Resources

At the end of semesters, I often share a joke with my colleagues: “I love teaching – except for the grading!” There’s a truth hidden in that humor. Grading involves a host of emotions: joy, frustration, pride, disappointment, even confusion. Then, once we’ve finally completed the grading marathon, another emotional rollercoaster begins: student evaluations of teaching (SET).The Emotional Weight of Student FeedbackPlease don’t misunderstand. I genuinely appreciate constructive feedback from students. Their insights reveal my blind spots, push me to be more creative, and encourage me to grow. However, there are also times when I’m unsure how to engage with critical remarks, which can sting and leave me feeling disheartened. In these moments, I worry that my passion for teaching might be overshadowed by hurt or frustration.You’re Not AloneDo we, as faculty, have a safe space to process our emotional responses to student evaluations? How do we take care of ourselves – and each other – when we feel vulnerable? How do we hold on to our calling and commitment to our students during these tense times?During my days as an adjunct faculty member teaching at multiple institutions the anxiety over student evaluations often kept me awake at night. A string of negative comments could threaten my already precarious job situation and some remarks carried undertones of bias regarding my accent or background. I often wondered, “Will these comments jeopardize my chances of being hired again?” and I even tried to guess who might have written them. It was tough not to take things personally.Later on, as an early-career professor, I spent countless hours designing courses, clarifying assignments, and perfecting deadlines. So when a student mentioned that my instructions were confusing, I felt deeply frustrated. I asked myself, “Where is this coming from? Did I overlook something in my teaching?” I ended up spending even more time reflecting, revising my approach, and working hard to address any real gaps in my pedagogy.Finding Balance Amid CriticismSometimes I notice only the critical comments, letting them overshadow the many notes of affirmation and thanks. Other times I skim over the praises too quickly, missing opportunities to celebrate successes and build upon effective practices.If you’ve ever felt torn about how to use student feedback constructively – without losing heart – please know you’re not alone. Feeling this tension can actually be a sign of how deeply you care about your vocation and your students. Many of us go through these emotional swings but remain silent for fear of appearing unprofessional or overly sensitive.Seeking Support and Sharing StoriesAt this moment, I hope you seek trusted colleagues, mentors, or friends to debrief painful comments and interpret them with empathy and deep care. Allow yourself to feel the disappointment without dismissing it. Processing these responses can bring perspective and prevent lingering resentment or burnout.Engaging with feedback can be an opportunity to refine lesson plans, improve communication, or sharpen pedagogical skills. It’s not easy work! But sharing our stories and learning from one another is one way we can practice self-care as educators. We stand in solidarity with each other, striving to grow and thrive in our teaching.I remember a conversation with a first-generation Korean scholar with over thirty years of teaching experience. She confessed that she still faces hurtful biases in student evaluations. After honest reflection, her final piece of advice was: “Sometimes, you just have to delete it and let it go.” We both recognized we had already processed and learned from the feedback. Knowing when to let go continues to be a meaningful form of self-care.Moving ForwardDear colleague, when you next receive that email with student evaluations, take a moment. Recall your passion for teaching, your calling, and your commitment to growth – both your own and that of your students. Let all those emotions guide you toward reflection and learning. And remember, once the feedback has served its purpose, it’s okay to let it go (yes, you can delete it!).

We are teaching through a polycrisis – a situation in which the problems we and our students are facing in the world are complex and interpenetrating, increasing the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity of our lives in the world.Many of our students went to high school or college, raised children, or cared for dying parents through the thick of the COVID pandemic. Now these students are moving through our classrooms during the most socially and politically disruptive era many of them have ever lived through.Add to this the wildfires and flooding and hurricanes that have increased in frequency and intensity due to anthropogenic climate change. Add to this persistent attacks on structures of care for trans people and their erasure from public spaces. Add to this ICE raids in all our communities, deporting the family, friends, and neighbors of our students and colleagues (or our students and colleagues themselves). Add to this…everything else.The reason these realities land so heavily on educational institutions is not just due to the targeting of schools, professors, DEI, and curriculum by the current administration. It is also because our institutions are one of the scant few intact-yet-precarious structures of community and support some of our students have in their lives.Not only has the individualism of our society gradually eroded collective structures we need in times of crisis – those which help us to hold our grief, our uncertainty, and our fear within caring community – but our current US political regime is also engaging in a process of “organized abandonment” that is systematically stripping away the supportive structures that our students and their communities depend on.We will increasingly see collective trauma showing up in our classrooms and on our campuses. Trauma is the bodymind’s response to events and not the events themselves, so personal experiences will vary along a stress-trauma continuum. Be aware of how differently students may be experiencing this moment depending upon whether they are LGBTQIA+ or BIPOC or immigrants.Polycrisis experiences like we’re facing become traumatic when there are not adequate support structures within which to hold our experiences of grief, fear, anger, and uncertainty. Adequate supportive relationships mitigate the effects of a crisis from becoming traumatic, though they’ll continue to be very stressful.Dissociation and inaction can be defense mechanisms against the overwhelm of collective trauma. We may feel this. Our students may exhibit this. We need to subvert this collectively through our actions as professors and administrators to meet this moment with robust forms of care for our campuses and the communities our students belong to.Anger and reactivity can become attempts to restore a fracturing status quo. We shouldn’t be surprised at the anger. It’s a signal about what’s going on in student’s lives. Your institution may be the only relatively safe place for a student to even direct their anger, misplaced though it may be at times. Take anger seriously and treat it with care. Remember: you can’t argue people out of a trauma response. We need to be mindful of the ways that focus is going to be fractured for many of our students in the coming months.(Oh yeah... ours likely will be, too!) Students may fear falling behind, so some supportive and encouraging messages addressing this may be helpful from time to time. Additionally, faculty productivity may fall behind as more of our time is directed to supporting students in ways we may not normally have needed to in the past.A few things are key to our response in meeting the moment’s critical needs: Trust takes time and relationship to build and many of our institutions are starting behind in this regard with many students for a wide variety of reasons. Whatever we can do to cultivate trust and build relationship will be critical. Time for open processing of student experiences of this this era will be vital. Subjugating these painful and fearful experiences into silence will mean they’ll be processed in much less helpful ways that will ultimately create more disruption to students’ education and formation.Our expressions of leadership need to exhibit consistency and congruence, both critical in crises and amid pervasive uncertainty. We don’t need to have all the answers, but we need to listen carefully and take all the pertinent questions seriously.How we engage in this moment as educators is teaching students something, and we need to be sure it’s teaching what we really hope for them to learn when they’re leading communities in the larger world.

Teaching. Is there a greater thing to fear? For those of us in religious education, the “straw epistle” tells us that the teacher will be judged more strictly (James 3:1). These words on strict judgment are a source of meta praxis reflection for me. Irene Orr defines meta praxis as: “the potential for human flourishing through an awareness of practice and the value of making craft as an explicit knowledge pathway. Within and beyond the practice, this pathway has the potential to put us in touch with the essential vitality of life and its human value.”[i]Below, I focus on my meta praxis with the idea that the craft of teaching requires courage. This courage reflects on the essential vitality of life and its human value. Furthermore, it requires us to make a serious connection between what we study and how we live it out. In Spanish we say, “Del dicho al hecho hay mucho trecho” which means something like “From saying it to doing it there’s a big stretch.” It is similar to saying, “It is easier said than done.”Teaching is a task that is undervalued in our cultural milieu – and especially in fundamentalist circles it is seen with suspicion. I live and work in fundamentalist circles in the Southeastern US. Fundamentalism loves the end-time prophets, the soothsayers, and the showmen. In the classroom, it prefers indoctrination and rote recall. For example, it took a solar eclipse in 2024 to generate speculation about eschatological events and a lot of misinformation pouring into the livelihoods of people of faith. True education involves so much more than fear mongering. It engages people where they live. Otherwise, there can be no authentic reflection or flourishing.In my experience, writing about teaching requires us to have the courage to be human. For example, in my classes I have experienced that it is important to build and establish a rapport with students. In building a rapport, the teacher must engage the students right where they are at, wherever they come from, and with the baggage (for better or for worse) of their religious background. It is here that being human involves a level of relatability. Griffiths states that being relatable can help to create an appetite for learning.[ii] As a person with a PhD, I am an expert on the content. I have studied it and know that the material I teach is potentially life-changing. The difficulty arises because as a teacher I engage the learner at the mundane level of everyday reality. The journey towards the deeper layers of cognition and the underlying base epistemology is quite daunting, particularly when my students are not asking the questions I want to answer. Furthermore, the age of disinformation complicates my work.[iii] I have had several students who have no formal theological training in my classroom. They are usually content to compartmentalize the grammars of theology from their lived reality. Quite simply, some students just want to know how to make their church grow numerically, how to increase donations, and about the latest eschatological theological fads. It is taxing to engage them in the everyday visceral reality with the deeper theological grammars that powerfully shape and mold human beings.I have found that an effective way of demonstrating humanity is by incarnating my deepest values in the classroom. Much of what I teach about is modeled in the classroom. The values that I hold dear are more often “caught” than they are taught.[iv] For me, it has become imperative to establish some sort of relational connection with my students. As a teacher, I find myself carefully observing the world around my students. I become a student of my students. It is similar work to that of ethnographers when they enter a group and establish a rapport for their task of observation. I have heard many of my peers criticize this by saying that our students don’t need their hands held, but when looking at different academic studies about the classroom, the most common denominator in retention success is a human connection.[v]And when one considers that the number of students specializing in religion is actually decreasing, this becomes even more important. Ultimately, it is a battle for the affections of our students, whether they are undergraduate or graduate students. I recognize that this affective work cannot be readily quantified as the affections are an elusive but very real element of our humanity.Having courage means that I must create a hospitable environment – even with the fundamentalists. I have found that teaching works best when I create a hospitable environment, even when we vehemently disagree. However, students desire a “relationship-rich” experience in their journey through higher education.[vi] It requires courage because quite honestly, my time is filled with faculty meetings, committee meetings, personal research, writing, and the search for creativity – the temptation is to let contact with my students slide and limit my communication with them to terse sentences via email (if I respond at all). This press for time means that my contact with students must be intentional and meaningful. The teacher must have the courage, even in asynchronous online interactions, to establish quality contact with students.I am convinced that being courageous yields positive results. It ultimately means that my voice, a Honduran-American mestizo voice, is at the very least respected because I have shown hospitality when many students merely think of me as just “the Hispanic professor.” This hospitality transforms me from a stranger (read: a “Bad Hombre”) into being able to engage my students, even with the insertion of a dissonance of perspective. It is this relationship with them that allows me to introduce them to a new thought or a different pattern of living (meta praxis) that can alter someone’s life journey. My mere presence has a new sense of authority that can possibly create enough ripples at the edges of life experiences so that I might alter the web or system of beliefs.[vii] I engage the teaching discipline to discover ways to alter webs and engage my students as I further embody concepts and the dense stuff in the clouds and give it traction in their daily lived experiences. We agree, disagree, and yet ultimately strive for synthesized solutions on our journey together. Notes & Bibliography[i] Irene Orr, “Meta Praxis: Craft Praxis: A Way of Being,” (Doctoral Thesis, University of Dundee, 2020).[ii] Paul J. Griffiths, Intellectual Appetite: A Theological Grammar (Catholic University of America Press, 2009), 2, https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=b3a0cf3c-9a8b-3131-b54f-14e766e41a5e.[iii] W. Lance Bennett, The Disinformation Age (Cambridge University Press, 2020),https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108914628.[iv] For an example see Ronald Allen, “Is Preaching Taught or Caught: How Practitioners Learn,” Theological Education 41, no. 1 (2005): 137-152, https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=5e35cd3a-845e-389c-bddd-d72efdd95eb0.[v] Rebecca A. Glazier, Connecting in the Online Classroom : Building Rapport Between Teachers and Students, (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021), https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=b7ecbdd5-70bf-3ed1-9f85-342d7e4829bd.[vi] Glazier, Connecting.[vii] Brett Topey, “Quinean Holism, Analyticity, and Diachronic Rational Norms,” Synthese 195, no. 7 (July 2018): 3143-3171; 3144, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26750351.

Funie Hsu’s “How Mainstream Mindfulness Erases Its Buddhist Roots” hit my classroom like a bombshell. We had studied Hindu and Buddhist teachings in my sophomore-level philosophy class, and we were ending the semester by discussing the mindfulness movement. I had introduced Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and we had watched a video where Jon Kabat-Zinn demonstrated the program in action. The students were deeply moved by how he helped people with severe chronic pain in the video, and they loved his caring and gentle teaching persona.Funie Hsu was less impressed, pointing out that white people like Jon Kabat-Zinn appropriate Buddhism without acknowledging Asian American Buddhists and their contributions. They talk about going to Asia as part of the counter-culture movement, learning meditation and mindfulness from Buddhist teachers in Asia, and then bringing it all back to the United States. But Buddhism didn’t come to America in the 1960s. It was brought to the United States by Chinese and Japanese immigrants in the 1800s.My students already looked nervous, and it got worse. Hsu explained that those immigrants and their religion were met with suspicion, racism, and discrimination. But many of their leaders still opened their temples to curious white visitors, and some became mentors to them. Their work has remained largely invisible in the white community, even though many of the famous white teachers were taught by Asian-American Buddhists. And that seems kind of … racist. Hsu writes,Though Kabat-Zinn has practiced with Buddhist teachers himself … his strategic erasure of Buddhism reinforces racial and religious stereotypes in order to appease a white-dominant social structure. (“How Mainstream Mindfulness Erases Its Buddhist Roots,” The Progressive, February 12, 2022)All this seemed … very bad indeed.My classroom was almost all white (except for a Muslim student from Pakistan), and that was suddenly painfully visible to all of us. The students were in shock. They were also guilt-ridden and defensive. Several argued that Jon Kabat-Zinn was a bad man, and other students nodded. They concluded that Buddhism should be left to Asians and Asian Americans, white people shouldn’t explore Buddhism, and they certainly shouldn’t adopt and modify any of its practices in the ways that Kabat-Zinn had. Two guys in the back of my classroom timidly suggested that Kabat-Zinn should get credit for helping people with severe chronic pain cope without opioids, but they were quickly shamed into silence.I wasn’t quite shamed into silence myself, but I might as well have been since my talking had no effect. It wasn’t my finest hour. I paid for it by reading a lot of preachy and one-sided final papers.So how should non-Asian Americans handle Buddhism and mindfulness in our classrooms and our lives? Were my students right that we should just stay away?No, I don’t think so. I may have been more successful in getting students to reconsider if I had asked them to reread Hsu. She writes,Buddhism belongs to all sentient beings. Even so, Asians and Asian Americans have a rightful, distinct historical claim to Buddhism…. It is because of our physical, emotional, and spiritual labor, our diligent cultivation of the practice through time and through histories of oppression, that Buddhism has persisted to the current time period and can be shared with non-Asian practitioners.In order to alleviate the suffering caused by cultural appropriation, we can refrain from asserting ownership of a free teaching that belongs all. We can refrain from asserting false authority and superiority over those who have diligently maintained the practice to share freely with others. And we can actively work to give dana [generosity] by expressing gratitude for the Asian and Asian American Buddhists who have shared their indigenous ways of being as integral expressions of their practice. (“We’ve Been Here All Along,” Lion’s Roar)Buddhism does belong to all sentient beings. But with that ownership comes responsibility. We need to learn the history. We need to seek out and listen carefully to Asian American voices whenever we can. We need to learn from those whose connections to the tradition are deeper than our own, and we need to acknowledge our debts to them.So how might I teach a class that would do all that better?Here’s what I’m trying this semester.We start with mindfulness and MBSR, reading Thich Nhat Hanh and Jon Kabat-Zinn.We then critically examine the mindfulness movement. We read Funie Hsu, learning how Buddhism was brought to the United States by Asians and how it has been received. We read narratives of young Asian American Buddhists (courtesy of Chenxing Han’s work) and notice the wide variety of practices and views. We read Donald Lopez, learning that the mindfulness movement adapts Buddhism in a selective and limited way. We think through the thorny issues of cultural appropriation, and we discuss ways in which we may be able to engage Buddhist people, ideas, and practices in a more respectful way.Only after all that, several weeks into the semester, do we turn to Buddhist teachings.I like how the class is going so far (we’re starting Buddhist teachings), and I just won a big victory. A student from the first class I discussed is also in this one. She was loudly unflinching in her condemnation of Jon Kabat-Zinn last time. I was not happy about having her in this class: I worried that she would make it impossible for the other students to think through the issues. But she is two years older now, and she’s better at nuance. In her midterm paper, she is planning on critiquing her final paper on Jon Kabat-Zinn from two years ago. When I spoke with her yesterday, she was still objecting to Kabat-Zinn’s work, but she had just reread her old paper and found it embarrassing – “it is so all or nothing, so very simplistic.”I look forward to reading what she comes up with. Clearly, I’m not the only one who has learned something since last time.Notes & Bibliography Han, Chenxing, Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists (North Atlantic Books, 2021).Hsu, Funie, “How Mainstream Mindfulness Erases Its Buddhist Roots,” The Progressive, February 12, 2022.Hsu, Funie, “We’ve Been Here All Along,” Lion’s Roar.Lopez, Donald, “The Scientific Buddha,” Tricycle, Winter 2012.Moyers, Bill, “Healing and the Mind,” Moyers, February 23, 1993, 1:25:30.

Our attempts to teach towards openness, towards possibility, towards new glimpses of an uncharted future mean that teaching can be demanding, even confounding. One way I learned to embrace this approach was by incorporating rituals in my course designs.The use of rituals in classrooms allows students an experience that moves them into realms where meaning-making requires imagination and vision. Rituals can provide provocative and creative ways for students to enter and inhabit course content that otherwise would go overlooked, under-investigated, or ignored. Rituals create space for learning through intrigue, encounter, and invocation.Below, I recount a class ritual I designed to coax students into claiming more power, agency, and voice in their own learning. Here is my key ritual.Ten graduate students and I went to a retreat center by the sea for an intensive 4-day course focused on the notions of mystery and imagination. At our first session, we gathered in a large room and sat on folding chairs arranged in a circle. The all-purpose room had a wall of glass windows with views east toward the Atlantic Ocean. From the circle, we could not hear the waves, but we could see the sea stretching out. The afternoon sun gently setting into the horizon was lovely and the perfect backdrop for our key ritual. It was a beautiful place to learn together.I sat in the circle holding a black, beaded purse.In preparation for the first session, I had collected an assortment of keys. My collection included skeleton keys, hotel room digital keys, metal house keys, roller skate keys, safety deposit box keys, padlock keys, piano keys, house radiator keys, clock keys, keys for maps, a thumb drive with Stevie Wonder’s “Songs in the Key of Life”— as many kinds of keys as I could find. The black, beaded, drawstring bag with long strands of fringe on the bottom was a treasure I had since my junior high school days of boho fashion.  I was delighted when I found it in my closet. It was the perfect vessel for the ritual.Holding up the bag in front of the class, I jingled the contents so the learners would hear noise. Over the sound of clinking and tinkling, while using a suspenseful and serious tone of voice, “I am going to bring the purse to each of you. When I come to you, reach in and select one object. Just one—you cannot handle two!” I chided. “When you pull the object out, this object becomes yours. Its power will become your power. Do not let anyone else view your object. Keep it concealed in your hands. Hold it to your bosom. If you want, glimpse at it through your interlaced fingers or turn your back for a peek. Do not let anyone see your object.”Some students became reticent. Some looked a little hesitant. I was having fun.I passed around the circle taking the open purse in turn to each student. I held the purse high so the contents could not be viewed. Each student, following directions, reached in, retrieved an object that was some kind of key. As instructed, students took care not to show their key. Some students used both hands to keep the key from view.  Once everyone had a key – I asked, “Before we show what we have chosen, or more to the point, what has chosen us, does anyone want to give back what you took from my bag? Does anyone want to return their choice? Or does anyone want something different?”These questions brought a thick, full silence into the circle. I waited for their decisions. Everyone signaled that they wanted to keep what they had chosen.“Very good, then. You can reveal what is in your hand. You can reveal what has chosen you,” I said.Students unfurled their fingers revealing their gift, revealing their key.Some looked happy – had smiles on their faces.Some looked quizzical – had arched eyebrows and squinting eyes.Others looked confused – they looked at their key then around at the keys of the other students as if they had received something strange.I continued, “For the duration of our course you will carry your key with you. You will get acquainted with the power of your key. Remember—keys open doors, providing access. Keys also lock doors, providing safety and protection. This key will give you power that you already possess but have not accessed or for which you have not been disciplined. Your key will help you become more of who you already are. With your key you have the power to open and close at your behest. During this class get acquainted with your power and use it wisely.”I instructed that the next step was that each student would take their keys and a notebook to a quiet spot inside or outside of the retreat center. Each person was to find a comfortable and private spot to converse with their key. For an hour, each student will interview their key; contemplate their key; draw their key; write a story, song, or poem with their key in the starring role. Get to know your key and record what your key tells you about its purpose, power, history, and value.To my surprise, these instructions were met with eagerness.An hour later the group returned to the circle. Each student told a fascinating narrative about what they had learned from and about their keys. The reports were in the forms of drawings, lyrics, journal prose and poetry. Each was beautiful in its own way. For the rest of the course students explored the power of their own agency and imagination and how those attributes were symbolized and animated by their key. At the last session of the course, I brought the drawstring beaded purse back to the circle. I asked if anyone wanted to return their key to the bag. Everyone kept their power.This is what I learned. When courses are more than spaces where information is memorized then regurgitated, students who are unacquainted with self-reflection and possess little self-knowledge feel lost or are easily overwhelmed. When classes are spaces of wonder, curiosity, and deep deliberation students must be acquainted with their own power to question. They must be willing to bring their own agendas and to consider a wider way of being. Too many students are unaware of their capabilities and capacities as learners. They are unacquainted with their own genuine. Adult learners who enter classrooms with little self-knowledge are often skittish, suspicious, and ill-prepared for the challenges of classroom endeavors. This lack of knowledge makes it difficult to teach.  It takes some modicum of self-awareness and clarity of purpose for learners to take hold of courses at a level of depth worth pursuing. Learning requires students to have agency – to have keys to their own power.Our job as teachers, in part, is to assist students with un-learning the ways which dampen their voices, and which keep them afraid of new learning. We must assist them with cultivating agency so they are less encumbered during their pursuits. Rituals in teaching can move students past their fears and into their power, courage, and commitments. Giving students keys was my way of ritualizing my expectations that they would use their power to learn, to come to voice, to tap into their own desires and yearnings. Reflection questions:What rituals can we lead so that students feel more themselves in our classrooms – i.e. empowered, voiced, and capable?What does it mean to teach toward possibility and how do rituals make the impossible possible?What rituals assist in creating a learning environment where students learn their own value and worth and dignity?

Imagine quickly stepping out for a coffee break between classes. It sounds simple enough: latte or mocha? But for international students, especially those with F-1 visas, that seemingly easy choice turns into a mental checklist: Am I carrying my passport? My I-20 form? Do I have a valid driver’s license—if that’s even permitted? Could today be the day I’m stopped and questioned?As theological education shifts into virtual and hybrid formats, many international students remain physically tied to campus to meet strict visa requirements. Dorms and seminary apartments become their main living spaces—where they eat, sleep, and study. Yet in a climate of anti-immigrant rhetoric and possible Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) visits, the usual rule—carry your identification at all times—can feel like a heavy emotional burden.When domestic students pick up their backpacks, they carry laptops, books, and perhaps a snack. International students carry something extra: proof that they belong here, documents that validate their right to study and exist in this country. A simple stroll to the campus café can trigger anxieties like: What if someone demands my papers? Do I have everything in order? Behind these immediate concerns lurks a deeper, more painful fear—do I truly belong in a place intended to nurture my spiritual and intellectual growth?Of course, it’s not only about paperwork. The possibility of being asked for legal documents at any time creates an ongoing stress that many domestic students may never feel. It can negatively impact their class interactions, making them cautious about speaking up or standing out. It’s hard to fully focus when part of you is always on alert.Additionally, international students often encounter explicit and implicit biases—messages implying they’re outsiders, job-stealers, or perpetual foreigners. I’ve spoken with students who describe exhaustion from continually navigating these prejudices, worrying about complicated reentry processes if they travel home, or feeling anxious about political shifts that could abruptly alter their visa status or employment prospects. While their peers confidently pursue internships and research opportunities, international students wrestle daily with layers of uncertainty.As graduation nears, the pressure piles on. Optional Practical Training (OPT) and finding a visa-sponsoring employer can feel like uphill battles in an already competitive job market. Whenever I talk with students about their futures, I sense the stress they carry around from potential bias or outright hostility—an unfair burden during what should be an exciting time.For those of us who teach or mentor—whether or not we’ve ever navigated immigration rules ourselves—that small question, Do I need to carry my F-1 visa papers at all times on campus? opens a window into their day-to-day experiences. It’s a reminder that institutions meant to nurture faith and scholarship can sometimes feel more like guarded checkpoints.Belonging isn’t cultivated by a single individual’s effort; it flourishes within communal care. If we pause to recognize the emotional toll our students carry, we can more intentionally practice radical hospitality. Instead of leaving international students to shoulder their anxieties alone, our campuses could provide accessible legal support and staff trained specifically to handle immigration-related encounters. In our classrooms, we can intentionally create opportunities for students to share global perspectives, fostering empathy and breaking down harmful stereotypes.Institutionally, we might consider advocating for clear campus-wide policies protecting students from sudden ICE interventions and providing ongoing training to equip faculty and staff with a deeper understanding of immigration complexities. Many schools already work hard to support international learners, yet it’s always helpful to ask: What does genuine safety look like here? How do we ensure no one feels compelled to carry the weight of constant legal anxiety?When we truly listen to the question—Do I need to carry my F-1 visa papers at all times on campus?—we’re challenged to see the campus through international students' eyes—a place where daily life in a place they call home can still feel uncertain. It invites us to imagine, create, and nurture educational spaces where every student can learn, engage, and thrive without having to endlessly prove they belong.Thus, this question is not just about legal documentation. It's about belonging, empathy, and our shared responsibility as theological educators to build communities where no student must carry the weight of constant vigilance alone.