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With over thirty years of experience in vocational ministry within the Christian tradition, my pedagogy is grounded in five core values that together create learning environments that are engaging, informative, and, most importantly, transformative. These five core values are wisdom, inclusion, fun, creativity, and generosity. My core strategy for implementing these values, which I call the Pedagogical Plot[i], relies on creating a plotline that can be used in a variety of pedagogical contexts. The Pedagogical Plot functions by first introducing an appropriate amount of mental tension or ambiguity, then sparking curiosity that fuels engagement through the resolution of that tension, and finally applying principles to the broader pursuit of the learning participant. For leaders engaged in a workshop, it might be their pursuit of current objectives. For the Sunday worship service attender, that pursuit might be living a life focused on peacemaking. The pursuit of the learning participant may be tied to their personal, professional, or academic development. This philosophy flows from my commitment to creating learning environments focused on transformation—environments that cultivate grit, curiosity, and the power of character in participants.Paul Tough laid the groundwork for my pedagogical philosophy in his 2012 book, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character. While Tough is primarily concerned with children’s success, his work serves as a precursor to trauma-responsive education, and the principles he unpacks function as guides for encouraging academic success not only for children but for learners of all ages. Tough argues that what matters most for academic success—and success in general—are not the cognitive skills measured by IQ tests, but rather “a very different set of qualities, a list that includes persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit, and self-confidence” (Tough 2013, 78). He later writes that these same traits are invaluable in college, the workplace, and life more broadly.My goal, then, in creating a course, class, or seminar is to use pedagogical tactics that align with the ultimate goal of transformative education: the development of grit, curiosity, and character beyond the specific topic being explored. This is the “why” behind my pedagogy. In his highly influential book Start with Why, Simon Sinek argues that the most inspiring and innovative leaders begin with “why.” The same is true of pedagogues. The “why” that drives my pedagogical work is the transformation of people into more determined, curious, and high-character individuals, regardless of the subject being taught.There is no attention without tension. Curiosity is the threshold to transformation, and it arises out of tension. That tension may take the form of a complicated physics problem, a theological paradox, or a somatic response to a new experience. Curiosity is desire—the desire to resolve tension—and it moves us toward transformation. The Pedagogical Plot centers on the intentional building of tension and the process of resolution through the exploration of wisdom and the movement from theory to practice.Developing a pedagogical plot for a class, course, seminar, or other learning environment involves five key questions. Acting as a facilitator through these questions helps create a transformative learning environment:1. How have we encountered and experienced the subject matter in our lives, in ways that are shared or not shared?Here, the subject matter is introduced, and participants are invited to situate themselves within the material. How do we experience this material in our lives? What are the assumptions that keep us at equilibrium mentally with the material?2. How have we encountered and experienced the subject matter in ways that produce tension in our world?This question begins to build curiosity and establishes a strong “why” for the subject, increasing participants' engagement. Here, tension is created by revealing cracks, inconsistencies, or unresolved experiences related to the subject matter. What is at stake if the status quo is maintained as it relates to the subject?3. What wisdom has been applied to this tension in the past?Who has been working to find innovative responses? What has been helpful in resolving current tensions? What has been neglected, and where are the opportunities for alternative forms of knowledge? Here, “expert” voices are introduced—often the information learning participants are being invited to metabolize.4. What can we contribute to the knowledge pool?What might we add through exploration, conversation, and research to move wisdom forward? This question invites participants into active contribution and deeper internalization of the material.5. What happens next?How might this learning advance individual goals? Does it make the world better? If so, how? Are we learning to live more fully into this wisdom? Here, participants are invited into a vision of the future shaped by newly acquired insight and understanding.These questions can guide movement from settled, to unsettled, to resettled states. These questions can be use to design a course, as well as within individual class sessions and learning exercises. Assignments may intentionally linger within one set of questions before progressing to the next. As participants move through this arc—from settled, to unsettled, to resettled—a pedagogical plotline emerges that sparks curiosity and, when the environment allows, fosters deep engagement with both the material and one another.This brings me to the five core values (wisdom, inclusion, fun, creativity, and generosity) that shape learning environments participants experience as empowering, accessible, and hopeful. If the Pedagogical Plot represents the “what” of transformative learning, the five core values drive the “how” of the learning environment and the delivery of the plot itself. These values determine the atmosphere in which transformative learning takes place. Wisdom seeks more than knowledge or memorization; it guides decisions about how material is presented, how pacing is adjusted, and how participant needs are discerned. Wisdom looks beneath the surface, attending to what may be present in participants who are struggling. It is insight hard-won through experience. Inclusion is the second core value shaping how material is presented and received. Inclusion honors the diverse ways learners show up and makes learning accessible and relevant across multiple positionalities by removing barriers and celebrating difference. Creativity opens up possibilities. It manifests in variety and allows for multiple pathways to demonstrate learning, acquire knowledge, and cultivate wisdom. Generosity is also central to a learning environment oriented toward transformation. Generosity appears in positive assumptions about learners, assessment practices that value more than simple knowledge regurgitation, encouraging feedback, and time invested in participants beyond the formal learning space. Finally, fun is core to both who I am and how I teach. Laughter and joy ease fear and anxiety. I work to create environments where material is taken seriously, but where we do not take ourselves too seriously. When pedagogical tools are implemented wisely, inclusively, generously, creatively, and joyfully, they form a holistic learning environment that balances content with context—one in which transformation can occur.I have implemented this pedagogical philosophy in the writing of lectures, group courses, professional seminars, sermons, and classroom lessons. Regardless of context, this theoretical and philosophical framework creates learning environments in which participants move from settled to unsettled to resettled while imagining futures informed by applied learning. Hands-on activities, films, primary and secondary sources, creative group projects, and reading lists are only as effective as their placement within the pedagogical plot and the values that guide them. Notes & Bibliography*Please note that AI was used for grammar, punctuation and spelling edits. [i] The name and philosophy are an adaptation and implementation of communication strategies from a few resources that have influenced my thinking over the years. See Jones, Kirk Byron. 2025. The Jazz of Preaching, 20th Anniversary Edition: How to Preach with Great Freedom and Joy. Abingdon Press. Lowry, Eugene L. 2000. The Homiletical Plot, Expanded Edition: The Sermon as Narrative Art Form. Westminster John Knox Press. Stanley, Andy. 2008. Communicating for a Change: Seven Keys to Irresistible Communication. Multnomah. 

As we finish this semester, it might be a good exercise to look back and see what worked, what didn’t quite work, and what will never work. Student evaluations often convey needs or anger or unfocused frustrations; very little that can actually teach us, so we must ponder our own little achievements and many frustrations. At each semester’s end, it would do us good to ponder what a classroom might be and what we can do in that environment in relation to the larger social-political arena we live in now. In a short excerpt from an interview,[1] Gilles Deleuze speaks about the classroom less in terms of mediating processes of apprehension and comprehension, and more in terms of movements and processes of becoming. He contends: “A class does not have as its sole objective total comprehension [of a subject matter] . . .  A class is an emotion . . .  It is not a matter of understanding and absorbing everything. It is a matter of awakening in time to capture that which is meaningful [to our own realities].” In his Difference and Repetition, Deleuze speaks of experiences that force us to awaken, to feel, not merely to comprehend something novel: “this something is an object not of recognition but a fundamental encounter,” he writes.[2] The arts are capable of generating such encounters—they undo the seams of our limitations, habitual circumstances, belief systems, values, and knowledge to weave the invisible back into the perceptible. Beyond a representation of subjects, facts, history, data, encountering art affectively allows us to sense and not cling to the world as it is but to imagine it more expansively, with further potential becomings. As such, the arts require the totality of our beings-in-bodies to be present and to co-create our realities anew—whether in classrooms, art galleries, the streets, or in the intimacy of our closest communities. Artistic manifestations often allow us to access and connect, individually and collectively, with what is meaningful, potentially generative, and ultimately transformative. It is less about fully understanding the world as such and more about being alert to discover the opportunities that this world offers us. For that to unfold, we must rise, we must awaken! We must be willing to co-participate in this unfolding. There is no room for passive observation here. We must be willing to move from dormant complacency into the position of co-creators, conjuring up new possibilities of being. Julia Kristeva describes this aesthetic awakening with a reminder that our bodies must take part in the experience with art not only to contemplate the art object but also to sense it. She writes: “The ultimate aim of art is perhaps what was formerly celebrated under the term of incarnation. I mean by that a wish to make us feel a real experience [in the body]” through lines, colors, sensations, abstraction, volume, textures, and participation.[3] The arts are poised with the power to remind us to celebrate our body-realities. As Mayra Rivera puts it, works of the imagination allow us to move beyond the limits of our earthly flesh and encounter God as we strive to transform this world. Seeing and touching and moving and speaking and feeling is participation in theopoetics—an articulation of the character of God understood through our embodied, affective experiences.[4] Brazilian visual artist Lygia Pape’s performance piece entitled Divisor (1968) does just that: it probes the limits of our sensorial and psychological conditions, relying heavily on the physical, embodied, affective, and—most importantly—collective participation of viewers. Divisor is at once performance and sculpture, interweaving bodies of spectators/participators, physical space, mobility, and artwork in a literally moving piece.[5] Originally performed in the city of Rio de Janeiro in 1968, this performance was re-enacted in the streets of New York on March 26th, 2017, in collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[6] Comprised of a 30-meter, white cotton fabric in the shape of a square, the piece has two hundred holes symmetrically perforated in the fabric through which viewers are invited to “wear” the sculpture, so to speak. Once 200 co-participators and co-creators are properly positioned, they are invited to enact a procession while wearing the artwork. Pape’s white fabric reposed over the shoulders of the participants, isolating the rest of the body, allows a commanding procession to take place. The effect is both poignant and powerful: a multitude of differently “bodied” people, unified by what takes on the shape of undulating waves, moves through the public arena in a procession. Their movement transmutes precariousness into potency. The work of art highlights the simultaneity of the shared life of those present: their bodies both tied to one another and acting upon one another, are transformed by one another. Such “imbrication of bodies in the fabric of the world,” as Rivera puts it, facilitates a union of sorts. What works of art such as this require of us is an awakened presence that is able to move forward in solidarity, entanglement, capacious resistance, and, most importantly, with response-ability, to borrow Catherine Keller’s language. How can we teachers conjure up opportunities in our classrooms that resemble the communal potency of Divisor? As the semester draws to a close and we reflect on strategies for learning and teaching and living, we ask ourselves: how can we wake that which is dormant inside of us? If another reality is possible, how can we work towards its actualization? How can we even keep the love of teaching when our very schools are crumbling down? How can our very understanding of education continue to produce a teaching-wonder and teaching-resistance that is so fundamental to the fullness of our lives and our communities? Knowing the dazzling possibilities of education and the dangers entailed in it, we are required to place the practice and the thinking of education in relation to the structures of our time. And we don’t live in the easiest times. Educators are rapidly becoming dispensable people who are supposed to teach whatever it is that has no critical engagement. In Brazil, for instance, a growing number of people are calling Paulo Freire to disappear from curricula. He is accused of being an ideologue, a communist whose education project aims only to destroy the values of family and country. Just recently, Judith Butler was almost physically attacked at the Sāo Paulo airport by a Brazilian woman who saw in Butler’s feminist and queer theories a threat to what she understood as the “traditional” Brazilian family. In the US, education, like health insurance, religion, among a great number of other things, has come to be understood as a private value dependent on individual efforts. Having been taken hostage by neoliberal systems, education must “produce” something, preferably at a profit. In this model, students must be treated like customers—education is less about formation than production, like an assembly line. The assaults by the Department of Education, the constant push to make education a matter of corporate profit and endless student debt, the targeting of colleges as a bad thing for the life of the country, the cutting of educational budgets for the sake of “austerity plans,” the creation of prison systems, the loads of money the Koch Brothers injected into higher education, the Senate Tax Bill that was passed recently, all form a narrative worthy of Dante’s Inferno. If education should only serve to produce people to fulfill the lines of jobs, the endless testing and precise measurements of syllabi begins to make sense. No wonder many of us in the classrooms have become apathetic and anesthetized. If one was able to go to AAR this last November and paid attention to the conversations that happened in between the academic sessions, you would know that the plight of so many educators is dire. I heard a professor saying to a friend at the exhibition hall: “I have been battling for 3 years now and I can’t continue doing adjunct jobs. This is my last year trying to find a job, or I will have to find something else to do. I can’t keep living this way, I have a family.” If the classroom and school bring daily struggles, embarrassment, precariousness, and even humiliation to our colleagues, how are we to keep our love of teaching? It is easy for me Cláudio to say, let us keep on loving our teaching and do it the best way we can. But I have a good job with great colleagues. Yohana who co-writes this blog post is a Ph.D. candidate. Will she ever find a good job? We need to engage our profession with a more critical sense of what it means to us, and how it can be made more expansive and sustaining. How can we support and accompany our colleagues who contest the violence of a plutocratic state, the erosion of our communities, the criminalization of protest, rising poverty, constant blaming of the poor, debt, emotional and physical exhaustion of those who are poor? There are no easy answers. There were never any easy answers. Perhaps we can start by thinking that our classrooms are places where we can still be awakened, that every time we meet we can raise up what was dormant in us. Perhaps we can discover that we need to pay attention to our emotions, our bodies, the communities that are formed in each classroom. Perhaps we ought to find better and more sustainable technologies of self and communal awareness, or spiritual practices that can become resources for our constant battle against the empire and its neoliberal systems. Perhaps we can also see our gift to teach as a way of positioning ourselves: first within ourselves, and then as a way of positioning ourselves in the world. Perhaps . . . . [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ln2A0fkA78 [2] Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. P. Patton, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 139. [3] As quoted in Stephen Bann, “Three Images for Kristeva: From Bellini to Proust,” in Parallax, 1998, vol. 4, no. 3, 64–65. [4] You can see more of this articulation in Rubem Alve’s work. [5] Fernanda Pequeno, Lygia Pape e Helio Oiticica: Conversações e Fricções Poéticas (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Apicuri, 2013). [6] Metropolitan Museum of Art *Blog Originally Published on December 14, 2017