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What Listening is NotIt will be obvious to some and painfully invisible to others, but it will lurk in quiet corners of the classroom. And it will grow and stretch and plant roots in many imaginations as being OK. Only some in the classroom will feel the discomfort and stagnation of its growing presence. Only some will notice this phenomenon hardening and forming a new wall that the privileged will be able to hide behind, marking it as their limit, as the end point of their journeys.Though teachers want growth in the classroom, I am not sure we want this type of growth; for this growth mislabels itself. It calls itself progress and progressiveness. It calls itself a sign of maturation and evolving, while what is actually unfolding is quite damaging.Listening as a practice of anti-racism or subverting one’s privilege, especially by white students (though this applies to all students with privilege), breeds a pernicious dynamic in the classroom – one of silence and thus of nonaccountability. It unfortunately encourages concealment. Students can take up a posture of “listening” to avoid the risk of addressing problems as they happen in the classroom.But listening is not silence.Silence is foe. It is not allyship. Silence dressed in the discourse of listening is clever avoidance. True listening is not stagnant; she is always active. She is not perpetually quiet. She emerges and course-corrects and grows into the right stance and posture. Listening is not a means of tapping out of the difficulty of a moment in the guise of passivity; it is to commit to addressing the awkward moments in the classroom in real time. It is a covenant to deal with difficulty.In its true form listening is quite loud.Silence has paraded around as listening too many times in progressive classrooms – and in the process it has harmed more moments and students than it has helped. There are No Silent ExemplarsIf change requires shift and movement, it is safe to assume that correction must be voiced. The right thing to do then, requires making a sound.Because of listening’s misinterpretation, the classroom can be a case study in how opportunities for change are missed. And these missed opportunities become cyclical.It is all too commonplace that a Black student’s white colleague consistently says the right thing about justice, oppression, racism, sexism, queerphobia, and so forth, when the intellectual moment presents itself in class. For the minoritized/marginalized student there is hope! The possibility that this classmate “gets it” first announces itself.But then something devastating happens. Another colleague or – if we are completely honest – sometimes the teacher, does not respond or react if something offensive, disturbing, biased, incorrect, assumptive, ignorant, or somewhat “off” is said or happens. People who are in the impacted group feel it. They feel compelled to correct the error. But they are also tired of defending themselves. They become apathetic, for they know this moment all too well. The silence is awkward; it is not productive but feels deeply regressive.But most importantly, it hurts. And the hurt grows. And grows.With each second that the articulate colleague or teacher allows to pass where the offense is not met with a pedagogical corrective, the wound burrows deeper, cementing itself in memory of the wounded: they will remember this the next time they have hope for those who boast the appearance of understanding in the guise of intellect. Listening as Weaponized IncompetenceWeaponized incompetence is not only a domestic dynamic. The push for majority students to “listen” to their minoritized peers in educational spaces has cleverly become the newest iteration of weaponized incompetence.Listening as a passive, benevolent act can do tremendous work for the moral appearance of change, transformation, and/or righteousness. The majority benefits from it while continuing to inflict harm on the minoritized persons in the learning space.Hearing transgressions and violations against another’s humanity, history, culture, aesthetic, tongue, way of life, or knowing, and settling into silence and inaction is not true listening.Listening must be redefined as practice oriented. It requires immediate and factual correction in and of moments where the incorrect narrative, perception, or action has been directed towards another. Listening demands activity; it means amending the error in real time no matter how challenging the moment.But the elephant in the room of this dilemma must be addressed: it is not only white students and students with privileged identities who employ silence disguised as listening over and against minoritized students. If we are completely honest, it is mainly teachers who do it.If teachers are serious about doing our jobs well with constructive results, we need to create and establish systems of correction and accountability within the classroom that take the pressure and responsibility off of our minoritized and marginalized students.Are we up for the challenge?What modes of accountability might teachers put in place at the beginning of each semester or term that ensures pedagogical challenge and expansion not only for our students, but for us?Might we model listening as active practice instead of a weaponized excuse?I hope we do. The future and efficacy of education depends on it.

My last blog was about the power of immersive classes to foster attention and presence in students. Here I want to focus on another aspect of learning that immersive classes are uniquely suited to produce: a community of learners.Let me set the scene: A group of hungry undergraduates and I have arrived at our campsite for the night and set up camp after ten miles of trekking with full packs. Because they’re perpetually hungry and I believe in luxurious trail meals (ask me sometime about our Mediterranean quinoa and Thai curry dinners), our food bags are full: enough for ten people for five days. And because we are in bear country, we have to hang the bags from a tree limb before we sleep. Not even the most macho of the students can pull the bags up on his own. (He tried. His name was Joel.) We need every person pulling on the rope. Or, on different trip, in an Arizona slot canyon, hanging our food away from bears was not an issue, but sleeping warm on a twenty-degree night was. We all snaked into our sleeping bags and then piled together like puppies snuggling against one another for warmth, never mind that most of us were strangers to each other that first night.Wilderness trips are by nature and necessity participatory ventures. Everyone is essential for a successful trip, at the level of making sure everyone eats and keeps safe as well as at the level of maximum enjoyment and meaning. It’s not unlike the most effective classrooms, where everyone’s voice is essential for everyone’s learning. The reality is just more obvious on the trail where you might genuinely need someone else’s warmth beside you on a cold night.Because of the visceral need for one another in daily chores or while crossing a river, students rely on each other much more quickly than in a classroom, and their physical need quickly becomes a need for one another’s ideas at class discussion around the campfire. Students see each other as human beings, as comrades, as companions, as fellow community members, because of the way of life on the trail. They have had to be vulnerable with one another and recognize their limits, ask for help, and so when they talk with one another, they already have a foundation of some trust. Plus, when we hike with someone side by side or one in front of the other, we can say more meaningful things because we don’t have to look each other in the eye. So students listen to and learn from one another, unthreatened by one another.I saw this on an immersive Jan-term that didn’t involve backpacking too. I took students to a monastery for three weeks for a class on the history, theology, and spirituality of monasticism. There they also had to rely on each other and on the sisters. The need was less immediate, but it was there in the shared work of washing dishes and shoveling snow. Then when a stomach bug ravaged us one by one we needed each other for basic things again. The bug hit me first, and I had to rely on the students too, just as I do on the trail. That example of dependence—of asking for help getting food or reaching out for a hand up a steep embankment—is something my students mark as invaluable. If their leader and professor is willing to throw in her lot with them, they can drop their guards and do the same with one another.Often this reliance on one another not only persists as we return from the trail and finish the immersive course (the rest of the Jan-term) at a monastery or retreat center, but even when students are back on campus the following semester. I see them around campus and hear how they are still talking together about course ideas. This spring my Jan-term group were competing together to see if they could collectively keep their screen time below a three-hour/week average. Building a community of learners on an immersive trip builds a community of learners beyond that trip. Certainly, students in the group are that for each other, but hopefully they are also able to see their next set of classmates as a community and be willing to risk needing them, transforming that classroom and their learning experience into something more than a grade or a checkbox.What kind of risks can you introduce in your classes that require students to need each other and so build a community of learners? Can you create a classroom that is by nature and necessity participatory? Better yet, can you begin class with an immersive experience that does this and binds students to one another in ways that will change their experience of your classroom for the rest of the semester? May you find experiences that do this, and may they transform your students’ learning.

(An audio recording of this blog may be found here.) With people all around the globe, my attention was captured by the Paris 2024 Olympics. I tuned into the TV coverage as often as I could. Watching world class athletes perform their craft is spellbinding. Athletes performing at the highest level, pushing toward new world records and new personal best records—rising to the challenge of being the greatest—all fighting to be number one. Winning the gold! It is riveting.Track and field is one of my favorites, and this year the Olympics delivered high drama. American high-jumper Shelby McEwen along with New Zealand’s Hamish Kerr both cleared 2.36m. In these kinds of moments, the rules of the game allow for a tie. If agreed upon by the athletes, both are awarded the gold medal. If the opponents do not agree to call it a tie, the competition continues until there is a definitive winner—a gold medalist and a silver medalist. The moment was tense. The officials consulted with the athletes. Rather than preferring the tie, Shelby McEwen opted for a jump-off with Kerr. Shelby preferred to continue the competition in lieu of sharing the gold medal.In the end, Kerr of New Zealand took the higher jump to clinch gold, following eleven straight misses from the two finalists. It was a devastating outcome for McEwen, who was left with silver. McEwen went home having clenched second place.For me, McEwen’s decision was one of life’s ironies. When I heard that McEwen opted out of the shared gold medal and wanted the competition to continue, I thought YESSSS! & NOOOO! at the same time …Yeah! That’s right. Don’t settle for second best! You got this! Fight on! There’s no “sharing” on the Olympic podium! Get your medal! Buckle down, concentrate, and win!  You’ve trained long and hard for this moment!NOOOO! What are you doing? Take the gold medal! Gold is what you have been training for. It’s what you have been competing for. You earned it! Take it! Share it! There’s no shame in sharing victory! No need to continue the fight! You won … well you and the other guy won, but that’s good enough!I can understand McEwen’s decision, and while I respect his decision, it troubles me. My fear is that we have been taught that a shared victory is a lesser victory, a suspicious victory, a sullied victory.Opting out of sharing a gold medal, and then losing the gold for silver, is not a story we are used to hearing, or the story we like to tell. The silver medal is not “really” a win, and we like winners. If this had been an old Hollywood movie, McEwen, in the final, dramatic round would have taken the gold. The old Hollywood story of winning rather than sharing must be interrogated, contested, reconsidered and rewritten.Doctoral students and faculty are not athletes. But the arena of the academy is highly competitive. We are in rarified environments where, in many instances, competition is prized over cooperation. Our competition includes making arguments, defending arguments, critiquing arguments and doing our utmost at winning arguments. We are trained to compete against one another for awards, jobs, grants, and book contracts. And now, with social media, we compete for TV appearances, influencer status and royalty checks. The academic competition is not fist-to-cuffs, but it can be as abrasive as any athletic bout. Many colleagues are drawn into the academic arena because of their warrior spirit and battle skills. Others had to adapt and hone for the fight. Others, unprepared and unable, have just been beat up. Those in the academy know a fight. Given the lesson of McEwen, can we learn when to share the win?I have no disdain for the competitive spirit. I enjoy friendly competition, especially if the winner buys the beer after the game. What I disdain is the way winning at all costs eclipses the love for what we do. Our passions are more focused on winning than on the practice and art of achieving, creating, and building. Honing collaborative efforts for stronger communities, networks and relationships is more needed than fighting for the individualized win. It is not enough to train scholars to compete. Learning the skills and challenges of partnerships, collaborations, coalition building, and the sharing of wins is the way we create the path into our own future. My fear is that in our unrelenting competitiveness we lose out on or squelch the most brilliant minds or miss out on the far-reaching achievements which only occur in collaboration.As we reshape our educational ecologies, the question of teaching for and with collaboration is a critical question. In your scholarship, do you expect to win while others lose? Do you aspire to be the one-and-only, the star, while seeing little value in partnerships, collaborations and shared accomplishments?  Do you pit your doctoral students one against the other for scholarships, grades, and your time and attention? Do you reward faculty colleagues who “win” in their fields with higher salaries and additional goodies while other colleagues are invisibled or ignored? Are your course learning activities and assignments geared to teach competition or collaboration? What will it take to shift our faculty cultures to environs that support and celebrate sharing and the variety of contributions?

  For two years I planned my full-year sabbatical, something colleagues said would be a life-changing experience. My sabbatical days were filled with research and art-making. By spring, making art nudged research out of the picture. I was transitioning from an art hobbyist to an art professional. The thought of spending my days teaching made me physically ill, despite the fact that I had poured much of my time into continually improving my pedagogy. This change of attitude was not due to boredom, burnout, or frustration over university politics. I was an artist, full stop, so that’s how I chose to live. Two years later, I took an early retirement package. I have wanted to write a book about these developments, something I might title Zen and the Artful Buddhist: Asperger’s, Art, and Academia. But I don’t have the time, energy, or inclination to write a book. However, creating an illustrated version does appeal to me, and I’ll say more about that in another post. I’m more realistic, and more selective about how I use my time now that I’m retired. A friend commented last week, “I’m not surprised that you have found new things to keep yourself busy.” My days are now spent in my art studio or at my part-time job at a local art gallery and framing shop. Down the hall is my former colleague, who, during a sabbatical, said to herself “I’m done with teaching.” She was my department chair for ten years, and she is my best (artist) friend. We regularly critique each other’s work and go for beer at 3:30 (aka “beer:30”) in the afternoon because we can. Plus, the pub is on the ground floor, two doors down. She moved out-of-state two weeks ago, and there’s now a feeling of loss each time I enter my studio. I’ve started painting a lot of intricate, repetitive patterns lately, something I was doing regularly a few years ago. People often comment that my art and art-making processes must be spiritual and/or meditative. With my pattern-heavy art, I can see what they mean, but I still refuse to use the word “spiritual” in general or in reference to my artwork. Something about the repetition of patterns calls for deep concentration. It’s also very soothing, calming any Asperger Syndrome-related anxiety. I often tune out my surroundings by putting in my earbuds and listening to my “liked songs” playlist. My music is not soothing to most people, but repetitive sounds soothe many folks with Asperger’s. My days are spent either working in a place that is part of the art community, or in my studio making art. As one of my art mentors used to say in figure drawing class — I took a few summer courses — “This is the hardest thing you are going to do today.” Art making is hard work. It calls for constant decisions, corrections, redirections, planning, and more. And then there are all the questions about why you made those choices. It never ends. And I’ve said nothing about all the other aspects of being an artist, like marketing your work, and so on. I suppose I will say more about living as a full-time artist in another post.

During the week of my fiftieth birthday, I was surprised to receive a letter and membership card from AARP—American Association of Retired Persons. Upon inspecting the envelope and its contents, my mind traveled back to a brief, yet profound conversation I had with my grandmother, who I call Queen Bee, when I was twelve years old. We were having lunch at our favorite fast-food restaurant. We placed our order and the cashier announced the total along with the senior discount Queen Bee received. Excitedly, I exclaimed, “I can’t wait until I am old enough to get a senior discount!” “That’s ridiculous,” Queen Bee vehemently responded, “You don’t look forward to being a senior to pay less.” This was not the message I was trying to express. I simply thought it was “cool” that seniors received discounts, when young people did not. In my twelve-year-old mind, elders earned the discount for having lived a long life. To me, elders were worthy of respect, and I was happy to see McDonald’s acknowledge that.Recently, I revisited these thoughts about senior status when I participated in Auburn Theological Seminary’s Center for Storytelling and Narrative Change’s Healing the Future Gathering. Thirty-five storytellers gathered from around the United States to share their letters to the future. Surveying the storytelling circle, I realized I was one of the older persons present in a group of mostly Millennials and Gen Zers. I remembered my twelve-year-old perspective about respecting elders. I touched my silver sideburns and asked myself, am I becoming an elder? Throughout the gathering, I was respectfully and kindly approached, cared for, and questioned politely. Continuing to contemplate, I pondered retirement, being elderly, and identifying with what it means to be a senior citizen.I am fifty-five years old, and eligible for a senior discount; however, I am not elderly. Nevertheless, my perspective on how I view myself and younger generations has changed. Teaching in higher education for seventeen years places me beyond early-career status and somewhere between mid- and late-career teaching faculty. As a seasoned teacher-scholar, I see myself adding value to conversations and collective engagement, more so than I have in the past. I am not elderly, but I now join the company of elders.Reflecting on the company of elders, I recall the impact another mid-career teacher-scholar had on my younger self. Dr. Katie Geneva Cannon, whose mission was to equip, encourage, and empower emerging scholars in discovering “the work their souls must have,” was my teacher, mentor, and dissertation advisor. Dr. Cannon was a faithful elder and is now a good ancestor. As a teacher-scholar moving toward retirement within the next twelve to fifteen years, Lord willing, Dr. Cannon’s elder legacy still has me asking, “What is the work my soul must have?” To become a faithful elder and a good ancestor.As a child, I was taught to respect my elders, meaning older adults. But age does not necessarily garner respect. So I ask, “Who is an elder deserving of respect?” Based on my knowledge, engagement, exposure, observation, and conversations, I would describe a faithful elder in this way. Faithful elders are usually older, but they are not defined by age. They are recognized because they have earned the respect of their community. Their words are congruent with their actions and teachings. They are containers filled with essential wisdom. They assess situations, carrying collective and communal prophetic and generative knowledge, and offer constructive feedback. Faithful elders practice their culture, impart their culture, and help others find their culture. They are keepers of tradition, rituals, and values. Faithful elders love God, others, and themselves fiercely. Faithful elders tell stories that shape the future with hope.Reflecting on the roles and actions of faithful elders in our families, schools, churches, communities, and society is important work of the soul. While continuing to move forward in one’s career and calling, becoming a faithful elder is vital to fulfilling one of life’s purposes, not only for oneself but for future generations.The exercise at Auburn Seminary of listening to and absorbing hope-filled letters to the future written by younger generations focused my attention on the collective wisdom, vision, and determination presented by the storytellers. I became embarrassed that in recent years I had given so little thought to the future. Called and convicted, I thought about those who made sacrifices so I could have a future with hope. Those “good” ancestors made decisions prioritizing the quality of life for those coming after. What does it mean for me to follow in their footsteps and become a good ancestor?As a faithful elder, I must build on the hope that has come before me. I must preserve and communicate an African-centered value system. As a faithful elder and storyteller, I must discern what to pass on and what not to pass on to the future. As a faithful elder, I must seek and offer forgiveness in the face of inhumane and unjust systems. As a faithful elder, I must tell the stories that help others to shift from a dejected mindset to one of expectancy, showing the way to a future of assurance.Reflecting on Queen Bee, Dr. Cannon, and a future imagined by young storytellers, I recognize that I have stepped into the company of elders. And it is now my soul’s work to take up the charge of becoming a faithful elder telling stories of hope and moving toward being a good ancestor.

Lurking on social media the other day, I listened to colleagues discussing how to respond to a student paper in a philosophy class. The assignment was about our responsibilities towards (nonhuman) animals. The student argued that we can do whatever we want with animals because God has given us dominion over them. Presumably, he had Genesis 1.26 in mind, but none of the course readings mentioned Genesis—or God.People in the social media group had lots of suggestions on how to respond:Tell him that religion has no place in the classroom.Tell him that there should be no theist or atheist premises in academic writing.Just write “Irrelevant” in the margin!That last comment got a lot of likes, hopefully because people found it funny and not because they considered it good advice.The consensus was clear: Tell the student that appeals to scripture are inappropriate in college papers.I don’t think that’s good advice.My colleagues were ignoring something crucial. In this sort of situation, we can do deep damage to our relationship with our student and to the student’s relationship with higher education if we don’t tread carefully. Presumably the student who wrote this paper believes in God and the Bible. His religion will be part of his ethical decision-making going forward, and the Bible will influence his thinking and his actions.Bearing this in mind, let’s not tell this student that his thinking about right and wrong in class must be utterly divorced from his thinking about it outside the classroom.My advice would be: Before writing any comments, identify your larger goals. Here are mine:I want our class discussions to help inform my students’ thinking and actions about ethical issues, and in particular about whether it’s OK to do “whatever you want” with animals.I want students to listen when I try to teach them more things after this and I want other professors to be able to teach them even more things. If I reinforce a student’s likely skepticism about professors and religion, I make that harder.I don’t want my actions to increase the chances that my students go out in the world thinking of higher education as an enemy to religion and God.These goals suggest a different approach. Start by taking the paper seriously:Do you think that’s what the Bible means by ‘dominion’? Some people think so, but I've always thought it meant something more like ‘stewardship.’ I mean, God is the Father, right? So, I think of it like if your parents go out and put you in charge of the family dogs. If they come home and discover that you haven’t fed them or given them water, they’ll be mad at you.What do you think someone who doesn’t believe in God and the Bible would make of your argument? How would you persuade them? For instance, imagine that you’re talking to the author of our second reading or to the other kids in the class.I would count this encounter as a success if the student feels like I’m treating him and his religion with respect and if he realizes two things:“Dominion” could mean “stewardship” instead of “freedom to treat them any way I want,” and I need to think more about which one the Bible meant.I need to talk about this differently or I won’t be able to persuade people who don’t believe in the Bible.That’s a start. Much more has to happen before this student writes at college level. Later, I and his other professors will teach him more.It’s a very small step. Growth and intellectual development takes time. I probably won’t see the result of the learning process that I was part of. But occasionally I do.My greatest success story in this context is a student who came into my Intro to Philosophy class as a freshman, determined to prove that Christ rose from the dead. It was rough going, but by the end of the semester, his sources weren’t cringeworthy anymore, and he was presenting an actual argument. And he still trusted me. He majored in math but took Philosophy of Religion with me as a senior, and he explained that he wanted to continue developing his proof.I braced myself. But during the semester, the class discussed faith and reason extensively, and I was able to ask him (privately): Given that you think about faith as being the important thing, what makes it so important to you to prove that Christ rose? He thought about it for a long time and finally decided that he didn’t need to prove that Christ rose. Instead, he wrote a strong final paper in which he reflected on the meaning of faith, discussing his own experience and the course readings.I rarely get wins that size. But taking my students’ religious views seriously makes them possible.

(An audio recording of this blog post may be found here.)One of the first requests I received in my new role as Director of the Wabash Center was to convene a group of “late-career” scholars. I said no. The friend requesting the workshop explained that they had participated in an early-career workshop, then a mid-career workshop. So, explained the colleague, it only stands to reason that, now, Wabash Center should host a late-career workshop. I said no. My rationale was that if late-career colleagues knew the richness of the workshop experience, then they should write a proposal and convene a group for one another. Now, in year five of this job, I have received the same earnest appeal many times from other colleagues in my generation. To each request, I have said no—until this past February.In February, over lunch in Trippet Hall, two colleagues carefully explained to me why Wabash Center needed to support late-career colleagues with a workshop. I listened. Somehow, I was persuaded by this encounter. I have begun to think about the possibility of convening the old(er) colleagues.In my wondering about this possible gathering, it quickly dawned on me that we have no meaningful name for “late-career” scholars. In the current system, being hired to a faculty position, moving through the tenure-track process and/or promotion, connotes early-career. The years after tenure and promotion connote mid-career. During the mid-career years some colleagues are promoted to full professor. Many colleagues remain associate professors for the rest of their career. Remaining an associate professor is not an indication of poor scholarship or poor collegiality. I do not like the terms “junior scholar” and “senior scholar.” Emeriti status occurs after retirement. With that said, what is the name of the vocational territory between mid-career and retirement? Why have we not identified this moment in our careers with a significant name that denotes the power of this season and so we can be aspirational? What if during this season of our career we are the best of ourselves and have the most to offer?I began to think that “late(r)-career” colleagues need a description or profile. So far—here is my profile: we would focus upon a gathering of senior scholars who know they are at their career’s apex. We would gather those who have been in the enterprise long enough to know what they know, including their limits. Those with an earned confidence would be invited. These colleagues are no longer ruled by their fears. They are comfortable in their own skin and in their own classrooms. They no longer feel responsible for supporting the status quo. They have a freedom in their professional life that other, younger, less experienced colleagues are not afforded or have not earned. They have garnered enough institutional goodwill and cache that they are able to take institutional risks—make good trouble—without fear of reprisal or retaliation. They recognize that depression, family obligations, financial challenges, health issues, and creative deserts have not had the last word. They have clear paths, practices, and habits for their generativity in teaching, research and discovery. They understand the teaching life as, paradoxically, contemplative and publicly active.They possess a feeling of being on the verge, which is exhilarating. They acknowledge and affirm the late season of their career, their success, who they have become, and the public journey they have undertaken. They are not narcissistic nor are they self-deprecating. Yet, they make time for early-career colleagues as a significant part of their scholarly duties. They are imaginative in their ways of mentoring, advising, counseling, coaching, advocating, allying and befriending younger colleagues.The truth is that even if we do not have a name for these people, we all know one or two of these folks. When I was an early-career colleague, several of these folks saved my life—more than once.These people are powerful, knowledgeable, and keep the community sane, somewhat healthy, and mission focused. These are the colleagues who have resisted becoming mean, embittered, or simply checking out of faculty life while still cashing the paycheck. These are the colleagues who save us from the bullies, the devils, and those who would haze us, even after tenure. They teach us with their actions how not to act entitled but be service-focused and humble.There should be a clear path to this season of a career. Early career colleagues should be aware of the power in this season. I have played with the following names:Elder scholars - for too many people the term elder connotes being elderly.Apex scholars - reminds people of being an apex predator!Apogee scholars – nobody other than physic professors get this reference.Sherpa scholars - has a kind of symbolism and resonance to the wider meaning of the aforementioned profile but lacks grit.Baobab scholars - makes use of the idea of gathering under the Baobab tree for wise counsel with elders in the African village, but do enough people know the tree?Synergy scholars - communicates that the work is about collaboration, interaction, and cooperation, but it sounds foreign to teachers of religion and theology.I am still working to name this season of our careers.In the meantime, here are the challenges. As an early career colleague, what will you do to aspire to this season? If you are in this peer-group, what will you do to move into connection with colleagues who are playing these roles and taking on these responsibilities? If you are retired, how will you support those still in the struggle? If you are an administrator, how will you recognize and celebrate the great work these folks provide in your school and for our colleagues?

Teaching Introduction to the Hebrew Bible is one of the most challenging—and enjoyable—parts of my job. It shares some of its challenges with any other large humanities class: how to keep students engaged, reading closely, and asking sophisticated questions while they sit in a sea of their peers. Other challenges are particular to this course. I jokingly tell colleagues that I teach one of the only Gen Ed topics—the Bible—that students know everything about before entering the classroom. Which is another way of saying that it can be difficult to tap into students’ curiosity about a text they may know about intimately from other places. To be curious about a text is to be vulnerable to new ways of thinking about it and not everyone who walks into my classroom feels ready to be open in that way. Thus, while I assume that every student actually does have questions about the Bible, some are primed to offer only answers instead of queries about this text. This resistance may be due to the ideological heterogeneity of their peers, to the fact that my authority to teach derives from academic, not religious, credentials, or some other reason entirely. In any case, the large, nondevotional site that is the public university lecture hall can be a difficult context not only for students to stay engaged but also to unleash their curiosity about the Bible in the first place.  The practice of Designated Respondents (DR), which I now use every semester I teach this 120-student course, does not resolve all of these difficulties. It does, however, generate conditions in which to address them by creating a framework for consistent engagement, inquiry, and connection.   Practice  Designated Respondents works in some ways like a sustained and structured “fishbowl.” Here is how I introduce students to it in the syllabus: Three times during this class you will be asked to serve as the “Designated Respondent” for a class meeting. This means that you will come to class more prepared than usual. I will look to you first to actively participate, respond to and pose your own questions during the course of the class. Try to speak at least once in each of your assigned sessions. If you are unable to attend one of your scheduled days, please contact me and I will assign you to another group.  I divide students into six or seven groups (fifteen to twenty students per group) and begin the DR practice at the end of the second week of class, once enrollment has stabilized. For the first round many students are quite nervous to speak up. To help relieve anxiety, I open these sessions by asking students to pose their prepared questions about the reading, so they can get used to hearing their own voices. They can ask questions about anything. I only require that their questions: (1) invoke the assigned biblical reading directly; and (2) are put in terms intelligible to a broad, religiously-diverse audience. The goal here is to get students to slow down enough to let the Bible surprise them and then to make those surprises intelligible to students who may not share their guiding interpretive assumptions. I have found that after students speak up once or twice they gain confidence in this aspect of the assignment. Inviting students to sit towards the front of the room, if they are able, helps to mitigate the intimidation they may feel from speaking in a larger space. This practice means that I structure every class session around large questions and leave ample space for discussion. I put one or more of these questions on the opening slide for students to consider as they settle into the room. That way, more reticent students can contemplate and even prepare their responses in advance.   Evaluation Students assign themselves a grade for this aspect of class, though they can only assign themselves full points if they: (a) attend their assigned class session, (b) complete all the assigned reading for the day, and (c) complete the entire rubric. The self-evaluation rubric consists of the following questions: What percentage of the reading did you read in advance of this class? Describe two passages from the assigned reading that you were prepared to discuss. What two questions were you prepared to ask in this class session? Be as specific as you can, invoking the biblical text directly. Describe what engagement looked like for you during class. Out of 10 points, explain what grade you would assign yourself based on your answers to the above questions. It is worth noting that for some students, speaking in class is not just a strong disinclination but not possible or healthy. I work with students to create specific strategies for their voices to be heard during their assigned sessions. However, the evaluation rubric permits students who are not able to speak up to still articulate their questions, explain their engagement (which may consist entirely of attentive listening and active notetaking), and achieve full points.    Results  Some students truly hate this assignment. It requires them to read and to attend, and it strongly encourages them to speak in a large class. Each one of these components can be profoundly challenging. But many more students, while anxious at first, find their voices through this practice. Some have shared with me that it has empowered them to speak more in other courses as well. Here is how one student recently described it:  “I really liked the designated respondents! At first I thought it was terrible, but after I did it and participated in the course, I found them really beneficial. I have thoughts and answers to questions every day in the class but I am always too scared to raise my hand (simply social anxiety!) but being told that I have to respond has helped me participate more in class.”  This practice has helped me forge connections with a larger percentage of students and to better understand their interpretive questions and concerns. I have also seen it generate connections among students within the class. Speaking up in class is a vulnerable act and it encourages students to be curious about the Bible and about one another. I have witnessed students, who were otherwise strangers, linger after class to talk in response to what they raised in our discussion. Finally, DR prevents any one student (or handful of students) from dominating discussion. Hearing from a diverse range of voices (by semester’s end, nearly every student has spoken) makes our class more socially-connected than is typical for a hundred-plus person course. Designated Respondents is not a panacea for the problems of student anonymity, alienation, and disengagement that hamper many large courses. However, by creating clear structures for close-reading and active participation from a wide range of voices, it creates conditions for some of these issues to be assuaged. 

With almost no leaves in the canopy above us, sunlight flooded the gently sloping hillside, penetrating and illuminating every open space in the leaf litter. My students and I had just spent some time—I don’t know exactly how long—inspecting a Dark Fishing Spider (Dolomedes tenebrosus) who was absorbing the warmth on the smooth gray bark of an American Beech (Fagus grandifolia). The spider—stretched out like a stereotypical beach bum—seemed to be enjoying the early spring warmth as much, if not more, than we were.“This doesn’t even feel like class,” one of my students exclaimed, taking a seat in the crunchy oak and hickory leaves. Indeed it didn’t. I had hoped for this.That experience was just one of countless precious memories during my first semester teaching Creaturely Theology in the spring of 2023. That course, an upper-level undergraduate theology elective, weds theological reflection on the more-than-human world, spiritual formation in nature, and biological and ecological surveys of the flora and fauna of Johnson University Tennessee’s campus.[i]In the fall of 2020, due to COVID risks, I began teaching outside almost exclusively. That experience brought immediate, unexpected pedagogical opportunities.[ii] While I continue to teach my regular courses outside as often as possible, “Creaturely Theology” has drastically enlarged my outdoor classroom. Now my students and I spend every Monday morning in the spring exploring the wild and hidden corners of Johnson University Tennessee’s 400-acre wooded campus. Increasing the physical dimensions of my “outdoor classroom” has required comparable growth in my pedagogical imagination and teaching repertoire.In this series, Creaturely Pedagogy, I will explore some of the exciting, life-giving lessons I am learning from my students, our non-human neighbors, and from the land itself through Creaturely Theology.All has not gone smoothly, I confess. The course has attracted significant attention, some of it negative.[iii] One social-media commenter, while generally supportive, called the course “lighter weight.” Every university educator and student has heard of the trope of the “blow off class.” Such courses ostensibly require little work on the part of students. They lack rigor. They are filler. Some even judge them to be a waste of time and resources.While I succeeded in creating a course that—at least sometimes—did not feel “like class,” it was not because Creaturely Theology wasn’t rigorous or intellectually challenging. I had to modify the schedule because of the density and difficulty of the required readings! The very distinction between serious and unserious courses, though, provides occasion to evaluate the ideals and goals of university education generally, and religious and theological education specifically, in our moment.In the recent past—with effects still relevant to the present—Western university education has idealized theory, technical content, control, and the abstract. In a word, education and competency have been equated with “mastery.”[iv] But none of the current educational disciplines that exist in university contexts today, not even the so-called “hard sciences,” can deliver mastery over their subject matter. In each there is an almost incomprehensible amount of material to examine, and new developments and discoveries happen all the time, even in the humanities, and, perhaps most shockingly of all, in theology! Education must involve developing competencies to think, speak, and work humbly and responsibly in a complicated world. And the work of coming to think and speak well about God and all things in relationship to God is rather involved work, after all.As readers of this blog know well, all human knowing is embodied. There is no human learning without sensation, and consciousness never happens untethered to underlying neurology and neurobiology. All learning involves feeling. All loving does, too. Creaturely Theology has allowed me to combine high-level theological reflection with unforgettable, hands-on experiences in the more-than-human world.In my forthcoming blogs in this series, I will often emphasize the importance of sensation and feeling in the work of theological reflection and learning. Future entries will explore the themes of naming, risk and fear, departures and arrivals, and ritual. I hope you’ll follow along.Notes: [i] Initial funding for the course came from the Science-Engaged Theology course grant competition in the St. Andrews New Visions in Theological Anthropology project, funded by the John Templeton Foundation.[ii] In a previous blog series, I shared some of the things that I had been learning from teaching outside.[iii] See “Johnson University’s New ‘Creaturely Theology’ Course Stirs Controversy.”[iv] Note Willie James Jennings’ salient critique of “mastery” in After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2020).

My absolute favorite way to teach is sitting around a camp stove on a bed of pine needles with students eating mac and cheese and laughing about the day’s challenges. If I’m lucky, my favorite wool socks are on my feet and the hat my friend Tess knit for me is on my head. If I’m really lucky, the students have moved from “That canoe carry was so hard!” to “I was thinking this afternoon about the point Belden Lane makes in the chapter on struggle as teaching us attention and indifference…”As much as I enjoy taking students outside for my regular semester classes, taking them through immersion courses—usually a week backpacking, sometimes canoeing—is a whole other level. All the good that happens in an outdoor session on campus is enhanced by being outdoors for a whole week or more. Students forget that they’re in class, become curious, and learn rather than ask me repeatedly if they’re doing the paper “right.” Students are less distracted on these trips, more able to focus on readings, reflections, experiences, each other. We all feel like we’re getting away with something, and we play, which makes us even more curious and open to learning. We are all more alive in the world. My teaching and my students’ learning becomes more attentive, more responsive, more active, more unpredictable in the best ways because that’s the reality of life on the trail: wild, unpredictable, active, requiring attention and response.All of these things happen, but for this post I’ll focus on just one aspect of the immersive experience: how present students become and how much that positively affects their learning and, more significantly, their lives.Two aspects of immersive outdoor trips especially facilitate students’ presence in their own lives. First, the places I backpack with students usually have no cell service, and I take their phones anyway, requiring them to go screen-free for the duration of not just the trip but the Jan-term (three weeks). Many of us make rules about devices in our classrooms and enforce presence for three hours a week, but imagine how the extended absence of their devices, the immersion into the non-virtual world, brings students into a more sustained experience of attention and therefore a deeper experience of presence. Students are not distracted by people who are not physically present. They cannot spend time staring at a video, leaving their reality behind. The things that distract them from their learning must be more interesting than those on a screen. Students tend to be much more engaged in their reading and read with more focus and depth on these trips, too! Without the numbing kinds of distraction available, students find themselves paying attention to their world and their community—each other. Their minds might wander, but they wander in ways our minds were meant to wander, making connections and noticing the world and the people around them, discovering the humanity of others and reaching out to meet needs they wouldn’t otherwise notice. They may even perceive internal movements of their own souls.The other aspect of the immersive trips that makes students so present is the pace of the trail. We are only ever doing one thing at a time. We’re hiking or sleeping or cooking or eating or playing or sitting around a campfire with one another, but never two of those at the same time (well, we can eat and do most of the other things at the same time, but these are undergraduates we’re talking about). Those are also the only things we do each day, every day, day after day. The pace and the rhythm slows us all down. We can focus. There is nothing vying for our attention. We just have to walk awhile, attend to our feet, attend to the person beside us.What happens when students are present, then, is an exponential increase in learning. Imagine conversations that last longer than thirty seconds because students have read deeply and brought questions and thoughts about the text. Imagine real conversation with real listening to one another and building ideas together because they are not wondering in the backs of their minds about who is texting them or what other conversation they are missing out on. Imagine a full day to ponder and digest the ideas of the previous night, a whole week for the course material to sink deep into students’ bones as they engage it with different people in different conversations over and over with nothing else to do but go for a walk and chat about it.Perhaps backpacking with students is not an option for you, but I imagine some kind of immersive experience is. Could you require a weekend retreat without phones and with a manageable amount of reading you do while at the retreat? Could you schedule even a single day immersion with students? Could you take them to a museum, take their phones, and give them a single task they have to do for several hours, slowly? Could you assign them a weekly meal where they have to be present to one another? May you find your immersive classroom and come to know your absolute favorite way to teach, with or without the wool socks.