Resources

We live in a world that tries to manage risk, to assess whether this decision or that decision is more or less risky, better or worse for the long term good of the institution, more or less likely to lead to student complaints, and more. And we make plans to mitigate risks based on knowledge and experience. Then, the crisis we are not prepared for appears. And if the crisis occurs in the midst of a semester, teachers rightly find themselves asking, what does it look like to teach in the midst of a crisis? There is no "one size fits all" response in the midst of a crisis. Each school is different. Teachers are different. Students respond in their own ways. Some classes are small, some large, some medium. Some students and teachers have lots of experience online and others none. In addition, there are a variety of emotions that may be present such as fear, anxiety, lethargy, depression, panic, and worry to name a few. It is important for teachers to recognize that both the teacher and the student/s may be experiencing challenging emotions that they have to navigate while functioning in an upended life situation. Our awareness of these situations can help us as we think about teaching strategies during a crisis situation. These strategies are familiar. First, invite the whole self to be present in the classroom. When my institution moved to the fully online environment, I set up a forum for each class and invited students to “check-in” with both myself and fellow students. They were invited to share how they were doing, how they were feeling, and how they had been impacted by the coronavirus crisis. I gave a little credit for completing the forum to show students that I really wanted to hear from them. I also shared some of my own concerns with them so they could see that I was also impacted by this crisis. I plan to continue this “check-in” strategy over the weeks ahead since the impacts of the crisis will be felt for months to come. There is no use denying the presence of such a crisis. Second, communicate clearly. In the first week that we were online, I sent out several announcements sharing information as it was made known to me. For example, I let the class know it had shifted from face-to-face to online and indicated when I would send out more information. Two days later I emailed them with the class outline for the week and clear instructions about how to access and complete that week’s class. On our normal class meeting day, I reminded them that my TA and I would be available via Zoom for an optional session where they could chat or ask questions. Third, change assignments to fit the crisis. For example, in a class on the book of Acts I asked students to analyze the speeches in the book of Acts in small zoom groups and then talk about the message the scattered disciples took with them as they left Jerusalem. I then asked them to think about what message they wanted to take with them as they had been scattered from the seminary to their homes. And, I asked them to think about how they would communicate this message in the time of social distancing. In a different class, I changed a requirement for service hours to an opportunity to write on the early church’s response to plague and connect that writing with our own situation. Finally, aim for an encouraging, empathetic tone. Creating a tone that encourages both students and teachers, reminding us of both frailty and hope, and calling us to our best selves will strengthen the community of the course. Allowing many to reach out and uphold each other in the midst of challenging times means the burden is not on just one person (usually the teacher). In this way, teachers can model for the future leaders we are teaching how to be people who name their emotions/vulnerabilities, recognize the variety of responses people have to crisis, communicate clearly, work to connect the current crisis with current learning, and reach out to support one another. Which strategies are you using to teach during the time of coronavirus?

When we first move into online classroom spaces, we often miss the dynamic energy of gathered bodies in a familiar location. We lose the immediate gratification of watching in real time as new knowledge “clicks” for students in discussions and class activities. Online classrooms may initially feel sterile, artificial, and indistinguishable from one another in our learning management system. With time and experience in teaching in online classrooms, we may begin to reconsider how a traditional residential classroom is also an artificial space. Residential education occurs on the educational institution’s “turf,” asking students to put their relational connections, participation in the economy, and other vocational expressions on hold to enter into these four walls to be formed and informed. Traditional schooling is an attempt to engage life wisdom from across generations and cultures in a simulated environment that speeds knowledge acquisition and re-organizes it more efficiently from how we might naturally encounter it in life. There is nothing “natural” about a classroom with 12-200 students in it all trying to learn the same things at the same time, regardless of their existing experience or knowledge. What feels “traditional” about this education is actually a factory model of education largely adopted during the industrial revolution for the sake of increasing access to and efficiency of education for the masses. To be certain, online classrooms have many of the same constructed elements. However, they are also more porous than synchronous residential learning experiences. You may experience this in the plethora of Zoom meetings that are happening right now in the midst of staying-at-home as a part of Covid 19 mitigation. Suddenly, you see your students in their home contexts, sometimes with roommates, children, spouses, or pets wandering into the picture. The students’ home contexts become a part of the teaching and learning milieu in more pressing ways when they stay embedded in them. While they are still engaging with a community seeking knowledge, they are also embedded in other relationships and contexts where that knowledge can be tested and integrated on a daily basis. Another of the unique features of online spaces is the capacity for immediate linkage to communities and resources far beyond those of the “walled-in” residential classroom. Opportunities to have students video-conference with scholars or practitioners around the world, curate their own examples or applications of course content drawn from internet resources and their local context, or interact with external media or images related to the course are easy to arrange in online classrooms. This allows course content and the contexts in which knowledge is situated to expand in ways sometimes even beyond faculty expectations and expertise. By asking students to take the insights they are gaining into other settings or to make connections with external resources, faculty may find ways to make online interactions more analytical, more relevant to students’ final vocational destinations, and more engaging for both students and faculty. Additionally, porosity means that students can share learnings from the course through online forums from Twitter feeds to YouTube videos by linking to these in the online classroom. This practice serves as a way to test out ideas in other publics and to help students understand that ultimately this knowledge is not for regurgitation in a classroom setting for their instructor to judge but rather for integration and application in other settings. The longer I have taught online, the more I have become reluctant to serve as the primary audience for student written work. While I always read student work and provide the best feedback my own expertise and experiences with the material can provide, I find that they are better and more committed scholars when they know that what they are creating will find its way into a group who can benefit from what they are creating, whether their class colleagues or some other part of their community. Student papers are remarkably stronger when they know they will share them with their classroom colleagues or other external audiences in comparison to the ones that they will just dash off at the last minute to submit to me in order to complete an assignment. This strategy improves student formation by positioning them more regularly as persons whose knowledge impacts not only their experience but serves other communities as well.  The space for collaborative exchange between students is so much easier to engage in porous online settings where students can share resources and insights easily through links and public postings. There are times when the porosity of online classrooms can be concerning. It is helpful to protect some spaces where mistakes can be made and opinions shared that are within relationships of mutual accountability rather than in the general public. And in theological education where I teach, students are often accountable to ordination boards and hiring committees who may not yet need to witness their growth and development as they encounter new ideas. Some of those boundaries can be maintained in online classrooms to the extent that they can in the public space of a residential classroom. But the possibility of regularly opening up the classroom to the world outside the four walls is an engaging gift of online education.

This conversation with teachers who are artists (Dr. Ralph Basui Watkins, Columbia Theological Seminary, and Sophfronia Scott) will focus on ways to incorporate image and story into the learning plan and syllabus design. The dialogue will focus on ways storytelling can be an integral part of your course to enrich and enliven the student’s learning experience.

Death is all around us. The palpable feeling of impending loss, grief, dread, doom, and despair has gripped our families, our nation and the world. With each passing day, there are increased numbers of positive diagnoses, hospitalizations, and loss. It feels as if we have been snatched up into the sci-fi novels of Octavia Butler.  We are on the inside of an apocalyptic narrative. We, the global community, in this pandemic moment, are walking through the valley of the shadow of death.  Mental health professionals are part of the teams of experts who are working tirelessly during this pandemic. Societal shuddering and quarantine have meant an increase in domestic violence, self-harm, and child abuse. There has been an uptick in all the forms of mental illness. Sustained periods of terror, trauma, and isolation shred our imaginations. The pressure of this moment will drive some people mad. The corporate value of rugged individualism is not serving us well in this moment. The myths of the lone ranger, the solitary winner, the underdog triumphing against all odds, are box office favorites. In the past, we have preferred the lone achiever, we have favored the one winner, and have envied the one, most prized, beauty. In this moment of pandemic, the ideologies which promote “I, me, mine” are failing us. Slowly we are awakening to, and becoming desperate for, “we, y’all, us, everybody.” The pandemic will be interrupted by a vaccine and/or by a cocktail of medications which will more rapidly quell symptoms. In the meantime, let us steady our fear, anxiety, hopelessness and despair by revitalizing our notion of community. We know all life affects all other life. Martin L. King, scholar and activist, said it this way, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” The poignancy of this truth was made vivid for me and my students when we traveled to West Africa. Many communities in West Africa welcomed me and my students many times over many years. While learning in the homes and schools of othered persons, my students and I were immersed in the life saving and unfamiliar practices of ubuntu. Ubuntu is a communal value of connectedness, radical care, hospitality and inclusion. Ubuntu means simply – “all-of-we-are-one.”  It means, “I cannot know myself apart from you. And you cannot know yourself apart from me.” I means, “If we are not, I am not.” When Ghanaians greet a friend in the market place the question is not “How are you?” This question, in the practice of ubuntu, has no merit or meaning. The question about the welfare of a single person apart from kith and kin seems absorb in the ubuntu philosophy. The greeting, “How are you?” infers that you could be some way that your people are not. Or that the circumstances of your people are not your circumstances. In the practice of ubuntu, the report and disclosure of your wellbeing is a report of the wellbeing of your people.  So, the greeting in the marketplace is “How is it?” The response is - “We are well.” The response is in the plural. In ubuntu, if your mother is well - you are well.  If you brother or sister are on hard times – then you are on hard times.  If your aunt or uncle had a victory, then you had a victory. How you are is how they are – because “all-of-we-is-one.” Ubuntu is bubbling up all around the USA. People all over the country are finding ways, while honoring physical distancing and quarantine, to build community, find community, be community, support community, live as if we are one community. Neighborhoods are having cocktail parties while each neighbor stays on their own porch. Synchronous on-line experiences like concerts, card games, birthday parties, yoga, cooking lessons, and writing sessions are easing the feelings of loneliness and the strain of being alone. Streamed and recorded worship experiences are connecting disconnected souls.  Experiencing community, being part of something bigger than oneself, knowing that you are connected to neighbor, fictive kin, family and co-workers helps all of us cope and survive in these death dealing times. In ubuntu, individualism is replaced with empathy, forgiveness, mutuality, and a feeling of deep connection with all that is. The Wabash Center, in our nimbleness and responsiveness, has reached out to our participants asking, “How is it?” We have heard from our colleagues the many ways they are sustaining and building community. We have also listened to laments from persons in the academic community who feel neglected, overlooked, and lonely.  We have heard colleagues say, with relief in their voices, – thank you for checking on me, because no one in my school has reached out to me.  Friends, the life of the mind cannot be a life of isolation unto death.  Check on your colleagues – just say, “How is it?”  And – as important - do not be afraid to reach back when you receive a call. Participating in activities of community will beat back the fear, the anguish and the trepidation. The devastation of the pandemic will be felt for years. Together (and not apart) we will survive. In the words of Toni Morrison -- "This is precisely the time when artists go to work.  There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language.  That is how civilizations heal."  Let community building be our artistic message. Let the composers among us write songs celebrating the marvel of community. Open the old cookbooks for cocktail formulas and recipes to reconnect with the ancestors. Make quilts in virtual sewing bees for the babies born at this peculiar time; knit shawls for those who are now widowed. Relieve a parent who is home schooling by writing poetry with their children on Facetime. Map the vegetable garden you will soon plant and ask your neighbor which veggies would they like planted.  Find a way to create something for someone else knowing this gesture of care and thoughtfulness will radiate out to everybody. And when the blues come (as they will) – write the words of lament, despair and hopelessness, express the uncertainty and rage, make vivid your messiness and unbalance and sorrow. Then share it with someone else – a neighbor or friend - to help them release their pain. And so – the question, I suppose, is “how is it with me?” I am both overjoyed and overwhelmed.  I am so grateful to the Wabash Center staff for their maximum flexibility in a time when we could have gone dormant.  We transitioned to working remotely while at the same time scrambled to create needed resources for our participants.  We created a dedicated web-page for online teaching resources, tripled the number of podcasts, hosted digital check-in conversations for more than 20 workshop groups, created a Facebook page and started live webinars. We are creating a page for artistic expression and dedicated blog column for online teaching. I am overjoyed about my staff’s dedication and hard work.  We have gotten feedback that our efforts are helpful in this moment of disenfranchisement. My overwhelmed-ness is that I started the job of directing the Wabash Center just three months ago; I am still disoriented.  Then, last week, I was informed that in my circle, three friends are diagnosed with COVID-19; the wife of a friend died on Wednesday, and the brother of another friend died of cancer on Sunday.  Both families are in grief and in upheaval because the funerals will be livestreamed. In the spirit of ubuntu – we are overjoyed, we are new to our job and overwhelmed, we are grieving the loss of loved ones and incensed because a livestreamed funeral is inadequate to hold our sorrow. Even as I write this, I have a keen sense of my community gather around me - calling daily, checking-in regularly – finding ways to be together through this chaos.