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An audio version of this blog post may be found here.It was the first morning of my vacation. The restaurant at the resort had a waiting list for breakfast patrons. The hostess took my phone number and said I would be called when a table opened. I thanked her and walked to find a comfortable spot in which to wait. Not far from the dining room, guests could choose to linger in any of three adjoining rooms--the bar, lobby, or library.I chose to wait in the library. The room was ringed with mahogany shelves carefully adorned with books and creative objects.  Statues, framed paintings, and board games were on display. The room reminded me of magazine covers from Architectural Digest or Good House Keeping. The many chairs and couches were positioned to invite guests to linger in small groups, or to simply sit and read. I picked a chair facing the wall of windows. The windows provided a view of the sprawling pasture setting. I noticed a scrabble board was set on a table near the windows and a chess game was set at another table near the entry door. I, indeed, felt as if I was visiting a friend or relative’s home.As I waited, not because they were loud or intrusive, I overheard a grandfather teaching his grandson to play chess. The boy was about six or seven years old. With the grandfather seated on one side of the board and the boy, kneeling in the chair on the other side, the granddad invited the boy to make the first move. As they played, the grandfather patiently explained the way the boy might move varying pieces. Several times, he encouraged the boy to consider a strategy. At the end of the game, the grandfather showed the boy how to reset the board for the next people who might want to play. I overheard the grandfather say he had taught his daughter, the grandson’s mother, how to play chess when she was about the same age as the boy.Even when I am on vacation, I am thinking about and identifying teaching moments. This tender teaching moment between grandfather and grandson was poignant, delicate, and beautiful. It was not extraordinary. Its beauty was in the ordinary occasion of a grandfather taking time, one-on-one, to play with his grandson.Some of the best, most tender, teaching occurs one-on-one.Classrooms can be marvelous arenas for superb teaching. Classrooms can be sites where the relationship between instructors and learners transforms. Equally ripe with possibility and beauty are the one-on-one relationships between faculty and students which happen beyond the classroom. Teaching students in one-on-one modes has the potential to assist students in ways that the classroom encounter cannot. The opportunity of a sustained conversation with one student can sometimes lead to a long-lasting, life-changing connection.While I was on a faculty, with intention, as part of my teaching agenda, each year I chose to work with a student teaching assistant (TA) and a student research assistant (RA). I considered these relationships with students as key to my teaching responsibility as the courses I taught in classrooms.My practice was to meet weekly with each of the two students to facilitate our prescribed tasks. Then, once a month, if the students were interested, I would convene them for a meal to discuss larger theological issues, hear how they were managing in the day-to-day reality of graduate school life, and encourage conversation about their occupational aspirations and dreams. My aim for these one-on-one relationships was to aid their health and success.I honed my listening skills by teaching one-on-one. Spending time in one-on-one conversations allowed my primary focus to be on the questions, curiosities, abilities, and perspectives of the student. These one-on-one relationships allowed me to make stronger recommendations for further graduate study, employment options, or give my opinion about life’s unexpected twists and turns.  A regular dimension of this kind of teaching was when I was able to write very considerate, in-depth, letters of recommendation for my students because I knew the student as a person and not just as a student who had done well in my class. Occasionally, if there was trouble, my relationship with the TA or RA allowed for convincing intervention or advocacy.My practice of intentionally constructing ways of working one-on-one with students comes from my own experiences in graduate school. When I was in graduate school, the professors for whom I was their TA and RA became my career-long mentors and friends. The three-faculty people who I worked closest with in graduate school have been influential in guiding my entire academic career.Recently, I referred one of my current mentees to my mentor for guidance on an issue for which he had expertise. I told my mentee that I was putting them in touch with their “grand-mentor.”Through these connections I know I am a better teacher and colleague. Last week, a mentee who serves on a university faculty and just received tenure, called me and asked me to talk with one of their doctoral students. I was delighted to assist. Just like grandfather was so glad to teach grandson, I am overjoyed to reach out and support a student of my student.

I remember dial-up modems and the exhilaration of logging onto AOL.com as a teenager. A few years later, I experienced the novelty of Facebook. Duke Divinity School (DDS) advised all of its masters’ students in the 2008 incoming cohort to create Facebook accounts so we could stay connected and support one another through the first year of our graduate program. DDS recognized that this would be a time where students begin to deconstruct presupposed understandings of religion, Bible, and the theologies that we had received from our families of origin and church contexts. Reflecting back on that time, I feel as if the beginning of my deconstruction was wed to the rising age of social media. Now as a professor of the New Testament in the age of social media, what should some of my best practices entail? While difficult to define, the term “social media” identifies the various internet applications that allow users to construct their profiles while also creating content that connects and networks various groups of people. While social media is supposed to be about “connection,” I imagine that we all have experienced “internet trolls,” folks who try to bait and upset readers with disturbing comments. As professors of religion and theology, I would argue that we are the prime targets for internet trolls just by virtue of the nature of our work at a time where there seems to be rising White Christian nationalism in the United States. So, I often ask myself questions about the role of the professor in the age of social media. For example, in my context, our Director of Outreach and Alumni Relations requests that faculty increase their social media presence as a way to connect with alumni who are out working in the world. Can I carefully curate my social media presence to let those alumni know that I support them from afar? As a professor, what content can I create that allows alumni to be refreshed as they do the difficult work of leading congregations and parachurch ministries? Moreover, can social media serve as a way for faculty to connect with prospective students as we all experience the feelings of scarcity in theological education? Is this another area of “service” that faculty can add to their tenure portfolios (assuming one has a job with tenure!)? While I am not sure of the proper answers to the above questions, I certainly try to be cognizant of what the next generations of theological students may look like. Gen Z, for example, born between 1997 to 2012, is the first generation to have grown up with ALL THE TECHNOLOGY. Further, they will buy products from social media sites more than any other generation. Is there a way for Millennial, Gen X, and Boomer faculty to capitalize on connecting with Gen Z through social media? I think that is a conversation that must be had in our various theological faculties. I started @BoozyBibleScholar on TikTok and Instagram, providing segments called “One Minute Womanism” and “Scripture Through Womanist Eyes” as a way to show my growing community that there are other voices besides the conservative right-leaning interpreters of scripture. Now, I will definitely not be keeping up with the latest TikTok dance trends, but I will add my own particular voice to the ever-growing vacuum of social media to provide a brave space for the folks who may be feeling left behind and kicked out of Christianity. Just as in the opening of this reflection I recognized my own deconstruction during the rise of the social media age, I imagine that Gen Z experiences similar deconstruction(s). As I peruse social media, it seems to me that the loudest voices in Christianity today tend to be destructive voices. If you have pondered a desire to help silence those destructive voices, I implore you to act now. Find ways to make your scholarship available to the public. I wholeheartedly believe that one of the professor’s jobs in the age of social media is to be a transformative voice in contrast to those who will try to tear people down. Instead of letting John Piper, John MacArthur, or Voddie Bauchaum be the loudest voices in public religious discourse, professors of religion and theology owe the American public counter voices in the age of social media. My hope is that my social media presence will at least point some to believe that there are other ways to be “Christian” in a world that has vastly devalued such an identity. TikTok: @BoozyBibleScholar and Instagram: @BoozyBibleScholar

I am not a scholar of Religion or Theology. However, my work as a creative writer and professor of Creative Nonfiction often involves identifying everyday divinities; finding the sacred in small things, the flawed, and the profane. Many of the readers/contributors to this blog might recognize my name as a kind of curator for this space. I serve the Wabash Center as an Educational Design Manager, a job that has brought me great opportunity to learn, share and reflect approaches to teaching and the teaching life. When I became aware that one of our blog publishing dates would fall on Juneteenth, I wanted to take the opportunity to write about it and perhaps encourage others to learn and teach more about the subject…Juneteenth: What is it?June 19, 1865: Gordon Granger of the Union army arrived in Galveston, Texas, to inform enslaved African Americans of their freedom and that the Civil War had ended. General Granger’s announcement put into effect the Emancipation Proclamation, which had been issued nearly two and a half years earlier, on January 1, 1863, by President Abraham Lincoln.Juneteenth is an annual commemoration of this event and the end of slavery in the United States after the Civil War. It has been celebrated by African Americans since the late 1800s. It is the longest running Black holiday. Also known as Freedom Day, Jubilee Day and Cel-Liberation Day.The day was first recognized as a federal holiday in 2021, when President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law after the efforts of Lula Briggs Galloway, Opal Lee, and others.I grew up knowing nothing about Juneteenth. This history was not taught to me in my public schools. I first became aware of the day and its significance in college, thanks to my first African American literature professor, and the book by Ralph Ellison. When I  heard the story, I was angry. Understandably, I think. The idea that slavery in the United States continued quite a while after the Emancipation Proclamation was deeply frustrating. But I was also upset with the fact that this event seemed whitewashed from my education. Why wasn’t this major moment in African American history discussed every Black History Month? Why wasn’t this made a part of the curriculum I was given?Another part of me was unsurprised. As a Black person in America, I am familiar with the ways my homeland can defer its promises of equality, and how inconvenient histories can be overlooked in order to affirm narratives of American exceptionalism. The story of Juneteenth complicates our understanding of the Civil War, Lincoln’s legacy, and the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.I wouldn’t encounter Annette Gordon-Reed’s Juneteenth until I was a teacher myself, assigning it to myself and my graduate students to read together. Together, along with other supplementary texts, we’d learn more details about the factors which led chattel slavery to continue in America years after it was said to have ended…States with little or no Union Soldier presence refused/ignored the order to free enslaved people.Border states, including Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, and of course Texas, ignored emancipation.Slave owners threatened to kill slaves if they tried to leave. Some slavers moved to Texas to keep people enslaved. Galveston, Texas was the last stronghold.The Emancipation Proclamation didn’t apply to Indian tribes. The five “Civilized Tribes” (Cherokee, Choctaw, Muscogee, Chickasaw, Seminole) owned Black, Mixed and Indigenous slaves. Chattel slavery among these tribes was not officially ended until 1866.These factors demanded considerable time and effort to navigate and prompted questions that were uncomfortable for the learners and for me as well. But I believe more was gained by engaging with Juneteenth in the classroom—a greater understanding of ourselves in relation to our citizenship, our communities of belonging, and one another.I wish I had the opportunity to have learned about the event sooner in my life and more often throughout my matriculation through academia. Even if it would have been awkward at times. I wish to have been able to observe this commemoration of freedom earlier, and the chances I might have had to unpack its significance with teachers and fellow students.There is no real discussion about freedom in America that does not invoke the lived experience of Black people. As the poet Terrence Hayes suggests, Black people share a historical and constant relationship to freedom. To take this further with a question: in lessons about the liberation found through God’s grace—the freedom from fear discovered in faith and divine will—why wouldn’t we center the lived experiences of a systemically subjugated population? Why not ask students to engage with a moment that signifies a turn toward a more moral universe? I would like to make a case for making Juneteenth a point of discussion in classrooms across all fields of study, but especially in theological and religious education with its potential to position scholars who lead communities and shape public thought. There is so much to be gained in the teaching of Juneteenth.Here is a resource, a Juneteenth Reading List cultivated by the Smithsonian’s National African American History Museum: CLICK HERE. As we consider how we might craft lessons around this holiday, making sure to read as much as we can on the subject feels imperative.If there are readers who have had success teaching Juneteenth and would like to share a reflection on their experience, reach out at quistd@wabash.edu.

The WizIt is the malleability of the Oz story to reflect different social, historical, and cultural contexts while utilizing recognizable symbols – special magical shoes, the Yellow Brick Road – which makes it such a powerful myth of America. Early in the twentieth century, within a few years of the publication of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, stage productions had already begun. The 1939 MGM film in which the title was shortened to The Wizard of Oz proved to be iconic in its portrayal of the story of Dorothy and her friends’ journey through the magical land of Oz and their journey of self-discovery. Oz started out as a literary narrative but is retold as a musical film. The Hollywood film musical was well established as a featured genre in which songs, their lyrics, and dance sequences were part and parcel of the narrative. The film musical, in turn, drew on the tradition of musical theatre. Musical theatre’s earlier predecessors included vaudeville, and prior to that, the minstrel show, the earliest popular stage entertainment in the United States.Minstrel shows emerged in the nineteenth century as performances of imagined blackness based on racial stereotypes. Minstrel shows featured white performers in blackface (makeup, wigs, and costuming). Minstrel shows proved to be so popular that there were minstrel shows featuring black performers who donned costume and makeup on stage to perform caricatures. While minstrelsy was supplanted by the movies as the most popular form of mass entertainment, it still lingered well into the twentieth century in stage shows and in film. Reflecting segregationist policies of the era, not many people of African descent who identified as black were cast in mainstream musical theatrical productions. Coupled with this practice, there were all-black musicals on Broadway. In Dahomey was the first such musical, staged in 1903. Others followed in subsequent decades leading up to the staging of the 1964 all-black cast of Hello Dolly! featuring Pearl Bailey in the title role.The introduction of The Wiz in the mid-1970s featuring an all-black cast should not be separated from its contemporary sociocultural or historical context. This staging drew on Baum’s original storyline, as well as on the 1939 MGM musical, but the story was transplanted from turn-of-the-century Kansas to contemporary urban, black America. The full title was The Wiz: The Super Soul Musical of “The Wizard of Oz.” This title was a statement about the musical’s positioning in relation to the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz which itself was positioned in relation to Baum’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. And so, as an audience, we are presented with a version of a version of a version in the fashioning of an authentic representation. The direction and creative costume design by Geoffrey Holder is in itself worthy of exploration, as I will discuss below.Occurring only a decade after the tumult of the 1960s, The Wiz reflected 1970s black American musical genres incorporating soul and gospel-tinged R n’ B in its lyrical content. Its storyline featuring a young Stephanie Mills as Dorothy provided a powerful message of belonging, self -awareness, and affirmation of black identities through embodied performances. With costumes by Trinidadian-born dancer, choreographer, actor, and artist, Geoffrey Holder, the musical was a triumph, winning seven Tony’s (considered the pinnacle of awards for Broadway musical theatre) in 1975. These included Best Musical and two for Holder as director and choreographer.

The day before we were told to go online, rumors that we would transition were flying think and fast. It was a Tuesday. I was supposed to head to Vanderbilt that evening to give a talk on Wednesday, but the night before, it had been canceled. Given this, I suspected that we (CU Boulder) would be going online soon. Earlier in the day when I met with my seminar (a class that, despite being label a seminar, had over 30 people), I told them that I thought online was coming. The entire room burst into conversation, much of it unease, some of it amusement, most of it because they knew I was barely managing our minimalist Canvas site. We had already experienced some small adaptations together. A week or two before, a student who was experiencing back spasms asked if she could lie on the floor during the class. I said yes, and she participated while lying flat on her back. Prior to our last in-person session, a student had emailed me to say that he thought he had Covid-19 and asked if he could attend via FaceTime, on a classmate’s computer. I said yes, and he participated from his screen. Using that flexibility as our foundation, we spent 30 minutes planning our online transition together. In the end, I am responsible for the decisions that were made, but I am very glad that my students and I worked through the plans together. We discussed the possibility of meeting over Zoom. While people really liked our classroom community, we had concerns about trying to have a 34-person conversation over the computer. (At this time, I had never used Zoom and did not realize that I could break the class into small groups with the push of a button.) In addition to questions about the feasibility of the Zoom platform, students were anxious about internet access, changing work schedules, and responsibility for younger siblings. So, we decided that we would have discussion boards. I asked them if they thought that it would be fair to have everyone post one initial thought and two comments on existing posts per day. We agreed, as a group, that one comment could be part of an ongoing conversation on your own post, but that the other comment had to be on someone else’s. We discussed what they wanted and needed in order to make this plan work. Deadlines. They wanted clear deadlines and they wanted me to promise that I would not move things around on them. As the semester would wear on, one by one, they would repeatedly thank me for never moving anything around. We agreed that the initial post needed to be up by the start of class time, and that they had 25 hours to post responses. I talked about what I wanted in the discussion boards: for them to try not to repeat each other, and to make sure that someone commented on almost everyone’s post. When I brought up that second concern, one student nodded. I knew she would monitor our inclusivity. I was delighted, and feel that I can take very little credit, for what happened on our discussion boards over the following weeks. I posted questions to get them going; one of which was always, “Share a quote that struck you as interesting and tell us why you were intrigued by it.” They answered. They picked quotes they liked, they picked quotes that they did not understand, they picked quotes for which they needed more context. They brought their confusion to each other. Frequently, I would log in to discover that a question posed late at night, and probably aimed at me, had been answered by a student before I woke up. But maybe more impressive than their willingness to share their vulnerability, to share their “I do not knows,” they were willing, firmly and politely, to disagree with each other. They challenged each other repeatedly. They debated interpretations of texts, but they also called each other on more charged issues, like failures to see structural racism. Each time, I was struck by the fact that they did so without pointing fingers or descending into accusation. They remained firmly in intellectual community with each other. To be clear, some of these things had been happening in the classroom all along, but most were not, or at least included only the most talkative of the class. These discussion boards were very surprising to me, and upon reflection, I think this kind of connection occurred because I let them choose a format. I did not let them chose the format because I knew that it would lead to these conversations—I did it because I have never taught online, did not know what to do, and wanted to get buy-in for my plan. Wonderfully, my students responded by taking ownership of the space. They had been asked what they wanted to do, and with that freedom they went ahead and did it.

(An audio recording of this blog may be found here.) Classroom spaces are places of intimacy and influence. Teaching is a human-to-human encounter. Course planning typically focuses on the many ways the academic content shapes, forms, and informs students. In our planning, what we too often underestimate, and under plan for, is the personal encounter in the classroom. Students learn as much from the person who teaches the course as they do from the assigned readings, lectures, and rubrics. Often, they are paying as much attention to the teacher as a person as they are to the theories, concepts and approaches being presented. What if the most formational elements of our courses are the ways we, implicitly and explicitly, perform them? If we take a moment to consider the ways students learn more from the behaviors and attitudes of the professor than they do from the topic, we will realize that our classes are permeated by our beliefs and commitments. Your classroom behavior makes vivid your personal values.  Are you aware that your personal values are baked into and operative in your courses? Are the values which undergird your teaching aligned with the institutional values? Are you aware that your personal values are see-able, viewable, known by your students? If so, which of your behaviors are inconsistent with your personal values, and which personal values do you wish to make most evident in your teaching? A facilitator at a recent staff development session I attended said, “We judge ourselves based on our intentions; others judge us by our behaviors.” This resonated with me. In other words, it is not what you say, but what you do that tells your students your ethics. If you talk the talk without walking the walk, then you have formed students with confusion, misalignment, and uncertainty. Words, platitudes, and good intentions are shallow without observable actions. It is not enough to have the intent of compassion, hope, courage, dignity — if no one has the experience of these values in interactions with you or through the learning assignments you guide and offer. Colleagues will often say they value such attributes as: learner-centered teaching, but then lecture during most sessions, placing themselves as “the expert” in the center of the course and relegating the students to the margins of the conversation. community and partnership but assign only individualized assignments to be graded. collaboration but offer no group activities as approaches to learning. creativity but ask that students simply regurgitate information. reliability but rarely return graded assignments in a timely manner. persistence but provide no mechanism to award the student who begins the semester with low grades ways to improve the final grade. responsibility but provide for no major decisions for students to make concerning their own learning in the course. care and compassion for others but limit the scope of the course conversation without including neighborhood projects, adventures, or pilgrimages. diversity without including voices other than those deemed as typical, commonplace, and regular. Designing learning environments and experiences which are congruent with and exemplify your personal values will enhance the learning of your students. Creating this kind of integrity will foster learning experiences which nurture trust and instill confidence in your students. Sculpting congruence in the classroom can be challenging, even for the most seasoned teacher. Consider these activities to strengthen your teaching: Ask a colleague to audit your syllabus for the personal values it communicates. Have a dialogue with the colleague about what they see, sense, and suspect about your values. Discuss ways to align the values you want to be operative in the course with the design of the course. Make a list of your personal values. Reflect – ask yourself why you choose these specific values to be exemplified in your teaching. Describe behaviors, practices and habits that are consistent with these personal values. Then, design or redesign a course with the list, rational and behaviors in mind. Ask a colleague to observe your teaching for 3 weeks, 6 weeks, or an entire semester. Ask that they watch for your traits, behaviors, habits which demonstrate the values, beliefs, and philosophies you demonstrate in your classroom. At the beginning of the semester, tell your students the values you are pursuing in the course. Decide, with the students, the behaviors which should be promoted for these values. Reflect – with a trusted colleague – those behaviors that are inconsistent with your personal values that you portray in the classroom. Decide which one or two behaviors you will work-on in the coming semester for better alignment. Our behaviors tell a story about who we are, what we value, and what we are about. How we behave toward one another speaks volumes and teaches lessons likely to last a life time.

Multicultural school events have become a global phenomenon, offering schools a platform to showcase the diverse cultures and languages within their communities. These events typically feature ethnic food, performances, and presentations from various cultures, serving as important spaces for fostering intercultural understanding and celebrating diversity among students, teachers, and families.However, despite their widespread adoption, researchers have critically questioned the efficacy of these events. They argue that when reduced to one-off occasions, without integrating multicultural perspectives into everyday activities, they may inadvertently reinforce existing power dynamics and boundaries. By treating multicultural education as isolated events, schools risk overlooking power relations and hierarchies, potentially reinforcing the borders they intended to dissolve and negate.In her series of blog posts “What Ritual Does”, Itihari Y. Toure reminds us about how rituals may help people to respond to change, not by reinforcing the status quo but in ways that facilitate transformation. Rituals help us navigate uncertain times; they provide a means for individuals to manage overwhelming circumstances and regain a sense of control. As such, rituals can help us feel closer. They create community and help us build an inclusive culture of belonging. From this perspective, multicultural events look different.Toure’s reflections make us pay more attention to the consistent effort that teachers, school leaders, parents, and students put into these events. As a ritual, such events can be interpreted as a continuous resistance against the spread of xenophobic attitudes, prejudices, and behavior that characterizes political flows in many countries. The participants’ engagement in multicultural school events can be seen as a persistent contribution to reducing prejudice in school and cultivating greater tolerance of cultural, linguistic, and religious differences.Furthermore, interpreting multicultural school events as a ritual reminds us of the dynamic character of such events. In a classroom study I conducted in Norway, the school had organized a group of key teachers who were responsible for planning and evaluating the event every year. The group was strategically balanced with a wide representation of teachers who were collaborating closely with the parent board. In this way, the school had reached a level where most parents expressed a sense of ownership of the event. For the coordinators, the event was seen as a work in progress that had developed continuously throughout the years. Setting aside time for an open and self-critical discussion of the event had helped the group to develop the practice from a top-down organized event that started off with only enthusiasm, to build a broad basis of participation and involvement. Critical reflections also helped the organizers to avoid identifying students and families with a particular essentialized background. Instead, the event was created as a social space where marginalized voices became the center of attention, enhancing the participants’ awareness of what it means to be diverse school.As Toure emphasizes in her series of blog posts, every teaching moment offers an opportunity for transcendent learning. Viewing multicultural events as rituals, I believe, can help us recognize more of these opportunities. Instead of simply dismissing multicultural school events as exotic happenings, we are challenged to consider how they can foster meaningful connections and inclusive practices.

To recap our context, we have been working on our Wabash-sponsored project on trauma, religion, and pedagogy and have consulted with Dr. James Finley twice. In our first blog post, we reflected upon the importance of community building and reconceptualizing teaching outcomes from the perspective of trauma-informed pedagogy as cultivating intentions of life-long learning. In this second post, we delve into a possible classroom exercise focused on the practice of patience. “What is the gift you want to share with your students?” Teaching is giving ourselves away in and to Love—as mystics do to the ultimate “O/other” in their contemplation and writings. This was one of the important remarks we received from Dr. Jim Finley, a psychologist and mystic, in our consultation with him. To begin, we would like to remind ourselves that trauma-informed pedagogy aims to hold and foster the holistic being of each participant, including the instructor’s, encompassing their woundedness. Suffering and trauma are an inevitable part of our lived experiences. A trauma-informed pedagogy requires us to alter our attitude toward human limitedness: it is not something that should be overcome but a valuable opportunity for discernment. Our precarious, complex, and embodied experience of the world invites us to cultivate our sensitivities and responses to personal issues and social injustice. If we borrow spiritual language, mystery, and even emptiness, can be a locus where deep awakening may take place. Such a holistic attitude toward limitation also reaffirms the importance of teaching humanities. The death of humanities discourse is no longer a surprise and many of us have been urged to rethink pedagogy after the appearance of ChatGPT, which brought sweeping changes in student learning and writing. To acknowledge the significance of empirical science, however, is also to recognize that human experience consists of more than inventions and uses of technology. We should allow ourselves to ask unanswerable questions about the unknown and unstable dimensions of reality that both fascinate and intimidate us. Trauma is one of the very loci where we can tap into a space of the unknown, where we have an invitation to form deep intimacy within ourselves and, in some cases, with others (only if they are respectful, nonjudgmental, and can hold confidentiality). One of the important assumptions of a trauma-informed classroom is the sense that we must practice patience, gentleness, and compassion when tender experiences arise. Therefore, we need assignments and practices that help us cultivate this compassionate stance when it comes to our reading and writing. Dr. Finley suggested adapting the ancient contemplative practice of Lectio Divina as a way to approach the assigned readings. We further propose that this practice can be extended to enable a close and spiritual reading of texts, especially difficult ones about human suffering, which can empower students toward intellectual and internal growth in their reflections. This in-depth reading starts with listening to, “taking in” texts. The result of this discursive, meditative reading must be recorded in the form of ungraded journaling. In this step of the assignment, it is important for instructors to acknowledge students’ fear of writing. (Often, if not always, undergraduate students’ problematic use of technology or plagiarism comes from anxiety around making mistakes and receiving bad grades as punishment). The purpose of this ungraded journaling is to express oneself out—it is to recognize one’s own voice and to trust one’s own intuition as one listens deeply and openly to the text as well as to one’s own inner world. It is a moment when one tries to form intimacy with, be patiently present with, and gravitate toward oneself. It is also a moment when trauma might erupt unexpectedly and overwhelmingly. We acknowledge that such a moment would be the kernel of trauma-informed writing. If the student is ready, deep awareness and sensitivity toward the self and the world—and perhaps healing—can begin. Technology cannot and should not replace such profound, unpredictable, and humane learning moments. Since this exercise may invoke student anxiety, the instructor may tweak it depending on reading materials and pedagogical contexts. It could be modified into a timed writing exercise, or students may further reflect upon the writing exercise itself. Moreover, this journaling must entail editing (rewriting) processes. This is a chance for students to choose what they want to share for submission to the instructor or to the class at large: ensuring their consent and safety is paramount. As we noted in our previous post, it is extremely important to form a safe learning environment when encountering various forms of trauma in the classroom. In addition, in this writing practice students themselves are given an opportunity to actively create a safe writing space for themselves. Again, the instructor must remind students to slow down in their rewriting, since hasty editing can re-traumatize the writer: in the process, one may encounter their inner critic, a sign of perpetual violence that they have experienced and internalized. Sharing deep reflection with oneself and then another is, indeed, a courageous and possibly life-affirming act of giving ourselves to Love. Ultimately, trauma-informed teaching and learning could be a process where we learn to trust in the infinite love offered to wounded people, to borrow Dr. Finley’s expression. It is an endless process of forming intimacy with ourselves and others, trusting that we have the capacity to hold each other as broken beings. We hope that in-depth reading and writing exercises will assist students in gaining their own voices, however slowly. It is a practice built upon patience and mercy, designed to help us form nonjudgmental empathy for ourselves and extend it to others. Needless to say, this is reflected back on instructors since teaching is a mutual act (of course, there are always exceptions). Here, we return to our beginning statement, “What is the gift you want to share with your students?” We teachers are also infinitely loved and wounded beings who are invited to co-create classrooms of care and courage within imperfect institutions, circumstances, and a world in continuous motion.

The Mythos of Oz This year, 2024, marks two milestones of Oz, an American mythos based on L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. In the first instance, it is the eighty-fifth anniversary of the MGM movie musical The Wizard of Oz (1939), and in the second, the fiftieth anniversary of the launch of the musical theatre production, The Wiz. Beginning in 1974, The Wiz toured in selected cities in the US before its groundbreaking promotional television advertisement and premiere on Broadway in 1975. It went on to commercial and critical success winning multiple awards. Significantly, a reboot of The Wiz began touring in the fall of 2023, originating at the Hippodrome Theatre in Baltimore, where its life as a stage show began in 1974. It will return this spring, 2024, on Broadway. Such is the power and endurance of the mythos of Oz that 124 years after Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion set off to “follow the yellow brick road” in search of the Wizard of Oz, audiences are willing to “ease on the down the road,” in a reboot of The Wiz. I was first introduced to Oz as a recently arrived immigrant child from the Caribbean in the 1970s. Classmates in my elementary school in Toronto told me, and other newly immigrated children, that The Wizard of Oz would be televised. Before the advent of cable television, streaming services, and the Internet, the viewing of the 1939 MGM musical starring Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale was regarded as a yearly ritual amongst my childhood friend group. Reading L. Frank Baum’s books followed after viewing the 1939 film. This was my first introduction to the world of Oz, and the story of Dorothy’s mythic journey, as something other than casual viewing for entertainment. Unbeknownst to me and my playground friends, the viewing on television and its discussion and reenactment at recess the next day was part and parcel of a ritual of retelling and performance in which the story became our own. We were thrilled when The Wizard of Oz was chosen as our school’s musical play in the mid-1970s. Cast as Dorothy, sixth-grade me saw more than a glimmer of my own story of uprootedness, as a recent immigrant from the Caribbean to Toronto, in Dorothy’s plight as a stranger in a strange land trying to find her way home. The messages of empowerment, good overcoming evil, strength in the company of friends who are with you on a long and challenging journey, and help from wise, good, and powerful beings like Glinda, were comforting. While we learned iconic songs from the 1939 movie like “Over the Rainbow,” and “Follow the Yellow Brick Road,” we also heard references to Oz in the rock group Toto’s “Tinman,” and Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” Significant, too, was the popularity of an adaptation of the myth of Oz in the Broadway musical, The Wiz, and its film adaptation in 1978. These were among the first broader popular cultural references to the myth of Oz. Decades later, in January 2000, I introduced an undergraduate course, “Religion and Popular Culture,” at Wilfrid Laurier University. In designing the course, I returned to my earlier fascination with the mythos of Oz. This time, through the lenses of religious studies and cultural studies, I viewed Oz as mythos – recognizable in its symbols and storylines yet malleable enough to be reinterpreted from multiple vantage points. In teaching that course, I was able to focus on broader themes of mythmaking and American civil religion through exploring Oz as a kind of urtext of American popular culture, visible in multiple movie and theatrical productions since its initial introduction as a novel by L. Frank Baum. Oz was both a mythical landscape of terror, wonder, and possibilities as expressed in numerous theatrical and film productions and popular songs, and a secular sacred text of the United States. Its endurance is enabled by the malleability of meaning attributed to its symbols. L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was the first in a series of books. The children’s book, featuring its story of young Dorothy Gale living with her aunt and uncle on a Kansas farm who gets whisked away by a cyclone to the magical land of Oz, has become a touchstone of American fantasy literature. There are nods to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. These books feature young girls who are whisked away to other landscapes beyond the mundane and everydayness of their daily lives. They must endure trials during their journeys and eventually return wiser and stronger in some way. Oz is revealed to be a carnivalesque huckster hiding behind gimmickry. “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” says Oz, as Toto, Dorothy’s animal companion, pulls the curtain to reveal his fraud. Baum’s narrative uses fairytale elements evident in the British late-nineteenth-century children’s literature genre but places them in a specifically American landscape – the Midwest and the state of Kansas. The element which pulls Dorothy to another world is drawn from the midwestern landscape itself – a cyclone which whisks her up and out of the farm and Kansas. From there, Dorothy’s adventures begin with her landing on and killing the Wicked Witch of the East and acquiring the magical shoes coveted by the witch’s sister, the Wicked Witch of the West (they are silver in the book but red in the film). She confronts her adversary, the witch’s sister, and begins her journey. Dorothy does not realize that she has had the power to return home all along because of the magical properties of the shoes. Her companions – the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion – who accompany her to meet the purportedly all-powerful Wizard of Oz also have desires which they hope that Oz can fulfill. The friends eventually discover that what they desired was within them all along. It is that quality of self-discovery and empowerment from within which, arguably, is the source of the power of the myth of Oz. This emphasis on empowerment from within resonates with notions of self-mastery and/as self-discovery which are key elements of the American Dream when articulated as the perfectibility of the individual self in the best of all possible worlds.

Sometimes students just need a change of pace. Sometimes their professor needs a break. It’s nice when those two moments coincide. [For more on the power of surprises in the classroom, see Dr. Lynne Westfield’s February blog post]. The rhythm of class, even when it’s an active classroom, becomes routine. Mostly that’s a good thing because students know what to expect, which reduces anxiety and increases openness to learning. But routines can allow sleepiness to creep in, too. What was stability and structure can become a lull as students get too comfortable and start to become passive about their learning. This might be even more the case when the semester speeds up and students have an overwhelming amount of work. They begin to do without thinking and reflecting, or begin not to do at all. On the professor’s side, the structure can be freedom. Limits engender creativity, and having a structure in place to fill in with lively activities and discussions feels like having a place to start. It puts me in a good rhythm with students when we’re all on the same page. But, like the students, the rhythm can become routine. In my case, it’s not a lull as much as a slog. I just keep doing the same thing day after day, week after week, semester after semester. Then the more the students fall into passivity, unwilling to do the work of learning, the more it feels like a slog for me, trying to rouse them to participate in their own lives again. And so I find myself in need of a break. Just a little one, maybe, but something. Enter outdoor assignments. Recently I needed to create a lesson that did not need me to facilitate in person, and it went so well that it’s inspired further creativity in imagining where my classroom can be. Wanting to do more than just “work on your presentations” time or another online read-and-write exercise, I paired a hike assignment with our content on the desert saints. The graduate students in this class had read sections of the Life of Antony and the Life of Syncletica as well as a collection of sayings of the desert saints, and they had written summaries and basic analyses of the sources as part of their online work before coming to campus for this in-person weekend. I sent them off to take a hike for an hour, find a space to read some of the sayings until one captured their attention, then ponder it awhile. Then, still outside, they were to complete a reflection on the state of their soul inspired by the work and words of the desert saints. When they were done, they were to write a page about the experience to turn in to me. It turned out to be a colder-than-average day, so I told them they were welcome to sit by a window and look at creation if they were not up for an actual hike. This is also a way to make the assignment accessible for most abilities. When I received their reflections, students spoke of the gift of space to be quiet and still, to absorb rather than figure out the right answer. They mentioned how much more real the desert saints, their lives, and the logic of their teaching became to them. What began as an attempt for my own survival became a rich and meaningful assignment. My students not only got the fundamental information about the historic desert saints but engaged the material deeply, with layers of comprehension, and further questioned how this material might affect their own lives. I’m thinking more and more about where I can place an occasional assignment that gets students out of the classroom and learning without my direct intervention on their own or in groups, that is not simply another online assignment. Can they interact with the world and each other? Can they find deeper ways into the material, even ways that resonate somewhere in their core? I send them on a scavenger hunt around campus to find the art of biblical scenes and think about art as interpretation. In classes on monasticism I ask them to go to a cemetery and ponder their mortality as monks do, an idea I stole from my own preaching professor who sent us to a cemetery to begin sermon prep sitting among headstones. I tell them to take a hike. With good instructions and a thoughtful “product” of some kind, students will learn a great deal (stay tuned for another post about assessing such assignments). In fact, because of the disruption to their routine, students might even learn more as they find energy they’ve been lacking. Bonus: the professor gets an occasional break, too!