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Recently, I finished a book called Midcourse Correction for the College Classroom: Putting Small Group Instructional Diagnosis to Work (Hurney et al. 2021). It’s about a program on college campuses in which faculty members invite a colleague to come to their class at the mid-semester point to find out how the course is going from the students’ perspectives. This is a program offered at my institution, and many others, usually through a professional development or teaching and learning center. The book, and such programs, got me thinking about soliciting feedback from students, beyond simply what most of us are required to do in the form of final course evaluations. Think about it: course evaluations, if we even read them (and so many of my friends don’t, because it’s such a stressful experience), only let us know how the course was, how we did, what a group of students that is no longer enrolled with us thought about our teaching and their learning. Notice the past tense. Certainly this information can be useful for future courses (I am—usually—the same person teaching Religions of the World this time as I will be next time, after all), but it doesn’t exactly help those particular students in that particular course. (And I won’t even dive into the controversy around the utility and validity of student course evaluations here; suffice it to say, those evaluations are one of the only times that we actually ask students, the primary recipients of our teaching efforts, what they think about those efforts.) The point of a program like the one profiled in the book is that we can ask for feedback from students before the end of the semester, before the experience is over, when there is actually time to make changes or reroute. The small group instructional diagnoses occur at the mid-semester point. (You can check out the book to learn more about the process; it’s pretty cool!) Typical questions asked of students are: “What has helped your learning in this course so far? What has hindered your learning in this course so far?” and “What suggestions do you have for improvement?” The focus is on learning, not what they like/dislike or the instructors’ performance. At JMU a few years back, we also added companion questions focused on the students’ own behaviors, for example, “What are YOU doing that has helped your learning in this course so far?” as a way of conveying that they are also, and I would argue, ultimately, responsible for their own learning.) Then, with this information, instructors can decide what, if any, changes or clarifications they’d like to make during a follow-up conversation with the students and for the rest of the semester. In the absence of such a program, or colleague support, you can always ask these questions yourself (e.g., through anonymous paper forms in class, an anonymous ungraded survey on your LMS, etc.). But there are lots of other ways to check in with students and get actionable, important feedback. You might have students fill out a weekly online “how’s my driving?” Google form, as one of my friends does, or you might lead an in-class discussion every so often about how everyone is doing, or you might ask students to fill out a word cloud of how they’re feeling at the beginning of class on a particular day. There are lots of things we can ask about: students’ moods, feelings, and stress level; whether they understood a particular concept, lesson, or reading; how that recent test or lecture went; what study strategies seem to be working well for them; and so on. I use a variety of ways to check in with my own students and get their feedback in all of my courses. Last semester, for example, I had experimented with a great deal of flexibility around the exams (e.g., they were take-home and not timed), to try to ease the anxiety and overwhelm that I knew students were experiencing, and I wanted to know how this approach was working for them. I spent time in class after the midterm on a debrief. It turned out that many students were taking hours to complete their work, even though I had intended the whole thing to be over in 75 minutes. This was stressing them out more—the opposite of the effect I was trying to achieve! I took their feedback, which I would have never realized if I hadn’t simply asked, and made some changes to the final exam (e.g., reduced the number of questions). Students noted in my course evaluations (as they do every semester) that they appreciated how I asked them for feedback and how I adjusted parts of the course as a result. Indeed, research on mid-semester feedback programs demonstrates that students appreciate being asked. And, of course, this kind of feedback process can benefit us too, as we open up lines of communication with students, convey care, and possibly learn which adjustments to the course will better facilitate their learning. After all, who wants to be teaching a course that’s not going well? Who wants to dread going to class every day? Who wants to be giving failing grades on projects? Who wants to be meeting resistance, but not knowing why? It often doesn’t occur to us to just ask students when we want to know more. But we can. What do you want to ask?

I am an activist educator. What this means is that I strive for justice both in and outside the classroom. I utilize critical or liberatory pedagogies as my theoretical bases. As Brazilian educator Paulo Freire said, liberatory pedagogy involves linking the word with the world. In my thirty-three years of teaching at Agnes Scott College, I have brought the things I care about, both people and policy, into my teaching. In my classes students connect with the community, both on and off campus, through practicums with local organizations and guest speakers and walking tours of the city. I work hard not to “indoctrinate” students—as if that were even possible—and to create bold spaces with my students to engage complex social and political issues. Democratic education is not “sit and git,” a phrase I recently heard an abolitionist teacher repeat to describe his resistance methods in his high school classes. It is embodied, hands-on, messy, moving, imperfect, risky, playful, and shared. The day before classes began this semester, my college announced they were extending the contract with Aramark over food service staff to the entire campus, from not previously outsourced (Facilities) to already outsourced (HVAC, electrical, and landscaping). The announcement was planned to be for Facilities only, but student leaders in our living wage campaign and some key faculty leaders organized a protest by showing up at that meeting. There is a quote from the Aramark head guy that summarizes the neoliberal take over: “Higher education needs to transform itself and get more like business and industry and understand how they can lower costs and improve service levels.” This quote exposes what James Lawson labelled “plantation capitalism” (also known as “plantation politics”), the extension of the legacy of slavery into our current economic labor relationships. My facilities colleagues are reacting with phrases such as: “We’ve been sold.” Many of us students, alumnae, faculty, and staff feel we are experiencing the caving in of whatever moral center our institution had. We are protesting as I type this blog. I have been outspoken in this movement for three decades, so students know I have firm opinions about economic justice on our campus. How do I create a bold space in the classroom for differing opinions? A favorite educator of mine, historian Howard Zinn, put in his course syllabi the following statement: This is not an “objective” course. I will not lie to you, or conceal information from you because it is embarrassing to my beliefs. But I am not a “neutral” teacher. I have a point of view about war, about racial and sexual inequality, about economic injustice—and this point of view will affect my choice of subject, and the way I discuss it. I ask you to listen to my point of view, but I don’t expect you to adopt it. You have a right to argue with me about anything, because, on the truly important issues of human life there are no “experts.” I will express myself strongly, as honestly as I can, and I expect you to do the same. I am not your only source of information, of ideas. Points of view different from mine are all around, in the library, in the press. Read as much as you can. All I ask is that you examine my information, my ideas and make up your own mind. (Failure to Quit: Reflections of an Optimistic Historian. New York: South End Press, 2002, p. 29) Whether acknowledged or not, all pedagogy is a pedagogy of place; the place of our classroom and campus, in concentric circles out, and back. This fall I began my third semester teaching a first-year required Leadership 101 course. My topic is “Religion and Economic Justice.” The beginning point is an “economic autoethnography,” a way for students to tap into their own intersectional social locations to understand economic (in)justices. The class of seventeen students is diverse, with a majority of students of color, with former refugees, international students, first generation students, along with several from single-parent, low income families. Some examples of writing prompts from this autoethnography assignment include: What is your understanding of social class from your own background? Tell a story. What is your own labor history? Your parents? Your grandparents? What institutional manifestations of classism have you seen and/or experienced? (e.g. health care, employment, education, etc.) In what ways has your social location and identity and also experience of social class and labor influenced your definition of “leadership”? What role has religion had (directly or indirectly) in your understanding of social class, classism, economic justice, and leadership? In this course students learn about our campus living wage campaign, work with a homeless shelter across the street from the college, engage leaders in local economic justice movements (the Beacon Hill Black Alliance for Human Rights, the Georgia Poor Peoples Campaign, and the film director of the new documentary No Address: Part 2: On the Criminalization of the Homeless in Atlanta) and national movements (in particular the Poor People’s Campaign: The Call for a Moral Revival). From their own personal stories, students dive into leadership stories—from student leaders in the living wage campaign, to more well-known leaders from the past or present (e.g. James Lawson, Bishop William Barber, Rev. Liz Theoharis, Grace Lee Boggs, M.L. King, Jr., Marian Wright Edelman, Hosea Williams, Dolores Huerta, Bayard Rustin, and others) as a framework for reflecting on their encounters during the semester. As we engage the real time and real world happenings of economic injustice and movements to build a better world in the here and now and for those who come after us, I want my students to wrestle, as I do, with really complex issues for which I do not have “the answer” or solution.  And I invite them, in the words of Myles Horton of the Highlander Research Center, “to make the road by walking” for “the long haul.”

From a broader aspect, school closure during the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic created a crisis in the global history of education. But, personally, this crisis brought about opportunities, and the pros outweighed the cons. When classes moved online, the unexpected challenges of educational disruption inspired me—more precisely, forced me—to have a critical reflection on what exactly multimodal communication means in higher education. This unique moment also made me rethink how and why physical interactions play a critical role in the process of learning. These in-depth reflections have reshaped my teaching styles and pedagogical skills, especially in my Zen Buddhism course. The lack of physical interactions during the campus closure created more devastating impacts on my Zen Buddhism class than on my other courses. This intermediate-level class guides students to learn thoughts and practices related to mind cultivation in Buddhist meditation traditions in China, Japan, and the United States. I faced a challenging task: students mainly focused on pursuing “good grades” rather than connecting their learning to the real world. Without classroom engagement, students ended up memorizing knowledge rather than developing insights. This issue is worth seriously considering for instructors. I realized that providing students with opportunities for firsthand experience is more significant than teaching them theories described in textbooks or PowerPoint slides. When we returned to the normative classroom-based environment after the pandemic, I redesigned my course syllabus and included a tea ritual to boost students’ engagement. This change aims to stimulate cognitive abilities and develop a sense of self-awareness. Lesson Plan: Students are divided into five groups. Each group selects a “host” to make tea, and other members become the “guests” who experience mindful tea drinking. I explain the procedure of tea making and each student takes turns practicing the etiquette of a “host” who serves tea. Students are required to observe their physical and mental states during the entire process. After the tea ceremony, each group discusses why tea drinking is a type of mind cultivation and whether the ritual can evoke peace and awareness. The questions that students discuss include: How does tea drinking bring about sensory awareness of the whole person (smell, vision, taste, and feeling cold or warm)? Why and how does tea drinking denote a “healing journey” from a personal aspect? How is tea making as the subject of concentration be unique, when compared with mediation? How is tea drinking in the Zen tradition different from other types of drinking culture (for example, coffee)? During the discussion, I reduce my input to eliminate the “authoritative” voice and remind students that it’s their time to share their self-discovery, which is beyond right or wrong answers. Here is what I have learned from students’ feedback. Students rediscover their sense of awareness: While comparing tea drinking with meditation, most students respond that the concentration produced by meditation is too subtle to detect. But drinking a cup of tea can stimulate multiple sensations such as smell, taste, and physical feeling. Because tea is visible, touchable, and noticeable, students feel it is easier to bring their mind and body together. Students said that they are able to perceive the whole body as a learning tool. Through the integration of physical engagement in learning, students acknowledge that bringing body and mind together is the key to producing insights. Limitation of language: When students discuss and share their feelings, they find out that language has certain limitations and their sensations and states of mind are ineffable and beyond language. Some students struggle to find words to express their feelings. A student said that seeing the world through the lens of “ritual” is very distinct from that of “textbook.” All students agree that this activity diversifies their learning resources and supports other modes of learning such as reading or writing papers. Daily activities create opportunities for spiritual cultivation: This activity enables students to extend the tea-drinking experience to reflect on their other daily routines. Students report that a five-minute tea drinking is a doable and manageable daily opportunity for stress reduction. Students also mention that the quiet moment is a time of mental purification, and they hope to create more occasions to do so. A student suggests that the college should consider providing free tea ceremonies at quiet locations around campus to improve student self-awareness and relaxation during break time, especially the midterm and final exam week. This teaching experience is meaningful and rewarding because I see smiles on students’ faces.

During my first year of teaching, I participated in a Faculty Learning Community that was designed especially for first year faculty. At one point during our bi-weekly gatherings, one of the facilitators made the comment, almost in passing, “We teach humans, not subjects.” My brain shifted gears. His statement helped me place the student in center view instead of the subject and content of my teaching. He was from the education department, so it made sense to me that he was bringing us back to pedagogy. His admonition was that we must first and foremost attend to the humans before us. The moment has stayed with me as an ongoing question—what does it mean to consider and teach the human before me, first, and my course subject, second? There are a couple workshops I have participated in that have helped me fill this in further—one on culturally-responsive teaching that builds on research in neuroscience and cognition, and another on what’s called small teaching. In themselves, these are full and rich frameworks with corresponding research and publications. Still, there are a couple key, practical, contributions they have made to my teaching that have stuck with me and help me keep the human brain in mind—and where my understanding of embodied teaching begins. The first key learning about the brain is that it cannot learn when its amygdala is activated (often referred to as the reptilian brain). The amygdala is activated by stress, anxiety, anger, hunger, fear. It is instinctive, unconscious, and controls our basic body functions, increasing our heart rate and blood flow, for example, when it senses danger. If/when our amygdala is triggered enough, it can keep us in a guarded state that makes it hard to stay open enough to learn. My students’ ability to trust me, then, at least to trust me enough so they can stay relaxed enough to learn becomes my first order of business as I attend to them as whole human beings. Attending to their amygdala is important for them to be ready for the actual task of building on their knowledge and stretching their brains as I invite them to reflect critically upon religion—which is an often-fraught subject that raises people’s defenses. This is where my learning about “small teaching” comes in—specifically the beginning and end of class. The first and last five minutes are key for easing students in and out of the learning space. I am very intentional about how I start and end the class. At the start of the class, especially at the beginning of the semester, I make sure to cover a few bases: (1) give them something to do so that they have a productive way to channel any anxious energy; (2) humanize myself to them so that they can begin to trust me a little; and (3) let them know they are allowed and encouraged to take care of themselves in our classroom so they know I respect them as autonomous beings. I have a variety of ways to communicate these things to them, but I will paint a picture here of a common scene from day one in my typical classroom. As students enter the classroom (whether physical or virtual), a slide is already posted for them to reflect on relating to the topic of the day that includes an image and two questions: What do you notice? What do you wonder? This gives them something to do while also bringing them to the present moment. Then as I call us together to start the class, I welcome them and ask if anyone has a story to share about some recent good news or something new or fun they have done recently—there are usually one or two brave souls who are willing to share about their new pet or job or recent trip. This helps us all get a glimpse of one another as who we are outside of the classroom space. It lightens the mood a little. Finally, right before we start our discussion, I let them know that they are free to move around, stretch, do what they need to do to be comfortable in the class—they can even walk out if needed. I want them to know that I respect their autonomy and support them doing whatever they need to do to be well and to stay present in as much as it is possible. Those are the first five minutes, where I try to help us arrive to the present moment and also try to build their trust so they are willing to hang in there when ideas get challenging. Then the last five minutes are crucial for helping students integrate the day’s learning and give their brain a chance to wrap things up. I never end my class with announcements or reminders—those come earlier—instead I end with a reflection exercise that gives them an opportunity to review, synthesize, or make note of any lingering questions they can bring to the next class. The point is to not send them out with an activated amygdala or hurl instructions at them at the last minute. And having the class end on a calm note is a way of setting the tone of “We got this, we are good for today, and we will continue next time.” As they walk out of class is when they most often reach for the snack box. In my in-person classes, I always bring a box of snacks that has at least three kinds of bars in it (cereal bars, protein bars, granola bars). From day one I let them know that our brain does not learn when it’s hungry and I want them to be able to learn, so they can always count on the box of snacks. In a way, my approach to teaching the human starts with attending to both the brain and the stomach —because it really is all connected anyway… right?

As a toddler, the Grammy-winning musician esperanza spalding heard Yo-Yo Ma play cello on Mister Roger’s Neighborhood and decided she wanted to play music like that. In an interview, she said it was Ma’s “total body activism during the music” that captivated her. A jazz-bassist, vocalist, and composer, esperanza moves with her music, which defies genres, and hopes to create a physical experience of resonance in her audience. As a professor of practice at Harvard, she hosts jam sessions at the studio at Harvard’s ArtLab so that participants can improvise and make music together. In her heart, she wants to be someone in “deep co-learning” with her students. How can our classrooms be spaces of co-learning that welcome creativity, collaboration, and even improvisation? How can we recognize the body as a valuable site of learning, so that the knowledge we gain would not be over our heads, but would speak to and touch our innermost yearning and desires? If this is difficult to do in an in-person classroom, is there any hope for online teaching via Zoom? Last spring, I taught an online course on Spirituality for the Contemporary World for Master students and community learners. I have learned so much about embodied teaching and learning: guided meditation, listening to music and poetry, art appreciation, rituals, Tai Chi, cross-cultural discussion, and much more. I want to reflect on a few memorable moments from the class. I invited Professor Cláudio Carvalhaes to speak on “The Pandemic and the Re-imagination of Rituals” because I knew him to be a creative teacher, preacher, and liturgist. Carvalhaes discussed the relation of ritual to our body and earth. He shared his experiences of leading workshops on liturgies on four continents of the world, which led to the book Liturgies from Below. At a time of crisis, he said, it is important to draw from the experiences of the community to craft liturgies and prayers that respond to the people’s needs. At the end of the presentation, he invited students to offer prayers with the movements of their bodies. He explained what he was going to do and invited students to warm up by standing, shaking loose, moving from side to side, and turning around. He demonstrated how to do these to ease the students. Then he picked up his guitar and sang four stanzas of a song. As he sang the first stanza on happiness and thanksgiving, he invited students to move to embody memories of happiness and joy. Similarly, he sang the second stanza on sadness and the third one on anxiety and invited students to imagine movements to express them. In the final stanza, he closed by asking God to hear our prayers, which were all in our bodies. During the pandemic, feelings of grief, helplessness, and uncertainty are stored in our bodies, as the book The Body Keeps the Score says. Acknowledging these feelings through movements of prayers helped us to connect with these emotions. Doing this together made us feel less alone. Students appreciated the time with Carvalhaes as they were given the freedom to experience the power of ritualizing through their embodied selves in their own ways.  I also invited Episcopal priest and artist the Rev. Susan Taylor to lead a class on spirituality and art. Some years ago, I invited her to speak in my class in person and she brought a lot of art supplies with her. She wanted us to try out and create a collective art project at the end and the process was inspiring. This time, I told her, the class was online and I would appreciate it if she could include doing art in the class. She told me to ask students to have their art supplies, such as painting and drawing mediums, brushes, pieces of paper, color, palette knives, etc., on hand. She made a presentation on how arts help individuals and churches during a time of pandemic and strengthen our relationship with God. She shared photos of her art and included a detailed explanation of the process of working through a 7’x 6’ painting entitled “Skyflowers.” Introducing the process of how we would make art together, she offered a lot of encouragement for us to explore and tune out the self-judgmental voice. On Zoom, we could see her painting in her studio, adding shades and layers of colors to her work. We spent some time creating our own art and afterward we shared our experience of making art and what this meant to us. We also discussed how to include art in our own spiritual life and ministries. The brief moment of creating art transformed us from spectators to participants. It was wonderful to see students trying to express themselves in new ways and hear what art evoked in them. Since the class met for an hour and a half in the evening, I decided to teach Tai Chi movements for several minutes in the middle of each class. I began by teaching simple Tai Chi exercises so students could understand the principle of balancing Yin and Yang in the movements. I also posted a video from YouTube so that they could follow the exercises if they wanted to practice more. After we practiced these exercises in several classes, I was able to teach them several Tai Chi movements by breaking down the steps. Even though we practiced only a few minutes in class, a student was motivated to learn further about the practice of Tai Chi. We easily succumb to Zoom fatigue in online classes when teaching is didactic, usually with a PowerPoint presentation, and students become passive onlookers. But there are many ways to expand the possibilities of sensory experiences, even in a Zoom meeting. esperanza spalding invites us to think about teaching as embodied adventures. I have been stretched and learned so much from my co-learners.                

We were halfway through the first day of class when a student started viciously criticizing a TED talk I had just shown. It wasn’t hard to determine where the student’s criticism was coming from. He was furious that I would consider a woman worth listening to. He was spewing misogynistic hate in a room that was 70 percent female. On the first day of class. I responded to the student’s misogynistic rant in my usual way. Trying to stay calm, I seized on something he was saying I could spin into a statement I agreed with, interrupted him with a “yes, and,” and proceeded to explain the value of the points made by the woman in her talk, being sure to emphasize how important and insightful they were. I never heard a misogynistic word out of him again. He never mistreated his female peers (I monitored closely) and by the end of the term was thoughtfully engaging with readings by female authors. It probably helped that he was surrounded—in my class alone—by thirty brilliant young women who were living proof of women’s intellectual capacities. It also helped that I was a white male, in a position of authority, who had not let him get away with saying misogynistic things unchallenged, even if I did use a strategy inspired by nonviolent conflict transformation techniques rather than direct confrontation and criticism. This story illustrates the power of embodiment, even in the form of a video. I doubt assigning a book or article by a woman would have elicited the same visceral reaction. Honestly, it usually takes me strategically getting a little angry in class to get students to stop routinely misgendering authors as “he,” despite my best efforts to ward off that habit, including through strategies like making cover pages for PDF readings that include a short biographical statement on the author. We often think of “embodiment” in teaching as referring to the kind of presence the teacher has in the classroom. Perhaps we also need to find ways to apply embodiment strategies to the authors we assign. Do we lose some of the power of a diverse syllabus when the authors remain just names on a page? In my classes, I try to use media to help highlight the diverse array of voices I hold up as worth listening to. Sometimes I assign a video or podcast or invite a guest speaker in person or on Zoom, but since most of the assigned readings are books, individual chapters, and articles, I also find other ways to help my students see our authors as real people. I often weave short videos or clips of lectures by our authors into my lessons. Lacking those, I’ll include a photo of an author alongside a quotation from their work in a slideshow. These aren’t complicated interventions; however, I fear that without them my students miss the diversity in my syllabi. This is perhaps most true of those students who most need to see it, those so steeped in patriarchal culture that even a “Barbara” or “Maria” becomes a “he.” Such interventions might not be the best idea if the message your reading list sends is that your field is dominated by cishet white men or that they are the only ones worth listening to, reading, or studying. Applying embodiment strategies to authors assumes that we’ve already done the work of diversifying our syllabi with the voices of those whose gender identity, sexual identity, racial identity, ethnic identity, nationality, language background, disability, age, religion, socioeconomic status, etc., both reflect the full diversity of humanity and affect their scholarship. As a white male, I don’t often deal with the kinds of challenges to my authority and expertise other educators experience, at least not from my students (as an adjunct, administrators and my tenure-track colleagues routinely devalue my expertise and experience). This means that my embodiment in the classroom is not particularly fraught. If anything, I have to take care not to be too intimidating lest my presence stifle participation. My identity and positionality also give me a platform and a responsibility to challenge worldviews that dehumanize and devalue those whose backgrounds, identities, and experiences are different from mine. Making the authors in my syllabi a little more real for students is one small way I pursue that goal.

#1        It is not enough to teach against injustice in its myriad forms of racism, sexism, islamophobia, homophobia, patriarchy, classism, ableism, antisemitism, white supremacy, etc. It is not enough to rail against what is wrong and what must be changed, restructured or done away with.   We, those entrusted with the responsibility of educating, must teach toward, teach visioning, teach futuring, must teach what we are in favor of, teach what we are for, i.e., the complex notions of community, solidarity, partnerships, coalitions, and collaborations.   #2 We cannot settle for, nor be placated by, that which comes with individualized successful escapes, successful assimilation, successful fleeings into the dark nights, successful trickeries, and moments when one or two outsmart, outwit, out fox, or beat back the oppressors. While that is good, that is not enough. These kinds of successes are illusions and meant to deceive. They come at a high, high price.   #3 In taking up the struggle, fighting, resisting, we must be about more than …. swimming against the tide, standing against the wind, raising a fist against evil or bullies or the common enemy or fiend. Resisting. Clinching our fists, fighting, while necessary, keeps us from handling tools and opening our hearts. All of these acts-against are, indeed, noble – but not enough. Our liberation must include acts of vulnerability, creativity, imagination, risky business and designing for new kinds of hopes for communal living.   #4 We, the collective us – those who are mindful, aware, woke, conscious, faithful, and living as if all lives depend upon all other lives, and all Black lives matter, and that the human family or our earth-house really truly means everyone, all lives matter, and not just a select few who possess all the power, and land and clout, and the vote, not to mention all plants, all animals – the seen and unseen which make-up the tapestry that is our planetary home, all must understand that passive waiting or simply resisting is not enough. It is foolish to think that we can save just a small percentage of the people and the land, and the animals if the rest goes asunder. We are all interconnected. All life affects all other life. The collective us must teach to understand that all of humanity are intertwined and interrelated, and our survival is threatened by the overwhelming greed and selfishness of a few; so, we must decide to teach what we are in favor of and not just what we are against.   #5 Friends, Toward what will we teach? What will we be for? What will we be in favor of, say “aye” to? What vision will we cast for our community as a common good? What will we build together? What will we sacrifice, together, for all our children? Who will ally, join, partner, pioneer, and experiment? With whom will we be in solidarity? We know that what we imagine will happen; that’s the nature of imagining.    #6 And if we can, and if we do, make this shift – move from being against to working for that which we are in favor of, then:  How will we teach our students to think strategically for what we are for? To mobilize for the new marvelous? To know practices of creativity, healing, dream casting, imagination, wonder, planning, no longer to combat against, but to use their energies for what we have agreed will be our hopeful future? How will we teach our students to call up from the deep? What will it mean to teach our students to depend upon their own abundances, knowledges, courages, and hard work? Can they learn to cooperate rather than compete?   #7        Teacher, what do you champion? I am hoping it is love, compassion, empathy – for all of life – Lottie, Dottie and Everybody! And that you come to believe that life for some does not mean living at the expense and fodder of others who have been, for generations, weakened, impoverished, downtroddened, and victimized for the survival and thriving of a few others, selected as special, chosen, or entitled by birthright or muscle or raw greed.  

Earlier this year, the song, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” from the animated film, Encanto¸ emerged as a viral sensation. The film’s protagonist, Mirabel, is seeking counsel from her reclusive uncle, the aforenamed Bruno, who is difficult to find because their family has ostracized him for his propensity to speak uncomfortable truths. Both of my children, one in middle school and the other in elementary school, reported that nearly everyone was singing this track. My eldest child even offered to show me some of the countless covers of the song on TikTok and YouTube.        In my experience teaching at a freestanding seminary, I have observed that there are also students that theological educators don’t talk about, or talk less about, whether within our own institutions or across guild contexts, such as the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature. Our conversations often focus upon two kinds of students: the ones who inspire us and the ones who terrorize us. Amid what almost always feels like a demanding academic semester, it is easy to talk about the students who are enlivening our classrooms and motivating us to sharpen our pedagogical skills. And we rightly seek collegial support concerning those students who abuse, antagonize, and aggravate us for a myriad of reasons, including discrimination based on race, ethnicity, gender identity, ability, nationality, and sexuality.   I can think of two kinds of students that we don’t talk about as much as the terrific and the terrible. The first is the tired student. I teach at a denominational seminary with increasing ecumenical, ethnic, and racial diversity within our student population. The Master of Divinity degree is required for ministerial ordination in the denomination to which my seminary belongs, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Therefore, our Presbyterian students are generally not full-time pastors during their studies with us. More of our students from different ecclesial traditions are already full-time pastors and seeking further education to augment their capacities for ministry. Some are bi-vocational pastors leading congregations and balancing multiple responsibilities. In addition to working at least two jobs, they are also primary caregivers for young children, aging parents, and other family members. The tired student I am describing is also exceedingly thankful. During the nationwide racial reckoning in response to the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd two years ago, my seminary implemented a broad and comprehensive plan for Black reparations, which included new scholarships that cover the full cost of tuition and fees for every admitted African American student. In addition, my seminary offers generous scholarships that support the entire cost of tuition for every other non-Black student in a first-level master’s degree program. For some of the students in my classroom, these scholarships have made it possible for them to pursue a theological education. But because all these scholarships require full-time enrollment, I encounter the tired student who is juggling my syllabus along with other family, ministry, and work commitments. One pastor who I admire shares this wise counsel utilizing the metaphor of juggling: One must discern which balls are made of rubber and which are made of glass when prioritizing one’s schedule. The “glass” tasks must not be dropped because they will shatter whereas the tasks that are made of rubber can fall to the ground. For the tired student, I am aware that my assignments and class sessions are more like rubber than glass, especially in comparison to their other responsibilities. The tired student is sometimes unable to show up or perform well on an assignment. Or the cost of showing up and performing well requires a herculean effort with substantial costs in terms of the tired student’s mental, physical, and psychological health. The second kind of student we don’t talk about is the triumphalist student. It is more precise to describe this student as one who comes from a more theologically conservative ecclesial context in comparison to my seminary. Some of my students are unfamiliar with historical-critical methods of biblical interpretation, postcolonial theology, and progressive Christianity. They have not heard of scholars such as Katie Geneva Cannon, Walter Brueggemann, and Kwok Pui-lan. They are unaccustomed to theological inquiry that identifies and criticizes some Christian doctrines and practices. Their conceptions of church history revolve around a search for examples of Christians enacting courageous witness and exemplifying the triumph of God’s goodness over evil. Yet renowned church historian Justo González observes the story of Christianity, when told fully and honestly, includes beautiful moments of awe-inspiring faith and ugly episodes where it is difficult to discern the divine presence. As an historian of Christianity in the United States, the only way that I can teach a full and honest history is to confront the active participation and complicity of Christians who committed and perpetuated the sins of settler colonialism, slavery, sexism, nativism, and other oppressive injustices. And my lessons do not always have heartwarming endings that uplift the soul. There are certainly moments of reflection and application, but some chapters of Christian history are sinful and irredeemable.      There is diversity with the “triumphalist student” I am describing such that I do not want to present this kind of student as a monolith. Some students experience our seminary classrooms as liberative spaces where they can expand their ways of thinking theologically about themselves, God, and Christian ministry. Other students undergo a complex process of educational formation with stages of disorientation and deconstruction preceding reorientation and reconstruction. And a few students remain resistant to our methods of pedagogy. We talk some about the “triumphalist student” who testifies to a metanoia from our curriculum, but we need to talk more about how these students return to congregations that are unprepared to receive their transformed approaches to ministry and theology.          

The online discussion board has long been ubiquitous in synchronous and asynchronous education, so much so that it is notoriously dull. It can be all too easy for discussion board posts to become a regurgitative learning task. When learners find themselves summarizing reading assignments, they often consign the discussion board to mere “busy work” designed to micromanage their progress. Yet through a “crowdsourcing” model, the medium offers an opportunity for learners to become content creators, adding to the knowledge base for the course out of their experience, expertise, and exposure to a variety of content sources. The discussion board has great potential for creativity, playfulness, and student-centered learning. Once we break free from the temptation to check up on whether the assigned reading has been accomplished, a discussion board can be a location for practicing key curricular goals such as critical thinking or theological reflection on the material or topic at hand. Freed from enforcing compliance, it can be easier to break open the multimedia capacity present in a good Learning Management System. I encourage students to engage the subject matter by curating a weekly journal of images, music, or video that reflect their thoughts on the topic at hand. While some still prefer to write their thoughts for a post, the ability to record a video, post artwork, or share music and poetry appeals to a broader range of students. The variety of ways of engaging makes for a lively discussion as students respond to one another’s offerings. To encourage this, I avoid requiring a certain quantity of replies to co-learners’ posts but instead include an “asynchronous participation grade” in my syllabus that specifies how much time per week each learner should spend reading and interacting with discussion board(s). Crowdsourcing learners’ experiences and media exposure for cultural analysis can further encourage learners to act as experts in their own cultural contexts. When I teach my Biblical Families elective, I use this method to contrast ancient and modern ideas around family and related topics. I provide content on ancient context through reading assignments while learners post and respond to case studies on the same topic either from the media or their ministry contexts (I ask for their posts to be equally distributed between the two over the course of the semester) in which they name the cultural constructions implicitly communicated in the conversation or media item. Some hilarity inevitably ensues as we comment together on commercials and experiences alike. It leads to a broader variety of contexts than I alone would be able to provide and increases learner investment in the project of cultural analysis. The increased prevalence of asynchronous courses and virtual presence can make community building a challenge as casual hallway conversations become less frequent if not impossible. One key element of learner formation is the mutually supportive community they can be to one another. A discussion board can be a helpful place to model this by making the steps toward a long-term project both public and collaborative. For this model, I create a “topic” within the forum under each student’s name. They can then crowdsource questions and ideas about their projects, not just with me but with their co-learners, receiving more responses and resources and having the opportunity to exhibit their expertise as adult learners. In my introductory Educational Ministry course I also have students post a weekly quote from the assigned reading that speaks to their educational philosophy, creating a running vision board that they can use when they write their theology of teaching and learning at the end of the semester. When teaching about the religiously unaffiliated, learners took on a “spiritual-but-not-religious discipline” and journaled the experience on the discussion board so that they could respond to and encourage one another throughout the semester. Crowdsourcing the discussion board requires a degree of trust that learners have prepared for their asynchronous participation well enough to critically engage and add to rather than prove that they have received content. This model opens up the possibility for participants to bring creativity and imagination to their posts and communicates that each learner’s cultural context is essential to the course, not a distraction from it. Learners become co-creators of multimedia course content, bringing their experience, expertise, and exposure into the virtual classroom. As such, they practice collaborative learning and experience how they can become a resource to one another in and outside of class.

One of the cruel ironies of teaching in Atlanta is that the so-called fall semester always begins in the damp-flames-of-hell climate that is August in Georgia. But this morning, as I sit with my coffee on my back porch, I recognize the halting, modest signs that a proper fall may arrive after all, despite all evidence to the contrary. I see a few yellow leaves drifting to the grass from the weeping cherry tree. Likewise, I notice the tip top of the Japanese maple tree is hinting at its fall purple-red glory. The air, while still sticky, carries a whisper of crispness. I could sit here for a while, if I can just slow my mind and let my senses help me pay attention to the world. Embodiment should come easily to me. I am a practical theologian whose specialization is the relationship between theology, education, and ecology. This intersection can hardly be imagined absent a strong commitment to embodiment, to the ways in which we understand our bodies to inhabit particular places and relate to other bodies; to see, to breathe, to taste, to hear, and to touch. In honoring the body’s knowledge, we name its vulnerability, and the ways in which we are tied to the vulnerability of other bodies.[1] I have tried to counter false narratives that would suggest that a real academic somehow transcends her embodied self. I have developed practices to help ground me in my heart and body, and when I’m able to commit to these practices, everything else seems to flow: my research, my teaching, even those administrative tasks. Easier said than done, though. In our institutions of higher education, serious inquiry has been conflated with dispassionate objectivity, learning with the cognitive work of recalling and interpreting.[2] We might even struggle to recognize the needs and honor the knowledge of our own bodies, as individual scholars and human beings.[3] Speaking for myself, I might spend hours crouching at my computer, loathe to break my supposed focus. With high hopes, I might have scheduled a workout or a walk with the dogs for later in the afternoon, only to abandon those plans when it seems I do not have time. I might eat breakfast and lunch at my desk. Now, after two years of remote work and learning, I think the question of embodiment is insisting itself to us in new and powerful ways. I think we begin to find our way toward an answer by first looking within. How do you begin your day? Environmental education scholar Mitchell Thomashow writes, “Consider two different ways of greeting the day. You can step outdoors wherever you may be in order to feel the temperature, wind conditions, light, sounds, and smells, or whatever visceral impressions fill your senses. Or you can immediately glance at your phone to check your messages, email, or whatever virtual information gets you oriented.”[4] On good days, I might begin the workday at my writing desk at home, which faces out a window, and quietly work on research and writing projects for an hour before the rest of the family awakens. Sometimes I might check in online with some colleagues who also arise early to write before turning to our other daily tasks. It’s a tiny act of resistance to the culture of accelerated and sometimes frenetic work demanded by the pressures facing so many of our institutions.[5] But more often than I would like to admit, I start my day by checking my institutional email on my smart phone before my feet even hit the floor. It’s a seemingly small thing, but the net result is that, from the start, my mind is in a reactive state. I respond to every demand, every email, every knock on my door, with little sense of purpose or vision. I end the day exhausted, my eyes and shoulders strained, with seemingly little satisfaction to show for it. This way of being is not sustainable, of course. And as orientation approached this fall, I was confronted in a new and urgent way with the limitations of approaching my work without mental and emotional intentionality. Even deeper, I was confronted with the poverty of the life of the mind absent a steady, trusting, and grounding practice that honors my own body’s knowledge. Thanks to a benign but persistent virus that took up residence in my inner ear in August, I found myself unable to be in crowded spaces, to process complex visual or aural stimulation, to look at my computer screen, or even read without becoming very dizzy. I would clench my jaw and “power through” whatever task was before me, practically racing back to my office to close my eyes—no fluorescents, please!—or rest my head on my desk until the next thing. I barely got my syllabus revised and was grateful for a colleague who volunteered to build my course website for me. To my surprise, though, I could work in the yard, walk the dogs, and even do yoga with little difficulty. The body that found itself queasy and unsteady after just twenty minutes of looking at my computer screen was calmed and centered by these practices that grounded me in sensory experience, slowed my mind, and allowed room to reflect, think, and be present. Embodied practices that I once had perhaps too eagerly broadcast as a countercultural “choice” became a necessity and a source of salvation. As I write this, episodes of dizziness and disorientation are, happily and as expected, becoming less frequent and less severe. Yet I am clinging to a reordered pattern for the morning, landing me here, on my porch, greeting the day with all of my senses, watching the leaves turn and listening to a chorus of birds and bugs. There is so much to do, it’s true. But might you also find a place to pay attention to the world, and your body’s place in it? A place where you could sit, just for a while?   [1] Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (New York: Verso Books, 2004), 26-27. [2] Furthermore, the ways in which learning is structured in so many of our institutions reveal a disembodied “implicit curriculum” observable in how our classrooms are arranged, the kinds of assignments we make, and the reduction of embodied exercises and classroom breaks to reluctant “accommodations” we make so that the mind can continue the work of learning, unencumbered by the inconvenient needs of the human body. See Elliot W. Eisner, The Educational Imagination: On the Design and Evaluation of School Programs (New York: Macmillan, 1979), 97. [3] It is, of course, important to acknowledge that “embodiment” has historically carried additional risks for too many scholars and students in institutions with unexamined racist, sexist, and heteronormative assumptions. See, for example, Carol B. Duncan, “Visible/Invisible: Teaching Popular Culture and the Vulgar Body in Black Religious Studies,” in Being Black, Teaching Black: Politics and Pedagogy in Religious Studies, edited by Nancy Lynne Westfield (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2008), 3-15. [4] Mitchell Thomashow, To Know the World: A New Vision for Environmental Learning (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2020), 75. [5] Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber, “Introduction,” in The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016), 1-15.