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Drawing on the lived experiences of Black students in adult degree completion programs at predominantly White, Christian institutions in the southern United States, this book presents a model for reimagining adult higher education. Westbrook explores the reasons students enrolled in degree programs, how they experience their predominantly white institutions, and how their experiences affect their lives. Employing Critical Race Theory and Christian theology as frameworks for evaluating the students’ experiences, the author sheds light on the ways African American experiences to inform, critique, and shape Christian adult learning in higher education. (From the Publisher)

When our courses went online in the spring, many of our students kept their cameras turned off in class. It was eerie. When my students wouldn’t say anything, I felt like I was speaking into a void, and my imagination started running wild. Was anybody else really out there? Maybe they had all just . . . left? Even when most students were talking, I wondered about those who weren’t. Were they still paying attention? I had no idea. It’s tempting to address this problem by adding a strict camera policy to our syllabi for the fall: Students must keep the camera on during online classes. Several of my colleagues are doing just that. I understand the impulse, and I agree that we need to find ways to help our students stay focused in our online classes. Making sure that we can see them and that they know it would be a simple start. But let’s think more before we add a camera policy to our syllabi. Why do students want to turn their cameras off in the first place? I’m sure some of them do it so that they can goof off without their professors noticing. But not all of them: Some students are embarrassed about what people will see in their homes: Poverty. A mess. A crowded space. A virtual background will hide all that, but students can only use one if their computer meets certain system requirements. On an older computer with older software, the virtual background won’t work. And of course, poor students are more likely to have an older computer. The camera makes some students acutely self-conscious, which makes sense given that it broadcasts a closeup of one’s face to the entire class for the entire class period. My favorite description of the experience is from “Why Zoom is terrible”: “You feel like every eyeball is on you, like a very intimidating job interview." I share this experience. Honestly, just reading the line from the New York Times makes my heart race. After the first painful month of Zoom meetings, I began turning the camera off as often as possible. It made the meetings less exhausting, and it became much easier for me to focus and to listen to what people were saying. If students are feeling overly self-conscious, they won’t learn well and won’t speak much. Are there other reasons for keeping the cameras on? We might think that seeing each other’s faces improves communication. In non-virtual face-to-face interactions, it does. Without noticing it, we process and interpret a flood of subtle facial cues, adding to what we learn from the other person’s words and tone of voice. But on Zoom, the imperfect video feed obscures those crucial small cues. We just don’t see the faces well enough, and so, we get faulty cues which can mislead us. We might communicate better with the cameras off. Requiring cameras to be on probably helps some students pay attention and the cameras allow us to see that our students are still there. But seeing their faces probably doesn’t improve our conversations, and the cameras make other students self-conscious, and thus less likely to participate and pay attention. So, can we find other ways of checking that our students are paying attention? I think so. In my class, we’ll develop a set of norms together. I plan to ask them: How do we normally show each other that we’re paying attention and that what others are saying matters to us? If we have cameras off, most of our usual ‘I’m listening’ signals won’t work, so what should we do instead? I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with! In the meantime, here are some ideas of my own for confirming that they are paying attention: Gentle cold calling (soft-ball questions). Have them type questions, comments, and answers to questions in the chat. Mini quizzes or mini papers partway through class. Exit slip at the end of class: “What was the most important thing you learned in class today and what question do you have?” All of these will be low-stakes assignments; and students will get full credit if it looks like they paid attention. Like the rest of us, I am looking forward to seeing my students’ faces again, but my Zoom class is not the right time for that. I’ll save that for office hours and small group discussions. In class, I’ll settle for their profile pictures and their voices. Note: I wish the idea about developing a set of norms was my own, but I got it from one of my esteemed colleagues at Stonehill.

Hospitality does not begin faraway, but near. We learn what hospitality is by reaching out to persons near to us—persons we pass by every day, persons who share our highways and hallways, our sidewalks and side streets. This past fall, forty-eight leaders from around our community gathered to tell “near stories” to one another about their experience of race and racism, privilege and power in their lives. These community leaders included local judges, superintendents and principals of schools, CEOs of health systems, business owners, college administrators, and, notably, police officers—the very leaders shaping the response to the unholy trinity of Covid-19, systemic racism, and misinformation. This group of busy, highly educated leaders committed to twelve hours of honest dialogue about the history and ongoing impact of racism in our country and our community. The dialogue followed what is known as a “caring circle” model—a model that requires participants, first and foremost, to listen actively to one another without judgment. That is, it asks us to “hear each other to speech,” as the racial justice activist Nelle Morton exhorted. The difficult realities of our shared life together in the United States—things like our biases, the past and present ways in which we have discriminated against persons based on the identities we decided were most important, the ongoing effects of racial violence and trauma—are not always easy to hear into speech among friends, much less among powerful community leaders. But the dialogues didn’t start with these difficult topics. The conversations begin with questions designed to reset the frame of the relationships in the caring circle. Participants were no longer their job titles or their positions of formal authority, they were human beings subject in myriad ways to the fundamental need to belong. The circle began: Tell me an experience of when you belonged? Tell me an experience of when you felt excluded? Participants start by relearning in a highly structured, formal way how to practice hospitality to one another, and this allows them to hear each other to speech about what we know to be some of our most profound, shared needs as human beings: the need to be recognized as whole persons with complex, unique stories that have something to contribute to the “we are” part of “I am because we are.” At the same time, circles emphasize the need to recognize in others something of the “I am”—something that connects who I am deeply to who you are you, to what it means to be human. That is, they start with near stories that illumine in their very particularity something of the universal ties that bind us together. Though some might quibble with the phrase, they are religious stories in the sense that they aim to “re-bind” (re-ligare) us together—to reaffirm our shared commitment to hospitality in the face of hostility and reinforce the threads that bind us together in the face of the threats that tear us apart. I would like to believe that these dialogues and the relationships they established prepared our community to respond with greater integrity and humility to the systemic and institutional racism at the heart of the racial uprisings this summer. Like so many things in this moment, the justification for my belief may only be confirmed with the advantage of hindsight. But as I turn my attention more fully to this fall’s syllabi, I am even more convinced that my tendency to fill weeks with content needs to be mitigated by the foregrounding of process and the centering of relationships in the classroom. It is not that content is unimportant. The “deep dive dialogues” among community leaders included content—presentations about systemic racism, health inequities, and implicit bias locally, for example—but this content was embedded in multiple processes of relationship building throughout our time together. In this way, the intimacy of hearing each other to speech in our small groups became the starting point for listening to what the presentations had to teach. What I have been describing is likely familiar to many who have attended (perhaps even led) workshops and trainings related to racial justice. But all too often the pedagogical insight does not quite make the leap from the workshop to the classroom. Even among well intentioned faculty whose courses are most amenable to flipping the classroom and devoting several weeks to relationship building and near stories, content always threatens to colonize the curriculum; the participatory language of covenant gives way to convenience, transposed into the more expedient and expected legalese of a learning contract. When teaching courses animated by issues of social justice (are there any that aren’t?), we knowingly enter into a charged space—even before we take roll on the first day of classes. As we enter a Fall semester in which pandemics, politics, and protests will be carried daily into our classrooms—by both persons and pedagogies masked and unmasked—this is the question I find myself returning to in the design of my syllabi: how do we help set the conditions for what Parker Palmer describes as a necessary paradox, namely, a charged but hospitable classroom, one in which the practice of hearing each other to speech is as much a process as an outcome? If our religious studies and theology classrooms are to be places of preparation for creative engagement in this imperfect world, to borrow from Faith Ngunjiri’s understanding of servant leadership, then we do well to make ample space in our courses for modeling discursive practices that counter hate speech with hospitality, callousness with compassion, and the pathology of violence with the promise of peace. For me, one way to do this with integrity will be to commit to the caring circle model as a pedagogical anchor for the course and not merely an ice-breaker in the first week of class.

When I go to work in the morning, the first thing I do is read the Bible. I read a bunch of commentaries, take a bunch of notes, then prayerfully reflect on the text. Then I set to work coming up with a meaningful and compelling way of communicating my interpretation to my listeners. Then I lift the piano lid. You see, I’m a composer of sacred music. At its heart, my job is to present an interpretation of Scripture to my listeners in a way that is interesting, convincing, and spiritually valuable. Unfortunately, few Christians ever hear my sacred music. That’s because I don’t write choral anthems or praise songs. I write sacred concert music: classical works that responds to themes, ideas, and texts from the Christian tradition. I’ve written a piano trio inspired by the book of Job, a song cycle that sets Rilke poems, and a brass quintet that explores the concept of perichoresis. (Humblebrag: of this piece, Walter Brueggemann wrote to me: “I am not a great theologian but have pondered “perichoresis” for a long time. This is the finest exposition of that thick idea that I have encountered.” Be still my beating heart!) Now, if I wrote a lot of choral music, I wouldn’t be complaining nearly as much. But today, most of history’s great church music composers face the same problems as me. While we do hear choral works by Bach, Handel, and Mendelssohn occasionally on Sunday mornings, the place where we usually encounter their sacred music is in the concert hall. This is an example of a strange irony: though most of us have nearly unlimited access to the corpus of great sacred music–either live or on Spotify-we Christians rarely have the chance to intentionally explore its spiritual value in the context of Christian community. As a result, we are missing out on the many ways sacred music can contribute to our lives as Christians–beyond its role in worship. In this post I’d like to provide a case study of a way that a different approach to sacred music can contribute to our work as educators. First, take about 15 minutes to listen to three new musical settings of Psalm 148 (scroll down for texts and info about each setting). Each was written in 2019 by a contemporary composer representing a different Christian tradition: Roman Catholic, Evangelical Lutheran, and Armenian Apostolic. Now that you’ve listened, let me ask you a question: which of these pieces interpreted the psalm correctly? Obviously, this is not the right question to ask. Yet it’s a familiar one, as it’s the one that so many students initially bring to the task of Biblical interpretation. And as educators, we know that ridding a student of this hermeneutic habit is the very first thing we need to accomplish in our classes. Listening to these three musical settings makes this easy. Each piece is an authentic, honest, and personal response to a rich and mysterious text. Each provokes us to think about the psalm in a completely different way: not just encouraging us to provide different interpretations of the psalm, but to ask completely different kinds of questions about it–and of ourselves. Heard back-to-back, the three settings testify incontrovertibly to the possibility–and, I might add, the necessity–of complementary, mutually-enriching interpretations of the same text. If we are going to teach the next generation of pastors, theologian, and laypeople, we know that these are the attitudes toward Scripture that we need to promote. More than anything, we need to convince our students to devote themselves to a lifetime of continuous exploration and re-exploration of our tradition. Beyond that, we need to encourage them to develop an attitude of humility, an awareness of the contingent nature of our own interpretations, and the courage to ask complex questions and follow them where they may lead. Sacred music helps us accomplish these goals. It opens up the field of interpretation by inviting us to engage with the Bible in ways that are not ideological, simplistic, or narrow, but instead subjective, affective, and open-ended. But this can only happen if we think creatively about new ways to use it in our classrooms and our churches. My new organization Deus Ex Musica, which developed the project culminating in the videos you watched, is my own humble attempt. For more than a millennium, composers have given us unique, powerful, and provocative musical interpretations of Scripture. They continue to do so today. In a world that increasingly promotes simple, ideologically-driven solutions to problems, I think sacred music has the potential to remind us that our tradition is rich, mysterious, and resistant to easy answers. Whether you are an educator, pastor, or layperson, I encourage you to seek out opportunities to explore the ways it can contribute to your ministry and your life of faith. Thanks for listening!

Like many of you, perhaps, I’ve been involved in a lot of race-related conversations at my institution lately. These conversations are usually among folks who I might, if pressed, call “allies,” “accomplices,” or even “co-conspirators”—well-intentioned, social justice advocates who are wanting to make real change at our institution, particularly in the ways we support the learning, sense of belonging, mental health, retention, and success of our underserved student populations. Yet I’ve noticed a trend in these various conversations, which, frankly, I find troubling. The trend is this: the problem (and thus, implicitly, any solution) always seems to be located elsewhere, outside the meeting space, in the ones who are not “woke”—that is, students, colleagues, and administrators ‘over there.’ This move, and it is a one I recognize and have made myself many times before, only serves to distance ourselves from the need for critical self-reflection, for taking responsibility, for offering apologies, for tough internal change. Exploring, even confronting, ourselves is a crucial step in doing any kind of social justice work, including what we might want to be doing with students in our classes. How can we effectively lead conversations about, for instance, antisemitism or Islamophobia when we ourselves haven’t done the necessary inner work of racial justice? Professor of Law Rhonda Magee offers an “ecological model of social change,” which, yes, aspires toward interconnectedness and collective transformation, but which, first, depends on the work we do within and on ourselves. For Magee, the focus is on mindfulness, awareness, self-compassion, and resilience. What are our physical sensations? What are our emotional responses? What are our fears? What are our immediate judgments? For me, such increased awareness leads me to ask some tough questions: How am I complicit? How is my department? How is our discipline? A few years ago, I read Irving’s Waking Up White and, I’m embarrassed to admit, realized for the first time in my life that I was, in fact, white. This set me on a course to better understand “white privilege”—how being white has affected me, what paths it has smoothed over for me, what barriers it has removed for me—invisibly, seamlessly, without me even noticing or trying. I’ve read Oluo’s So You Want to Talk about Race, DiAngelo’s White Fragility, and Kendi’s How to Be an Anti-Racist, and I’ve been unsettled, even disturbed, at some of the things I’ve discovered about myself. I won’t record them here, as I imagine they would be upsetting for some readers, but I assure you that this aspect of my social identity invariably affects how I show up as a friend, as a neighbor, as a colleague, as a team leader, as a teacher. When we talk about implicit bias, it’s not just “them,” it’s me. When we talk about microaggressions, it’s not just “them,” it’s me. When we talk about the problems, it’s not just “them,” it’s me. Ongoing self-exploration, “fierce moral audits” as a friend of mine likes to say, is necessary as we work with and alongside our students. There are wonderful tools and resources available online, such as this Anti-Racist Educator Questionnaire and Rubric. Folks of color (like those at yourblackfriendsarebusy) have been generous in curating, writing, talking, protesting, singing, illustrating, imagining. For me, these efforts are not to (continue to) center whiteness or to get kudos and congratulations for doing what is essentially the bare minimum; it is to better ourselves before attempting to better anyone else. In a recent blog post, Sarah Farmer wrote beautifully of her experiences with students: Justice-seeking conversations challenge students at the core. Students aren’t just grappling with social justice concepts theoretically; they wrestle with their very identities. I invite that wrestling in the class. I want the class to be a space where they can explore, discover, challenge, reconstruct, and dream of a better world and their participation in that world together. But each of these actions require courage. I imagine my classroom as a stage, one where students are invited to “try on” these new courageous ways of doing and being socially just. Her words work just as well if you replace “students” with “us” or “we.” This work is challenging for us. We are wrestling with our very identities. We are (or should be) exploring, discovering, challenging, reconstructing, and dreaming. Social justice requires courage—not just of them, but of us too.

Effective online teaching requires applying sound pedagogy, the same as those practiced in the classroom experience. One such practice is induction–and, you can never overdo it. When I was in parish ministry, our staff met weekly to do worship planning. In addition to reviewing text, sermon topic, music, hymns, and other components of the worship service we would always decide on the questions, “how will we enter the room?” and "how will we close the service?" That is, how and when would the worship leaders (choir, pastoral staff, etc.) enter the worship space so as to lead the congregation into the worship experience? How would we signal the "start" of the worship experience? We wanted to “set” the tone, affect, and focus of the worship experience by creating expectancy at the start, helping the congregants know how and what to pay attention to during the service, and moving them toward response and closure at the end of the service. The same principles apply to learning. In a learning environment, induction (or, “set induction”) refers to those actions by the teacher designed to introduce the students to the learning experience, be it a course of study or a lesson. Induction helps the learners relate their experiences to the objectives of the lesson or course (building on what they know to acquire what they do not). Using set induction will orient your students to the course (or lesson) and put them in a receptive frame of mind that will facilitate learning. Two purposes of set induction are: (1) to focus student attention on the lesson or course–-its purpose and relevance to the student; and (2) to create an organizing framework for the ideas, concepts, principles, or information which is to follow. Effective application of set induction will provide important instructional functions for your students. It will serve as an advanced organizer, create expectancy, and identify why the content is meaningful, which is an important motivator for learning. In a classroom setting many instructors use the course syllabus as a tool for course induction. Walking your students through a well-designed course syllabus will provide a framework for helping your students answer the Ws that are anxiously rattling around in their minds: who, what, when, where, and, how? Admittedly, most instructors do not take enough time using this technique. Which is why you may get asked several times during the course, “When is the final exam due, again?” Or, "what should I write my paper on?" When setting up your online course environment practice I.R.A. and use the Ws. I.R.A. stands for “Information Reduces Anxiety.” When your students begin a course, they have a level of anxiety and are looking to understand what the course is about and what will be expected of them as a learner. Front load your course site with as much information as your students need to answer their questions; but no more than that. When you design your introduction/orientation page, embed the Ws (who, what, when, where, why, and how). These are the questions for which they are seeking answers. As your course progresses, cut back on the course orientation content, reduce content coverage, and increase learner engagement activities and opportunities. Does your course introduction or orientation answer the following for the students? Who is this course for? What is this course about? What is its focus? What is the big idea? What are the expected student learning outcomes? What background knowledge, skills, or competencies does the student need to succeed in the course? What does the student need to do first to begin the course? When will this course start? When will it conclude? When are the assignments due? Where can the student find information and resources (course syllabus, schedule, handouts, readings, rubrics, links, etc.). Why is this course meaningful? Why is the focus of study important? How will the student successfully complete the course? How will the student demonstrate attainment of learning or mastery of skill? How will the student's work be assessed?