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ePortfolios are web-based, student-generated collections of their work and reflections on their learning and growth. They are tools for students to synthesize and integrate their learning, inside and outside of the classroom, by critically reflecting on their academic and co-curricular experiences. I first learned about ePortfolios from George Kuh who visited our campus in the fall of 2016 and mentioned that they were the latest addition to the list of High Impact Practices that deepen student learning (https://www.aacu.org/leap/hips). As Bret Eynon and Laura Gambino note, ePortfolios can facilitate student inquiry into their own learning, reflection on their development and growth, and integration across disciplines, as well as curricular and co-curricular contexts (2017, 20). As repositories of student work, ePortfolios allow students to reflect on their academic learning at various stages of their undergraduate development. They facilitate critical reflection which has been theorized as a four-stage reflective cycle (presence in experience, description of experience, analysis of experience, and experimentation; Rogers 2002) or a three-step sequence (describing experiences objectively, examining experiences in light of learning goals, and articulation of learning that includes goals for future action; Ash & Clayton 2009). In ePortfolios, students can describe their work (research papers, leadership positions, etc.), analyze how it has contributed to their growth and development, and experiment with various future possibilities by tailoring their ePortfolios for different career paths and job opportunities. I have used ePortfolios in several different courses: first year seminars, upper-level seminars, directed individual study, and capstone courses. ePortfolios allow seniors and recent graduates to showcase their work, and they have been shown to improve performance in job interviews because students can readily recall what they have done over the course of their undergraduate career and cite specific examples of their transferrable skills. In my capstone course, I had students create a type of ePortfolio that included pages about themselves, their signature work, their co-curricular activities, their resume, and their contact information. On their signature work page, I had them describe their capstone project for the general public and reflect on what they had learned in their program. ePortfolios can be powerful for first year students as well. Some institutions, such as Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) include ePortfolios within their first-year-experience programs. They have students create ePersonal Development Plans (ePDP) that enable students to increase awareness of themselves and others, set self-concordant goals, develop hope, and shape education and career plans (https://eportfolio.iupui.edu/). When students create ePortfolios in their first year, they can build on it over time, reflect on what they have learned at various points in their undergraduate career, and chart different pathways when their personal and professional goals change. They can generate robust repositories of what they have learned in their academic and co-curricular experiences. Not unexpectedly, the ePortfolios from my first year seminar were less developed than my capstone course. First year students, navigating new terrain and trying to get their bearings, reflected on what they did in high school and what they hoped to pursue in college. Some had clearly defined goals and career aspirations, while others were uncertain and open to various trajectories. But I think the ePortfolio served two important purposes: first, it clearly demarcated their new identity as a college student, and second, it allowed them to reflect on what they wanted to get out of their college experience in a private forum. Although most free ePortfolios–such as Weebly, Wix, and Wordpress–are public, subscription ePortfolio platforms such as Digication, Pebble Pad, and Taskstream allow students to keep their ePortfolios completely private, share with particular individuals (such as their instructors or classmates), share it within their university, or make it publicly accessible. Many students find such privacy to be novel. When I asked my first-year students if they kept journals or did any reflective writing, I was surprised when only one student raised her hand. The rest said that they used social media such as Facebook, Instagram, or Finsta (a hidden Instagram shared among friends). Instead of engaging in private reflection, they were posting and performing on public or semi-public websites. As a result, many found ePortfolios to be unfamiliar territory, because there was no clearly defined audience, with the exception of myself, who would check to make sure that they were completing their pages, awarding all or no credit. For upper-level seminars and directed individual studies, I have had students create ePortfolios that were more closely tied to the course content. A student researching Aikido created one as a public website with an introduction to Aikido, an annotated bibliography of scholarly resources, and reflections on his personal experience. For my Buddhism course, they reflected on what they learned in the course, uploaded their scholarly review paper, and also wrote about their research for a more general audience. Questions to consider: Do you feel familiar with and comfortable using the ePortfolio platform? What campus resources and support are available for you and your students? For what purpose do you envision using the ePortfolio–for students to reflect on a paper/project, learning process, or academic development? Does your course seek for students to integrate their learning across various contexts or over time? If so, how might you use ePortfolios for this integrative learning? What prompts might you include in your ePortfolio to encourage the kind of integration, reflection, and synthesis that you would like to see? For example, you might ask what insights they gained from an assignment, how it connects to other goals, or how it contributes to their understanding of the discipline or their career development. References: Ash, Sarah L. and Patti H. Clayton. 2009. Generating, deepening, and documenting learning: The power of critical reflection for applied learning. Journal of Applied Learning in Higher Education, 1(1), 25-48. Eynon, Bret and Laura M. Gambino. 2017. High-Impact ePortfolio Practice: A Catalyst for Student, Faculty, and Institutional Learning. Sterling, VA: Stylus. Rodgers, Carol. 2002. “Defining Reflection: Another Look at John Dewey and Reflective Thinking,” Teachers College Record 104, no. 4:842-866.

In the late 1980’s, the church I served had a large staff and a sanctuary worthy of rental for the filming of a professional TV Christmas special. On an otherwise humdrum day in March, word that Stevie Wonder was in the sanctuary spread like wild fire around the staff offices. Along with the gossip, came the foreboding reminder that staff were not to enter the space since it was being rented. Never having been one to follow foreboding reminders, I used my master key to make my way down the back stairway and into the sanctuary through a little known and rarely used door. The sanctuary was abuzz with a TV camera crew, producers, musicians, and many persons I could not identify. I made myself invisible and sat in a pew behind Vanessa Williams. I looked at the chancel–sure enough, Stevie Wonder was at the keyboard. The Harlem Boys Choir was gathered around the piano and sprinkled in the pews and chancel area. I was wide-eyed and amazed. What a moment! In not-too-long, the men Stevie Wonder was talking with left the chancel. Stevie Wonder started playing the keyboard. He looked up from the keyboard and called over to the church’s organist who was seated on the organ bench. Stevie Wonder said, “I feel like Malott’s Lord’s Prayer.” This piece of music is considered one of the music standards of African American church musicians; every church musician worth his/her salt knows this piece. The organist paused, called over to Stevie Wonder and asked, “Do you have the sheet music?”    A nervous hush-your-mouth fell over the enormous room. It was one of those rare moments when the shock was so great things seemed to go into slow motion. Some of the shock came from the fact that a professional musician asked a blind man for sheet music. The rest of the guffaw came from the pronouncement that a professional church musician could not play this standard without reading it from sheet music. As providence would have it, the director of the Harlem Boys Choir had heard Stevie Wonder’s request and the organist’s embarrassing response. The Director pointed to one of the boys who was standing on the chancel steps. The boy, dutifully and without hesitation, ran to the piano and began playing Malott’s Lord’s Prayer. As soon as Stevie Wonder heard the piano sound, he joined in on keyboard. That afternoon, I sang Malott’s Lord’s Prayer with Venessa Williams, Stevie Wonder, and the Harlem Boys Choir. A few camera people and producers sang too. It was a triumphant moment of Christmas in March! Gardner Taylor, considered an extraordinary preacher, would leave his sermon manuscript, which he had spent the entire week poring over, in the middle of his desk, then go into the pulpit and preach. He would preach his sermon relying upon his preparation and the movement of the Holy Spirit. The reason we know this to be the case is that he never entered the pulpit with anything but a Bible in his hand and there are reams of Dr. Taylor’s sermon manuscripts. My former colleague, Otto Maduro, would lecture from post-it notes–only 3 or 4 for an hour lecture. Never did I see him stand and read aloud from a manuscript and always did he give an impassioned and informed lecture. About ten years ago I decided I knew the materials in my introductory course well enough that I would no longer use a manuscript for lectures. The first couple sessions, I was afraid I would forget something or leave out some vital aspect of theory. What I discovered was that rather than reading to my students, I began to talk with my students as I lectured. Without a manuscript, I was able to be present with them in a significantly different way. Being untethered from a manuscript allowed me to come from behind the podium; allowed me to watch their expressions and pay closer attention to their breathing; allowed me to think fresh thoughts as I talked. My glitch then and now is when a student wants me to repeat something verbatim. I say, “Hmmmm . . .  I was not listening to myself.” Then a student (there is always one) who takes copious notes repeats what I said and we move on. Teaching without a manuscript allows me to gather-in previous conversations, items in the news, and the temperament in the room. I can have moments of scripted thoughts and I can have moments of improvisational musings which ground the discussion in the here-and-now. When I am free from a manuscript I can help students in meaning-making with the inflictions of my voice, the gestures of my body, based upon what I know of their own life experience. It makes me more agile, more dexterous, more in-tuned with a conversation between us rather than information from me to them. Lecturing without a manuscript has changed the tempo and rhythms of my teaching. I linger over notions when students signal they need more time and move quickly through items for which students signal they understand. I feel I have a better rapport with them because I am not focused on the page in-hand. I feel more free to teach. After doing this for ten-plus years, I am convinced that by the end of the semester I have covered as much or more intellectual terrain as I did when I had a manuscript. Like the piano-playing boy in the Harlem Boys Choir–there are some intellectual standards that I know, and letting go of the manuscript makes me better able to perform what I know with conviction and percussion. I can play it on cue, not in a mechanical or rote fashion, but in the moment and for the people who are also there to play. We learn, in these moments, to listen for each other. Highly respected musicians make it their craft to read the notes as printed, as intended by the composer, as expected by the listening audience when they are knowledgeable and ridged. The great work of composing music or writing a manuscript is not to be overlooked or belittled. Playing the music without interpretation, without deviating – trying to get it perfect--is a respected form, discipline, practice. Even so, there are genres of music and kinds of musicians who lift their heads from the sheet music and dare to interpret, dare to make the music their own in every moment. I want to teach, not toward the illusion of perfection, but toward authentic expression of my own voice, my own “take,” – exposing my students to my own spiritual authenticity. I suspect the boy who played for and with Stevie Wonder that day is now a man who still remembers that remarkable moment. I hope he is a man who still knows how to say “yes” to improvisation and the grace which comes with letting go.

I spent most of my early teaching online trying to figure out how to make key aspects of residential teaching and learning—interactive lecturing, organic discussion, respect for diversities—possible in online contexts. I’ve sometimes wondered: “Will teaching online at some point begin to enhance what I think I already know about teaching well residentially?” The answer is yes. And the scope is surprising. Most educators work out their teaching pedagogy and practices in residential spaces. How educators teach is shaped by how we were educated, mentored, and seasoned by residential teaching practices. So it is natural to picture a one-directional flow of impact: finding adaptive ways to bring the best of good residential teaching into online course design. Yet the enhancements can flow in reverse, making room for fruitful bi-directional cross-fertilization. There is more to say, but here is a big picture view to whet the appetite. Supporting More Equitable Conversations: Teaching online has matured the strategies I use for fostering more robust and equitable conversations in the residential classroom. Discussion dynamics online become more democratic when each student is equally invited and expected to contribute to conversation. In those moments, the peer-to-peer learning intensifies because all voices are heard even in the midst of sometimes hard gender and racial dynamics. In residential spaces, minority, international, and women students frequently aren’t given adequate space to enter into large group conversations. And some of the brightest male and female students process internally or in writing. I know the power of each student’s voice because I read assignments. But the most trenchant student perspectives in a residential course are often not heard by peers. Online teaching has prompted me to experiment with residential teaching strategies that mimic the more democratic online discussion. One successful strategy is to invite every student to write three sentences on a discussion topic; then open the discussion with each student selecting and reading the sentence of their choice. Another tactic is to have a less vocal student “unlock” a discussion with a first word on the topic, and another less vocal student “close” the conversation with the concluding word. Resourcing Complex Life Contexts: Online teaching has also widened my view of the resources students bring to a residential classroom from their own backgrounds and life contexts. Online course assignments and learning activities ask students to connect what they are learning to their professional, personal, or cultural contexts. This makes learning more meaningful and applicable, and expands the contextual awareness of both peers and educators. Residential classrooms are full of the same kinds of resources which often go untapped. I have become more intentional about utilizing free-writing moments in class or pair and share opportunities for students to connect learning to their life contexts. In residential course assignments I am now more explicit about expecting and rewarding innovative connections to life contexts that expand the contextual awareness of the entire class. Prioritizing Desired Competencies: Teaching online has also challenged me across teaching contexts to be more explicit not only about what I want students to know, but what I want to see students be able to do. For example, in an online theology course I want students to learn how to respectfully engage one another online around complex aspects of Christology. I realized I had a similar “hidden” objective in the residential version of the course which is now in the syllabus. Prompted by online experimentation, I have also reframed some residential course objectives as desired competencies a student must demonstrate by the end of a course. For example, I added three prayer competencies in a residential course on Trinitarian themes: a well-crafted pastoral prayer, a memorized scriptural benediction, and an unscripted blessing and anointing. In these competencies, students could see the beauty and pastoral impact of Trinitarian language. And I could celebrate and more accurately evaluate not only maturing knowledge but also new capacities and skills. Respecting Complex Life Contexts: In residential courses I am now more intentional about respecting students’ time by selecting strong but accessible readings, scaffolding assignments with straightforward expectations, and affirming good communication around the life challenges impacting their learning. Online courses are tailored to professional and working adults who must multitask across layered responsibilities: child or elder care, volunteer work, job commitments, full or part-time pastoral leadership, and graduate theological education. I remind students online that my own life is similarly complex. Mutual kindness and reasonable expectations are essential; I do not expect them to be online 24/7 and I deserve the same consideration. This has alerted me to the ways in which all of my students, including residential, are adults with complex life commitments and circumstances. I need to honor time on all sides and promote clear and open communication in both kinds of teaching spaces. These are some of the ways fruitful bi-directional cross-fertilization can happen between online and residential spaces of teaching and learning. There is much more to say. Stay tuned.

George Bernard Shaw, recipient of the 1925 Noble Prize in Literature and award-winning Irish playwright, famously said: “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” As I reflect back on my years of online instruction, I confess: I’ve made this mistake. I often assumed that students understood a post, an email, or a video I’ve made when they did not. Harder still is letting students know that the instructor is “on their side” and wishes their every success. Born from trial and error, here are my top 5 suggestions on the most effective ways for teachers to communicate with students online. 1. Make first contact and do it early The worst mistake I think I ever made was sending my greetings to students on the first day of class. It’s too late. Students need a few days to get a sense of the course, read the syllabus, ask questions, and carve sacred space in their busy schedules for the hours they need to study. Trying to do all these things and start on the first module when the term begins never works out well. Instead, I contact students weeks before the beginning of classes. I make a video introduction so they can see and hear that I’m a “live” person. In the video (a short 2-3 minutes), I give my greetings, say something about myself, share a vision of the course and why it’s important, and keep “business matters” to a minimum. Strategically, I set up a pre-class orientation module for the students to work through prior to the start of class. There they see the assignments at a glance and get a walk-through of the course shell. When the term officially begins, they are ready to jump into the first module. 2. Have office hours every week and make them consistent In an age when using Zoom, Big Blue Button, Skype, or other video conferencing tools is not only convenient but free, I recommend setting up regular office hours when a student can count on a specific day and time each week that you are online to “meet.” I send out a Doodle poll early so students can indicate their free hours in a given week. I try to pick two 1-hour time slots when most students can join. Then every week, I’m online in Zoom or Big Blue Button waiting for students to drop into the video conferencing session. While I wait, I can grade, write emails, and get tasks done. But as soon a person enters the session, I drop everything and we talk. Someone almost always shows up. Office hours assure the student that the instructor is available and present. It lets students know you want to help. It also gives me a pulse of how students are doing. Are they drowning in, or sailing through, each module? Meeting them through office hours is a quick reality check 3. Receive advice and implement suggestions when you can At times, students have great suggestions. It may be the case that the suggestion cannot be implemented right away, but if it can be done, I try to do it. It could be as simple as extending a deadline on a particularly tough assignment or providing samples of good bibliographies. Whatever the suggestion, implementing it gives a needed sense of ownership to my students 4. If you make a mistake, don’t be afraid to admit it and offer a fair resolution I remember one time when I was not informed that more than half my class would be taking a week off in the semester to attend a conference sponsored by my seminary’s denomination. There was no way these students could attend the conference and complete the next module. I saw no way forward but to contact each student and apologize for not incorporating the conference in the class schedule. I talked with academic services and with their help adjusted the course to accommodate the conference week. I dropped one major assessment. It was messy but the students were graciously cooperative. Whew! 5. Keep it positive Students get discouraged easily. If they are feeling the course is too hard, we work out a plan to move forward, whether it’s extra tutoring or adjusting study habits. The most important thing is to keep it positive. Hope inspires perseverance. Perseverance is what we all need to succeed.

Last year, my university offered online instructors two video tools on a trial basis: Flipgrid and VoiceThread. While VoiceThread’s features did not suit the classes on my schedule, I might incorporate it with advanced students in the future. Flipgrid, a Minneapolis-based educational startup (acquired in mid-2018 by Microsoft), uses an intuitive interface to allow students to create and upload videos on “grids” established by an instructor. First adopted in K-12 settings, the social media savvy generation can navigate the process with ease. It intrigued me enough to use it in both summer and fall General Education classes. As a mechanism for class introductions, Flipgrid is a slam dunk. Although my previous practice of asking students to post a brief introduction with a photo worked just fine, I enjoyed receiving candid video footage of students in their dorm rooms or apartments, as well as with their roommates and pets. The mobility of the app gave the students options and many decided to have fun. Other backdrops included hiking on the Blue Ridge, work sites, or even in the car with friends (no videos were filmed while driving). Moreover, all participants can easily access other classmates’ videos and they got interactive without being instructed to do so.  Another helpful function was as a conduit for questions about the class or the parameters of an assignment. Instead of fielding a number of separate private emails on the same topic, students made video queries and I posted answers for everyone to see. Using Flipgrid as a discussion board produced more of a mixed bag. First, the positives. Even though the videos were graded, I wanted lower stakes assignments than writing, and many students embraced that informality. I could therefore hear a student processing the questions I posed and thinking through the assigned materials. Because I also asked them to engage with the video of another student, I caught glimpses of how they negotiate differences. Additionally, the platform allowed me to build a scored rubric suited to the assignment and I could send individual responses (point totals and comments in writing and/or video). I liked that videos showed the personal. For instance, listening to posts with young children screaming in the background made the challenges of parenting as a student obvious. And Thursday, Friday, or Saturday night contributions, with folks getting ready to head out the door on dates or to parties (or, sometimes, coming back in) taught me a great deal about the social scene as well as fashion in clothing, hair, and jewelry . . . and preferred drinks which were quite visible.    But it did not prove all smooth sailing. Many students carefully curate their online identities and want control over their public personas. Even in Flipgrid’s private and password--protected space, evaluations indicated some students experienced anxiety about their self-presentation in this format. Unexpectedly, one way this concern manifested was through an uptick in plagiarism. While students on traditional threaded discussion boards sometimes cut and paste content without attribution, I never anticipated videos featuring students reading directly from websites as if the words were their own. But they did, and did so in significant numbers. My conversations with offenders about this behavior indicated fear about appearing less than knowledgeable in ways that amplify differently from a typed post. Workload also became a problem. While I thought video posting would prove less onerous for students, I hoped it might equate to grading traditional boards for me. Again, the results varied. Many students appreciated the chance to make contributions in this new format, but others reported choosing an online course because of a preference for writing out thoughts and were disappointed not to have that option. Still others refused to post a video until they thought it looked and sounded perfect, resulting in lots of takes and time sunk into the production. As for me, although I limited all videos to a maximum of 3 minutes, that meant listening to 2 posts per student weekly could run three hours straight for a single class of 30 students–extended, of course, by the need for breaks and to compose and enter feedback. It was the latter that truly took up time because grades assigned in Flipgrid did not automatically integrate into the learning management system gradebook. Instead, I recorded separate grades in Excel and then again in Moodle gradebook for the students (in addition to emailing my feedback through Flipgrid). Many days toward the end of the term, I longed for my old threaded discussion boards I could grade in an hour or so. Still, I do not regret being experimental with a new technological option. Learning how to incorporate a new pedagogical tool effectively always takes time. I will not abandon Flipgrid, but I do plan to modify my future use. It’s certainly a keeper for introductions and class questions. But instead of using it like a traditional discussion board, I am mulling over incorporating grids at the completion of a unit, or perhaps after a reading or a video, in order to allow students space to pose questions about an idea or a theory where they need additional clarification or to push on something I may not have stressed. I can also see assigning a student to make a short video presentation on a given topic where others will ask questions or pose challenges. Finally, using this tool helped me as a teacher. I became less uptight about posting only perfected content made when I was dressed in a certain manner and every hair was in place. In fact, I often posted from wherever I happened to be, including on the treadmill at the gym, while at the grocery store, and even from a friend’s hospital room. My students got to see me as a person with a life, too. That kind of interaction can get lost online. So even when this new toy failed to live up to my hopes, or I failed to use the resource to its best advantage, it nudged me to keep stretching as a teacher, to seek more effective ways to communicate. That outcome is never a bad one.

We are celebrating the 50th anniversary of Paulo Freire’s magnificent book Pedagogy of the Oppressed and the Wabash journal, Teaching Theology and Religion, has published a Forum to  to celebrate the book and Freire’s legacy. Very few books in recent history have made their way around the world expanding the ways people think about education and learning processes. Freire’s legacy is one that will always be developed and challenged. Developed by those who care for deep, critical thinking and challenged by people and governments who see the danger of Freire’s thinking. Regarding the latter, Jair Messias Bolsonaro, the new president of Brazil, where Paulo Freire is from, sees a danger in Freire’s work and legacy. While campaigning, the new president said that he would go into the Ministry of Education with a flame-thrower to burn anything associated with Paulo Freire. Even though Mr. Bolsonaro most probably has never read any of Freire’s books, he claims that Freire offers a sectarian and socialist education whose Marxist teachings undermine the education of the student. Along with Bolsonaro, the Brazilian new conservative movement called “Schools Without a Party” also blames Freire for making students receptacles of ideologists who want to put socialist interests before the love of Brazil and threaten the “Christian values” of family, property and church. It is with good reason that the president of Brazil and conservative sectors of society are all concerned with Paulo Freire. Freire’s education helps people to figure out their own lives more fully, to develop critical minds, to engage into social mobilization, to gain their own sense of liberation, and become subjects of their own history. This process helps people to see, judge and act, challenging all forms of power. Education for Freire is the unfolding of worlds for the one who is learning. It is a way to gain conscientization of one’s own life and the environment in which one lives. When Paulo Freire is teaching a village of fishers, he starts by asking people “what is a fish?” Then he asks what is the meaning of the fish to the community, and how fish and fishing are connected with their own ways of living, as well as how they relate with other fishing villages, the environment, and even big fishing companies. Through pursuing the meaning of the word “fish,” the fishers describe several power relations around their lives. In the end, people learn not only how to spell and write “fish,” but also how “fish” tells people about their lives, their world, and the other worlds with which they are connected. Done this way, education is a path from being oppressed to become free. Education is a way of giving voice to the voiceless and gaining conscientization that unleashes the struggle against the domination of those in power, of realizing that everyone has the strength to organize and struggle to change their lives. This form of education is everywhere in the world and as educators we must go where transformation is at work. In order to continue to honor Paulo Freire, we must acknowledge that popular education is present in the movements of resistance and emancipation. For us to get a better sense of what Freire’s pedagogy can do, we should listen to those who are at the bottom of society trying not only to survive, but to thrive. It is from those places that we gain a much better sense of what Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed means. As Oscar Soto says: The popular education of Paulo Freire is the possibility that workers, peasants, landless workers, excluded and marginalized people will think and re-invent themselves in the transit from being spectators to become genuine creators of the material conditions of life. It is not in vain that the language of the pedagogical rebellion of the oppressed is spoken in the popular movements, in the base communities, in the theories of dependencies, the sociologies of exploitation, the liberation theologies, the Latin American socialisms, the research/activism, participatory action and so many traditions of resistance in Our America.[1] On the other hand, Freire’s pedagogy can also be relevant for teaching contexts with privileged students in elite universities. It can help students gain a sense of vincularidad[2] or deep relationality, of unbalanced power, exploitation, and class struggle. By gaining consciousness of our lives in the relation with others and larger societies, we learn how to act towards somebody else, and move from protecting our own groups into seeking common justice for all. This opening of the world of oneself into the world of another brings a demand with it, namely that we engage in each other’s worlds. What happens then is that I have to check how my own ways of thinking and living are related to other forms of thinking and living, how my habits of eating fish relate to fishing villages and the massive destruction of the sea life by big corporations. This consciousness of our common situation and the fundamental sense of vincularidad challenge teachers and students in any school, poor or rich, to engage in uneven exchanges. Freire’s education for consciousness is the beginning of the unfolding of a vast world of wonders and imperfections that need to be engaged. For instance, if we want to deeply honor Paulo Freire and his legacy, we must respond to one of the most fundamental challenges of our times: patriarchy/fascism and the “masculine mandate.” Rita Laura Segato calls our attention to the war against women and how the new forms of fascism are aimed at the destruction of the women.[3] How can we engage pedagogies of liberation that help us engage and relate with this those being oppressed by it? How can we find tools, together, to understand it and create conditions of possibilities for transformation? Our lives, and the life of our planet, depend on forever-expanding forms of conscientization that keep demanding freedom, and justice for every person. In this way, the work of Paulo Freire, developed by the work of women, indigenous voices and popular movements, can reach any and every school and community, connecting us deeply with the work of Martin Luther King who said “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” (Letter from Birmingham Jail) [1] Oscar Soto, Freire, Mariategui y una educación popular campesino, Noviembre 22, 2018, http://contrahegemoniaweb.com.ar/freire-mariategui-y-una-educacion-popular-campesina/ [2]  Walter D. Mignolo and Catherine E. Walsh, On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis (Durham:  Duke University Press Books, 2018). [3] Rita Laura Segato, La Guerra Contra Las Mujeres (Madrid: Traficantes de Sueños, 2016).

"We are all wanderers on this planet.”[1] In my wanderings through the written word over the last month, I met the American poet Robert Lax (1915-2000). For a time his greatest claim to fame was his deep and lasting friendship with the Trappist monk Thomas Merton, yet Lax’s contributions as a poet are being unearthed. Lax’s work in and of itself did not receive much recognition within his lifetime--with the exception of the poem Circus of the Sun, a reflection on creation from the metaphorical viewpoint of his circus experience. Late in his life, Lax began writing aphorisms, one of which I came across twice in my wanderings. Michael N. McGregor, author of the biography, Pure Act: The Uncommon Life of Robert Lax, writes that Lax “sent an aphorism to his friend the artist Nancy Goldring that beautifully summarized how [Lax] had come to see his—and maybe everyone’s—task in life: ‘not so much finding a path in the woods as finding a rhythm to walk in’.”[2] This is indeed food for thought as we each meditate on Whose we are and who we are becoming as Beloved. I think this vital wisdom plays a critical role for us as theological educators and, perhaps even more so, as online theological educators. Many students come to us seeking what they need to know to spread the Gospel and asking what’s the path of Truth. Yet that is not ours to give. What is important is to help students find a rhythm to walk in so that within their journey they can contribute of themselves to building the Reign of God. It is not so much finding a path . . . as finding a rhythm to walk in. At a very practical—incarnational—level, I imagine many can relate to the need and importance of understanding expectations in much of what we do and to which we belong: jobs, sports, church, and family. Having that understanding provides the parameters of our being in those particular ecologies and relationships. However these expectations, while sometimes made explicit, are often communicated in subtle ways: the raising of an eyebrow from a colleague or a side glance at the end of a meeting from a supervisor, or an unscheduled conversation between parent and child in the kitchen over ice cream during the late hours. Without these face-to-face cues and moment-to-moment interactions—such as when we are in online learning environments—setting expectations and developing a rhythm of being is of utmost importance. As a neophyte of online pedagogy what I find most helpful to students, in addition to setting global course and assignment expectations, is to clearly delineate a way of being as community, i.e., to develop an ecology of being or a rhythm to walk in together. By this I mean, setting expectations for their relationships as learning colleagues. To do this, I frame our week in prayer, provide a weekly study guide and adhere to regular time frames. The importance of weekly communal prayer is discussed at length in an earlier blog: https://www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/2018/09/needling-students-to-authenticity/. Suffice it to say, prayer helps us—myself included—to “hold the tensions [we experience in the learning environment] as we deepen into greater self-awareness supporting one another in mutual learning and growth.” The weekly study guide provides a map for the week’s hopes and learning activities. It includes the weekly learning objectives and delineates step-by-step what needs to be accomplished with prompts such as: view the prayer video, view the introduction video, read X, Y and Z, attend to these questions as you read, online discussion instructions, and begin your research. Yes, I do have the module set up with each piece in logical progression, yet my experience is that students find the study guide itself supportive for learning. It provides a sense of security and helps students find their own rhythm of study within that structure. Finally, adhering to regular time frames is imperative. Regular time frames include the times for opening of a module, for online discussions, and for professor feedback. Our weeks of study run from Sunday at 7:00 pm (Central) to the following Saturday at 11:59 pm. Modules for the upcoming week’s materials open each Saturday at noon. This promotes focus on the week’s topic at hand and allows for students to plan their rhythm of study for the next week before it officially begins. Online discussions usually take two forms—for example, leader/summary or original/final word—and follow regular posting times such as: the leader posts by Wednesday, 11:59 pm; discussion occurs until Saturday at noon; and the summary post is due Saturday, 11:59 pm. Content and length expectations of the various posts are described in the weekly study guide. Expectations are important, and perhaps even more so are the feedback received by the student on her work. Critical feedback from the professor within two weeks provides students the opportunity to adjust their rhythms; perhaps they need to take more time reading, integrating, ferreting out important distinctions, or engaging their peers in substantive ways. Growth can occur and energies adjusted if students are provided regular and timely feedback. It is not so much finding a path . . . as finding a rhythm to walk in. Guiding students to operate from a regular rhythm in the online environment provides the support students need to develop their own rhythm of study. Guiding students to walk in a regular rhythm provides students the freedom to be; to engage ideas and one another—which is where their focus needs to be.  Guiding our students into a rhythm will not necessarily help them find the path of Truth, but perhaps to discover their own rhythm as they wander on this planet and create a path by which they live more deeply into the Truth. [1] Michael N. McGregor, Pure Act: The Uncommon Life of Robert Lax (New York: Fordham Press, 2015): 378. [2] McGregor, Pure Act, 381.

“Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.” So many of our students have a “Dorothy” experience when they enter theological and religious education. Our classrooms are not what they have had previous experience of. Our classrooms are not the local church, not Bible college, not the family reunion, not church camp, not church conference, not undergraduate school, not job site; not anything like they have ever had to traverse. The location of our adult classrooms, for many students, is unique. And, once the degree is received, it will be a space to which they never return. Our classrooms, for so many, are the most foreign space they have ever ventured into. So many students are out of their comfort zones. They are away from home. While our teaching goals are rarely to comfort our students, teaching students who are upset, distressed, and skittish does not make for good teaching or good learning. Like many schools, we have a growing number of commuter students. My school draws from the boroughs of New York City, Jersey City, and Newark. While those of us who are familiar with living in the suburbs do not think of it as a “dangerous” space, those brothers and sisters who call the city home can find thick forests and dimly lit walking trails to be a problem. One night after class I was walking home. Home was on the other side of campus. Between the building where I taught and home was the baseball field, then an expanse of unlit trails through the campus arboretum. I had walked this route at night for many years with no fear or trepidation. After class, I passed a student getting into his car. Edgar (not his real name) was headed back to the City. We quickly exchanged after-class-pleasantries, then I resumed my walk toward the woods. Edgar called out to me in a concerned tone, “Doc, where you headed?!” I turned around and told him I was headed home and said, “Good night.” Edgar got in his car, raced around the parking lot until he caught up to me. He rolled down his car window and in a distressed tone called me to his car. I walked over–not sure what was wrong. He asked if I was going to walk through the woods–in the dark, alone. I said yes. He asked, “Please let me drive you home.” Feeling Edgar’s concern for me, I got in the car. During our five-minute drive, he expressed his anxiety for being in “the country.” I told him I had lived here for many years and felt comfortable walking, even in the dark, in spaces I had come to know. He told me that if I needed a ride home after class for the rest of the semester that he would gladly drive me home. Before this experience, I had considered that students might be uncomfortable with new ideas or new people or new values presented in our classrooms. I had not previously considered that students might be uncomfortable with being “in the country”–away from the city–uncomfortable in the terrain where they did not know the rules and the pathways were, literally, unlit. Suppose an obstacle to good teaching is the literal space we occupy? What if we have city people who have ventured to the country, or country people who have ventured to the city, and are fearful of this unfamiliar space? In either regard we have students who are distracted by their uncertain safety, worried if they will get back home safely and without incident. What does it mean to teach with this kind of discomfort in the room? Dorothy, of The Wizard of Oz, turned her situation into a quest. She constructed a journey which eventuated in her return home. So many of our students are not on a quest; they simply want to get a degree and the degree-giving-place is located in a place that is very foreign, a long way from home, but commutable. They commute to the foreign place and then return home each week. I suspect some students resign themselves to being uncomfortable for the duration of their education. Complicating the discomfort and anxieties of our students, another dimension to their discomfort is the experience of possibility. Author bell hooks said, “The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy.” So many students resist encounters with “radical spaces of possibility” preferring instead spaces which are reliable and previously known. My first teaching challenge was at age thirteen when I taught elementary-aged children in my church’s summer day camp. Snack time was a favorite moment in the day’s schedule. The teachers would gather all the children in one room and provide fruit as a snack. Ralph, age 10, never ate his fruit snack. He would complain and ask for cookies or chips. One day I sat with Ralph who was pouting. I asked, in earnest, why he would not eat the fruit. He said, “Because you don’t know what you’re going to get.” I told him that I did not understand. Ralph said, “If you eat an orange you don’t know if it’s gonna be sweet or sour. It might be juicy or it might be nasty. But if you eat an Oreo – they all taste the same. You know what you’re gonna get.” Many of our students find our classrooms too risky with possibility. They simply want to know, like Ralph, that they are going to get what they previously know, what they previously experience as dependable. When we say learning will be discovery, newness, encounter with the unfamiliar, even transformative–the Ralphs in our classrooms recoil. They do not want to be transformed. Some of the resistance and anxiety is that lots of people do not have an adventuresome spirit. Or more to the point, students will say that in their busyness they do not have time for an adventure. The thought of new ideas is worrisome, even burdensome, rather than motivational or inspirational. Students’ discomfort about risking the randomness of learning is anxiety producing and can make our classrooms woeful. The spring semester is upon us and my syllabus is prepared. Even so, I do not have strategies to relieve the many real discomforts, anxieties, and fears of my students. Edgars and Ralphs will likely be in my course as well as a few new kinds of fears I have yet to catalogue.  By now I have enough experience to know that much learning can happen even when fears, uncertainties, and reservations are not calmed or eased.  Beyond that, I know I need to be a non-anxious presence for the sake of all of my students and me.

I distinctly remember what my husband said when he found me typing an email to a student in the middle of the night, the glow of my laptop illuminating my face in the darkness: “You need to set better boundaries.” Suffering from insomnia–whether it was in the late stages of pregnancy or the first year of night feedings, I can’t remember–I rationalized my behavior by saying that I was being productive since I was up already, and that the student seemed genuinely distraught by the state of their paper in light of a pressing deadline. In fact, his words resonated profoundly with my own sense of being out of balance. Online teaching can blur the boundaries between our work and our lives. People readily remark that online courses take a long time to design and develop, but less time to administer. In other words, they are more front loaded than face-to-face courses. However, communication and interaction with students over email, Skype or Zoom, or even face-to-face can also place considerable demands on our time during the course of the semester. Because we can virtually correspond anytime and anyplace, it is easy to find oneself replying to students during times that one would not even entertain the possibility of a face-to-face meeting. An added pressure is that online students consider prompt responses and feedback from their instructor crucial and an indication that they care. On their evaluations students report greater satisfaction when they receive prompt replies to their emails. Yet we do a disservice when we reply as soon as we see their email, regardless of the time of day. Although this might create a greater sense of satisfaction on the part of our students, it fuels the idea that instructors are constantly “on call” and undermines their own capacity to delay gratification, which is a crucial skill for self-regulated learning. Moreover, when they see that we have emailed in the middle of the night, they may conclude that it’s all right to prioritize other things over sleep, rest, and wellbeing. We lose the opportunity to model to our students a more balanced, mindful approach to our communication and interaction. Mindfulness encourages us to cultivate an embodied presence, receptivity, and awareness of ourselves and our surroundings, so that instead of immediately reacting to what we experience, we can instead create space for a more thoughtful response. We may overlook our bodies as we interface with digital devices and screens, but as Linda Stone has observed through the phenomena of “email apnea” – the temporary absence or suspension of breathing, or shallow breathing, when doing email (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/just-breathe-building-the_n_85651) –our online interactions have physical, emotional, and cognitive ramifications. By immediately replying to students’ emails, I was failing to address my own sleep habits, and I was not giving the space for students to try to resolve their problems by themselves. In the case of students who had clearly procrastinated and emailed me an hour or two before a deadline, one could even argue that I was encouraging bad habits. Aiming for a quick turnaround, I was being reactive rather than responsive. A more mindful approach would have aligned my online communication with the expectations laid out in my syllabus, where I explain that email is my preferred method of contact, and that they should expect a reply within 24 hours. Those parameters allow for balance: one can establish hours to be offline. Admittedly, we may still find the need to accommodate students even when it impinges on our personal lives. Once I found myself emailing back and forth with a student, trying to clarify the expectations of the final project, when he suddenly asked, “Can we talk over the phone?” Although I was at my parents’ house, I felt bad and agreed to call. Bracing myself for the potential of a half-hour interruption, I dialed his phone number. After responding to various questions I hung up and looked at my phone. It had taken less than ten minutes. This made me realize that we should take advantage of multiple channels of communication with our students. In another case, a student asked if we could meet face-to-face to discuss his ePortfolio for the course. We sat together looking at his laptop, and he scrolled through some of the ePortfolio pages to ask about my comments and suggestions. Again, within a very short span of time, I was able to address all of his concerns . . . and meet the student in person. These kinds of interactions with students–over the phone, via Zoom or Skype, or in person–not only show that we care about our students, but they contribute to a greater sense of embodied presence. Although I still have a long way to go, I have found myself trying to be a more mindful online teacher, for the sake of both myself and my students.

In theological education, students who go to school online are frequently students who remain at home throughout their degree programs serving in faith communities they know well. This reality affects their formation and affects how teachers approach it. There are some advantages to the situation. As Elaine Ramshaw writes about teaching pastoral care online: “The fact that many of the students are also concurrently doing what one might call ‘embedded’ parish work, and that some of them are the pastoral leaders of their congregations, can be a plus for teaching in any of the practical fields.”[i] For example, in a class on pastoral leadership I might teach students how to lead decision-making via consensus process. An assignment option for that class might then be to lead their church board through consensus process. Assignments carried out in students’ ministry contexts represent what in higher education are called “authentic assessments.” Defined as real-world activities mirroring the very sorts of tasks students will practice in the professions for which they are preparing, authentic assessments are widely valued for their role in formation. They are also sometimes perceived to be tricky to create. But when online students can simply turn a camera on in the place they already work, authentic assessment becomes easier. I have learned several ways to take advantage of the video camera in assessing ministerial formation. The first thing I tell students is that because it is their development I care about, I will be watching and listening to them, not their congregants. They should train the camera on themselves and not worry about capturing everybody on film. They will upload the video to a secure channel, I will be the only one viewing it, and they can delete it once I have done so. Moreover, I tell them, I’m not assessing their congregants. Activities do not have to go perfectly for me to get a sense of students’ leadership abilities. Whether or not, for example, their board actually reaches consensus on a decision is not the point. These reminders help students help their folks to relax, act naturally, and forget about the camera. The hope is that I will, in fact, see a truly authentic ministry event. It appears to work. The video camera becomes quite literally like a fly on a wall that ceases to be noticed after a while. Therefore, filming has certain advantages over direct personal observation of students, which in face-to-face education is often considered the ideal way to assess student formation. The second thing I tell students is that they must watch their videos. I was surprised when I first started teaching online to discover how often they did not. I appreciate the self-consciousness and even pain associated with seeing a tape of oneself, but one of the best ways to learn how to be a minister is to watch oneself in the act of ministering. Videotaping uniquely allows for this kind of learning. The third thing I tell my students is that by watching a video of them in action, I will learn more about their context and gain appreciation for the challenges they face. The videos give me access, after all, not only to students whom I would never see otherwise because of distance, but also to real conversations being held in real church parlors, basements, and Sunday School rooms. It doesn’t get more ‘authentic’ than watching a bunch of folks sitting around a table sipping Diet Cokes, quieting fussy babies, and occasionally digressing from the exercise at hand to rehash last night’s big game. Watching the videos makes me realize how difficult the skills I’ve taught in class can be when practiced authentically. I cannot help but see what goes on. I see all the distractions and interruptions that come with trying to get church folk to have a serious conversation. I’ve watched my students struggle to manage dominant personalities, deflect obvious attempts at alternative agendas, and finish exercises in time to get to the second service. I have even watched somebody suffer a stroke in the middle of a meeting. A final advantage of authentic assessment via videotape is that teachers come to appreciate the true breadth and complexity of ministerial formation. [i] Elaine Ramshaw, “Reflections on Teaching Pastoral Care Online,” Reflective Practice: Formation and Supervision in Ministry, Volume 31 (2011), 62. This entire volume of Reflective Practice is dedicated to formation and supervision in a digital age.