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A major task that our students will have to undertake is to create a sustainable way of life. To do so, they need to be able to understand how to analyze themselves, especially how their behaviors and worldviews are connected with social and environmental effects. To our misfortune, this is also the living generation with perhaps the least ability to self-analyze, to patiently plot out long-term goals, and to withstand the psychological pains of self-transformation. To meet the demands on this generation for sustainability, I made metacognitive tasks central to an introductory course on world religions, with a personal emphasis on sustainability. I was surprised at the degree of resistance and struggle at metacognitive tasks, and I have recommendations to improve success. Context and Problem I teach at a racially diverse R1 state university with some unique courses on world religions. Namely, we teach an introductory course that is offered statewide and that is reciprocally accepted at colleges across the state. In addition, there is a general course with more students and fewer credit hours, a traditions course for humanity students and religious studies majors, and a graduate-level course that examines the concept of “world religions.” For the introductory course, faculty are free to take their own approach that would appeal to humanities and non-humanities majors alike. I chose to reorganize my version around sustainability. I am in some ways following the lead of scholars like Mary Evelyn Tucker who advocate that we integrate environmental concerns into our classrooms and scholarship. But, more fundamentally, I am expanding my work on racial minority communities—Asian American, African American, and Native American—who are increasingly concerned with the coupling of social justice and environmental racism. Thus, my goal of centering a world religions course sustainability has foundations in the pressing issues of social and environmental degradation that my racially diverse student body are confronting in their communities. Since students are, or will soon be, facing these great problems, I thought that they would be willing to take on relatively simple challenges of self-evaluation. I was both right and wrong. I created course assignments that required students to analyze themselves and the natural world around them utilizing metacognition. Metacognition—in its simplified definition of reflection and “thinking about thinking”—is natural for the religious studies classroom because it undergirds common practices in religion. However, its formal definition in cognitive science and pedagogy has not been commonly applied in our field. As psychologist Anastasia Efklides articulates, “metacognition is a representation of cognition that provides awareness of cognition” (138). Largely in pedagogy, this image of cognition provides students the ability to see why they should know information and how they will be tested. When students become conscious of where information sits in this “image,” they can adjust study habits to be more efficient test-takers and with practice become proactive learners who “seek solutions to any problems they may encounter” (McGuire, 16). Skill in metacognition can be incorporated into lecture, class activities, exam preparation, and post-exam assessment. Tests can focus on one’s skill in knowing where information sits. Additionally, as my Georgia State colleague Molly Bassett has done, metacognition can be incorporated into multiple-choice exams in religious studies (Bassett). In these ways, the practice of representing cognition can be incorporated to nearly any class, and can help students develop more control over course content and help provide instructors a better sense of how their students are learning. Upper-division courses can utilize metacognitive tasks to reexamine the same topic or idea at multiple points in the semester, thus allowing the class to see how they are applying different processes of interpreting the same thing and deriving different results. Introductory courses do not have this luxury of focus. Instead, I had students examine the only consistent object through the semester: the students’ selves. I broke the self into two sides—how one sees oneself and how one sees the world—and detailed religious conceptions of the self and worldviews. I accordingly created two assignments and a final paper to bring these two tasks together. The first metacognitive assignment is called the Creature Journal. It is an observation journal, like scientists, observe plots of land over time, but modified for the religious studies classroom. Based on research supported by Wabash, I found an expansive definition of “person” in indigenous cultures that includes animals, plants, and natural features like mountains and lakes (Norton-Smith). Students may choose any “person” (which I replace with “creature”) as long as they can observe it throughout the semester. For each journal entry, they take on the worldview of a different religion and write down their observations. The trick is that even though they are observing something else, they are really discovering their selves because they get to vicariously be someone else for the period of the assignment. For example, in one memorable creature journal, a student observed a tree with the lens of Hindu karma and reincarnation, and saw that the tree swayed like a person in the breeze. In fact, a common comment from students is that they have never taken the time to see a nonhuman as a living thing and have never observed the lack of care it receives. Thus, by looking outward they learned to form an image of their interconnection or lack-thereof to other “creatures”; this practice also conforms to the more formal definition of metacognition. The second assignment is called Reflections. To help students form an image of their selves to reflect upon, I created a diagram of the construction of worldviews and a model of a cycle of learning and transformation. With these two images, students are asked to reflect upon worldviews and how they transformed. To simplify the assignment, each part of the assignment takes one step in the cycle and students choose one aspect of their worldview to analyze. The aspects are drawn from the diagram of worldviews, which depicts major categories, like values, beliefs, experiences, and senses, that undergird worldviews. The aspect of the worldview is any part of any category, like the belief that “everything happens for a reason.” In the Reflections students consider where the aspect came from, what it means for them today, and how it might transform in the future. The trick for the Reflections is that the even though they are analyzing their selves, they are really discovering how they see the world. For example, one student discussed how charity became central to her core values. When the student was in middle school, her family became involved in a charity that distributed clothes to the homeless, and now in college, she cannot see her life without a significant dedication to charity. In this way, through the assignment, she practiced analyzing her self and formed an image of the self that is connected to values, a habit of giving, people in general, and her family. In the final paper, which brings together the two metacognitive assignments, this student was able to compare her own history and conception of charity to the worldviews of other religions. Thinking-about-thinking thus enabled the student to understand that traditions shape religious worldviews and individual experiences reinforce particular aspects of religious worldviews. The final paper also asks students to consider how an aspect of their worldview assists or deteriorates sustainability. In this example, the practice of charity towards the homeless aids social sustainability, since it upholds the stability of society, and environmental sustainability, since it reuses clothing and household items that otherwise would go directly to landfill. Consequently, the student was able to connect her practices to society, the environment, and religious worldviews. In such ways, metacognition can be an important vehicle for developing systemic, multileveled thinking that is essential for reforming one’s relationships in order to create a sustainable world. Struggles and Advice While a few students leave with dramatic transformations in understanding their selves and worldviews, along with an experience connecting complex current issues to the study of religion, a significant portion of the students resisted metacognitive activities and assignments. I anticipated a little resistance because metacognition is unusual for courses, but I hoped that the desire to work on a significant issue of their day and Millennials’ narcissistic tendencies would make up the difference. This generation—the Millennials—are notoriously narcissistic (Hoover; Howe & Strauss), so I hoped that spending the semester focused on themselves would be natural and productive. The problem is that narcissism also entails fragility, and self-analysis threatens the stability of the self (which is an important step of self-analysis). As a result, students consistently asked why they needed to think about themselves, and I developed a few ways to mitigate these issues. Pointing externally, students complained that course information was not being provided. To counter this, I consistently provided study guides at the start of each unit of the course. I also utilized concepts in class lectures, discussions, and activities, and the assignments required the use of course concepts. One student objected that the course focused too much on my own interests and not enough on religion. To meet this issue, I explained thoroughly several times throughout the semester that according to department practice each professor teaches this course by centering their own expertise and using it as a glue to introduce religions to students with diverse academic interests. Moreover, every reading and lecture was on religion. I also anticipated the concern over focusing on a theme that may seem too based in my own politics. To mitigate this concern, I emphasized the ethical and moral argument that environmental and social degradation is a problem for all the world’s peoples and that religions’ collective wisdom can alleviate the impact of our collective follies. The study guides, assignments using course concepts, clear goals for the course, and ethical call for self-evaluation all helped to address student anxiety with metacognition and self-analysis. Overall, I found that, in addition to the practical adjustments just outlined, there is a need to consistently and frequently encourage and relieve students as they take on metacognitive tasks. I keep assignments open to different levels of self-analysis and self-disclosure, so students can choose the level of sensitivity or superficiality with which they are comfortable. I model self-analysis by alternating humor and seriousness, light self-deprecation and deep self-critique, personal stories and scientific data on the impact of my own choices. With student preapproval, I also highlight interesting and solid work done by the students. I found this multilevel honesty and support brings students to feel strong, especially those who want to become responsible citizens of the world as well as those who had already taken on responsibilities in their lives, such as students with considerable family commitments, dedications to communities, and who have taken on military service. Given the pushback by anxious Millennials, the conscious and consistent efforts to alleviate anxieties, and the potential benefits of incremental self-transformation and sustainability, I feel it is worth it to tackle metacognition and sustainability in the religious studies classroom. My numerical validations have so far taken a hit, but the qualitative value of self-confident and self-evaluating students self-sacrificing for the good of the world outweighs the costs, in my opinion. References and Other Sources Bassett, Molly H. “Teaching Critical Thinking without (Much) Writing: Multiple-Choice and Metacognition.” Teaching Theology & Religion 19, no. 1 (January 2016): 20-40. Efklides, Anastasia. “The New Look in Metacognition: From Individual to Social, From Cognitive to Affective.” In Metacognition: New Research Developments, ed. Clayton B. Larson, 137-51. New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2009. Hoover, J. Duane. “Complexity Avoidance, Narcissism and Experiential Learning.” Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Learning, 38 (2011): 255-60. Howe, Neil and William Strauss. Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation. New York: Vintage Books, 2000.

Back in the summer of 2017, these Deans of theological schools from the US and Canada set out on a journey of building a community of trust, respect, friendship, and collaboration to work on some of the most challenging issues facing theological education today. Comprising a religiously and geographically diverse group of leaders, the Wabash Deans Colloquy has embraced over its two, four-day sessions (Summer 2017 at Wabash College; and Spring 2018 on Mustang Island, TX) the signature Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion combination of rigorous collaborative peer learning with community building and play in order to navigate the boundaries that divide us religiously (Evangelical, Roman Catholic, mainline Protestant, and Christian and Muslim), and the contemporary institutional instability that often seems to foster a spirit of competition rather than collaboration among our schools. 
  On this journey we explored the alignment of Deans' vocations with the mission of our schools, probed possibilities for ways our teaching and learning can promote the common good in our different contexts, and considered how best to equip ourselves for academic leadership in curriculum revision, assessment, and faculty and student formation in times of intense cultural and religious change. We've shared in prayer, meals, card games, deep conversation, hot putt-putt golf (like hot Yoga, but golf), dolphin watching, and collaborative writing with one another.  Formed now as a collegium, our voyage continues. Just what the future holds is not certain for theological education in any of our contexts, but no matter the challenges or opportunities we face, we are thankful that one thing the future holds is the promise of traveling in such good company.

Interrupting Institutional Patterns of Trauma (Non)Response Moving is difficult. In the past twenty years, I’ve moved fifteen times and I am in the middle of another move right now. Some moves were by choice and others due to unexpected circumstances. Moving is laborious–packing, reimagining space, anticipated and unanticipated expenses, unpacking, broken pieces of cherished material items, revisiting old stuff, exposing the insides of a home to anyone who offers to help at a time when one needs a lot of help, communicating address changes, responding to the questions that arise: now why are you moving? In the academic life, moving takes valuable time away from research and good teaching, service and self-care, thinking and writing.  At least three times at three very different parts of my life, I have been offered the opportunity to move when faced with a potentially traumatic set of circumstances. Someone in the building is threatening? You can move to another building. Something happened that violated the safety of your placement? You can move to another placement. Something in your classroom is disruptive to your teaching? You can move to another classroom. The subtext is often “deal with it or move, nothing is going to change here.” And I have found myself responding on a visceral level: I’m Not Moving, You Move!  I’ve also seen this response given to colleagues and students. Institution is toxic? Go back on the job market or switch schools. Toxic roommate? Move to a different dorm. Toxic work environment? Move to a different floor. Internship is not holding up its part of the bargain and supervisor not supervising? Switch internship placements. Instructor made an inappropriate comment that made a student uncomfortable? Move the student to another section. The subtext remains “deal with it or move, nothing is going to change here.” And still, I hear that visceral voice: I’m Not Moving, You Move! Moving in order to leave a toxic situation can be life-saving and should not be minimized. In my pastoral care classes, for example, I teach students to partner with local domestic violence shelters to know whom to call to help future parishioners, clients, and colleagues be ready to leave (seminary doesn’t train pastors for this, so they need to partner). The underreported statistics are clear: every institution has some history or current instances of violence and, as a leader, you are identified as a safe or unsafe person to consult for help.  Sometimes students can’t believe that it can take an average of seven attempts to leave a dangerous relationship of intimate partner violence. Sometimes students say, why can’t they just move? Survivors in the community know the answer: moving is difficult and intertwined with all kinds of complexities. Moving itself can be life or death. At worst, immovability advocates don’t just tell more vulnerable persons with the least moving expense resources to move, they say, “move or die.” In one of the FaithTrust training videos, an interviewee who left an intimate partner violence relationship and was the pastor’s wife, said that she could have stayed, but then she’d be a dead pastor’s wife.[1]  Moving can be life itself, but who is asked to move? From an interpersonal to a systemic view, why do systems foist all the moving on the more structurally vulnerable party, often requiring nothing of the system? Again, we know the answer--moving is difficult. According to Sarah Ahmed’s research on complaints in higher education around harassment and diversity-related infractions, it is the nature of institutions to put up brick walls where they don’t want to or can’t imagine moving.[2] All the packing, unpacking, exposing, digging up old things, hidden expenses, phone calls to change over all the bills, address changes, explaining the move–in the best of cases, it’s a lot. In more dire situations, it can be so emotionally draining to move. Why can’t the system take on more moving responsibilities? Why can’t the toxicity makers be made to move so that everyone can live in a less toxic environment?  Someone in the building is threatening? Make the building community safer. Revisit policies, revising and setting up new accountabilities. Something potentially threatening is happening in your placement? Take the placement off the list for now and rethink training, supervision practices, and accountabilities for placement supervisors. Something in your classroom is disruptive? Increase reporting and responding channels so that the classroom supports learning and thriving. Instructor made an inappropriate comment that made a student uncomfortable? Believe the student and move the instructor, providing training and counseling for all parties. Use the policies in place for this situation or create them.  Somedays I think I never want to move again. I don’t want anything else to break by accident. I don’t want to fill out another mail forwarding request and hope I remember to move everything over to a new address, finding out months later what I forgot or not finding out at all. You’d think I’d have all this down by now, but moving is exhausting. I have experiences of having been asked to move without any movement on the part of anyone else who could have moved and helped the situation immensely. Other times, it’s clear that I am part of a system that rewards immovability and I must remember the importance of moving together and then move. But I do like the experience of having moved because having moved can restore and create possibilities for new life. Where in your life, work, and institution can you see needs for such restoration? Where in your institution are more minoritized or more vulnerable community members being asked to move and change while the system remains unchanged? What can you do to influence systemic change to flip the script: You shouldn’t have to do all the moving, I’ll move too?  [1] See www.faithtrustinstitute.org [2] Ahmed, Sara, Living a Feminist Life, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017

“Spiritual Companioning for Ministry” is a course I recently taught for the first time for a colleague when she took a well-deserved sabbatical. She shared her syllabus and course plan with me and told me that she usually taught it to about 12 students which worked well for the topic. A couple of weeks ahead of the semester, I realized that I was going to have to make some major changes fast; close to 40 students had registered. The class involves a lot of sharing, often around intense topics, in order to become skilled in responding to the issues that surface when companioning others on their spiritual journey. I needed to design a way for so many students to have the ability to engage the texts as well as form a confidential and trusting learning community for the many discussions of this course. The key was to build effective small groups, which we called learning teams. Because Catholic Theological Union has students from around the world we used part of the first class to divide students into learning teams that allowed for diverse voices in each group. During that first class, we also discussed small group dynamics and the learning teams were invited to develop “ground rules” or covenants they wanted to keep with one another. (Examples of covenant points include confidentiality, cell phone use, planned facilitators etc.) The learning teams soon became the cornerstone of the class. They provided a rich framework for practical experience and integration of course material. Community within each learning team was fostered in a number of ways: The classroom was rearranged so that each learning team had a table to sit around. Tables were spaced so that intimate conversations could take place and other groups were not too close. This physical arrangement set the tone for the atmosphere I was hoping to foster in the class. Each session included discussions within learning teams. Discussion prompts might have been for groups of two or three or discussions for six, but students were always in discussions with someone from their learning team. This allowed for a mix in the types of discussion but kept discussions within the learning teams to build relationships throughout the semester. Each class began with a reading assessment where learning teams would discuss the readings and work through an assignment of questions or activities about the readings. This encouraged each student to stay on top of the readings, as their small group would expect their participation in these weekly conversations. Students completed “noticing journals” on our online D2L course management system. They were asked to post brief responses to prompts such as “Discuss a time this week you talked with someone about prayer” or “Discuss a time this week you noticed someone talking about or discerning a decision.” These posts would be read and responded to by learning team members online. One of the gifts of the online discussions was that students who were more hesitant to participate in the larger class setting had an easier time participating in the online forum. Throughout the semester, the worksheets on the readings, the noticing prompts, and in class discussions were more involved. Students engaged one another on progressively deeper levels. I spent less time engaging them in a large group but floated around the room checking in on their discussions, answering questions, and making notes for the next class’ lecture based on what I was noticing in the teams. During the semester, several students experienced serious illness or a death of a beloved family member. The learning teams provided an intimate hands-on forum for spiritually companioning one another in a way that the larger classroom could not have handled. On the last day, I brought in “talking pieces” that represented various discussions from the semester and invited students to “end well.” Learning teams were encouraged to select a talking piece and give each person in their group a challenge, a commendation, and a blessing. The learning teams took their time with this session; some continued well beyond the allotted class time. The sharing was deeply emotional and confirmed that learning teams within a large class provided the framework that modeled and built companionship in a profound way.

How do theological educators help students face the constant reality of failure? Picture this scenario: a second career divinity student suffers health and financial troubles that impede her studies. The impact of these issues revives past psychological wounds. Enduring this morass of difficulties leads to the student’s failure in several class assignments. Further, the weight of the unresolved emotional burdens, partly resurrected through themes in classwork, results in crippling pessimism, angst, and depression. The student begins to conclude that dropping out of school is the only solution despite the negative ramifications this decision will have on her career goals. What are the pedagogical possibilities for instructors and students with regard to issues of failure both in and out of the classroom? In addition to keeping students aware of campus and local health resources that accommodate various needs (including psychological and counseling services, for instance) instructors can develop a helpful methodological ethos around success and failure in the classroom. As the prophet Jeremiah testified, “You shall say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord: When people fall, do they not get up again? If they go astray, do they not turn back?’” (Jer. 8. 4) Pedagogical strategies for encouraging students to confront and overcome failure begin with instructors modeling a lack of fear in this regard. Teachers are not perfect. Nor are lectures, teaching plans, or classroom activities executed perfectly at all times. Responding to hiccups in real time classroom settings indicates there is a way back from past failures as well as traumas that may be at the root of student underperformance. This models effective coping strategies for students. Further, it is helpful to assist students to find ways of processing how the legacy of trauma, both collective and personal, affects learning. Part of the impact of trauma is the defensive posturing in individuals and societies that tends to obscure the origins or initial events that contributed to experiences of upheaval. Theological education, which assists in the dissemination of epistemologies based in critical inquiry, enables students to interrogate traditional and received interpretations, even if, in some cases, only to validate them. Just as the use of critical inquiry in coursework can provide opportunities for facing themes and opening pathways related to trauma in social experience, so can pedagogical strategies, structured in this framework, hone methodological skills of survival and success for students. Developing opportunities for students to enact these strategies also enables instructors to assess the usefulness of particular methods and modes of presentation. The familiar mantra, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,” was originally written to encourage students in the educational process. Indeed, teachers can develop specific strategies to help students face problems in classroom performance. These include not only acknowledging difficulties when they arise but also incorporating tactics that analyze obstacles in classroom exercises. For example, tracing patterns or connections, dissecting complications, wrestling with incongruities, working through potential solutions, and testing their implications in classroom exercises model the confrontation skills necessary for overcoming failure. Built on the paradigm of evaluation, critique, and re-evaluation, such teaching methods can help develop the kinds of students who encounter defeat, yet refuse to fail.

Emily Dickinson said, "Hope" is the thing with feathers - That perches in the soul - And sings the tune without the words - And never stops - at all- Yet hope is not confidence This bird--frozen in flight and in death--evokes for me both the hope Dickinson speaks of and the precarity that so many feel in these uncertain times. Many theological school deans lead in contexts where success and failure, gain and loss lie close together. The landscapes of education, church, and society have shifted radically under our feet. The future of many institutions cannot be discerned. There are greater forces at work--some benign, some destructive, all-powerful, few predictable. Attempts to fly might fail and no one, in particular, will be at fault. Paradoxically, theological educators are daily in the business of nourishing hope, of remembering, deepening, and empowering the vision of God’s radical love for humanity and creation ever-unfolding in the world. There is no shortage of need or demand for this work. And yet deans are doing a disservice to that work if an institution and its people are blind to the realities and risks before us. Cultivating collective hope means facing together the risks with creativity, candor, and courage. As Ernst Bloch has said, “hope is the opposite of naive optimism . . . It is critical and can be disappointed.” This bleak and beautiful image captures for me the work and commitment of theological education in these times--so precarious and yet soaring with possibility.

Walking the beach, I am caught by the ordered chaos of blue and white shards oriented around a large center shell. What a great image of centered-set thinking, I muse, and pull out my phone to capture the image. Isn’t a part of the deans’ job to keep pointing to the center? To guard not the boundaries but the heart? In the midst of shifting cultural forces, the changing nature of the institutional church and theological education (all our usual suspects), we are committed to a common mission, living a common life, journeying toward a common goal. But a poet reminds me that “things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” And the words trouble me because I long for the center to hold. What I don’t see, until I bring the captured image up on my screen, is the bright luminous reflection offering me a glimpse of another reality to which the whole enterprise is oriented. And I think, yes, it is true. The deans’ job is to keep orienting toward the center and fortunately, we do not do it alone.

My course began with an iconic book by bell hooks and ended, after several other readings, with a beloved text by Parker Palmer. On the last day of class, a white woman student came up to me to tell me how much she enjoyed the course (she had earned an A in the course), and to give me feedback, saying, “Next time, start with the white guy and not bell hooks; it will be easier for us white people to stay in the conversation.” So much teaching is complicit with dominant race ideologies and patriarchy, yet we yearn for different ways to teach. White normative approaches to disciplinary-subject matter, reading lists which strain to add even one non-white author, grading standards which insist upon majority culture assessment categories are only a few of the ways that the ideals which normalize whiteness permeate our daily living and teaching. Disrupting these patterns of evil and shifting these detrimental values takes mixing things up, muddling stuff, creating newness and difference. Increasing our knowledge of new resources and redefining our criteria of what might constitute acceptable academic resource for our classrooms, might be a way forward. Look for narratives which resist and repudiate the story of whiteness. Stories that champion and reinforce whiteness and patriarchy, stories that allow for a token few minoritized people to triumph, but refuse to portray a change in the oppression for all or stories which never question the absence of powerless people in significant roles permeate our airwaves and imaginations. We are persons immersed in the narrative which supports and promotes white supremacy, white nationalism, and patriarchy. We have to find ways to resist. A critical challenge for all teachers who want to teach as a disruption to whiteness and patriarchy is that, regardless of personal social location, each of us must expand our knowledge of freedom narratives. We, all of us, given the ethos of the United States in the 21st century, must with great intent, seek out and immerse ourselves in the counter-narratives to the lie of whiteness. We must internalize a narrative of freedom, love, creativity, and forgiveness. We must believe in the sacredness and worth of all human beings and teach this story in unflinching and believable ways. As a spiritual discipline, take time to fill your consciousness and imagination with freedom narratives as a way to fortify yourself for teaching against the status quo. We must re-teach ourselves in order to teach toward freedom.   Read stories that depict and portray people of color as intelligent, generative, and caring human beings – as normal. This is why the movie Black Panther was so popular and so refreshing. It did not start and end with chattel slavery. It made use of fresh portrayals of people of the African diaspora which told a story of community, kinship and the complexity of freedom.  Avoid the motifs of the individual superhero like the ways Martin Luther King’s or Harriet Tubman’s legacies have been distorted. Look past the stories of inferiority and degradation often told in the daily news cycle. Find stories where the women are not one-dimensional wooden beings and the people of color are not gratuitously violent, oversexualized, or stupid. Teach yourself to identify the narratives of freedom and bring them into your classroom. In immersing yourself in freedom narratives, look for a multiplicity of mediums: film clips, music, screenplays, artwork, photography (all means of storytelling), and then consider making use of the best ones in your classes. Narratives that are sophisticated about race/gender politics are seeping into the U.S. culture. Look for new stories like “Dear White People” on Netflix. Binge watching both seasons of “Dear White People” took focus and stamina. I managed to do it in 48 hours – taking occasional breaks to walk my dog, get a snack and sleep. The well-written Netflix series is based upon an acclaimed film of the same name. The plot is set in a 21st-century fictitious college called Winchester University. The story depicts the lives of African American college students at this Ivy League, predominantly white university. The Black students are bright, articulate, culturally and politically conscious, and conscientious. In other words, the black folks are woke. The title “Dear White People” is a clue that the white folks of the community are not woke. The lead character and protagonist has a campus radio show. She often, to inform white peers, professors, and university administrators formats her radio soliloquies in the form of a letter which begins, “Dear White People.” Then in great poetic rant, she informs and reprimands the offending, or simply ignorant, white people about their white supremacy, privilege, and the ways their behaviors and the racist, sexist systems which privilege them, to which they seem to be oblivious, continually affect her and her friends. The poignant stories disclose and interrogate cultural bias, social injustice, misguided activism, and the zeal that comes with college-aged persons. The stories are also about the relationships of young people and the ways they struggle to negotiate their social, cultural, and intellectual growth. Creator and executive producer Justin Simien is a storyteller who understands the ever-present irony, bitter humor and too often anger for persons attempting to live life while being a target of white supremacy and patriarchy. “Dear White People” is an expanding of freedom narratives. This is the kind of material you want to explore for possible classroom use. Material which unapologetically tells the story from the perspective of the oppressed and the ways we navigate the dehumanizing terrain.  Consider radical ideas as you find new resources. What if you taught your introductory course with no white or male authors? Develop a course which is soundly disciplinary, but has no majority culture readings. This might mean using all articles and no textbooks, per se, but why not? Teaching to transform might not mean including a few voices of the marginalized --- it might mean excluding the voices of the oppressor so we can learn the perspectives, voices, and stories of the oppressed. And/or consider introducing each text to be read by providing, or having your students research, the social locations of each author. If an author is white and male, identify the person in this way. Resist only identifying the gender and race of authors who are female and people of color because it signals they are “exceptions” to the routinely read normal readings authored by white men.  Creating educational spaces for which the voices of the oppressed and marginalized is taken seriously, respected, even prioritized is a paradigm-shifting act – an act of freedom in which you can participate by the stories you bring into your classroom.

I imagine that once upon a time, a child joyfully ran along the beach in this sandal - picking up shells, building sculptures in the sand, playing in the waves. But, after a season at sea, this sandal would be difficult to walk in – it’s nearly broken in half, now the home of sea life, and no longer part of a pair. Plus, the child who wore it last summer has likely outgrown it. A new season calls for new equipment. Deans are called to help theological institutions, and the people within them, realize these same sorts of things. The shoes we’ve been wearing (perhaps our curricula, organizational structures, recruiting processes, systems of student support, and faculty cultures) don’t always serve us well in a new season. Moving beyond unneeded parts of the past – first naming and then letting go of old ways and sacred cows – can be difficult, however, and so deans also need to care well for faculty, staff, students, and ourselves amid times of significant change. It’s OK to swap out equipment, and sometimes it’s the best option. We still need shoes to get us where we are going, shoes that will provide cushion and support and protection and make the journey easier, but it’s likely time for a new pair of sandals. New equipment may take time to break in, but we can trust that it will serve us well in this new season and allow us to explore and build and play in response to the divine invitation to equip God’s people to serve as they have been called

The ocean – dynamic, powerful and vast – the dean must be willing to be there; walking with and leading others into the movements of change. The dunes - stable, protective and slow – the dean must be a stable and sustaining presence, standing strong with others in the midst of storms. Or perhaps the dean must be the bridge, creating the pathway between energies of stability and change; walking purposefully back and forth between the two and inviting others to walk along.