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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!

(An audio version of this blog may be accessed here.) The rank of senior scholar is the highest and most revered. The hierarchy of the academy creates senior scholars by assigning newly minted faculty with the status of junior scholar, then over several years through a process of review, tenure and/or promotion, some colleagues reach the status of senior scholar. Promotion to senior scholar, as either Associate Professor, or Full Professor, is perceived as a badge of worthiness and nobility. The academy requires professorial participants to either ascend or be jettisoned. In some schools, earning the status of senior professor means having fought, brawled, struggled, and won. Senior scholar status is entitled to previously unavailable resources, and opportunities—goodies not afforded the junior scholars. Senior scholars are expected to have responsibilities and obligations which are not the onus of junior scholars. However, at some schools, there is not a clear demarcation between the obligations of junior or senior scholars—juniors are given duties and responsibilities similar to, or aligned with, those given to senior scholars. All this is to say, there is a great deal of variation between schools when one considers the culture, hospitality, duties, and obligations attributed to junior/senior scholar status. I am not suggesting that one model is superior to the others. I am suggesting that one needs to read the context and know which model is functioning in the school where they are employed. Who teaches senior professors how to be good senior professors? How do senior professors get mentored into their duties, power, influence, obligation? Who shows senior scholars how to transition from the institutional patterns, habits, and behaviors of junior status? How does the institution assist senior scholars in becoming their most generative selves in this season of seniority? By what process are senior scholars given permission to wield their power for the best impact upon students, community, and the institution’s future? What if most senior scholars operate as novices in the community structure? What if, without senior scholars who are mindful and present, the community cannot become healthy nor flourish to its potential? As I think of my own vocational journey, I have not been privy to conversations about identity as a senior scholar. Without benefit of critical reflection for planning, and without imaginative reflection for doing, it has not been easy to know what to do, or how to be, or what to be about, as a Full Professor.  I have never been part of a conversation which helped me parse, decide, live-into, or imagine how the authority of the rank of senior scholar could be used, might be used, or should be used. When I was promoted to the rank of Full Professor, I was glad for the pay increase. Equally true was my lack of interest in the institutional loyalty that was so often inferred by some administrators. I have learned to be a senior scholar by watching and engaging, that is, by trial and error. I have learned from the modeling of others only because I paid attention to those in this rank and wondered about their lives and professional decisions. In so doing, I have noticed three personas of senior faculty, or three modes of professionalism for the highest faculty rank: Gatekeeper, Historian, Elder. I am sure there are other modes. For now, I want to describe these three. Senior Scholar as Gatekeeper The gatekeeper recognizes the power and influence of the highest rank and intentionally wields that power in decision making opportunities which form and shape the institution and its future. In acknowledgement of the gatekeeper’s authority, colleagues assign the gatekeeper as chair of the most central and significant committees. The gatekeeper is consulted on major institutional decisions by the highest administrators including the trustees. If this persona is considerate, gracious, humble, community minded, and collaborative, the colleague is contributing to an ethos of cooperation, deep listening, and shared care. The danger of this persona is when the person operates through power-mongering, tyrannical, opportunistic, mean-spirited, and bigoted decisions. Schools can be treacherous when these people attend to maintaining the oppressive status quo which results in deepening the toxicity of the school’s ecology. Senior Scholar as Historian This persona works as being the reminder, the memory keeper, or the historian. Having served on the faculty for a long period of time, the person has a long memory from years of experience and participation. When the new people, new programs, new projects, or curriculum changes are considered, the person playing the role of historian will recount the moments when, in the past, a similar attempt was considered or made. The voice of the historian is often used to hold the institution accountable to the mission, legacy, and tradition. The historian often holds dear those colleagues who are no longer employed by the institution or no longer members of the faculty by invoking their names at meetings or telling stories about “the good old days.” This persona can be quite helpful as an institution plans for the future and is able, with memories of the past, to press forward and adapt. The person can also hold the institution hostage to the past and to earlier decisions which are not adequate for unfamiliar futures. Senior Scholar as Elder This person may or may not be elderly, per se. This person recognizes that they are no longer in the fray of accomplishing status and rank, and makes use of this phase of professional life to regularly provide insight, wisdom, and assistance to others. This person uses their power and influence to build community, mentor others, and be personally creative. They create time to regularly sit with individuals and groups for wise counsel. The communal role of the elder is reinforced by the way members of the community respect them and treat them with kindness, deference, and regard. They are admired and respected. Elder scholars will often take on the mantle of making “good trouble” so that the more vulnerable colleagues are not blamed or receive retaliation in difficult institutional battles. They can afford to risk, stick-their-necks-out, knowing their status means that they will receive little reprisal. I suspect I most admire the mode of elder because I come from a tradition that promotes, and depends upon, those at the highest ranks to reach back, reach down, reach out, and help. The Black church tradition has its gatekeepers and its historians. But we revere our elders. In my tradition, we defer to Big Mama, Mother of the Church, the Saints, the Teachers, and the Prayer Warriors. I am working on my elder persona. The toxic environment which plagues so many faculties is not lodged in the brick, mortar, and drywall of buildings. The toxicity permeates the relationships of the community. The lack of care, unfriendliness, bigotry, and acts of dehumanization reside in the ways people treat one another. Toxic environments—relational patterns of ugliness, shaming, blaming, ruthlessness, and deadly competition—might be inherited, but they are upheld and maintained by our choices of continued violent behaviors, lack of relational skills, and low emotional intelligence. Senior scholars, as gatekeepers, historians, and elders have the power and authority to shift and repair toxic environments in schools—if we would.