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Trauma is like a mirror that we don’t want to look into. It captures us at our worst angles. It accentuates what we want minimized and overlooks what we wish to be prominent. In trauma, we see projected the unwanted aspects of our realities in such a startling way that we forget everything over which we might have control. Sometimes we don’t have control over a lot. And if we are lucky, we are graced with a reminder that less can be more. To be clear, I don’t mean to make asceticism a virtue. Rather, I want to honor the irrelevant revelation where many on the brink find humor and solace—the fleeting thought of how “it could be worse.” On the flip side of that sentiment is an appreciation for the chance to no longer take what one has for granted. It is this latter posture that I think we teachers should become more accustomed to inhabit. If you follow me on social media, then you know that half of my best pedagogy comes from lessons learned while parenting. As I write, my six-year-old is wrestling in his first tournament. Kid Newton loves the sport. I like that he loves it. But the anxiety in the gym is as airborne as the body odor. And as these children face off, I can read the look in their faces. They are not scared of each other. They are afraid of their own limitations. Throughout this tournament, I have seen a lot of different coaching styles. I don’t have the foggiest idea about wrestling technique, yet I do know enough about teaching-learning to see what isn’t working. And the number one way to fail seems to be throwing a lot of new information at a student/athlete in the midst of a stressful situation. This results in a lot of takedowns, tears, and tantrums. I’ve also picked up some practices that seem to work on the mat, if not in the classroom. When trauma finds your students, consider having them do the following: Breathe. At a Wabash consultation, my colleague Dr. Melanie Harris would frequently lead my cohort in a few moments of collective breathing before we dove into the topic of the day. This may have been the single greatest takeaway from these intensive professional development experiences. In just a few silent moments of respiration, I found assurance that I had survived the previous moment and could be present in the current one. My mind stopped wandering to the future. My thoughts stopped dwelling on the past. So when I sense that my students are stressed or at dis-ease, I push pause on whatever we are doing and have us breathe. When we reenter into the activity, we are so much more prepared for what may come. Have space to be heard, read, and seen. Just like athletes need to breathe, people in trauma need a moment to vent. This doesn’t necessarily involve conspicuous expression, but perhaps just a moment to acknowledge what one has observed can go a long way. If I have a sense that we are in the middle of a traumatic moment, I like to start punctually but give students a chance to release their thoughts within the formal classroom time. This gives them license to work through preoccupation rather than be consumed by the trauma occupying them. Sometimes I just quickly name the event and have students free-write individually as they see fit. Other times I announce that we’ll take three minutes to talk about (or not) whatever they think needs to be discussed. In this situation, I move to the side of the classroom so that students can relate to each other as peers instead of to me as their instructor. When we move to our next activity, students seem to be calmer and more collected. Relax in their strengths. The traumatic moment can be a teachable moment, but not for skill acquisition. This is not the time to trot out radically new content. Instead, consider how you can bring out the things students know. What are the things that have been practiced, drilled, and rehearsed? Giving students a chance to bring these out will orient them toward the “more” ahead. Leaving a little room for free association or creative application can even bring a little hope in the midst of despair. As students rise to the occasion of just one task, they can remember that they have risen before and will rise again. None of these activities are novel. In fact, if you incorporate them into your regular teaching practices, they’ll be that much more effective in moments of testing. At the end of the day, the challenge isn’t ending the trauma. It is dealing with it. Just remember that you, in fact, do have the tools to begin doing so.

At many schools, the new academic year will begin with an interim Dean at the helm of the academic administration office. That's not a stretch for a guess as most deans in theological schools have a 4.3 to 4.5 year tenure. In most cases the interim deans will have come out from among the faculty---these are well-meaning, generous people willing to step up to the need of the moment. Most will likely not have previously served as dean, but will do a good enough job keeping the academic enterprise of the school going smoothly to some extent or another. They are to be thanked, for they'll give up a lot during their interim, and take on a responsibility that is critical to the institution; challenging, often thankless, and at times, overwhelming. Meanwhile, another group will step up to a different task: searching for the next dean. Before coming up with a list of questions to ask the candidates, the search committee will do well to answer the following questions for themselves: 1. How do we define success? Getting clear about what success means in your context and offering that vision to prospective deans is more fruitful than asking the question of them (e.g., "What is your vision of success for our school?" The honest answer to which is, "I can't know that yet."). What constitutes success is contextual to your school. The answer lies in the culture, shared values, academic intent, and the aspirations of your particular school. Some indicators of success are measurable, while others are aspirational. The one will keep you grounded, foster accountability, and inform strategies; the other will pull you forward---especially during difficult times. The clearer you as a search committee are about these, the more helpful in discerning your best choice among candidates. 2. What are the biggest challenges we face? While a search committee will put on a good face for a prospective dean and share all the good things about the school, a dean needs to know what challenges she or he will face coming to the position. To the extent the committee has done due diligence in identifying those challenges, has avoided self-referencing ("We're a great school because we believe we are."), and can be transparent and honest, will be the extent a prospective dean can discern whether or not there's a good "fit." That "fit," however, goes beyond personal likability, transactional familiarity, or cultural affinity. The best "fit" for a dean goes more to function than to role. All deans play the same role (they all have the same job description). Function, however, goes to the needs the school has at a particular point in its trajectory and within its contexts. A school in the midst of an institutional transition requires different functions of its dean than a school entering a period of development. A school requiring significant strategic re-organization needs a different dean than does a school in the midst of a crisis. No mature or experienced dean will be naive enough to think the job will be smooth, easy, or challenge-free. But deans need to know what the school requires of them that may not appear in the job opening announcement. The "right" dean will be the one who can help the school address its challenges. 3. In what areas must our new Dean create change and development; and how much change can we stand? Helping a school address its challenges will mean bringing about some level of change. A worthwhile conversation with a prospective dean will be about how well the school handles change and responds to challenges. If a school has change-fatigue from recent developments or transitions, it's not likely it will respond to an energetic, enthusiastic dean who sees herself as a "change agent," or to the impatient dean who "wants everything done by yesterday." Deans will of necessity bring about change in the institution---it's the nature of the job. How much change a school can stand is a product of capacity and willingness. Let the dean know where you stand. At the end of the day, one can only lead the willing. When it comes to making changes and following through, how willing is the school (Faculty, administration, Trustees)? 4. In what ways will the new Dean add value to our school? Let's face it, the hiring interview process is a process of seduction. Each party does its best to look good and be desired. Even the best-prepared search committee can get snookered by a slick candidate or fall in love with a personality. Secondary characteristics, inconsequential capacities (she's a good skier; he's an avid hiker; she knows Brad Pitt!), and "good feelings about" the candidate can tip the vote in favor of a safe, cool, or comfortable candidate. One question that can provide a corrective to bias is being clear about what value a particular candidate will bring to the school. What will the prospective dean bring to the institution that you need and which another cannot provide? 5. What was the President's relationship with the last dean? What will be the new relationship? While the search committee cannot take responsibility for the relationship between a president and dean---past or future---it is critical that the importance of the relationship be recognized. To a certain extend, a President's relationship to the dean will make or break the job. A common question during the search interviews with deans is about the triangulation between dean, president, and faculty. Typically, the question is couched in terms of "How strong an advocate will you be for the Faculty?" While insecure faculty members may wish to hear that will be the new dean's primary focus, a seasoned dean will likely take a different perspective. Certainly an effective dean will be supportive and a resource for the Faculty in its work of research and teaching. But deans are stewards of the institution, and not advocates of one group over others. At the end of the day the dean needs to ensure that decisions benefit the institution in order to benefit all. That stance inherently sets the dean up for dealing with perpetual internal competing interests and needs. To the point, "Making Faculty happy is not my job," may be the most honest response. Happy interviewing! There's a good dean out there for your school. Choose wisely.

When I was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer, everything seemed to cave in on my body as questions narrowed: first, what to take out via surgery, then what to put in via chemotherapy and food, and eventually, to possible internal causes due to genetic flaws. Although everything and everyone seemed to be focused on my body, my thoughts were occupied with things outside of my body--from environmental carcinogens, to students, to writing deadlines. While much of the focus on trauma in the classroom has been on how to deal with traumatized students (links below), there has been less discussion of traumatized faculty, as if professors are somehow immune to the trauma students bring into the classroom. Yet, professors, like students, are embedded in environments that often cause trauma. How do we teach not only in the wake of the trauma of students, but also in the wake of our own traumas? Moreover, how can we shift individualistic narratives about trauma toward a cultural narrative, particularly in the context of the classroom? While we might idealistically like to keep personal trauma separate from the classroom, the realities of trauma tend to be messy. Trauma exceeds the boundaries we have worked so hard to establish. This is as true for professors as it is for students. To tell or not to tell When I was diagnosed, I was teaching two courses: one entirely online as part of the Council for Independent Colleges's Consortium for Online Humanities Instruction and one at a correctional institution using the inside-out model. I knew that I would not be able to continue shuttling students back and forth to a correctional institution following my surgery and that it was going to be difficult as I started chemo. My online students had grown accustomed to near-daily interactions in the spaces we had created for dialogue. My options, as I saw them, were to tell the students about the diagnosis, tell the students that I was sick, or not to tell the students anything. Regardless of the choice I made, my diagnosis would affect students and classroom dynamics. Do we invite students into our personal traumas or keep them out? What do we risk by putting students in proximity to personal trauma? What do we risk by trying to keep them out? What might students learn from watching their professors deal with illness or other personal traumas? Both classes had fewer than 20 students enrolled and I had formed connections with many of the students, so I weighed the options in this context and decided not to shield students from the details. I would be as honest as I could. Shifting the narrative One of the things that students might learn if we invite them into our personal traumas is how to shift the narrative of trauma from a narrative about individuals to a cultural one. In the case of my cancer, this means considering the "how did this happen question" without resorting to blaming my genetic line, the decisions of my parents, or my decisions about food and exercise. It is easy to like individualistic reasons for trauma. If you can figure out why I got colon cancer, you feel like you can protect yourself from this particular trauma by making better decisions. This is not unlike feeling that you can avoid rape by dressing modestly and not walking alone at night. While many have recognized the problem with responding to rape by calling on potential rape victims to change their habits, people with cancer continue to be advised to change their personal habits. Such advice shields the broader collective from having to make difficult decisions about the way we have organized our lives together, how that organization might be contributing to the rise in cancer, and the effects of a politics that marginalizes people with pre-existing conditions. Because my diagnosis coincided with the first-full scale attempt to dismantle the ACA, bringing my personal trauma into the classroom created space for students to see how collective decisions shape what might appear to be individual trauma. By naming trauma in the classroom, we invite students into the kinds of questions that can shift the narrative of blame from individuals who experience trauma toward systemic problems that reveal an economy willing to sacrifice some for the benefit of others. In shifting this narrative, students learn how to think about trauma as something that affects individuals, but often does not have individual causes. Trauma is often rooted in social decisions. Links: The Ethics of Trigger Warnings in the Classroom No Trigger Warnings in my class You Are Triggering Me!

Is there a pedagogical responsibility to traumatize our students? I’m not thinking of some unbridled notion of “tough love” in grading, or an exaggerated insistence that actions have consequences, or even routine attempts to challenge assumptions and perspectives. Rather, is there a pedagogical responsibility to make students feel less safe, less secure, less stable, to insist that the world is more sinister, more dangerous, more potentially harmful than they might at first suspect or admit?  I grapple with this question in many of my courses. For example, I teach a course focused on cinematic representations of Jesus that strives to enable students to read such films rhetorically, in conversation with their own historical and cultural moment as well as the current one. To do this well, we have to tease out the ways in which the films support (and resist) anti-Semitism, nationalism, misogyny, racism, homophobia, erotophobia, and Christian imperialism.  In a general education course that explores American histories of race, gender and sexuality through horror films, we grapple with very similar issues. Students resist ideological critiques of these films claiming that such analyses read too much into them or make too much out of minor details or simply exaggerate the importance of “mere entertainment.” Students also emphasize their historical distance from these films—racist and sexist imaginaries may have infected the forties, fifties, sixties, seventies . . . even the early aughts, but those problems have been resolved, and we occupy a more enlightened moment. Part of my work in these courses is to push back, gently but persistently, against these defenses and resistances and force an encounter with ugly, painful, dehumanizing energies. Part of my work is to help students see what they might be unwilling to see about the ways various cultural representations try to prevent them from seeing.  Questions about confronting students with potentially traumatizing material are often resolved by appealing to students’ identities. In a recent Facebook conversation, a group of colleagues discussed whether it would be appropriate to screen video of the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in class. There was a concern about protecting students of color and a desire to confront white students. While these priorities made—and make—sense to me, they aren’t fully consonant with my experience as a teacher. I have had female students challenge claims that an argument or analysis is sexist, had queer-identified students champion fairly optimistic assessments of the presence of religious homophobia, and had students of color contest of racism in representations.  By no means am I suggesting that my assessment of the cultural, political, and ethical dynamics of materials is always correct—and I certainly try to create classroom spaces where students can respectfully challenge interpretations offered by course materials, their classmates, and me—but it seems important to note that it may very well be those students who are most likely to be targeted by certain systems of unjust and injurious power—i.e., those students who we worry most about (re-)traumatizing—who may be least willing to acknowledge their vast reach. These challenges were most pronounced in a course I co-taught a couple of years ago entitled “The Violence of Hope.” This course interrogated the ways in which discourses of progress, restoration, healing, and redemption—in politics, ethics, and religion—disguised, perpetuated, or intensified violence. The course pressed the notion that we are all inevitably and inextricably implicated in and complicit with systems of violence and that our attempts at amelioration are often mechanisms of acceleration.  Many of our students had deep activist commitments. Most of our students confessed feelings of hopelessness and frustration as the course progressed. Ultimately, what I think made the course work—what I think makes my film courses work, my Queer Theory coursework, my courses focused on sexuality and religion work—is that there was an acknowledgment of the enormity and seriousness of the questions raised by the materials under consideration and a genuine, patient attempt to grapple with them. In my teaching, I heed the call to traumatize my students. I work to make them more paranoid—or paranoid in new keys. But this is never the goal of my courses. By the same token, it is never my goal to solve the problems I raise, answer the questions I pose—or even offer palliative care for the injuries I may inflict. Instead, I seek to help students develop the skills, the habits, and the dexterity to negotiate the fraught, uncertain, and ever-shifting terrain that comprises their world. Consistent with my sense of responsibility, the only way to develop such capacities is to enter hostile territory.

Teaching-learning is often a perilous process. Occasionally, in the midst of delivering carefully structured lectures, facilitating balanced yet critically engaging discussions, or working with students one-on-one, life intervenes in a dramatic and direct fashion. Three years ago, I was teaching a summer course on Methodist church history for Master of Divinity students pursuing ordination at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. Right after we began the section on Black Methodism, Dylann Roof walked into a Bible study class at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina and killed nine people, including the pastor. The world was rife with shock and grief. We, ourselves church leaders, Bible study teachers, and ministerial workers, were actively engaged in crafting understandings of ecclesiastical history in order to refine vocational skills. Students (and instructor) processed painful emotions derived from a current event that hit close to home. Empathy with the victims and their families mingled with rage, disbelief, and ultimately, compassion for the tormented assailant.  Socrates reportedly once said, “I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.” For me, as instructor, a pedagogical opportunity had arisen. I found myself addressing a contemporary demonstration of the societal and cultural terror that necessitated the original founding of Black Methodism while teaching a section on Black Methodism in a Methodist history class.  In that moment, critical analysis of the broader sweep of church history and its convergence within the present was essential. It was important to help students utilize the historical information they were acquiring in light of current events. Balancing both sets of data, the historical record and the contemporary event, opened the way for collective inquiry, sharing, and judging right there in the classroom. This experience reveals a wider view of pedagogical method. By allowing students to ask and respond to critical questions, underlying assumptions are revealed. Students are then invited to further examine the nature of their assumptions. Have key events and concepts been adequately accessed? Does other relevant information exist that may shed light on these assessments? What are the logical implications of this view? Are there alternatives? If so, are they just as reasonable? Thus, one of the ways student-learners develop critical thinking skills is through the facilitation of teacher-learners who ask questions and respond to answers with more questions. While acknowledging the contributions of students equitably (and encouraging all to participate) facilitators move the discussion forward by engaging questions that maintain focus on the stated goals of the course. This includes summarizing the status of reflections, critical points, and remaining questions. However, it is also crucial to keep in mind that students may harbor feelings of trauma and stress sparked by the evaluation of historical knowledge and associated current events. Creating a classroom that nurtures the student voice through affirmation of shared experience fosters safe space. The use of critical thinking in analyzing history, which is oftentimes quite troubling, engenders the technique of practical engagement with personal and social traumas. And, sensitivity to cultural diversity, religious difference, and doctrinal belief is paramount in cultivating a healing environment. This includes the overt recognition and appreciation of differing and conflicting opinions. Paying attention to the energy of the class, body language of students, and other contextual signs will determine choice of direction that a teacher-learner may take, even while encouraging rational analysis of stated views. Taking a synergistic approach, that is, dialectical interaction among teacher-learners and student-learners, therefore allows room for reasoned critique of hypothetical assumptions as well as the emotional processing of potentially painful experiences. Effective execution requires heightened attention to the needs of students and patience with the flow of communication. This can be challenging, particularly when unexpected realities shatter benignly anticipated teaching moments carefully structured by course design. Instructors must, therefore, be gentle with themselves and practice flexibility in meeting the demands of challenging and/or controversial teaching moments. Although teaching does involve the transmission of knowledge, the ultimate goal of teaching lies in the cultivation of tools that allow students effective engagement in critical discernment of the world, leading to reasonably based decision making. In our Methodist History course, the shootings by a crazed supremacist at the historic Mother Emmanuel Church were a sobering occasion that offered the chance for systemic appraisal of institutional structures in church and society that continue to perpetuate racial violence. This unfortunate and deeply traumatic event provided context to evaluate broadly how various interlocking systems lead to experiential sufferings that are typically passed down generationally. As we grappled with the pain enkindled by this senseless act (which will reverberate in the annals of traumatic historical events) insightful theological and practical observations, deduced by critical analysis, were honed. Like the rest of the world, our class did not emerge emotionally unscathed by facing the horrors of history alive and well in today’s world that mournful day. We did, however, incorporate pedagogical tools, that, with repeated and improved use, are designed to foster growth and empowerment in teaching, learning, and living as responsible citizens.

Early adopters of instructional technologies, for years, have been trying to raise awareness of the need for theological education to be adaptive (never mind innovative--that just seems not in the DNA of most theological schools) to the emerging realities of learning in higher education. Many have been warning that "the Digital Natives are coming!" Well, the Digital Natives are here, and as a result, most theological schools are obsolete; they just don’t know it. That is, the way most theological schools teach is obsolete. Students have changed, and as a result, so has the nature of education and learning. Here are some characteristics of the incoming students in seminaries (adapted from Beloit Colleges "Mindset" lists): They are the sharing generation, having shown tendencies to share everything, including possessions, no matter how personal. Having a chat has seldom involved talking. Their TV screens keep getting smaller as their parents’ screens grow ever larger. Rites of passage have more to do with having their own cell phone and Skype accounts than with getting a driver’s license and car. A tablet is no longer something you take in the morning. Threatening to shut down the government during Federal budget negotiations has always been an anticipated tactic. Growing up with the family dog, one of them has worn an electronic collar, while the other has toted an electronic lifeline. Plasma has never been just a bodily fluid. With GPS, they have never needed directions to get someplace, just an address. There has never been a national maximum speed on U.S. highways. Their favorite feature films have always been largely, if not totally, computer generated. They have never really needed to go to their friend’s house so they could study together. They may have been introduced to video games with a new Sony PlayStation left in their cribs by their moms. A Wiki has always been a cooperative web application rather than a shuttle bus in Hawaii. They have always been able to plug into USB ports Their parents’ car CD player is soooooo ancient and embarrassing. Since they binge-watch their favorite TV shows, they might like to binge-watch the video portions of their courses too. “Press pound” on the phone is now translated as “hit hashtag.” The water cooler is no longer the workplace social center; it’s the place to fill your water bottle. There has always been “TV” designed to be watched exclusively on the web. Yet another blessing of digital technology: They have never had to hide their dirty magazines under the bed. Attending schools outside their neighborhoods, they gather with friends on Skype, not in their local park. They have never used Netscape as their web browser. “Good feedback” means getting 30 likes on your last Facebook post in a single afternoon. They are the first generation for whom a “phone” has been primarily a video game, direction finder, electronic telegraph, and research library. Electronic signatures have always been as legally binding as the pen-on-paper kind. They have largely grown up in a floppy-less world. XM has always offered radio programming for a fee. There have always been emojis to cheer us up. Donald Trump has always been a political figure, as a Democrat, an Independent, and a Republican. Amazon has always invited consumers to follow the arrow from A to Z. In their lifetimes, Blackberry has gone from being a wild fruit to being a communications device to becoming a wild fruit again. They may choose to submit a listicle in lieu of an admissions essay. By the time they entered school, laptops were outselling desktops. Once on campus, they will find that college syllabi, replete with policies about disability, non-discrimination, and learning goals, might be longer than some of their reading assignments. Whatever the subject, there’s always been a blog or a Youtube channel for it. A movie scene longer than two minutes has always seemed like an eternity. As toddlers, they may have taught their grandparents how to Skype. Wikipedia has steadily gained acceptance by their teachers.(1) Closer to home: The majority of your incoming students have taken at least one online course, in elementary school, high school or college; they don't need a "tutorial" or orientation to using an LMS (but many of your Faculty do!). A paper syllabus is useless to them. They expect that most of the information they need for your class will be on a digital platform (an LMS, a website, or an app) on a  screen (a laptop, a tablet, or their phones). Whatever they produce in your class, for whatever subject, will be digital to some extent. And, they are better at Powerpoint than you. The reality is that as theological schools we hold on to an industrial-aged model in a digital world. Furthermore, the imagined future students we push our admissions office to find to fill our classroom seats and residential halls don’t need us to learn. Classroom instruction as a signature pedagogy is obsolete. That may seem an overstatement, but here are examples of how Digital Natives challenge ideas of how you learn and from whom. At 13 Patrick McCabe learned robotics from the internet. He even demonstrates how to teach a robot to learn. Amira Willighagen was seven years old she took it upon herself to learn how to sing opera music. Growing up in Pakistan, there were no instructors in town that could teach Usman Riaz how to play percussive guitar, so he learned it from the internet. "I wanted to learn more about that so I just let the internet be my teacher," Usman said, "You learn from exposure and you learn from watching other people and that's exactly what I did except that instead of having the person physically in front of me I had a portal to them through the computer." He says, "There's so much out there available for everybody that they don't need to sit and worry about whether they don't have a teacher or not, you just need an internet connection and the desire to want to learn something and that's really it." Arguably, the most important role of a dean is to be the visionary that shapes the educational values and enterprise of the school. Does your vision for your school align with the realities of a digital world? Is your Faculty teaching in the ways Digital Natives need to learn? Expect to be taught? Is your Faculty preparing ministers with skills for a world that no longer exists? Is your Faculty as attentive to the ways of teaching and learning as much as they are to what they teach? Will your next incoming class find they've signed on to an industrial age system of education that is obsolete? Where is your school situated in the landscape of online theological education? (1) Adapted from Beloit College's "Mindset" lists.

We can define the syllabus with precision, but our best-laid plans are subject to the moments when life simply happens. Questions arise. Frustrations are felt. And the sages on the stage better have something to show for all their high-falutin’ learning. At least this is how I feel when teaching in the midst of traumatic events. I can usually triage the syllabus—shuffling assignments around to give space to the moment. I even know well enough to leave room for the inevitable crisis within my course planning. But what do you actually do when you’re in front of students who have come to class just as raw as you? There’s no media bulletin that will solve the problem. Trauma doesn’t care about public relations. There’s no master lecture that will bring a master solution. Trauma doesn’t leave room for satisfying answers. But I’m here to tell you that all is not lost. Every Christmas break, I go home to Houston. My most recent trip was the first time I had been since Hurricane Harvey. And in the days following my return to Pennsylvania, friends wanted to know what I saw. I didn’t have much to respond with except for the watchwords of the human story. We rebuild. We heal. We grow. We learn.   This is what we do in the face of natural disaster. It too is what we can do in the face of psychosocial trauma. But it’s going to take some time. Unfortunately, I have found myself in the position of consulting a number of institutions enduring the perpetration of prejudicial affronts, most frequently concerning rampant sexism, homophobia, and racism. The biggest mistake I see is the grab for a big fix or antidote to make the situation go away. I have to explain that trauma is an immediate crisis that takes hold of us for the long haul, so our job is to equip our communities to rebuild, heal, grow, and learn as best as we can manage, moment by moment, day by day. For teachers, this means reminding ourselves and our students that the more we know, the better we can manage the crisis before us. When life happens, I tell myself to adhere to the following protocol step by step. Gather your composure. Find your footing even in the midst of your insecurity. Claim your own humanity—the right to feel, the right to hurt, the right to grieve. Eat nutrient-rich foods. Drink plenty of water. Meditate, do jumping jacks, practice yoga, or walk around the block. Your first step is to regain your sense of self. Reconnect. Take a moment to let a trusted colleague or companion know that you’re about to go into the fray. You have a community. A simple text message or phone call can remind you that you’re not alone. Lower the bar. When it’s go time, your job today is to “be you” and “do you” with the students. This will equip them with the confidence to do the same. Before you know it, you will fall back into the role of teacher. They will fall back into the role of student. And you’ll together develop a new stasis. Preach what you have practiced. Have your students take a few minutes to do a version of what you have just done. Lead them in a moment of silence or even a quick stretch-break. Let people grab a drink of water and return to class. Let them check in with each other as they trickle back into the room. Your acknowledgment of their humanity will go a long way in garnering the trust you’ll need for the day. Teach the moment. Present what you understand about the situation and contextualize it in light of what you know as teacher-scholar. Then take a few moments to show how you’re learning. In so doing, you’ll remind students that they are not the sum of their emotions. They are also learners with skills and proficiencies to help them grapple with the day beyond what they could have done prior to class. It also solidifies a basis for community-building amidst the new state of affairs. From here, you have a “we” with which to work. Come together around a whiteboard and make a list of questions that you all want to pursue as a class. Name the resources you might consult in the coming days in your search for more information. Excavate your syllabus to see not whether there’s anything of use, but what can be used in the moments ahead. Better questions lead to better possibilities. The work you have put in—together— will bear fruit in the days to come. I know now what else to ask for in the midst of trauma. But until then, use the learning process as a vehicle to position yourselves in renewed strength and community.

Several years ago, I was expecting a guest speaker in one of my courses. To prepare for the colleague’s visit, I asked my students what questions they had for the person.  Silence. And not a quizzical silence, just a dead silence. I tried to prime the pump by repeating the guest’s research agenda as well as the topics of our course’s conversation. The response by students was underwhelming – the not so faint sound of crickets could be heard. I signaled my dismay by using a displeased tone of voice and reminded the students that they must have questions. In distress, a woman blurted out, “I don’t have any questions!” I realized she meant that she did not have any deficits.  She thought questions only signaled what she was supposed to know, but did not.  Questions, for her, were a confession of inadequacy, unpreparedness, and ignorance. I had failed to teach that questions were tools of curiosity and a method of inquiry to interact with the guest lecturer. Since that moment, I have been trying to cultivate and nurture student curiosity.  In this journey, I have learned that what I am curious about is not necessarily what my students are curious about. I have learned that some students have no curiosity for classroom learning because their energies are tied up in modes of survival, credential earning, and the distractions of family and wage earning. These students are difficult to gather-in. I have learned that students have been told that their genuine curiosity is without merit, so they have learned not to voice their real questions or pursue their authentic passions. I have learned that some deep, marvelous curiosity is voiced in a language/vocabulary that is academically unsophisticated and I have worked to train my ear to hear these curiosities. I have challenged myself to “think like my students” and try to anticipate the kinds of questions and inquiry they will levy toward a reading or learning activity. I want to align with them and use their inquiries as starting points.  I’ve had some success with this tactic – but it’s not easy.  Mostly I’ve learned that students are so eager-to-please that when I tell them they are to formulate their own genuine curiosity about a topic – they do.  Last semester I had two kinds of assignments in my seminar. First, the students were to consider the assigned readings, then like jazz musicians, riff off of the author’s argument. I called them Riff Reports. The instructions were to bring to the class a report about what the reading sparked in their thinking and imagination. I challenged them, “Bring your own insights, curiosity – do not repeat the reading, do not report the reading.  Consider your own passion, interests, situations, then build, expand, add your voice, perspective, and idiosyncrasies to the conversation.” At the beginning of the semester, I modeled in class sessions what I meant by Riff Reports by doing my own version of riffing off of the readings. In my three-hour session, I would do a one-hour riff, then two students, each taking 30 minutes, would riff off of the same reading. This would give the class three riffs from one reading – a cornucopia of meaning and wonder! Second, by the end of the semester, the students completed a Curiosity Report, building off of the reading, their Riff-Reports, my Riff-Reports, and the conversations we had in class sessions. The Curiosity Report could culminate in a critical reflection essay or it could be a creative portrayal. Regardless of its final embodiment (the student’s choice), the report had to include a method of inquiry which addressed the student’s own curiosity. Students were invited to explain why this curiosity was important to them and their people. They had to sit with the librarian to create a bibliography, interview experts, and go on field trips to visit the locales needed to satisfy their inquiries. By mid-semester, students gave oral reports about their topics, questions, and inquiry methodology. By the end of the semester, students gave an expanded presentation and then handed in a written form.  Watching and helping students formulate their own curiosity was a very different way to teach than telling them what was important, critical, or required in the disciplinary canon.  Helping them develop, unearth, and investigate their own agendas was not the same as performing my passions, thoughts, and ideas for them at the front of the class.  Witnessing their process of being inspired by our reading, then taking a kernel of their own idea and working it up into a full project, was very meaningful to me. This witnessing gave me a real sense of reverence for their ability to think, create, and hope – I felt as if I was witnessing beauty.  In every case, students selected topics that were personally relevant, intimately related to their life circumstances, and in some cases, life-giving. Our librarian called me to comment on the breadth and uniqueness of their topics and how interested he was to help students who were interested in inquiry. In two instances, I sent students to talk with faculty colleagues whose research interest matched the students. In both instances, the conversations were generative for both student and colleague. Finding like-minded thinkers feels like water in the desert.  At the risk of romanticizing the experience, I did have one student who, in my opinion, got lost in the process. The student preferred being told what to do and how to do it.  When that was not the task, the effort needed for discovery and self-motivation was too much. The student was able to articulate a fascinating question of inquiry, but could not follow through on investigation and creative research methodology. Pursuing curiosity requires time for introspection, consideration of on-going context and conversation, and the where-with-all to investigate.  Structuring classrooms for student curiosity seems like a no-brainer, but it has taken me many years to get here.

In graduate school, I spent a year teaching at San Quentin State Prison while writing my dissertation. I loved my Religion and English classes at the prison and frequently remarked to friends that teaching incarcerated men, many of them in their mid-thirties or beyond, was strikingly similar to teaching 18-22-year-old undergraduates at UC Berkeley. “They make the same excuses about why they couldn’t do the reading,” I loved to tell fellow graduate student instructors. The students, those on the inside and on the outside, also often struggled over the same points – how to write a persuasive thesis, how to conduct research, how to understand unfamiliar religious practices. Eventually, I found a job at Rhodes College in Memphis, TN, and left both Berkeley and San Quentin behind. After several years at Rhodes, a colleague invited me to teach in another prison education program, this time a “great books” program at the West Tennessee Women’s Prison. I jumped at the chance and offered to cover the Hebrew Bible. Strategically, I decided to teach the two books I was already teaching to Rhodes undergraduates in my Feminist Biblical Interpretation class: Ruth and Esther. This suggested several advantages: I would already be prepared for what the students would have to say about the texts, what directions the conversation might take, and I thought women might be interested in reading texts where female relationships, like that between Ruth and Naomi, are foregrounded.   I entered the first class at WTWP confident in what would happen. I had just taught Ruth to my traditional undergraduates a week before and the Rhodes students had had excellent discussion, especially about Ruth and Naomi and their relationship (Ruth, you’ll recall, is urged by her mother-in-law Naomi to leave after her husband dies; Ruth replies with the famous words, “Where you go, I will go; Where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die— there will I be buried” [Ruth 1:16, NRSV]). My Rhodes students were open to the possibility of queer readings of Ruth and Naomi – generally, they were interested in finding and ferreting out pockets of homoeroticism in the text – though also critical of Naomi as “a whiner.” Ruth, meanwhile, seemed less a loyal friend or lover than a burden – “like someone else’s pet you have to take care of,” as one student put it. The women at WTWP were also very enthusiastic to talk about Ruth, but they had different understandings of the relationships in the text. They were, on the whole, far more sympathetic to Naomi and “what she’s been through.” They were mostly (though not entirely) reluctant to see the relationship between the two women as homoerotic, but they placed great value on reading it as a strong friendship. Ruth and Naomi had each been through a great deal. They needed each other. This experience of teaching the same text in two very different groups was a valuable pedagogical reminder to me about the dangers of making assumptions about students and how they will respond to the text. It was also useful in thinking about trauma. Many incarcerated women are survivors of trauma, especially violence and sexual violence. Incarceration challenges family bonds and strains relationships. All of this is well known. What I did not realize until teaching Ruth in prison, however,  was the unique hermeneutic perspective it gives students into the text. These women read the book with greater empathy, and with greater attention to the dynamics of its relationships. They understood why Ruth and Naomi needed each other. (Relatedly, when we read Esther the following week, they took a dim view of the men in the text, especially Ahasuerus for his sexual exploitation of women and Mordecai for his strategic exploitation of his niece Esther. These readers intuited what scholars such as Nicole Duran and Randall Bailey have argued, that the book of Esther is a work of male exploitation). The traditional undergraduates at Rhodes have their own traumas, and these too influenced their reading. College students are especially attuned to the fraught relationships between children and parents -- this came across in their reading of the book. Sexual exploration is also a cause of interest, as well as anxiety, in college -- these readers were more open to the possibility of queer romance in the text.  The traumas that shape our lives shape, as well, how we read texts. This is a simple lesson, but one that the students in my two Ruth classes helped me understand better.

Time and time again, I find that successful online students are those with skills of self-direction, self-regulation, and time-management. Self-directed learners determine their learning needs, set learning goals, locate and access suitable resources for learning, manage their learning activities, monitor and evaluate their performance, and reflect on and reassess their learning strategies. Self-directed learners have skills of self-regulation—this encompasses concentration, self-awareness, self-discipline, time-management, delaying gratification, and self-assessment. However, as Sandie Gravett notes in her blog post, students often feel ill equipped for self-directed learning (https://www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/2018/09/becoming-a-better-teacher/). How do we encourage students to assume responsibility for their learning and become self-directed learners? It takes more than signposts and reminders. For many years, I signaled the importance of these skills by linking to websites such as "What Makes a Successful Online Student" which states: “With the freedom and flexibility of the online environment comes responsibility. The online process takes a real commitment and discipline to keep up with the flow of the process.” I also encouraged them at the beginning of the semester to write down all of their deadlines in a scheduler. I would even email them reminders each week. And still, I found some students fail simply because they fell behind: they prioritized other courses and responsibilities, or they procrastinated and left it until a later time that never came. Online environments can exacerbate tendencies towards procrastination and distraction. We can find endless rabbit holes online that fuel procrastination and undermine our efforts at self-discipline (as Tim Urban humorously depicts in his popular blog post on procrastinators, https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastinate.html). We are also prone towards continuous partial attention–the process of paying simultaneous attention to numerous sources of information, but at a superficial level. Unlike multitasking, which is driven by a desire to be productive and efficient, continuous partial attention is motivated by the desire to continuously connect and be connected in an effort not to miss anything. As Linda Stone remarks, “It is an always-on, anywhere, anytime, anyplace behavior, and it involves an artificial sense of constant crisis” (https://lindastone.net/qa/continuous-partial-attention/). Our students have a fear of missing out (“FOMO”), and their attention is often interrupted by notifications and alerts on their cell phones. Although we have no control over our students’ behavior and whether they will ultimately succumb to the pull of distraction and procrastination, we can incorporate various activities in our online courses to encourage them to develop skills of self-directed learning. For example, you can facilitate greater self-awareness of their study habits and learning strategies by assigning introspective writing exercises where they answer questions such as: What tasks am I currently procrastinating? Is it because I’m unsure of how to do them, or afraid of doing them poorly? What activities do I gravitate to when I procrastinate? (Nilson 2013, 83) Here I share a few strategies drawn primarily from Linda Nilson’s Creating Self-Regulated Learners: Strategies to Strengthen Students’ Self-Awareness and Learning Skills (Stylus, 2013). Again, self-regulation refers to a sub-skill of self-directed learning: how students approach learning tasks in our online courses. You can introduce them to self-regulated learning from the outset by assigning a reading such as Robert Leamnson’s (2002) article, “Learning (Your First Job)” available through the University of Georgia Center for Teaching and Learning: http://www.ctl.uga.edu/uploads/main/mainLearningYourFirstJob.pdf. It begins by emphasizing that learning is “not something that just happens to you, it is something that you do to yourself,” and then shares strategies for focusing attention, managing one’s time, studying, and preparing for exams. You can encourage students to set goals for their learning by having them write a paper at the beginning of the course entitled “How I Earned an A in This Course” (Zander and Zander 2000). This exercise encourages students to envision concrete and attainable goals for their learning, and it also gives you a sense of their hopes for the course. You can have students revisit them at the end of the semester, reflecting on the extent to which they followed their strategic plan, when, how, and why they might have strayed, and how this impacted their actual performance in the course. You can help them self-test their understanding of the course materials through reflective writing and visual mapping tools. You can do “learning logs” where they identify the main points of each reading, what they found most surprising, what they found most confusing, and why they found it confusing (Bean 2011). Or you could have them write double-column notes on the readings: one column with substantive notes similar to those of “learning logs” but another for their personal reactions (feelings, attitudes, values, beliefs, perspectives, prior knowledge, changes in their way of thinking). (Nilson 2013, 27) You can have them test their understanding through “mind dumps,” where they write down all they can remember about the readings, videos or podcasts, or have them create visual study tools that map out, integrate, and structure what they’ve learned (Nilson 2013, 33). After you give students feedback on their work, you can have them complete meta-assignments that ask them to explain what they think our feedback means (Nilson 2013, 56), or write a letter to the next class about the paper or project: how to prepare for tackling the assignment, what strategies to take, what missteps to avoid, and the value of the assignment (Nilson 2013, 56). Finally, you can have students reflect on their learning through course “wrappers”: at the beginning of the course, students write what they think the subject matter or discipline is about, how it’s done, and why it’s important, and then at the end of the course they revisit those questions and compare their answers (Nilson 2013, 87). Another closing activity might be short “Future Uses” papers where they identify the three most important concepts or skills they learned in the course, why they consider them important, and how they might use them in the future (Nilson 2013, 88; Svinicki 2004). These are just some ways that we might help students develop skills of self-direction, self-regulation, and time-management so that they can be successful in our online courses. Works Cited Bean, John C. 2011. Engaging ideas: The professor’s guide to integrating writing, critical thinking, and active learning in the classroom (Second Edition). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Nilson, Linda. 2013. Creating Self-Regulated Learners: Strategies to Strengthen Students’ Self-Awareness and Learning Skills. Sterling, V.A.: Stylus. Svinicki, Marilla D. 2004. Learning and motivation in postsecondary classrooms. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Zander, Rosamund Stone and Benjamin Zander. 2000. The Art of Possibility. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. min Zander. 2000. The Art of Possibility. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.