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I joined the faculty of Drew Theological Seminary in the fall of 1999. Before arriving at Drew, I had taught children, youth, and adults in a variety of settings. I had never taught at Drew. I had never served as a tenure-track faculty member. And I had never taught this particular community of students.But, I knew how to teach. I was confident in my skills and abilities. I trusted my preparation, my instincts, and my experience. Yet, I also knew a truth that every teacher eventually learns. Context matters.At that time, the student body at Drew was richly diverse in racial and ethnic identities, national origins, denominational affiliations, theological commitments, vocational aspirations, and ages. Such diversity was not a problem to solve—it was a gift to honor. Still, I knew enough to know that I needed help learning how to teach effectively in this new environment.The help arrived serendipitously. What began as a friendship became a lifesaving and career-shaping practice.During my first semester, I taught Introduction to Educational Ministries, a required course with thirty-two students enrolled. On the first day of class, the beauty and complexity of that learning community sat before me. Their experiences, questions, assumptions, hopes, silences, and histories filled the room. By the end of the session, I felt wrung out.That afternoon I called my friend, Brother Reginald Crenshaw.Reginald was an Episcopal monk serving a parish in Harlem, New York. We met a couple years before at a house party in Harlem and became fast friends. He had spent more than two decades teaching in one form or another. I called simply to chat. Before long, we were talking about the class session, the students, my preparation, and the intricate work of teaching. For nearly two hours, I recounted the day. At the end of the conversation, I thanked Brother Reginald for listening.The next week we did it again.And then again.By the third or fourth week of the semester, our conversations had become a standing appointment. After class, I would offer a verbal verbatim of the session. I talked through what happened, what surprised me, what delighted me, and what troubled me. Reginald asked questions about my pedagogical intentions, practices, assumptions, and missteps. He invited me to think more deeply.What I remember most is what he did not do.He did not evaluate me.He did not negatively criticize me.He did not offer quick fixes or easy answers.He did not position himself as the expert dispensing wisdom from above.Instead, he listened.Reginald listened as I wrestled with the demands of teaching in a new context. He listened as I tried to understand what was happening in the classroom and within myself. He listened as I searched for language, perspective, and courage.Now, twenty-five years later, I understand something I could not fully appreciate then. Reginald's listening was not merely collegial. It was an act of steadfast love.Brother Reginald loved the craft of teaching. He cared deeply about my flourishing. He wanted me to succeed, not because success could be measured, but because teaching matters. Listening to someone think out loud about teaching brought him joy.Many institutions organize classroom observations and peer reviews to assess teaching. Such practices can be useful. But what Reginald offered was something altogether different.He was not gathering evidence.He was not preparing a report.He was not determining whether I measured up.Instead, he created a space where I could work it out and work it through.Week after week, he offered room for recollection, reflection, perspective, lament, celebration, uncertainty, and even joy. I could tell him the truth about my teaching without fear of judgment. I could revisit moments of brilliance and moments of failure. I could hear myself think. I learned to hear my own voice in a new and needed way as I talked about my teaching. Even confident teachers need such spaces.We need sounding boards. We need reflection partners. We need people who can hold our stories long enough for us to discover what we are trying to say. We need to be heard deeply so we know the meaning of our own teaching. Sometimes growth comes not from being instructed but from being heard. The human practice of being heard might be a lifesaving necessity. In those conversations, Reginald helped me make self-corrections. He helped me recognize when a pedagogical pivot was necessary. He helped me imagine practices that better served the diverse students entrusted to my care. Not by telling me what to do, but by listening carefully enough that I could hear myself and trust the pivot I was considering. Teaching can be surprisingly lonely work. Too often, it becomes privatized labor hidden behind classroom doors. Without reflective companions, even experienced teachers can become trapped inside their own assumptions, rehearsing what they already know.To become better teachers, we need patient and knowledgeable colleagues who will accompany us in the difficult and beautiful work of critical and imaginative reflection. We need communities that value inquiry over performance and curiosity over certainty. We need listeners if we are to improve our teaching. Perhaps the deepest wisdom of teaching is not found in mastering a technique or perfecting a syllabus. Perhaps it is found in cultivating relationships where honest reflection can flourish. In such spaces, teaching becomes less about expertise and more about growth, less about control and more about learning alongside others. Teaching becomes buttressed by dignity and respect. The myth that teaching is best done as a solo performance must be dispelled. Teaching is never a solo act. It is, at its heart, a jazz ensemble, a front-porch conversation, a potluck where everybody brings something to the table. The classroom hums with stories, questions, contradictions, and possibility. We teach, we miss the mark, we try again. We laugh at ourselves, revise our plans, and discover that wisdom often arrives disguised as a good question. Along the way, faithful listeners companion us and help us hear the music above the noise. They remind us that teaching is not merely the transfer of knowledge but the cultivation of human flourishing—messy, improvisational, joyful, and alive.Thank you, Brother Reginald!Reflection Questions In what ways might evaluation culture in higher education silence the honest reflection that teachers need for growth?Who listens to you talk about your teaching, and what kinds of truths become possible when you are deeply heard?Who do you accompany? Who do you listen to deeply as they rehearse their teaching? If teaching is a communal practice rather than an individual achievement, what structures of mutual accompaniment could you create with colleagues?What stories, voices, or ways of knowing are regularly absent from your classroom, and what might become possible if those absences were addressed?Imagine a future learning community where curiosity is valued more than certainty and wisdom more than performance. What would teachers, learners, classrooms, and institutions look like in that world?

The class is Religion and 20th Century Fantasy Literature, affectionately known around campus as “The Harry Potter Class.” One of the larger classes the Religion department offers, there are two main classrooms where this course lands every semester. One is the giant lecture hall in HCB (huge classroom building, of course), with room for 335 students. It’s boring, but efficient. The other room was made for this class, and its maximum capacity is a cozier group of 225 students. Renovated to reflect its original look from the 1800s when the university was first built, the room is grand. Carved oak decorates with detail, and the painted ceramic ceiling tiles, gorgeous, were reconstructed from one half-tile that remained from the hundred years prior. The floor-to-ceiling windows welcome into the room the Florida sun. And despite the fact that seagulls are more likely to fly past than owls, the room tricks you to believing that all manner of magic is possible.The professor who teaches in this room must master the domain or do the room injustice. Moreover, in the case of the “Harry Potter Class” a certain electricity is present. The Harry Potter professor wishes to deliver, and so the familiar tune, the recognizable theme song to the films, fills the room. The students come into the room already knowing the material – primary text, film adaptations, fanfiction, memes, and all content in all directions, related to this world of literature. The expectations are high. That these students are in the room, filling 20-30% of their schedule with this class says all. It is not a required course – they spend one of their precious electives to come into this space and simply learn, learn more about a topic that they know well. In fact, for some, they know this material like religious texts, and they know it authoritatively. They surely know the details of Harry Potter more than any of the other material in any of the other courses in their schedule. And so long as the primary text steers the course, the professor cannot go wrong… or can they?In such a course, the professor walks into the room at a disadvantage. They are not the “smartest” or most knowledgeable person in the room. In fact, were a bar to suddenly come up out of the floor, and a bartender begin asking those familiar questions that mark a Harry Potter trivia night, the professor would lose, hands down. The individual and collective knowledge in the room, the way that hiding in one’s bed with a flashlight long after bedtime, night after night for years, imparts knowledge and expertise is only lost on the professor once. The lesson of who knows more is revealed fast. If the professor’s ego rests on the false identity of “Harry Potter Expert” in this crowd, the identity and ego is sure to crumble fast.But a sixteen-week course on Harry Potter would bore even this crowd fast if all it did was go through the plot details, character analysis, and talk about what everyone in the room already knows. What this course on Harry Potter covers are the Christian/religious/irreligious elements of the story. The course explores the Joseph Campbell mythic elements of the story, the Augustinian elements of the story, the clash between the supernatural and the detective (Sherlock-Holmesian). It reaches into 20th century history and considers the impact of World War II on Britain, the Battle of Dunkirk, and how all those things affected the world of HP. And the course compares the three major British Fantasy works that live in community with each other: Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and The Chronicles of Narnia. The course weaves all these elements in and serves up a platter of complexity that offers the expert reader not only enough to keep their attention for sixteen weeks, but the skills to ask the right questions and explore influence into their beloved texts, long after they leave the classroom.So when a student catches the professor off guard, and perhaps even in a mistake that comes from recounting episodes from the source material off the cuff; when the student, enamored until this point realizes that the professor is a “muggle,” and relies not on magic to know all, but their sheer skill in teaching; when the student learns that—in some areas of Harry Potter expertise—they know more than their professor, it is not a cause for despair for the educator.  When the student comes in and knows the minutiae, details of things like what color curse was used with “this spell” in “this episode” in book, the professor can safely and honestly relent without harm and say, “You know these details better than me. No question. But wait until the end of the term, and tell me you didn’t learn something.” You can know all the facts, the data points, and still get authenticity all wrong. And you can miss a date or a detail here and there and still be authentic. Teaching is not about the year Caesar crossed the Rubicon, but what his crossing meant. The professor does not need to know it all. In fact, it can be far more powerful when they concede that they don’t know items and simply move on. The things they do know will rest powerfully on the eager students’ ears by means of honestly and authentic engagement.

Most days, I no longer think of “studio time” as a separate block on the calendar. The work has spread into everything else. I might be rinsing dishes, arranging pens that have finally unclogged, or making notes about the day’s errands when a line or pattern catches my attention. Art no longer begins with a blank page; it begins wherever I happen to be paying attention.2025 Mini #17, 2.5x3.5 in., ink on paper That recognition has altered my perspective on creative practice. Drawing, cooking, walking, and cleaning all rely on the same capacities: observation, repetition, and adjustment. Each activity requires focus within its constraints. A 2½ × 3½-inch drawing forces choices about scale and composition; a dinner deadline forces decisions about timing and sequence. What unites them is method—a disciplined, almost research-like approach to noticing how perception works in real-time.When I was teaching, I used to describe scholarship as the craft of paying sustained attention to ordinary things until they disclose more than we expected. I find myself doing that again, only now the medium is ink instead of text. The page becomes a field site. I observe, record, and revise. The variables are pressure, speed, and rhythm rather than citation, argument, and evidence, but the logic is the same: careful description produces understanding.Constraint is part of that method. Limited tools, limited time, limited space—these boundaries clarify what matters. My favorite pens clogged months ago, so I switched to a set of colored pens I’ve hardly used. The change altered everything about my process: the rhythm of the line, the speed of line-making, even the way I breathe while drawing. Limits become data. They show how attention behaves when conditions shift.2025 Mini #19, 2.5x3.5 in., ink on paperWhat I learn on paper transfers elsewhere. The pause before overworking a drawing becomes the pause before overexplaining or overreacting in conversation. The ability to stop, look, and reset—to acknowledge that I’ve gone too far or not far enough—is the same skill across contexts. Art, in that sense, functions as a training ground for perception.There’s nothing mysterious about this. It’s simply the repetition of noticing. The more I repeat, the more subtle the distinctions become: between one kind of line and another, between habit and genuine seeing. Practice sharpens the instrument that makes both art and life intelligible—the mind paying attention to its own process.2025 Mini #20, 2.5x3.5 in., ink on paperThe daily drawings have become a kind of record of this experiment. Some succeed; others collapse halfway through. Collectively, they form a logbook of perception under constraint. They also remind me that consistency matters more than inspiration. A single drawing rarely tells the story; the accumulation does.I sometimes think this is what I was always teaching, though I didn’t frame it that way at the time. In the classroom, I asked students to slow down with a text or a film, to observe structure before interpretation. The goal wasn’t belief or agreement; it was precision of attention. I’m still pursuing that, only now the syllabus is shorter and the outcomes are measured in lines rather than pages.If there’s a thread connecting these activities—art, writing, caregiving, cooking—it’s the refusal to separate them. Each demands the same thing: presence with material conditions as they are. Ink runs out; recipes fail; conversations drift. The task is to return, adjust, and keep looking. Over time, that practice forms its own kind of stability.2025 Mini #22, 2.5x3.5 in., ink on paperAttention, then, is not a virtue or special personality trait. It’s a method—a way of being attuned to experience. It asks, “What’s actually happening right now?” and waits for the answer. The drawings are simply evidence that the question was asked. These pieces will also soon form the basis of a new Patreon project—a space to share process, sketches, and reflections each month. Like the drawings themselves, it’s less about product and more about tracing attention over time.Maybe that’s the point of this stage of my work: not to produce enduring artifacts, but to refine perception itself. To keep training the eye and hand to register the world with slightly greater accuracy, whether on paper or in the course of an ordinary day.

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. 

I teach a religiously diverse crowd at my college. In any given Intro to Christianity course, I can expect one or two atheists, one or two conservative Christians, and twenty students running the rest of the gamut in between – my agnostics with religious trauma, my cultural Catholics, my “we went to church until I started playing sports” folks, and a group of people who are into spirituality but could never imagine themselves being committed to any one religious tradition. This is how I like it! More variety means better conversations, more interesting questions, and a lot of learning from one another. As I tell them, practicing talking about religion with people from another background is a little awkward, but being able to talk awkwardly about important things is a needed and transferable skill. Even if they never talk about religion again after they take their final for my class, they’ve still practiced for the day when they’ll need to ask their boss for a raise, or tell their significant other that the laundry situation is a big deal and needs to be solved now. Awkward conversations are a part of life!But I don’t want my students to just marinate in the awkward – I want them to think about how they can communicate and connect across difference, and to grow in mutual respect for the experiences and beliefs of others. This is a more complex task. How can I simultaneously suggest to the non-religious that there might be something lovely in the way religious people use traditions and rituals to stay rooted, while also teaching my most traditional believers that maybe there’s something exciting in how people without religious commitments forge their own paths and craft their own meaning? Oddly enough, inspiration struck in my own garden. I grow plants with far more enthusiasm than skill, but I do find that some of the fun of gardening is doing it a little “wrong” and seeing what happens. From my literal and metaphorical soil sprouted a metaphor that I now use constantly when trying to explain why some people love religion while others don’t – tomatoes and cucumbers.People, I say, might be more like tomatoes, or more like cucumbers. Tomatoes (or at least the tomatoes I manage to grow), love structure. They do great when surrounded by a framework to grow into, like a tomato cage or trellis. They grow bigger, leaf out better, and fruit more if they have something to help hold them up. So too, some people thrive with religious structure. They like the parameters and clear expectations. They feel safer with something to lean into – beliefs, community, ritual – when life feels less stable. There’s nothing better or worse about thriving with structure. It’s just the way tomatoes work best.Then again, people might also be cucumbers. Cucumbers (at least the ones I cultivate), laugh at every attempt I make to corral them. Trellis? No thank you. Wire cage? Cute, but not happening. Once the cucumbers start, they go where they darn well please. They find the best light, the prime pollinator areas, and the most hidden spots to grow their fruit on their own. Every time I’ve forced a cucumber plant up a structure that I created, it droops and mopes and refuses to blossom or fruit until it makes a break for it when I’m not looking. Cucumbers want to be free! And when I just let them go on their own journey, they thrive. People can be like that too – structure can feel constricting and artificial rather than comforting, and they’d rather strike out on their own to see what they learn, and create something entirely unique. There’s nothing better or worse about thriving with space and options – it’s just how cucumbers work best.While the metaphor may reveal more about my sub-par gardening chops than I’d like, I do appreciate having a relatively neutral way to explore how religiosity just looks and feels different for each person. How do you explain the variety of ways to be religious to your students?

I was in elementary school—second or third grade—at George Washington Carver Elementary School in Philadelphia. The school served kindergarten through sixth grade, about five hundred students taught by roughly twenty teachers. Through the eyes of a seven-year-old, it felt bright, safe, and full of possibility. I loved school. I belonged there.From the first day, the teachers lined us up to walk through the school hallways in alphabetical order. Because of that, Angela White and I, Nancy Westfield, often walked side by side. Angela was quiet. She rarely smiled. She kept mostly to herself and took her schoolwork seriously.Her mother, Mrs. White, worked at the school as a non-teaching assistant. She supervised hallways, lunch periods, recess, assemblies—always somewhere nearby, always paying attention. Mrs. White carried herself with a kindness that settled people. Mrs. White greeted students warmly and helped make the school feel like a place where children mattered.Assembly days were a big deal. Once a month, the entire school gathered in the auditorium. Sometimes there were musical performances or class presentations. Sometimes police officers or firefighters visited with lessons about safety. In the spring, awards added extra excitement. Whatever the program, assembly days broke routine and filled the building with anticipation.One Tuesday morning, our teacher announced it was time to go to assembly.We lined up, barely able to contain ourselves, and marched to the auditorium. Every class had assigned seats. The youngest students sat closest to the stage; older students filled the rows behind us.I was sitting on the aisle. Angela sat beside me. The auditorium buzzed with hundreds of conversations. Children laughed, whispered, called out to friends. It was noisy in the way only children can be noisy—joyfully and unapologetically. The auditorium seating was old wooden theater seats. When you stood up, the bottom flipped upward.Angela started shifting in her seat. She placed her hands behind her back and continued squirming. Then it happened.As Angela leaned backward, the seat opened slightly. Her hands slipped into the gap between the seat and the backrest. When she leaned forward again, the seat shut. Both of her hands were trapped and crushed by the scissor action of the wooden seat. Angela cried out. When she tried to stand, the pressure became worse. Her cry grew louder, sharp with pain and panic.I remember searching for our teacher.Instead, I saw Mrs. White.She was across the auditorium.Hundreds of children filled that room. Yet somehow Mrs. White heard one voice.Without hesitation, she ran toward us. In one swift motion she reached across me, lifted Angela free, released her hands as the seat flipped upward, and carried her toward the nurse's office.Nearly sixty years later, I still remember that moment.In a room overflowing with voices, how did Mrs. White hear that one cry? How did she know instantly it was Angela?As educators of adults, we may hesitate to compare teaching with parenting—and we should. Adult learners bring agency, experience, expertise, and self-determination that fundamentally shape the educational relationship. There is something worth noticing in Mrs. White's knowing and response. She recognized Angela's voice because she knew it. And because she was listening for it. That distinction matters.Adult education unfolds in noisy spaces. Sometimes the noise is literal. More often it is the noise of work schedules, caregiving responsibilities, financial pressures, institutional demands, digital distractions, and the thousand daily realities adult learners carry into our classrooms.Adult learners do not always announce their needs directly.A missing assignment may be a sign of exhaustion.Silence may signal uncertainty, exclusion, resistance, or deep reflection.A brief email may contain far more urgency than its few words suggest.Listening for learners requires more than hearing words. It requires listening for meaning, context, history, and possibility.One challenge of teaching adults is that our time together is often brief. A fourteen-week semester can feel like an extended introduction. Just when we begin to understand who our learners are, the course ends. Yet over time, some learners become more audible to us. We begin to recognize their rhythms. We learn their questions, their hesitations, their brilliance, and the ways they enter a conversation. In crowded classrooms and online discussion boards, their voices become recognizable. That kind of attentiveness does not happen by accident. It is a practice.What distinguished Mrs. White was not simply that she heard her daughter. Plenty of people heard Angela’s painful cry. Mrs. White was listening for Angela. There is power in that kind of listening. It refuses distraction. It insists that people matter enough to be noticed.For educators, the question is not whether our learners are speaking. The question is whether we have trained our ears to hear them. Listening for learners may mean creating multiple ways for students to communicate. It may mean paying attention to patterns of participation and absence. It may mean noticing subtle shifts in tone, energy, or engagement. It certainly means cultivating classrooms where learners know their experiences are welcomed and their voices carry weight.Attentive listening is not passive.It is disciplined.It is an act of respect.It is fodder for dignity.Mrs. White's attuned ear was not merely about recognition. It was about readiness. When the moment came, she was prepared to respond. She came running! Adult educators are invited into a similar practice—not as parents, but as attentive companions in learning. We are called to listen deeply, respond humanely, and honor the complex lives our learners bring with them every time they enter our classrooms.Thank you Mrs. White.  Reflection QuestionsWhose voice reaches you most easily in your classroom, and whose voice might be getting lost in the crowd? What assumptions shape your listening?Imagine your course through the eyes of a learner carrying invisible burdens. What signals of struggle, strength, resistance, or resilience might you be overlooking?When have you mistaken silence for disengagement? What other stories might silence be trying to tell?If your learners were describing the culture of your classroom, what would they say about who gets heard, who gets affirmed, and who must work hardest to be noticed?What would it look like to teach this term as someone intentionally "listening for" every learner? What specific practices would need to change for that commitment to become visible?

Mouth open, story jump out was a phrase that I grew up hearing in Anglophone Caribbean cultural and linguistic contexts. It described an experience where the avoided topic of conversation somehow, in spite of our best machinations, managed to insert itself into the narrative, often awkwardly. You might say to yourself in advance that you are not going to discuss a particular topic or idea for any of the following reasons: it is controversial, it might seem rude or uncouth, it might be shameful to oneself or others, it could stir up deep emotions for which one may be unprepared. In other words, having the conversation will undoubtedly upset the status quo. However, as the phrase warns, as you begin to speak with the intention of uttering the carefully prescribed words of avoidance and subterfuge, it is as if the story has a life of its own and the suppressed topic comes tumbling out. Typically, the subject matter which was being carefully avoided is one which needed to be addressed. And despite the discomfort, there is a very real possibility of transformation for oneself and others through honest dialogue and careful inquiry.As I mentioned in another blog, “Story Bones,” my older brother and I spent our early childhood with our maternal grandparents in Antigua. They were born about a century and a quarter ago in Caribbean colonies, of the then British West Indies, when the British Empire arguably was at the height of its power. Household items and technologies for preparing food and washing clothes from the nineteenth and earlier centuries would have been in daily use. We, the current generation living adult lives in the early decades of the twenty-first century, were not there as living witnesses. However, those who lived during those earlier times raised us, fed us, taught us how to cook, and told us their stories using what poet and literary scholar Kamau Brathwaite terms “nation language,” a creole expressive language created by Caribbean people. We learned about descriptions of a variety of qualities of speech and oral expression including how bodies moved in motion or held postural positions. These descriptions told us a lot about the speaker and how to listen to whatever they were saying with discernment. For instance, someone who was dicty was fussy and ostentatious in their personal style. From my Trinbagonian (Trinidad and Tobago) friends, I learned the term mauvais lang to describe those who relished gossip. I also grew up hearing the term speaksy-spokesy used to describe deliberate, careful speech which indicated the user’s self-conscious striving for upward social positioning, often through avoidance of common, everyday language use including creole. From my experience, mouth-open-story-jump-out speech challenged controlled speaksy-spokesy utterances and lived into the postural, audacious style of the dicty. Mouth open, story jump out was outspoken speech which offered an invitation to radical truth telling. It held the promise of a path to engagement with the challenging work of personal and social transformation.Mouth open, story jump out is an observation about the power of stories which can transform our own consciousness and that of others in their utterance. Teaching can involve moments like these which surprise and jolt us out of expected conversational routes, especially those designed to avoid what we might consider topics that are too challenging, or for which there just does not seem to be enough time to adequately address. We teachers might pause believing that students may not be adequately prepared, but the topic intrudes on the planned lesson. Popular cultural texts, world events, and changing cultural landscapes can prompt what might seem like impromptu expressions. My suggestion is to embrace them as they come up. They might be the entry point to creative ventures, new research and curriculum ideas, and collaborations and collaborative problem solving. For instance, when I opened my mouth and dared to listen to some of the half-whispered stories, my work as a short story writer jumped out. They were the hidden stories, fragments of which lurked in archival documents. Speculative fiction was the genre which enabled me to blend historical research with imaginings about what the lives and thoughts of people living in the colonial era in the Caribbean may have been like as they grappled with theological and spiritual themes about the nature of liberation. In other words, these stories explored many of the same themes as my scholarship and course development. Speculative fiction enabled me to reimagine the life worlds of Caribbean people using Caribbean folklore to explore themes such as intergenerational trauma, liberation, memory, and invisible branches of family trees. Incorporating opportunities for students to examine challenging topics through written reflections, creative writing, facilitated conversations, and other creative projects holds great potential rewards for transformative learning. What stories will jump out, if we dare to open our mouths authentically in our teaching practice?Suggested ReadingBennett, Louise. Jamaica Labrish. Sangsters, 1966.Brathwaite, Kamau. History of the Voice: The Development of Nation Language in Anglophone Caribbean Poetry. New Beacon Books, 1984.

To me, grades are the biggest problem that we contend with as we help to shape an egalitarian classroom. On one hand, the process of engaging with student work – prompting ideas (the assignment), offering conversations in office hours and class to refine the approach, and offering feedback and (possibly) revision opportunities – is at the core of a conversational, enriching classroom. Drawing on bell hook’s notions of pedagogy rooted in love, I believe that honest and generous engagement with a student’s work is at the core of assessment when done correctly. I am excited by the ideas of ungrading, but given that many of us work in institutional contexts that do not support these practices, I have had to confront the question: how do we grade, and grade with rigor, while not lapsing into authoritarian practices?First I’d say we need to accept that this often creates the somewhat frustrating dynamic that my title alludes to. With the egalitarian practices outlined in my previous blog post, students occasionally have the perspective that I’ll be an “easy” grader. After all, I am flexible with deadlines, offer affirming comments throughout class, and frame my teaching on building skills they already possess rather than corrections or an exposure of deficiency. Yet, staring down at lengthy comments and a B-, students sometimes feel confused or even betrayed. They thought I liked them! At first, this attitude really bothered me – and sometimes it still does. But try as we might to decouple rigor from authoritarian approaches, we have to contend with the fact that these two things are often synonymous in students’ eyes. In other words, being kind but still rigorous remains a bit of an anomaly. Therefore, we need to first practice patience because we’re operating in a system that usually only has room for “nice, easy” teachers or “tough but fair” (or just tough) teachers. Getting through the “nice person, but…” comments can allow us to press on and continue to have a rigor rooted in egalitarian love. Perhaps one day it will be “nice person because she’s a rigorous grader,” but for now, I try to enjoy the experience that may lead to this transformation.What does this look like? Borrowing from ungrading/labor grading, I aim to involve my students as much as possible in crafting the assignments themselves, assessing their own work, and building in responses to my feedback so that it becomes less of a “hand off” (described elegantly by Freire as the “banking model”) and more of a collaboration. In seminar classes, my students and I collaborate to make a participation rubric based on their feedback on quality discussions. They submit their own assessment of their participation frequently, which levels the grading (i.e., they are accountable to themselves rather than seeing me as the arbiter of what “counts”) and creates a dynamic of community in which contributing becomes less about a grade and more about building quality, in-depth discussions together.When assigning papers, I often have students work to create their own questions, meet with them one-on-one (during regular class time for those of you worried about extra labor!), give extensive feedback on what worked, what could be improved, and specifically how to improve it. Following this, students have the opportunity to revise, and in their revisions, they include reflections on my feedback. Perhaps most important, I ask “What was the biggest issue as you see it, and were you worried about it coming in, or was my feedback a surprise to you?” I find this question is particularly effective for leveling authority and maintaining rigor as it reveals any moments in which a student is blindsided by a grade or comment. Such a moment is important to respond to when thinking about anti-authoritarian practices. While I often want to reply, “Well, I’m the expert, so listen!” I now use this as an opportunity to discuss with students the conversational and collaborative nature of learning: some things are only revealed when we are vulnerable enough to trust others to read and think with us. There are some areas of growth and improvement we cannot see and we depend on the generosity of others to work with us. And sometimes, professors get it wrong too – I have had moments where a student objects to my characterization of their work, and upon rereading, I realized that I was tired or unfocused when I read it the first time. Again, egalitarian classrooms allow for an exchange like this without feeling like we’ve compromised our expertise or authority, but rather allows a moment for vulnerability and true transformation.In an ideal world, I think this feedback and conversation could take place in the absence of grading. But in the world and institutional contexts almost all of us operate in, shifting the narrative, allowing students in, and creating opportunities to emphasize process and growth over each individual attempt allow us to maintain standards, rigor, and knowledge, but from a place of care, collaboration, and, yes, love.

It happened again this semester. I had planned a new class for this term called “Religion, Imagination, and Facing the Future.” While the class technically fulfills a first-year seminar curricular function of teaching graduate level reading, research, and writing, I can pick the theme. I chose it in light of the chaos in the United States right now and the fascinating conversations arising amongst scholars and organizers I admire about how to imagine a different future than the late-stage capitalist, wealth inequality laden, earth-destroying, violent social world we currently live in. I collected readings hoping to explore imagination as a key quality for religious leaders facing scary and death-dealing situations in their communities. We started with Ruha Benjamin’s Imagination: A Manifesto and moved into Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower, with later readings from so many friends and colleagues I respect… Willie James Jennings, Sarah Farmer, Yara González-Justiniano. I created assignments and built a rhythm for the course with great care and excitement for the students I would encounter. I read and re-read the texts I had chosen, creating discussion prompts for the students to engage. The course was built out in Canvas, the students had been populated into it by the registrar, and it was time to hit the button to “publish” the course. I hesitated. I re-read the course description and its now seemingly impossible claims about what we would be exploring during the term. And then I sat there with the deep feelings of inadequacy that flooded my body. Who was I to be teaching such a course? I was achingly aware of the privilege of my social position, of my work as a professor rather than an organizer, of my lack of experience working in institutions that didn’t allow space for my vocation to emerge and be expressed. In those days I was watching former students and professional colleagues involved in organizing resistance to the ICE occupation in Minneapolis, living into the mutual aid, love for neighbor, solidarity, and bold witness that I have taught about for years. Deep in my bones and my gut, my intuition told me that I was inadequate to the task of teaching this course that I had put together. What did I do? I pushed the button and published the course anyway.Why? Because in my deeper wisdom, I know these are the questions and the struggles that my students need to wrestle with, whether or not I feel up to the task. They need to learn more than I can teach in this moment. That moment of profound humility before the work of teaching is absolutely the place to begin, at least for me. It marks a moment of letting go of the control of the learning environment and leaning in to trust that the students will show up. Together we might begin a journey that won’t be fruitless. They will learn things that I intend to teach them, and they will learn things that I never imagined or don’t yet understand myself. They will teach me what they know from the work they engage where they are, from the mentors who have guided them, from the challenges they have already survived, from the faith they have when I am lacking. Together, we are good enough to engage these questions that they are already responsible to in their lives well beyond my classroom. If I only taught the things I feel expertise and skill in teaching, I would fail to provide the education they need in this moment. It takes courage and vulnerability to recognize my limits and to still take necessary risks for significant learning anyway.

Part 2: “Love”I will admit that it’s much easier for me to write about the downsides of being a teacher-administrator than the upsides.And I wouldn’t say that I love being a teacher-administrator any more than I would say that I hate being a teacher-administrator. There are gives and takes on both ends.As much as I loathe to admit this in the midst of an incredibly satisfying sabbatical, there is deep joy in getting to know and work with students in spaces beyond the classroom. Theological field education—which exists in the form of internships or specialized chaplaincy training (called Clinical Pastoral Education or CPE)—serves as a kind of in-between educational space. There might be a class component where students meet regularly with an instructor, but in my role I mostly engage with students through the processes surrounding the classroom and the field site. In this more liminal space, I really get to know them—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Sure, some personalities might arise in the context of the classroom. Faculty generally know the students who collectively engender the most joy and the most challenge throughout their courses and the degree program or school as a whole. Some individuals, however, try to model particular behaviors in a course because they know they are being evaluated. The rest of us who work with students beyond that space often have a little bit more insight into how those individuals show up differently when they aren’t being evaluated formally, and we often have more chances to engage in personal conversations about students’ lives and experiences that may not be surfaced in the context of a graded course. Sometimes, I’d rather not know a few of the more personal details that I have learned over time. Other times, I’ve developed lasting relationships with individuals over our shared experiences or affinities (especially guinea pigs, who are the greatest pets a human could have). In some instances, I’ve held my tongue in faculty meetings where a majority of my colleagues want to award a particular individual with the title of Student of the Year because they displayed exemplary intellectual skill or agreeable behavior in classes, yet I have encountered them as completely different (i.e., less agreeable) persons in the field education process. In other settings, I’ve marveled at the deep wisdom and maturity with which students have navigated very difficult internship or CPE situations, yet my colleagues would consider them to be fairly average students intellectually or otherwise. I suppose we all know different aspects of students, in the same ways that they know different parts of us as educators. I would argue, however, that my knowing individuals both within (as a teacher) and beyond (as an administrator) the classroom space grants a level of joy that I wish more faculty could experience. Not joy in the sense of ephemeral happiness or elation but, rather, as a process of both knowing and being known. This itself cultivates a profound sense of fulfillment, constituting education as relationship rather than content or container. Relationship is certainly messier and more frustrating; it results in more meetings and more emails than I care to count. As an introvert who would rather spend every waking moment either reading or writing books, I am easily depleted by the continual interactions required for relationships. Some students treat our exchanges as merely transactional and, many days, so do I. They want me to fix their problems or change some policy, and the technicalism of it all can be wearing.But if I hold on to the capacity for dynamic knowing, if I dare to open myself up to what might unfold in the in-betweenness of our vocational conversations and at the edges of the paperwork needing to be completed, I might actually love being a teacher-administrator. It’s not for the faint of heart and requires some true grit, as my teacher-administrator (especially field educator) colleagues know. Also, I can say with confidence that it is more work than that of my faculty colleagues with no administrative responsibilities. It is hybrid, holy work. And I feel honored to be doing it.