Resources

Teaching always begins inside time, never outside of it. Our metric of time is typically semesters. Our own learning as teachers, as well as our students’ learning of the subject matter, unfolds unevenly throughout those semesters. Classrooms reveal what cannot be rushed: trust, the formation of community, courage, compassion. In our impatience, we might try to hurry. We rush our own teaching. We attempt to hasten our students’ learning and they bear the cost of this hurry. Our students deserve teaching shaped by who we are becoming, not just by what we know.Knowledge does not rush toward us; she waits to be welcomed and courted. She is fickle, demanding, and unpredictable. Deep learning—engagement with new knowledge—asks that we sit with confusion, love the question, and linger with one another, sometimes for a long time. That which matters most resists efficiency, cannot be downloaded, and belongs as much to our hearts and imaginations as to our minds. Knowing emerges through struggle, care, and communal accountability. Insights arise from misunderstanding, silence, discomfort, and a willingness to think new thoughts about old things. Insights are sparse. It takes time to learn to teach in ways that allow students to still themselves while their questions mature and their insights settle. Teaching as relational, improvisational, and unfinished is the more difficult pedagogy.Good teaching is not a skill we acquire, but a self we grow into—and that takes time. Sometimes it takes a lifetime.In the early years of teaching, we arrive eager, hopeful, afraid, novices in the enterprise. If we stay attentive, by mid-career we discover that teaching requires missteps, revisions, and reckonings. We learn to reject myths of mastery and instant competence. If we are lucky, the certainty of our early years gives way to humility and compassion. We come to understand that mistakes—even the big ones—are not detours but essential curriculum for improved teaching. If we are brave, and if we stay present to our craft, we allow ourselves to be reshaped, reformed, and profoundly changed, even as we are tasked with shaping others. By late career, we might become decent teachers. Teaching is a long becoming.Deep learning refuses hurry. Here lies the distraction of teaching by semesters: learning never appears on schedule. Transformation often arrives after evaluation periods close, after grades are recorded, after the final exam. Good teaching—slow teaching—requires faith in delayed understanding. We must reckon with the truth that good pedagogy attends to trajectories, not prescribed outcomes.Better teachers know that teaching is an act of collective endurance.In learning to teach slowly, perhaps we must refuse the lie that we are behind or late. The illusion of urgency keeps us absorbed and agitated. Slow is not late. Remember that survival itself is a long lesson. Just as important, refuse despair when progress is not visible. We must cultivate within ourselves a slow hope. Most of all, stay with the work long enough to be changed.ReflectionWhat would it mean to reduce the habits and practices that rush your teaching and your students’ learning? For example, what role does impatience play in your preparation and classroom demeanor?What habits or practices might you need to unlearn—or relearn—to grow your awareness of becoming a teacher over time?How might you take account of and celebrate the growth and maturity you have already accomplished as a teacher?

(An audio version of this blog may be found here.)We were not gathered to analyze the problems facing systems of education, societal storms, weaponized misinformation, wars around the globe, or climate change. We were not convened to solve problems of organizational structures or craft new and much needed policies and procedures to salvage educational enterprises. Rather, this was a gathering of Wabash Center leaders—highly credentialed colleagues, experts in their own fields, invested in the art and innovation of teaching.Wabash Center leaders assembled, as the invitation read, “to whet appetites, inspire new thinking, beckon the muse, provide new insights, rekindle the imagination, move us out of the constraints of boxed/hobbled ideas, and encourage new kinds of experiments in our classrooms and curriculum. Specifically, we gather with prominent thought leaders from other fields than religion to grapple with this meta-question:What are the possible futures of teaching religion and theology, and how do we imagine and create those possibilities?  Our discussion centered on the belief that the map/plan/direction to the new world is in our shared imaginations and risk-taking capabilities.  For the sake of possibility, we assembled to nurture our collective curiosity.Our presuppositions were not new or novel. We need a new vision if we are to have educational paradigms adequate for a democratic society in the coming future. We know that it is not enough to tweak, patch, or cling to, hollowed-out traditions of the current operation of higher education. If we are to establish systems of education which can sustain a flourishing society into the future, we must be about the business of casting new visions, pursuing new longings, and seeing new approaches. For this, we need curiosity, clarity of imagination, better communication concerning unusual approaches and a willingness to open ourselves to originality. We need detailed dreams and concise dreamers who will, with precision, help wean us from our dogged reliance upon the tired, ineffective paradigm. We convened to prepare for a future that is much different from our now.The Curiosity Roundtable gathering did not disappoint. Feedback from the participants told us that we convened a worthwhile conversation. Here is a sampling of the feedback from participants:  Using an approach related to curiosity wherein none of us was expected to be the experts, opened spaces for authentic engagement, laughter, reflection and community building.The opportunity to connect with others and engage in a different set of carefully curated conversations really accomplished the task of awakening our curiosity.I was surprised, but shouldn’t have been by now, at the vision of the Wabash Center to bring a set of unexpected conversation partners to the group – the Porche experience, an artificial intelligence sociologist and activist, a racialized socialization of children expert, a spoken word poet, and artist salon conveners. It worked! It worked in ways that will keep working on me, and I trust the whole group, in our own ways.Throughout our conversation we identified practices to foster curiosity. Here are a few of the ideas which bubbled around during the conversation:Push yourself to experience the wild, untamed, unfettered, out-of-the-box, unplanned spontaneous, improvisational, and undisciplined.Stay rested. Know what your body feels like when rested. Pursuing curiosity requires rest and calm.Learn to pay attention to daydreams, sleeping dreams, nightmares, desires, fantasies, and wishes. They might be as important or more important than aims, goals, and outcomes.Read beyond your academic discipline. Become an interdisciplinary agent. Read novels, short stories, creative nonfiction, stories of all genres.Write novels, short stories, creative nonfiction of all descriptions.Surround yourself with creatives—people who are unafraid of painting, sculpting, creative writing, film making, dancing.Practice new artistic expression(s) then pursue them passionately.Kindle the joy of being deeply moved by beauty or freedom. As best you can, avoid the ugliness of participating in oppression, exploitation, and the marginalization of people – especially if it is to your benefit.Practice silence, stillness, meditation, and contemplation.Attend to the health of your body as if you love it and need it to thrive.Attend to the health of your mind as if you love it and need it to thrive.Attend to the health of your soul as if your life depends upon it.Kindle relationships with family, friends, neighbors to surround yourself with love, care, and mercy.With regularity, make believe, pretend, fantasize, and goof off.Practice compassion because it is good education.The Curiosity Roundtable concluded with the challenge to each participant to develop a praxis project inspired by our conversation which will continue to unbridle their curiosity. The proposals are due in a couple of weeks. I suspect the projects will transform our world for the better!