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Serving as both a campus pastor and an adjunct instructor, I know that web-based teaching can feel disconnected for the students I'm called to serve. I'm also not satisfied with this reality. Thankfully, neither are my colleagues. Together, we're learning how to better design our web-based content to move from online teaching to digital formation. Formation is teaching that is received and incorporated into the development of a student’s knowledge, skill, vocation, or identity; all formation includes teaching, but not all teaching results in formation.  My desire to teach at the college level came from a yearning, even a calling, to connect with students in their critical years of identity development and vocational exploration. I want to empower them with reason, wisdom, and knowledge that they might find not just lucrative careers, but rewarding lives. In other words, I desire to teach in a way that promotes formation. Online education doesn't change that intent, but it surely changes the methods.  • Relate your pedagogy to student's priorities. Many of my students now have entirely different schedules than when we were all on campus. Some are out of work entirely, while others are working twice as many hours in shipping centers and grocery stores to make up for job loss experienced by other family members. Expecting everyone to be available at the time we agreed upon when the world wasn’t in the midst of a pandemic doesn’t work with the entirely different set of priorities that have emerged for them—and for us. Adjusting some class times and providing asynchronous modules has been essential in retaining student engagement. • Reformat your office (on campus or at home) to enhance engagement. There are many content creators who have helped us think through simple logistics to make recorded and live interactions more engaging to your audience. This short and particularly helpful clip from the VlogBrothers offers some insight into space, lighting, and equipment. Helping your students see your face, hear your voice, and appreciate your context provides multiple points of connection for those on the other side of the screen. • Augment--or avoid--information dumps. Information dumps are a mixed bag. For many of our courses, a certain amount of information is essential. Many of us are used to giving that information via lectures, while others utilize activities in class that require creativity. While it’s relatively easy to record a lecture for students to watch, that doesn’t necessarily promote content retention. Youki Terada provides a helpful literature review and provides five strategies to promote increased cognitive recall. I’ve found success with two of those suggestions in particular. ◦  Peer-to-Peer engagement, a common tool in physical teaching, can still be accomplished in online learning. If meeting in a synchronous class, technology like Zoom allows educators to separate the class into smaller groups to promote discussion among peers and then return to the larger group for a report back on their discussion. In asynchronous models, additional assignments to meet outside of the lecture and reading provide students a similar opportunity. Students can record brief summaries of the conversation and send them to the instructor. This increases their repetition of the information as well as provides accountability for participation.  ◦  ​​Incorporating images with teaching helps many types of learners access an additional reference point for the essential information. I’ve had particular success utilizing a core image to guide a theme, sometimes for one class, a section, or even an entire semester. This provides a sort of touchstone, to which other selected images then relate. One hint here: too many images can become distracting and reduce student interest. I only utilize images--and, at times, videos--for major themes in any given class (usually about 3-5 per class).  • Gamifying still increases engagement. My mother-in-law, Kim Conti, is a math whiz and Senior Lecturer with SUNY-Fredonia. She taught me the wonders of Kahoot, a learning platform she’s used to rave reviews in her classroom for courses like Math for School Teachers. Quizlet, another resource she commonly uses, reports that 90% of students who use it earn higher grades. These tools allow users to utilize content created by other professionals or create their own games. Initially designed for use in a physical classroom, they’re introducing new features for web-based interactions.  In all of this, it’s important to remember that alternative delivery methods aren’t lesser delivery methods. We may, however, have less skill at these methods, which requires more of us to learn and employ new ways of forming our students. That, then, is the key to doing this all well. Simply taking all of our in-person content and deploying it in the easiest fashion (for us) on the web can be called online teaching, but it doesn’t necessarily promote digital formation. In periods of crisis--and indeed, in all eras of education--we ought to design courses in ways that promote true formation. The best online teaching utilizes web-based tools to create points of contact that foster digital formation. The above suggestions can enhance our practices in ways that promote digital formation through our delivery of online teaching.

In a previous post on this blog, I reflected on a common misperception among students preparing for ordained ministry and other leadership roles in Christian community: that studying theology in a formal sense is not of obvious utility in pursuing and exercising one’s larger vocation. I offered several reasons why that might be the case. And I described an assignment I had developed and used for the first time as a result of participating in the Wabash Center’s Teaching with Digital Media workshop. This project entailed making and sharing memes on theological themes and then reflecting on what was learned through that exercise. The goal was to give them a concrete experience of selecting specific theological concepts to communicate to a specific audience in order to elicit specific formational outcomes. The assignment required students to do small-scale, but active, public theologizing and employ techniques of metacognition to help them perceive more clearly the need for solid theological grounding as part of their formation and, by extension, for the formation they will be responsible for in others. For this semester, I created an assignment that amplified that intention by requiring them to offer a bit of formal theological instruction in a more direct and standard mode, but still in a digital form. The prompt for the assignment was this: Imagine that you are the rector of a program-sized parish. In substantive conversation with at least five readings assigned [in the previous unit], create a 5–7 minute presentation to teach your clergy staff about how one’s eschatological imagination can be a resource when engaging those of other faiths or of no faith. Create a TED-style talk, a narrated PowerPoint, a VoiceThread, or a video of another kind that your staff can view on their own time. It must include video, sound other than just your voice, and still images. Think carefully about what it is you want them to know and tailor the use of the technology to ensure that it is communicated to them clearly. Focus on the theology at the heart of your teaching. Ground your theology in the sources and be sure you let your hearers know when ideas are not your own, especially if you quote anyone’s writing. Students were given a deadline by which these presentations needed to be complete. I then posted them as separate threads in a Moodle forum open to the class. There was then a second deadline by which each student was “required to have watched all of the presentations and to have made substantive comments of a theological and/or pedagogical nature on at least three of them.” Finally, there was a third and final deadline by which students were “required to have replied thoughtfully to all comments made” on their work. I then viewed all the presentations and read through the discussions, and I assessed the projects based on a previously provided rubric of seven criteria, each with four levels: above standards, meets standards, near standards, and below standards. The seven criteria (with the maximum number of points earnable for each indicated in parentheses) were: use of sources (30), original and critical thinking (15), structure of presentation (15), pedagogy, meaning the clarity and achievement of the presenter’s learning outcomes (10), required elements (10), comments on peers’ presentations (10), and responses to peers’ comments (10). Interestingly, students were less intimidated by this assignment than by the meme assignment. Presumably, this has to do with the medium: all students have experienced an instructional presentation online, but not all are familiar with the syntax and culture of meme-making. During the Wabash workshop, we were encouraged to assign multimedia projects of this kind with very short time durations. Nearly universally, however, students bemoaned not having enough time to communicate all they wanted to say, wishing they had been able to provide more nuance in their presentations. I was surprised, but gratified, by this. Next year, I will increase the time limit, but I will also warn them that more time means a greater temptation to wander too far from the central idea the presentation is meant to communicate and that they must diligently maintain that focus throughout. The extent to which most students readily grasped the importance of providing ongoing theological formation for their clergy staff was highly gratifying. They attended to that task with rich creativity, substantive theology, and an inviting personal presence. As teachers-to-be, I think it was useful for them to see themselves and their colleagues in this role. Students were eager to discuss pedagogy in the forum, but a little less forthcoming about their specific theological choices. As the one evaluating and providing feedback on their approaches to the theological formation of others, I would like to know more about that and I will ask for more detail about that in the future. Overall, the use of digital media in connection with this assignment appears to have ignited the imaginations of the students to think about doing theological formation in the milieu they are most likely to do this in their careers: the parish. Education in formal theology in the seminary is meant to equip students for bringing the riches of the theological heritage and discipline to bear in the work of ministry. This assignment seems to have contributed well to that outcome.

The Pandemic Amidst shelter-in-place orders and the hasty swap of physical classrooms for virtual learning spaces, it is clear that Covid-19 is being taken seriously by institutions of higher learning; daily, they are learning to re-shape themselves. Summer courses are going virtual as the duration of national isolation measures are still unknown. It is becoming more likely that a society in flux will delay the return of a “normalized” education system as distancing may continue well past the summer months.[1] Educators learn a number of lessons when thrown into pedagogical precarity and novel teaching circumstances. The first is not to master Zoom’s many features, nor protest the abrupt pedagogical transition,[2] but to closely examine what this moment reveals about their students.[3] This has been the case for me. The first week of teaching-online, the disposition of my class felt strong. Too strong. I questioned the fortitude emanating from many of them—the majority Black. I knew they were experiencing the same pandemic as the rest of the institution. Their tenacity was both admirable and alarming. Many of my students were ready to dive into the new format and keep going. This was their habit; they willed themselves to keep moving because they have always had to, because they have never had the choice of being considered “enough” to have a different response to crisis. No matter the circumstance, even a global pandemic, many had come from a culture of persistence and knew how to respond dauntlessly to tragedy. It was stitched into the fabric of how they knew how to be. The Predisposition This display of scholastic perseverance is racial, historical, unjust, and the aftershock of generational trauma. Many of my students have normalized being in a perpetual state of crisis. But the danger in this is that they rehearse how to feel and be; they do not quite let in what they actually feel, how they actually want to be in this moment. This barrier to them feeling the fullness of their personhood and humanity needs to be toppled. The truth must be named: teaching minoritized students during a pandemic is drastically different than teaching privileged ones. In my class’s case, all of my Black students had a "making a way out of no way" mentality. They assumed a pandemic could be added to the list of traumas they have experienced, witnessed, or accepted as their legacy. The idea of suffering towards one’s success has been concretized in their imagination as descriptive of what their lives should entail. Black students are used to trauma in every area of their lives, including education. Although this pandemic is significantly disrupting their lives, their mentality is to make it work, find another way, hustle, suck it up, and take it on the chin, rather than lament, rest, and most importantly, ask for the leniencies, grace, and benefits other peers are requesting. Though in class they argue passionately for equity, when it comes to tangible opportunities, many Black students do not feel it worth asking for what others are receiving; history has told them their asking is futile. This pandemic is uncovering how truly disturbing the disparities are. Historically privileged students unaccustomed to this level of stress exist on a completely different ontological plane than their minoritized peers. For them, extreme stress is the norm. For privileged students, extreme stress is a disruptor. Minoritized students adopt the “make a way out of no way” posture because hardship is not new, is not jarring. This should alarm instructors. For too many minoritized students, pandemic trauma feels no different in their bodies than the other traumas they have experienced on a normal basis. Responses from privileged peers can then be infuriating for weary-but-way-making-minoritized students. They have never had the option for an entire educational system to respond mercifully or so drastically to their fiscal, familial, or personal traumatic experiences. Mercy in the time of a pandemic, to some minoritized students, can look and feel like privilege.  A Counter-Response Educators need to encourage their students who have experienced historical neglect to allow themselves to feel the weight of this moment, to not tirelessly fight through it. We must grant them permission to reimagine strength and productivity. We must grant the humane treatment they have become resentful seeing granted to others and not themselves. We must help them understand that “success” is in the fullness of feeling the moment and letting our bodies, minds, and souls react how they want. We must, in our own respective platforms, change the metrics of achievement to focus less on succeeding, and more on simply arriving.[4] Our job is to impact how our students receive information; what greater place to begin than within. [1] Ed Yong, “Our Pandemic Summer,” The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/pandemic-summer-coronavirus-reopening-back-normal/609940/ (Accessed April 17, 2020 [2] Rebecca Barrett-Fox, “Please do a bad job of putting your courses online,” Rebecca Barrett-Fox (blog), Accessed April 17, 2020, https://anygoodthing.com/2020/03/12/please-do-a-bad-job-of-putting-your-courses-online/. [3] Nicholas Casey, “College Made Them Feel Equal. The Virus Exposed How Unequal Their Lives Are,” The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/us/politics/coronavirus-zoom-college-classes.html (Accessed April 17, 2020). [4] Paul Ollinger, “Your Only Goal is to Arrive,” Forge by Medium. https://forge.medium.com/to-survive-the-quarantine-change-your-metrics-e345d79be14b. Accessed April 17, 2020.

In March 2020, when colleges and universities across the United States and the world started rapidly moving all of their courses online, a few colleagues reached out to me to ask about best practices for online teaching. I have been studying online teaching and learning for over a decade and can provide links for inclusive online course design, peer-reviewed academic articles, and handy best practice takeaways. But the truth is, what we are dealing with right now is not a “best practice” scenario. Now is not the time to try to do everything you might if you had the time and mental space to plan for an online class. Nor can we act as if there wasn’t a pandemic going on. What we are doing right now is emergency remote teaching. Does anything we knew about online teaching in the before time transfer over to this crisis scenario? In a word: yes. The most important and consistent finding in all of my research has been that making real human connections with students in online classes leads to better outcomes. This is a lesson that not only still applies, but is more important than ever. Building Rapport with Students When faculty make an effort to reach out and connect with students, or build rapport with them, their efforts have a powerful impact. When a student has a positive relationship with their instructor, they are more likely to stay enrolled in the class, to earn a better grade, and, ultimately, to graduate. When it comes to online teaching, however, many institutions and faculty members spend most of their time concerned with technology and far too little on human connection. The vast majority of institutional training programs focus on mastering the Learning Management System. Even in the midst of a pandemic crisis, many faculty members are concerned about uploading professionally-edited videos or learning how to use Zoom.   Being able to use technology is important, but once basic functionality is achieved, the focus should be on connecting with students. In a recent survey of thousands of students at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, only 15% of students said that they wanted their professors to be producing interesting and engaging content right now. More than twice as many students (31%), wanted professors who were available and answered their emails. The most popular response (42%), was professors who were flexible with assignments and deadlines. Thus, I would argue that the most important thing professors can do right now to ensure their students’ success is to connect with them on a human level. Techniques for Building Rapport How can we build rapport with our students? Both long-term and short-term teaching experiments offer a few key strategies. Ask for feedback. Students want to know that you care what they think. Connect with students through a short survey or even just adding an extra question onto the next quiz. Something as simple as “What do you want to ask me?” or “What can I do to best help you right now?” sends students a signal that you care about their input. Send personal emails. Taking the time to personally reach out and check in on a student can make a world of difference. This can be time consuming, so start with the students who haven’t show up for class in a while and may be struggling. There are mail merge tools available online that can enable you to reach many students without a lot of work. Humanize yourself. If your class just moved from face-to-face to online, you already have an advantage. Your students know you are a real human being and not just a grade-generating robot. You can further humanize yourself by leaving markers of everyday life in your videos—don’t edit it out when your cat jumps on your lap or your toddler asks for a cookie. Your students may have cats and toddlers too! These moments help them see you as a real person they can connect with. Be flexible. The situation we are dealing with is not business as usual. Communicate to your students your flexibility on deadlines, adjustments you are making to the syllabus or assignments, and your understanding of what they are going through. Make sure they know that you are willing to work with them. Looking Ahead Building rapport with students is more important than ever during this crisis. But the empathy and understanding we are fostering now are attitudes we need to take with us into future classes as well. Right now, everyone is in crisis, so it is easy to be compassionate. But every semester, some of our students will experience personal crises that are at least as disruptive at Covid-19. If we make real human connections with our students, we will be ready to help them be successful in our classes no matter what challenges they face. [caption id="" align="alignleft" width="695"] Students at University of Arkansas Little Rock, photo credit: Larry Rhodes.[/caption]

When Covid-19 became a pandemic, I was not ready to make a transition to online teaching out of the blue, in the middle of the course period, but I felt a great responsibility for my students since they were going through upheavals. So, I made a 3-minute video for them and shared it through email; I encouraged them to stay safe and strong. This initial video brought a message of hope and care to them. In these tumultuous times, I see myself as pastor, theologian, and scholar. I also sent a kind, informative email to them to make sure we were all on the same page in terms of the remaining course schedule. I reached most of my students through email, but three of them did not respond for two weeks. I was anxious about them and looked for them like a shepherd who has lost a sheep. I tried to contact them every way I could: by phone, through school staff, through social media. My attempt failed. Two weeks later, they responded to me with descriptions of personal and family crisis. I was so happy that all of my students were safe. My philosophy during this time is to streamline teaching or learning, to minimize the use of technology other than that with which they are already familiar (e.g., email and the Learning Management System [LMS]). I did not ask them to learn new online skills or to set up a Zoom account. In fact, “Online Meetings” was available through our school’s LMS. All I emphasized was the importance of fast communication through email. In this traditional tech way, I maintained close contact with them and understood their individual situations.  With this teaching philosophy in mind, I prepared a weekly PPT with audio narrations (like lecturing in person, unlike just reading the text) and uploaded it to our LMS, along with the new course schedule and detailed instructions. Then, the students were asked to review my PPT several times and submit a response paper to the weekly question via email. They followed my instructions very well, but some of them were struggling, so I proposed weekly online tutoring times during which I could speak with some of them online “face-to-face.” One time I had 10 students in our virtual room and talked with them about various topics they brought up. It was a good, humbling, and eye-opening experience. We felt our close community in this together. I learned how to make a podcast with a smartphone application and created podcasts for my students. I ended up making a total of 13 podcasts, each an average of 6-7 minutes. They were like songs with critical information for the week. Each podcast had its style or color with background music. My students loved them. It's an irony that this unusual environment allowed me to obtain the necessary online teaching skills which I have wanted for a long time. While virtual teaching won’t replace face-to-face meetings, in the future we may serve some “special” students who cannot make class every time. I think we may need to use hybrid courses often to maximize the student learning experience.  Now I am sitting at the chair at my home and thinking about my students who are going through this pandemic. I had the joy of reading their journals of “Reading and Learning,” which is part of the required assignments. They took journaling seriously and wrote it in creative ways. Below are some excerpts: I really have to say Dr. Kim; I like the way you have really made this transition WORK! You have kept us intact with emails, weekly videos, and now the podcasts. This has been a very smooth transition; you have answered a lot of our questions and concerns on your podcasts and you have been willing to pour out to us all that you have learned over your career. I love the part where you say 'Hello, this is Dr. Kim speaking to the World!' I am so thankful for the power points because you say more than you write on the slides. I can re-listen and that’s one of the luxuries we do not get in person. In coming to class, we hear it once, and then it's off to the next thing. However, with the podcasts and blogs, it's more personal and within reach. The past two weeks your voice has become a household voice, and I do not use any headphones so when I am listening to audio. Bless you, Dr. Kim, I just wanted to give you a quick “shout out”, since we have been schooling online. I call it a pleasure to get up in the mornings and get my cup of coffee and listen to your podcasts or re-listen to your PowerPoint with audio!

An Interview assignment is on my syllabus for my Critical Thinking and Communication class (Gen Ed, required of all sophomores, inquiry based).  My course title/inquiry is "A Good Life:  What is it?  How does one live it?"  As we pivoted to remote courses in mid-March and as I began to convert activities and assignments, I wondered about keeping the Interview.  How to talk about a good life when life doesn't look so good?  As it turned out, the assignment worked.  I received some of the strongest, most engaging submissions I've ever read. As one student said, "We (her grandmother was the interview subject) had time together around the kitchen table.  She loved my questions and she was tickled to help me with a paper. But I was the lucky one. I heard stories I had never known.  And now they are recorded on my phone.  What a treasure."    Click this link to view the vlog.

Anti-Muslim bias manifests in antagonism or ill will towards Muslims and often builds upon white-supremacist, xenophobic, and racist tropes. Anti-Muslim bias can sometimes manifest as Islamophobia, which is antagonism towards the religion of Islam or towards regions of the world historically associated with Islam.  Anti-Muslim bias can be experienced by religiously practicing Muslims as well as those of an ethnic or racial background associated with Muslims. Hence, anti-Muslim bias does not just affect Muslims, it can impact North Africans and Arabs (including Christians) and brown people who present with perceived similar characteristics as Muslims (e.g.,  Sikhs). White Muslims of non-Arab backgrounds, Black, Latinx, and Muslims of East Asian backgrounds experience the effects of anti-Muslim bias as well.  In the North American and European context, there are several motivating factors for anti-Muslim bias. Some of them are explicitly geopolitical, others are rooted in the historic encounter and—in some respects, direct competition—between Islamic and Christian faith-based civilizations. Still others are seemingly rooted in an existential discomfort with human difference. In other words, anti-Muslim bias serves simultaneously as an expedient mobilization technique, as a theological polemic, and as a means to sow animosity and mistrust for personal gain. These motivating factors can overlap and be mutually reinforcing. For instance, many American and European politicians have ignited a political base by that is largely white and Christian by appealing to stereotypes of Muslims as invaders who are frenzied, culturally unsophisticated, nonsensical actors with a propensity toward violence. The white, Christian-identified politicians can then depict themselves as savior–protectors who are poised to guard territory, religion, and national identity. In this way, anti-Muslim bias becomes a lever of ethnic nationalism. Such strains of anti-Muslim bias have foreign policy implications beyond their domestic utility; it is much easier to wage a war in a territory if constituents supporting the war effort believe that their enemy is culturally and religiously inferior and a legitimate existential threat. Likewise, it becomes easier to morally justify news of mass civilian casualties abroad if those bearing the brunt of the suffering are seen as not like “us” in fundamental ways. Their suffering then becomes, in this paradigm, an unfortunate but ultimately unavoidable result of “our” need to protect “our values” from being attacked.  Thus, the gross prejudice and bigotry undergirding much anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic sentiment is readily disguised as noble patriotism. Political discourses that are hostile toward Islam and Muslims—and especially those promulgated and propagated at a national level—readily feed into everyday prejudices and implicit biases against the individuals of minority race, ethnicity, and/or religion; after all, these minorities only tenuously belong to the conceived “we” of the dominant national identity. False narratives, gross generalizations, and academically ungrounded analyses all serve to support notions that Muslims, or those appearing Muslim, are to be regarded circumspectly.  Often anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic sentiments are promoted with coordinated talking points through prominent media outlets and personalities who stand to benefit personally from stoking the flames of bigotry. Rather than appearing as hate-mongers, trafficking in destructive stereotypes, these media personalities can cast themselves as patriots who stand for freedom and democracy over and against the repression and theocracy supposedly valued by Muslims (as a result of their purported collective disposition and religiously mandated convictions). Anti-Muslim bias is a social justice issue because it tears at the civic fabric in a way that exacerbates ideological divides and makes minorities particularly vulnerable to the violence of vigilantes and the mentally unstable. It does not just impact civic life. Like other bigotries, it clouds collective moral judgement. Education about anti-Muslim bias and Islamophobia should include discussions of its effects on targeted individuals and groups, clarification of the stereotypes and false information that propel it, and exploration of the media and financial networks that enable it. Anti-Muslim bias can be taught in the context of how other large-scale religious and ethnic prejudices have led to blatant injustices, crimes, and other morally questionable actions. The topic of compound social marginalizations, the ways in which gendered stereotypes operate, and the niche roles of so-called native informants are all relevant topics to explore in depth. There are many provocative works on these subjects. For instance, for understanding anti-Muslim biases in the United States, I recommend Stephen Sheehi’s Islamophobia: The Ideological Campaign Against Muslims (2011) which covers the nuances of anti-Muslim sentiment with extensive coverage of the approaches of the Bush and early Obama administrations. I also recommend Peter Morey’s Islamophobia and the Novel (2018) for an exploration of how Islamophobic tropes are imbedded in English literature. Sara R. Farris contributes an excellent analysis of how gendered and racially biased assumptions impact European social policies in her book, In the Name of Women’s Rights (2017). The sheer magnitude of the systemic issues and their complexity can be daunting and even depressing, but many creative and entrepreneurial efforts have taken root to try to ameliorate biases and disparities. In this regard, one of my favorites for classroom use is The Secret Life of Muslims, a short-form, web-based series of first-person documentaries that was Emmy-nominated and a Peabody finalist. I have mainly referenced the American and European context here, but Islamophobia and anti-Muslim bias, of course, have a global reach; at present, India, Myanmar, and China are areas of elevated concern.

Last summer, I packed up our house, defended my dissertation, and moved to the greater New York area to begin my first tenure-track teaching position. There was nothing in new faculty orientation about teaching in a pandemic. However, I find myself drawing from my doctoral experience researching and directing a theological education program in prison as a very present help in this moment of crisis. Here is why.Teaching in prison is to teachin frequent states of crisis and disruption.It was not uncommon to hear of violent assaults or deeply unsettling “shake downs” that left the community enraged. Both of these and worse happened– and more than once. Crisis and disruption were more the norm than moments of structure and peace.I learned during those times thatthe most essential thing to do was to show up for class.“Showing up” is a pedagogical practice of “being with and for others” in times of crisis. In prison, that meant physically working our way through security checkpoints, gates, and locked doors so we could open physical and metaphorical doors for others. The journey to class was often filled with so many obstacles that it left us all physically and mentally exhausted. But there was an unexplainable source of energy (grace) that came when we all showed up. Showing up was how we, teachers and learners, held together a physical place where those who wanted to gather, could gather.In those times, I learned thatshowing up in crisis risks encountering human emotion.In crisis, the classroom can become a place where lament and laughter co-exist, weaving in and out of one another in ways impossible to control but necessary for survival. The classroom can be a space where rage gives rise to revelation … or not. I learned that emotions are an essential and expected part of processing crisis and my role as an educator is not to be a therapist or a counselor, but to bear witness. To bear witness in crisis is to be present to the confusing and unpredictable shifts between joy and anger, between light-hearted relief and soul-crushing fear, between wanting to lament and wanting to get on with the lesson of the day. This experience bearing witness to uncomfortable moments of pain, despair, sadness, and rage has, in many ways, prepared me for the present.When my University shifted to remote learning, there was the familiar question of whether or not to have class. The overwhelming response of students was yes. Showing up, even virtually, allowed us to maintain a sense of community and to be present to and with one another as gift, a balm. Students wanted a place where they could gather, listen, and be heard. I knew from my prison teaching experience that to hold a place where people could be heard in crisis was to risk exposing human emotion–and I was okay with that.As a curator of classroom experiences, I often begin with communal hearing sessions or check-ins. Sometimes I do this as a large group, sometimes in smaller breakouts. Hearing from one another does not normally take an entire class session. There were many times in the prison where I simply asked students to share one word describing how they felt as they entered class that day. At the end of class, we closed with a one-word hope for the week ahead. The ritual of hearing from one another allowed us to gauge whether we needed more time checking-in or whether we moved on to the lesson for the day.As our time in crisis extends, I find myself varying the prompts I use for communal hearing, embracing different forms of poetry, guided meditation, and music--sometimes using silence. Recently, I asked a Zoom class to sit in silence for five minutes while reflecting on an unexpected source of hope or joy from the week prior. I closed the time with a short, one-sentence prayer. Testimony, art, silence–all mediums for processing emotion, bearing witness, hearing one another, and for showing up. All mediums I grew comfortable using while teaching in prison.As a graduate student, I did not know then how much teaching in prison was radically shaping my openness to and ability to teach in moments of uncertainty and disruption. I suspect teaching in this crisis will have a similar life-altering effect.How do you hope teaching in this crisiswill radically shape your teaching for years to come?

As everyone moved to online teaching and learning in mid-March, our faculty and students made the leap of faith onto various platforms. Faculty had to get ready over a weekend for synchronous teaching via Zoom (including Shabbat on which technology is not commonly used) so that the following week, fulltime ordination students would have their regular classes available (including our daily Beit midrash [collaborative exegesis seminar] and daily prayer). There was technology to set up, faculty to train on the technology, as well as the individual concerns and varieties of teaching. Students needed to be directed and advised, not to mention the current asynchronous online students on a different platform. These students were used to online learning, but now had children and work responsibilities at home and were separated from their usual equipment, resources, and books. In addition, a wonderful rabbinic colleague had just passed away from Covid-19 leaving a bereft family and congregation. It was a massive effort that week, so you can imagine how I felt at the end of that week when a faculty member suggested we offer a community-sustaining opportunity for our educators and students. She envisioned bringing people together, lowering the frenetic atmosphere, and offering pedagogic and spiritual resources to those who were leading their own institutions. It took some persuading, but gathering my last ounce of energy, I saw the wisdom of her proposal and agreed to teach the first session on the Monday before Passover. Knowing that Passover was about to commence for our community gave us that extra impetus to offer a message of comfort, hope, and promise of liberation to those who would be working through the holiday season. Come Monday morning, we commenced with a simple Hinneni–‘Here I am’ like Moses at the burning bush in the wilderness. It was a wonderful opportunity to connect and breathe together as colleagues, fellow Jewish educators, and students. Then I taught the midrash of the four children of the Passover Haggadah reminding everyone that the midrash is based on four hypothetical biblical children’s questions, three of which (the wayward, willing, and wondering) come before the event of the Exodus in chapter 13. Their questions of uncertainty and anxiety are the same questions we have about our current situation and they need response from our spiritual resources of hope and healing. The fourth biblical child (wise) comes to ask his/her question once the whole experience is over. A reflection on experience, the question (derived from a verse in Deuteronomy 6), requires we respond in a different theological way, as does the Deuteronomist. That learning was followed by a colleague inviting participants to reflect together about our questions of uncertainty. This colleague used the framework of the Gibbs cycle of reflective action--encouraging the expression of feelings around decision-making and personal and professional circumstances. It was a cathartic experience for the participants and it lifted the burdens upon us. Now we were a community of educators looking to each other and to our tradition of text and ritual for sustenance and healing. All my hesitations about this additional time online fell away as I realized that this was probably the most important spiritual solace we had had all week. We were also modelling a pedagogic practice for the participants to emulate with their own communities. After 75 minutes, we had a final moment of nehemta–a concluding spiritual expression of hope. One of our cantorial students introduced a piece of modern liturgical music by saying, “This is for you, our teachers who are on the front line of providing essential spiritual service.” The words of Debbie Friedman, beloved Jewish singer songwriter, melodiously flowed from his guitar: For our teachers and their students And for the students of their students We ask for peace and lovingkindness, and let us say: Amen. And for those who study Torah here and everywhere May they be blessed with all they need, and let us say: Amen. It was tranquil, contemplative, and uplifting. It was a selection (Kaddish de’Rabbanan) that traditionally marks a culmination of Torah study or the death of a Torah scholar. This time it did both. We then bid each other goodbye as we unmuted and wished each other a ‘fulfilling Pesach of enacted freedom.’  I very quickly wrote to my colleague, “Brilliant! When are we doing the next one!”  “For our teachers” is now a biweekly webinar, an act of hope in a time of uncertainty.

Princeton Theological Seminary recently doubled-down on its commitment to residential theological education. As you can imagine, the transition online for an institution that has no online degree programming has been a shock to the system. However, last year, the seminary opened an Office of Digital Learning. With attentiveness to the needs of learners during this unprecedented time, we have been able to transition smoothly and have received overwhelmingly positive feedback from both students and faculty. As the Digital Learning Designer for the seminary, I have three suggestions for effective theological education during this crisis that I would like to share with you. I hope these ideas will inspire meaningful teaching and learning now that you’ve done the challenging work of transitioning online. #1 PRIORITIZE CONNECTION Right now, students may be feeling particularly unmotivated if what you are teaching seems abstract or disconnected from their lived experiences during this pandemic. By connecting your teaching to what they are experiencing, you will deepen the learning that takes place.  Here’s what one PTS faculty member said about how they’re doing this:   In today's class it was clear that many--especially those with children--are highly anxious. We tried to channel that anxiety--and the class's broad level of concern for what's happening in the world--directly into our discussion. . .  if they were going to take time away from their families under these circumstances of global crisis, the class by golly had better be worth it. It had better be relevant to the crisis they/we are all experiencing. I found this to be very profound and instructive for seminary education in general. I will try to carry that sense of urgency and relevance into the other class as well to try to generate more investment on the students' part.  Draw upon what’s going on in the world and in students’ lives right now and integrate that into your teaching. The best learning takes place when students are motivated and when content is relevant to their lives.    For more, click here to read an article by Craig E. Abrahamson, a Professor of Psychology at James Madison University, about motivating student learning through personal connection.  #2 CHOOSE LEARNING OVER CONTENT TYRANNY Content tyranny is what happens when you prioritize your content over student learning, when you become more focused on covering material than on cultivating growth. Your content is valuable, and you are most likely passionate about it. However, by letting go of some of your content, you may free up your students to learn better. If the current situation has forced you to drop some course content, let this reassure you. More content does not necessarily lead to more learning. Rather, students will learn better when you select your content carefully, deliver your content thoughtfully, and connect your content intentionally to their lived experiences.   For more, click here to read an article by John G. Radzilowicz and Michelle B. Colvin from the University of Pittsburgh about reducing course content without compromising quality.  #3 EMBRACE A CREATIVE SPIRIT   You are all probably already doing this! The best teaching is a mix between science and art, and, in times like these, pedagogy feels more like artistic expression. If you are still engaging in synchronous learning, each online class session will be a practice in improvisation while teaching. Any number of difficulties might arise, but you can handle these with confidence and grace if you embrace a flexible and creative spirit. As a theological institution with a Reformed heritage, the faculty and staff also trust that the Holy Spirit is at work in the teaching and learning endeavor and in your creative improvisation. Even if technology fails and your words seem jumbled, we trust that the Holy Spirit is at work.   For more, click here to read an address by Emilie Townes, the Dean of Vanderbilt University Divinity School, about teaching and the imagination.  Taking classes online within a few weeks’ notice is no small task for faculty, students, or staff. At Princeton Theological Seminary, we are learning just how important each individual person is in the process of creating a robust learning environment. We are also learning how essential it is to be attentive to learners’ needs, to be willing to prioritize learning over content, and to be open to the imagination. May you all engage in meaningful connections with your colleagues and students and may you be open to the creative work of reimagining pedagogy during this pandemic. Has your institution embraced or struggled with these elements over the past few weeks? Has there been monumental growth, or is this culture of teaching already well established? Would you add a fourth insight to the list?