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If I have learned anything in this life of teaching, it is this: the emotional labor of teaching is genuine. Routinely, class sessions left me exhausted. After most sessions I would need to sit in silence for an hour to regain my energies or have a meal to replenish my body. The depletion was never from a lecture, but from the intensity of conversation with students. The emotional labor of teaching occurs due to the full engagement of body, mind, spirit, guts, wit, intuition, intellect, and humor, all summoned in the teaching encounter.When we do our teaching work well, classroom conversation can be powerfully interactive—for students and for us. Teaching religion, in confessional or non-confessional institutions, can stir up cultural tensions, stretch personal beliefs, raise consciousness and reenforce ethical obligations. Classrooms where the pursuit of truth is passionate, enthusiastic and exciting can take an emotional toll on the teachers because of the emotional investment in the endeavor. Interactions with students are often fulfilling but never neutral. The intensity of the conversation when students are expressing curiosity, thinking deeply, connecting previously disconnected ideas, and experiencing new insights can tax our emotional reservoirs.Emotional labor in the classroom is not a flaw, nor a side effect. Teachers who extend themselves, make themselves available, and open their hearts to students must realize that emotional presence—from delight to disappointment—is part of the work of teaching. Regardless of the season in one’s career, navigating identity, belief, and culture without falling into advocacy or detachment is hard. Vulnerability can be costly.For those of us who must contend with the disrespect, disregard and indignity foisted upon us by students who judge us as inferior due to our gender, race, nationality, age, or physical ability, the emotional toll assumes the jagged dimensions of discrimination and injustice. Classroom spaces riddled with unfair bias can be debilitating.To further complicate the challenge, students’ habit of coaxing teachers into boundary-blurring or insisting upon role overload can be aggravating. As an African American woman, students would treat me like women in their families or in their churches. Too often I was relegated to the status of deaconess, mother of the church, pastor’s wife, auntie or favorite cousin. Students, because of their lack of familiarity with an African American woman as a professor, and to appease their nervousness, would think of me as their counselor, lover, therapist, or friend. Many students would signal that I was like a familiar TV character—Florence Johnston, Oprah Winfrey, Aunt Viv or Clair Huxtable. I refused this status. I rejected the blurring and projection of these roles. I was their teacher. Being a teacher is a status, role, and an obligation worthy of pursuit and needs no appendages, additions, or attachments.The emotional labor needs to be monitored, nurtured, and attended to. Over long periods of time, the labor can erode us. Burnout, disengagement, cynicism, ill-health, or depression must be avoided.  Here are some strategies I have learned over the many years.Practical StrategiesPractice Grounding Ritualsmeditate and pray before class to center myselfstart class with breathing or meditationPlan the emotional rhythm of the semesterplan for low intensity class sessions, e.g. a trip (on or off campus), showing a film, guest speaker, art activity, playing a gameplan for time during the semester for rest and reflectionParticipate in peer support groups or professional support sessionsroutinely talk with colleagues or friends throughout the semestercontract a therapist, spiritual director, cleric, or counselorBe aware of burnout symptomsknow the symptoms of depression, burnout, fatigue and monitorjournal concerning your emotional health as pertains to teachingBe mindful of your own humannessmake sure you do not teach while over-tired or sleep deprivedbe well hydrated and not hungry in the classroomdress in clothes that make you feel confident and that are comfortableWe must find ways to stay emotionally connected while attending to our own needs. The emotional strain of teaching is part of the job but does not have to be a detriment of the job.Reflection QuestionsWhat are the moments that renew you in teaching? How can you plan for those moments?How do you plan your sessions so there is a rhythm to the semester?What conversations or practices help you stay grounded?What habits, practices and behaviors help you sustain your truest self in the classroom?What toolkit can you build for your emotional health and wellbeing?

(An audio version of this blog may be accessed here.) As scholar/teachers, we must have and be able to articulate our intellectual project. It is good if it happens in the early career stages of a scholarly career, but it is never too late. A scholar’s intellectual project is: the philosophical cornerstone of their scholarly career the 50,000 foot/big picture pursuit of their intellectual work the grounding of their work the perennial question, issue, the quest the epistemological guiding-star for decision-making toward that which the scholar works their entire career; their scholarly passion and intellectual haunting, that which they are interested in—regardless of their status or season of their career. The intellectual project is your big pursuit, your big idea. Your intellectual project is why you wanted to be a scholar and why you continue in scholarship. There will always be smaller, contributory ventures which engage, address, and actualize your central inquiry or question, BUT those smaller schemes are never the whole of your intellectual project. They may satisfy an aspect or element of your intellectual aspiration. However, the desire of your intellectual inquiry is bigger, much bigger, than any one expression created as a single book, journal article, course offering, or artistic rendering. The key is to be able to articulate the most basic description of your intellectual project. This is a necessary to your scholarship and to participating in a scholarly community. Your intellectual project, over the course of your career, and over the seasons of your work, will refine, deepen. The project might even shift and change. Regardless of these potential changes and shifts, your articulation of your principal project is paramount.   An intellectual project is not: a single job or your career; on the contrary, your places of employment are in service to your project a single grant proposal or committee accomplishment a single publication or panel participation defined by your approaches to your scholarship; the methodologies of engagement of your project are not the project dependent upon nor redundant to the conversation in your academic field; your project is meant to add to the conversation already in the field. You need a boiler plate speech. Your project must be articulatable in 3 to 7 sentences. You should have a succinct paragraph that describes, in its most basic, your intellectual project. This is as much for your own comfort and focus as for those who will ask you about your work. Knowing your project, as well as being able to succinctly communicate your project, allows you to work your project. This work is not easy. Your intellectual project’s articulation might feel elusive or vague. Intellectual projects can be bold/ “in your face”/dazzling. They can also be coy, temperamental, and evasive. Knowing your project is good—being able to articulate your project is what is needed; articulation may take time and great effort. Questions to spark, encourage, point toward clarity of articulation of your intellectual project: What is your curiosity? Or, to what are you compelled? To what are you called? What are your perennial questions? What are your big, philosophical, epistemological questions that are worth spending a career or lifetime pursuing? What issues would you study/explore/interrogate/pursue with or without salary? What agenda do you bring to every job? Toward what questions or issues do you bend every job, all writing, and all your courses? What has broken your heart and so now, to mend your heart, what will your scholarship be about? What is your immortal wound, and how are you saving your own life through scholarly pursuit? What, for a lifetime, will you resist, protest, contest, and fight against? What wrong will you right? What makes you so mad that you spring into action – especially the action of intellectual work and scholarly labor? What is your vision for the new world and how will this vision be embodied by your scholarship? At the end of your life, when you look back over your long and illustrative career, to what did you say yes? What is the pattern of your yes-saying and what can you glean as having been your project? Who is your inspiration and what was/is their project? How will you attach to it; fulfill it? What is the intersection of your gifts/talents with the mighty needs of the world? Why did your people send you to school? For them, what will be your scholarly accomplishment and contribution? How will your scholarship liberate your people? Intellectual projects are often vivid to other people, ask someone who knows you and your work. What do they believe your project is? Going through a search process routinely helps with clarifying your intellectual passion, focus, and intent. These processes force you to articulate your vision, perspective, aspirations, and scholarly itches. Consider applying for a job and see what happens with articulating your intellectual project. Beyond participating in a search process, consider the following to assist with coming to know and articulate your project: Write and rewrite a mission statement, write an elevator speech, write in simple prose, 3 to 7 sentences; practice those sentences on family, friends, and colleagues until they make sense to them and have resonance with you. In question format—create a list of 50 to 100 questions which frame your curiosity and pursuits, then cull the list down to the questions you want to pursue for years to come. In poetic or in creative forms, design a rendition of your intellectual project, then contemplate it; after contemplation, write your paragraph. If your scholarly project is woven into a course, assign students the task of mapping, charting, postering or displaying the basic concepts of the course. This allows you a perspective to see what you talk about when you talk about what you talk about. Often our students know our work of thinking better than we do. Invite several faculty colleagues to create public or digital displays of their intellectual projects then host a gathering to explore and celebrate the current and future work of the colleague. Plan several recorded conversations with a trusted colleague who will dialogue with you as you think through, think out loud, and articulate. Re-read your dissertation. Use that as a springboard to say what you are, actually, about.