is the pay-off of collaboration, networking and friendship. This is the marvelous of being part of an intellectual community. Nancy Lynne Westfield Drew Theological School