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Teachers of religion and theology recognize, from preparation and experience, the complexity of teaching fields of study in which students have a personal stake. Students, whether enrolled in courses on religion or theology, often base their engagement in the course with their personal faith, their personal moral codes, their personal ethics, decisions, and behaviors. Even if the course is not intended for this purpose, students signal with their questions and participation, that they are thinking of the course materials through the lens of their own lives. Teachers cannot escape inquiries about events in the news which daily shake and effect lives. Our classrooms are permeated with questions, concerns, and issues which arise out of that which grips the attention of our nation and the world. In this moment, we are gripped by Covid pandemic/endemic, Monkey Pox infections, Russia’s war in the Ukraine, the prosecution of those involved in the U.S. Capital insurrection on January 6, global economic inflation, major shifts in legislation concerning women’s reproductive health rights, routinized school shootings and failed gun legislation, marriage inequality debates, instances of abusive police power, privatized correction systems, climate change,  immigration challenges – to name a few. And, we are aware that a society grappling with these kinds of political, economic, and civic issues are also then challenged by persons suffering with depression, insomnia, increased suicide, grief/loss, effects of domestic violence, increased drug addiction and abuse, exile into the prison industrial complex--to name a few. On any given day, and in any given class session, these issues are at play. Not anticipating conversations around these topics, ignoring the potential for these conversations and/or declaring that these conversations are “inappropriate,” will only serve to further the suspicion that the scholarly discourses of theology and religion are irrelevant, outmoded, and unnecessary. Our students, in their insistence and persistence, declare to us that we have arrived at an inflection point in world history. What we teach and how we teach in this moment is critical to our survival. The stakes are high for teaching because its practice is one of the most powerful apparatuses of change in any society. What will it mean to harness this power? What will be lost if we do not? For those of us charged with teaching in this moment it is easy to lose sight, given all that is swirling, of our purpose. The aim of educational leadership in this right-now moment is to imagine, design, and build new routes into beauty, health, compassion, citizenry, community and imagination. We must recognize that this moment of chaos and upheaval is also a moment of opportunity. In this moment of seeming impossibility, leaders/teachers must muster the wherewithal to envision a future that is whole, healthy, and just, for all. And then we must build that future, together. The good news is that we are scholars trained in critical thinking and analysis. We know how to interrogate for the solving of complex problems. Large scale and huge scope problems are our jam! We are faculties of persons capable of thinking toward new visions, dreaming new dreams, and we can learn to relinquish that which no longer sustains us. We know how to disrupt narratives of systemic hatred, systems of injustice, and tear down conditions under which people live one form of debilitating violence or another. Our advocacy matters. The difficult news is that we are unsure if we want to insist upon institutional nimbleness, adaptation, creativity, and empathy. If and how we are nimble as we react to the complex challenges of positive and negative changes will determine our survival. Our ability to adapt to new realities will be key to opening up our future. The ways in which we care for ourselves and others will make a difference in our endurance. We have what we need; and we must not hesitate to empower those who are courageous, those who know how to design for a new future. So, we ask for persons, colleagues, in and beyond the academy, to reveal themselves for our benefit and learning: Who knows the skills, habits, and practices of redesigning? Who can assist us reconceiving our schools? Who are our best strategists? Who has the know-how for institutional creativity, imagination, and re-building? Who can draw blue-prints for the new and the needed? Who understands nimbleness and can train us? Who adapts well and quickly and can teach us? Who sees that there are multiple realities and can show us? Who can lead us into our hopeful future? Friends, we must, in dramatic ways, pivot the current educational enterprise that would have us standby silently, passively, and complicitly to a world that would kill needlessly. We need leadership who will cause us to come together, be together, stay together to do whatever we can, to do whatever it takes, as teachers and scholars, to save our shared future. Do not go numb. Do not stop breathing. Do not avert your eyes, lower your head, or go invisible. Do not get used to the death toll reports. Be disturbed. Dare to hope. Be about teaching that is relevant, timely, and attends to the needs of those yearning to live. The power of teaching is at your disposal. Harness it!

Experienced teachers recognize the need to continually learn about the art and craft of teaching. With the aim of improving our own teaching, a group of Wabash Center colleagues and I set out to observe classrooms beyond typical higher education settings. Our first session was with a museum docent.  The plan was for our small group of colleagues to meet the docent, then along with a group of first-graders, take the tour of featured exhibits. I was very excited about the museum tour and the first-graders. A museum docent, volunteer or staff, is a person who leads tours of exhibits in museums. The docent has interest in art, might be an artist themselves, desires to interact with persons who come to the museum for an experience of the art, and desires to assist persons to discover their own interpretation the artwork. Docents are guides who help museum visitors better see the artwork. Our docent was named Ann Marie (not her real name). She had been a guide, teacher, trainer in this museum for more than fifteen years. The colleagues and I arrived at the museum before the first-grade class. We were greeted in the lobby of the museum by Ann Marie. Ann Marie was a white woman, mid-to-late fifties, with a cheery disposition. She gave us a brief overview of the museum and talked about her responsibilities as a docent and docent trainer. She said she liked her job and that she had started as a volunteer, and now she was on staff. She said that during the quarantine the museum, like all others, had gone dormant, but now, with a mask requirement, they were open for business and had a regular schedule of visitors. The first-grade class arrived. My colleagues and I stood to the side as approximately 25 African American children, age 6 & 7, along with about 8 chaperones (likely parents and aids) quietly filled the museum lobby. The group entered the museum like people would a library or church – with a kind of quietness of spirit and anticipation.  Ann Marie instructed the group to take a seat on the floor. I watched as the children, under the guidance of their chaperones, made three orderly rows. The children were talking quietly and waiting for the tour to begin.   As I watched the children interact, I had pangs of remembering field trips from my elementary school days. Those memories reminded me why I loved learning and why I have wanted to be a teacher since childhood. The chaperones, standing, placed themselves at the edge of the group and kept a watchful eye. I noticed a young white woman sitting on the floor in the third row. She sat with the children, relaxed and talked calmly with the children seated around her. She was the only white person in the group of children and chaperones. As I observed, I thought this likely the first museum many of the children had visited. I was glad these children had the opportunity to leave the classroom for learning in the wider-world. I felt my heart open. Ann Marie approached the seated children and began her presentation. Her welcoming and cheerful manner quickly devolved into what sounded like a canned speech, withering into a series of questions meant to prompt specific responses from the children. The children were instructed to raise their hands and wait to be called upon to answer the questions. With each question from Ann Marie, multiple children raised a hand to participate. Once Ann Marie finished with the question-and-answer portion of her presentation, she informed the children she had instructions for how the group should navigate the exhibits. Ann Marie said in a dry and disciplining tone to the children, Please do not run. Please do not touch any art work. Please do not talk when I am talking. Do not walk on the stairs without holding onto the handrail. Do not leave the group. Do not wonder. Do not call out to speak. Do not ……. With each “Do Not ….” command spoken by Ann Marie my heart sank. I cringed. The experience of wonder, art, creativity and interpretation was becoming an exercise in compliance, obedience, right-doing, and rule following. At the end of the long list of rules, the children were still quite attentive, Ann Marie took a long, dramatic pause. I suspect she was trying to reinforce the point that these rules were important. During the pause, the white woman sitting on the floor in the third row raised her hand. When she got Ann Marie’s attention she stood up. The young white woman stepped out from amongst the children so all could see and hear her. In this moment I realized she was the teacher. Teacher said in a firm tone, Class, I want you to remember what we talked about while we prepared to come to the museum. Remember? We talked about all the kinds of things you CAN DO. Who remembers what we CAN DO? Teacher paused for the children to think and respond. Several first graders raised their hands to signal they had answers. Taking turns as they responded, the children answered saying: We can look with our eyes. We can enjoy what we see. We can ask questions. We can appreciate the colors. We can talk about what we see. We can see the pictures. We can say what we think about the pictures. We can see what artists drew and painted. We can say if we like it or if we do not like it … or both. We can look at all the different kinds of art. Teacher responded, Yes, to all of those. Very well done! Teacher looked at Ann Marie and said, We are as interested in what we can do as what we cannot do. I was relieved that Teacher had spoken. I was grateful that Teacher advocated for her students. Teacher had a clear vision of the kind of learning experience she wanted for her students and she spoke-up for that experience to happen. Learners, children and adults, are formed by the theories, concepts, and lessons of the classroom. They are equally formed by the ecologies, experiences, relationships and rules which frame the learning. We learn as much from how we are treated by the people and by the institution as we do from the curriculum materials. The brilliance of Teacher, in advocating for the learning of her students, was that her advocacy was not meant to provoke a confrontation. Teacher’s advocacy did not hinge upon telling the docent that her methods were unwarranted or even biased. Teacher had prepared her students for an experience of curiosity, wonder, exploration and discovery. When the docent tried to diminish that experience to an experience of NO, CANNOT, MUST NOT, SHOULD NOT, DO NOT, Teacher intervened by making use of her authority and voice.  Teacher had authority because she was the teacher. Teacher simply, elegantly, and forthrightly used her voice to reframe the rules and signal to the class that they were free to learn, expected to explore, and be free. On behalf of your learners, Teacher, I thank you.

In planning a course, have you ever designed a creative learning activity that you thought was marvelous, and then feedback from others substantiated its marvelousness? But then, one or two people, naysayers, gave you a negative critique? And, rather than focusing on the marvelousness, your focus attached to your fear and those scant few negative opinions. You allowed the feeling of the praise to become flimsy, while the feeling of being chastised became more concrete. Along the same lines, have you ever read student course evaluations and the overwhelming majority of the opinions were positive while one opinion found the course lacking, and then your focus was upon the one negative word rather than positive feedback? These examples are quite common.  In these moments, we have allowed our good work to be eclipsed by the negative critiques. We surrendered our creativity, allowing negative voices to even drown out the praise of trusted peers and pupils. We allowed ourselves to be disconnect from our own ingenuity. Too often, we succumb to negative criticism, then decide to curtail our creative choices, rather than lean into the feedback that supports and celebrates our creativity. What would it mean to ignore the negative and, for the sake of effective teaching, pursue that which is imaginative, generative, and wildly untraditional in the classroom? I am glad I mustered this kind of courage. Here’s a story… In my excitement, I arrived at the building about 7:15 AM. I was meeting the carpenters in the atrium of our seminary building to hang our poster exhibit. Our exhibit entitled, “Basic Concepts of Engaged Pedagogy” was our semester-long aim.  My students, with my guidance, had made posters depicting the basic concepts of bell hook’s theory of engaged pedagogy. Their work was brilliant! From the first session of the introductory course until week nine when the posters were handed-in, we had been reading, discussing, debating, discovering, analyzing, and understanding Dr. hook’s work on teaching as a practice of freedom. In our grappling, we had incorporated Paulo Freire, Anne Streaty Wimberly, and Katie Cannon. Each of the twenty-seven students had created posters depicting the clarity and depth of thought they had gained for hooks’ politic of freedom. Our poster exhibit was an expression of their learning as well as a way to teach others about the power of pedagogy to bring liberty. Three carpenters arrived with ladders and tool boxes. With great care, they laid all the posters on the floor. In creating a cohesive exhibit, the carpenters and I discussed the best locations for each poster to hang.  Taking into consideration colors, forms, textures and ease of viewing, we mapped each wall of the atrium. Once the exhibit was mapped on the floor, the carpenters hung each poster. I was very moved by the amount of time and intension the carpenters took in arranging the display. By 9:00 AM the atrium had been transformed into a gallery filled with the concepts of pedagogy as freedom. It was a marvelous gallery exhibit! All day there was a buzz of excitement in the community about the exhibit. Students, faculty, and friends were very complimentary. Then, around 3:00 that afternoon a staff colleague came into my office. I was sitting at my desk. She began talking as soon as she entered. Her: The atrium is a shared space and should not be cluttered with one person’s course materials. Me: Cluttered? Her: I’m just afraid you will mar the wood. Me: Mar the wood? Her: I really think that all that busy-ness does not belong in the atrium. Me: Busy-ness? Her: I really think the posters should be taken down… At some point her voice became like those of the Charlie Brown adult voices in Peanuts cartoons. When I noticed that she had stopped talking and was now staring at me, I said flatly, “Thank you for your feedback?” She hesitated before leaving. I suspect she realized I was not going to take the exhibit down, so with that, she turned and left my office. The next day I was called to the Dean’s Office. The Dean asked me how long I had planned to leave the exhibit up. She said she was asking because she had gotten a complaint. The Dean said that someone was concerned about the exhibit marring the walls. I told her the exhibit would be up for four weeks – until the end of the semester. I also informed the Dean that the carpenters had hung the exhibit. The Dean looked surprised. She said she had been told that I had hung the posters myself. I did not respond. We sat in an awkward silence. Finally, I said, “Have you walked through the exhibit and admired the good work of our students? Their grasp of pedagogical theory is impeccable.” As I left her office, the Dean said if she had time, she would take a look at the exhibit. As you might imagine, I left that office feeling angry, deflated, and insulted. I am recalling this event from the early years of my teaching because my initial reaction was to allow the negative critique to curtail my creative approaches. Even though the students were extremely proud of their work and even though so many people in the seminary community were appreciative of the imaginative project, I considered allowing the nay-sayer to stop me from these kinds of projects. Deciding to ignore this negative critique was likely one of the best decisions I made as a young teacher. Now, years later, after having made creativity a hallmark of my teaching, I am full of gratitude that I did not allow the naysayer to eclipse my creativity, my teaching, and the good work of my student’s learning. This summer, as you design your new courses and reconsider old courses, think on the positive, affirming feedback more than the negative. Do not give-in to petty complaints or to controlling, dull complainers. Hear the good feedback for what it is--appreciation, admiration, and encouragement for a job well done. Use this summer to quiet the voices that would make you reticent, hesitant, or fearful. Plan to allow your own ingenuity and creativity to shine bright.

One of the many joys of reading poetry is the fluidity of meaning to which poems lend themselves. Mary Oliver’s poetry allows the reader to imagine their own situation, ponder, then gain dynamic insight. From A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry (Mariner Books; August 15, 1994), Mary Oliver wrote: For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry. Teachers! Can we make this declaration with firm regard and assuredness about our courses, our teaching, our livelihood as faculty? What would it mean if, with the help of Mary Oliver, we whispered one to another:   For courses are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry?   Often, I wonder what a course is, or what it is for. I know the mundane of why courses are taught. The curricular obvious and the institutional mechanics are part of my understanding; I am not asking about the obvious or the mechanical. Instead, I wonder if courses matter? Are courses important, impactful, and when they are – what makes them so? What makes a course fire? Rescue? Or sustenance for the poor? Mostly, when I was enrolled in courses, very few experiences had the gravitas of the comparison with Mary Oliver’s provocative images. Like most folks with a terminal degree, I was enrolled in formal course work for over twenty years – if I start counting from kindergarten. In most cases, the teacher did not do anything wrong, but neither had they done anything like bringing fire for my warmth or letting a rope down when I was in a pit. And, I have inhabited cold, dank, pits. It is too easy to recount experiences of flimsy teaching, but their commonness is crippling to our students. By the second week of a required course in college, my friends and I figured out that the lectures of the professor were excerpts from the primary text. During the weekly hour-long lectures, we sat quietly in class and highlighted the passages she read aloud from the re-typed pages she laid on the podium. Occasionally, the teacher would skip pages in the text causing us to, with a flurry, turn pages until we found the passages to which she had jumped. I always wondered if she noticed that we were not taking notes, but highlighting the textbook, and if so, what did she think about this. At mid-term and final, in preparation for the tests, my friends memorized the passages in the book. I, thinking that a waste of time, got a “B” in the course because I refused to “study.” I was bored in the course. We have all survived teaching that has been reduced to words, facts, and data. Mary Oliver bids us to take stock of the possibility that teaching could be, after all, life changing and lifegiving. Given this opportunity, it would behoove us to set our intentions as if we are about course design with transformative power. The power to feed the hungry, locate the lost, and set the captives free.  I have been a student in several courses where I received healing, inspiration, and renewed agency to meet my vocation well prepared. Some courses shifted my core values and deepened my commitments. Some courses were exemplars of a call to action for the rest of my career. In 1985, one such course was titled Ministry and Mission of the Church in the World Today. It was co-taught by Jack Seymour and Robert O’Gorman. I found the course interesting, and equally, I was fascinated to watch the two scholar/friends as they taught. I learned as much by watching them teach as I did by being taught by them. Three sessions before the end of the semester, I found myself sitting in the classroom quite frustrated. Near the end of that day’s lecture, I raised by hand, and fumbling for words, asked a question about implication and application. As was the established practice, each professor took a turn responding to my question. Both responses said that questions of implication were not part of this course. My frustration deepened. I furrowed my brow, frowned my face and spoke back - vehemently. I, in graduate student authorial voice, informed my teachers that our conversation had to include conversation on implication because without that, I said, “What was this course for?” The two men were surprised by my outburst, but not deterred. They said they would discuss my request. At the next class session, Jack and Bob informed us that they had adjusted the course syllabus for the final weeks. The new design now included two sessions focused on implications and applications. At the announcement, the class cheered! I was amazed and changed by having had my curiosity taken seriously. I am not suggesting that all courses should include questions of implication. I am suggesting that, if we are intentional, courses can become spaces for teachers and students, who together, learn to kindle passions, braid ropes to lower sojourners over sheer cliffs, something as necessary as cool water in drought. Thank you, Mary Oliver.

Every now and then I read a book for which I have such resonance and affection that I wish I had written it. One such book is The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life, by Parker Palmer. Parker Palmer teaches that the bad days of teaching create a kind of suffering that only comes from attempting work that is loved, revered – work where our passions find expression and release. For many of us, teaching is the work our souls must have. (K. Cannon) When soul-rich teaching days are bad, then the teacher is anguished. Palmer encourages that when teachers endure unswerving bad days that that teacher must not attempt to escape, but instead, to get out of trouble, go deeper in Yes! I agree! Or I used to agree. Before the quarantine I thought Palmer’s words noble, admirable, aspirational and attainable. Now, in the midst of the yet on-going Covid pandemic, the unrelenting social violence against BIPOC people, the renewed awareness of war around the globe, the uptick of mental illness, the supply chain shortages, grieving, languishing and so on - while I am not rethinking this nobility, I am stymied by it in new ways. In the struggle with teaching-while-in-Covid, a refrain uttered by colleagues is the wish, need, outcry for withdrawal, maybe even surrender. In multiple forms, colleagues have reported their suffering with these words: I want to quit teaching every day. The series of bad days is stretching-out too long, too far, too much. A response of going deeper, doing more, reifying commitment, is not working. Colleagues do not possess the fortitude to meet their espoused loyalty. For many, the fires of passion have burned out. Some days, I count myself in this number. Lovers of the Courage to Teach are encouraged to read beyond the aforementioned pithy quotes, and focus on the grand picture of teaching and the teaching life for which Palmer speaks. We must remember that Palmer also wrote, If we want to grow as teachers -- we must do something alien to academic culture: we must talk to each other about our inner lives -- risky stuff in a profession that fears the personal and seeks safety in the technical, the distant, the abstract. During the pandemic, the practice of nurturing an inner life, rather than for growth, might now be practices of survival. While it would have been better to have risked habits and practices of talking to each other about our inner lives before the current on-going crisis and malaise, doing it right now might slow our undoing.   A foundation stone of the Wabash Center is our cohort groups. We have learned that the critical role of the cohort groups lies in providing space for dialogue, networking, and relationship building. Participants often find old friends, make new friends, and deepen friendships (see our website for upcoming opportunities). Friends are the folks to whom we can pour out our hearts with the assurance that our words will not be weaponized against us at tenure or promotion processes. My hunch is that without friends in the industry of teaching, or friends beyond the industry of teaching, a teaching soul cannot make it alone, especially during this pandemic. It is in the intimacy of friendship where our inner life is discussed so that the suffering of our bad teaching days does not devour us. I have a friend I depend upon. We speak regularly. During the isolation of quarantine, we spoke every day – sometimes more than once a day. We needed to check-in, to be checked-on, and to feel connected. One of my favorite ways that we interact is to always say to each other such yammering of truth telling and troublemaking as --- you have done enough/you are enough/go take a nap/tell them no/did you eat today/ are you hydrated/go outside and sit/ set your alarm clock so you stop working/ you don’t have to reply to that email/that deadline can be renegotiated/I’ll call you later… These statements are not so much advice as they are gestures of soul tending and care. It takes friends to help with the daily work of refusing and resisting the messaging which tells us we should be fodder for the machine of misogyny, racism and the faltering capitalist democracy. We risk friendships because the alternative is madness. Mostly – my friend and I laugh! We laugh at our own foolishness, the foolishness of people who have annoyed, disappointed or angered us. We laugh about the absurdity of war and we laugh when a new binge worthy show is announced on Netflix. We remind one another not to take our jobs so seriously that we hurt ourselves, press ourselves too hard. We acknowledge that teaching in a pandemic has exacerbated the already hard struggle. On the days we want to quit, we never try to talk the other out of it.

Just the thought of failure, either in anticipation or in loathsome memory, causes many to recoil, wrench in pain, or feel ashamed. The big red-inked “F” on the exam, either literal or metaphorical, sends chills down spines and contracts sphincters. Fiasco, disaster, confirmed lack, or found-out mediocrity, humiliates and destroys. Failure is unavoidable. As they say, “we learn more from our failures than from our successes.” Rather than stigmatizing those who fail, it behooves us to embrace those who are brave enough to make attempts and normalize the help needed to strengthen efforts. Still, normalized help is not easy to come by. For many students, for many reasons, one of the first things they do in undergraduate or graduate school is fail. A student who exceled in high school courses will not necessarily ace the first exams in college. Comparable to students, teacher failures are as varied as teachers. Early career fiascos, mid-career blunders, late career mistakes and poor judgements – confirm that we are persons who are fallible. Humanness is messy. Our teaching failures remind us that an expert in any field does not necessarily make for a good teacher of that field. Learning to teach the methods, approaches, practices and literature of any discipline requires as much attention as learning the content of that field. Any seasoned teacher will tell you that there were (many) failures along the way to becoming a competent teacher. The ways schools respond to failure is a key element in the formation or deformation offered in our educational enterprise. Students and faculty are more formed by the ways they are accepted or rejected during failure as they are by any course in the curriculum. A climate of help, support, applauding of persistence, and reward for courage, tells students if they are worthy of the degree they are attempting to earn. It tells teachers that the community where they teach has their backs. Higher education colleagues report that they survived an educational process which told them that failures were to be rare/never and were intolerable. Out of self-protection, many of us learned to pretend we do not fail. Or we have been taught to hide the failure. We masquerade or just never quite own up to any failure. School ecologies which are intolerant of failure are climates which are deforming of spirit and shallowing of imagination. Without healthy spirit and deep imagination education becomes rote, wooden and hollow. Our students, then, are ill-equipped to leave our classrooms. Calvin Coolidge said, “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful (wo)men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” In classrooms, it behooves us not to lower standards, inflate grades, or dumb down curriculum so there is little to no failure, but instead create ecologies of learning where moving past failure is integral to learning, encounter, discovery, boundary expansion and new experiences. Asking for help is not cheating; it is not a show of weakness; it is not a declaration of permanent inadequacy or insufficiency. Failure does not foster mediocracy or create indelible flaws. Asking for help is difficult. Asking for help has to be re-learned. I first met Ariel as a student enrolled in my introductory class. His habit was to sit quietly, listen attentively and participate actively in small group activities. I noticed that he was smart when I read his first submitted essay. His writing was strong, his grasp of the course material was solid and his conjectures concerning implications and applications was superb. By mid-term of the semester, Ariel’s engagement in the class showed that he was, consistently, a capable and talented student. During a break in a class session Ariel came up to me to talk. He said he had a proposal. I was intrigued and listened attentively. His proposal was that since he had done so well on the first three writing assignments, that I would allow him to forego the remaining three assignments. I told him to let me think about it. At the end of class I pulled him aside to talk. I told him that in order for me to forego the three pending writing assignments, he would have to agree to help students in the course who were struggling. I told him he would not have to do the remaining assignments in the syllabus, but instead he would use his time to lead a study group to help failing students. He said he would think about it. During the following week he emailed me and said he would take my offer. I emailed back and told him to meet me in my office an hour before our next class. Before the next class and my meeting with Ariel, I emailed three other students who were also doing quite well in the course and offered them the same deal. If they were willing to keep up with the reading of the course, in lieu of writing the remaining three essays, the four of them would help other students who were struggling with the materials. When we met I told them that their help with other students was not mandatory and they could complete the course as outlined in the syllabus. Each chose to create a study group with other students. The study groups worked well; help was given and grades came up. After the last class session Ariel came to my office. He thanked me for the class then said, jokingly, that the deal I struck was unfair. I smiled at him and waited to hear his rationale. He said that the task of creating the study group, and helping other students, was much more work than had he simply written the remaining essays. I smiled wryly and reminded him that it had been his choice. I asked him if he had learned from helping. He said yes. I told him that there were students who he helped who would not have taken help from anyone else. And I thanked him for his good help. Ariel told me I owed him lunch. Gladly, I obliged. “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” ― Winston S. Churchill So, we ask these reflection and invitational questions. To whom do you turn for help with your teaching failures? What systems of help do you build into your courses for your students? In your school, is there an ecology that normalizes failure and regularizes help, support and resilience and if not, what would it take to create one? Who are your collaborators and conversation partners when you fail and when you need help? What failures in teaching are weighing you down and need to be forgiven and healed?

[text_only_widget] Author’s Note:  My use of the word “diversity” is with reluctance. It is an overused and often misunderstood word. In this case, by diversity I mean difference. I am concerned with the difference that is revealed in our body sizes, shapes, shades, smells, tastes and sounds. Diversity exists between cultures when minoritized peoples are compared to the status quo, or when white, western, male, straight culture is normalized as superior. By diversity I mean to imply the innovation that is needed to meet the needs of classrooms when curriculum, rather than ignoring minoritized students, shifts to include, accommodate, incorporate and value new meaning making, new knowledges and new ways of being together. Where there is diversity there is likely conflict. Diversity, whether by institutional intent or by happenstance, complicates our ability to see students. [/text_only_widget] Peekaboo! I see you! Infants and parents all over the world play some version of this game. In view of the infant, the adult hides their face, pops back into view of the infant, then says Peekaboo! … I see you! This game, full of surprise and expectation, results in the infant’s squeals of delight and amazement. For infant and parent, being seen is joyful. Like in the peekaboo game, teachers understand the value and joy of conveying to our students that “I see you.” It is important that each student in our classrooms have the experience of being acknowledged and welcomed. Each soul wants to be seen. With comparatively little effort on the teacher’s part, students with similar aspirations, similar race, similar culture, and similar economic class, easily find their place in the classroom tableau. It is less complicated to teach a course whose student population is homogenous than it is to teach in diversity. In sameness, the assumptions, the presumptions, the conventions, the ascribed values and the norms function without need for explanation, or clarity and typically without threat of contestation. “Everybody knows …” is the working premise - and rightfully so. In the diverse classroom, “everybody knows…” falls short because now every body is not the presumed same body. In diversity, the bodies vary, the knowledges and know-hows vary. Differing bodies bring different music, clothing, hairstyles, lifestyles, languages, value patterns, religions, foods, history, and family situations.  That which could be presumed as being normative can no longer be presumed and often demand a stretching of our thinking, being, understanding and doing.  Our language, social labeling, and identity politics bares out our societal patterns of inclusion and exclusion. “In this country American is white. Everybody else has to hyphenate,” said Toni Morrison. When our white classrooms shift to include hyphenated persons, we are unprepared. Those students who, with their very presence, create diversity are often the students who go unseen and who are rendered un-seeable. Regrettably and commonly, seeing minoritized students means policing them. The surveilling gaze, the suspicious stare, the apprehensive look, or the disapproving glance lets him/her/they know of the hostility and the relegation to being as a stranger. Or worse yet, students who create diversity in the school’s population are erased, made invisible, removed completely from the sighted reality of the teacher. These students are ghosted – absented in classrooms. Their differences are not recognizable as adequate. Differences do not mean deficiencies. As teachers, we choose which students we will see and which students we will disregard, look past, or look away from. This is a challenging realization. It is dis-ingenuine for any teacher to say that he/she/they pay attention to all students, that they are able to see all students, that they are attentive to all students. Even the most caring teacher has students for which giving their attention is a strain. We all have biases, prejudices, and cultural insensitivities. This does not make any teacher a bad teacher. It does make us human beings who must learn to stretch beyond our prejudices, shallow cultural boundaries, and narrow sensibilities. Homo sapiens. “(Wo)Man who knows.” Or rather, “human who is conscious.” Human who is conscious that he/she/they does not know. We are our most human when we make choices, when we exercise the power of choice. Teaching is a testing ground, and learning place, for our own humanity. In teaching relationships, we succeed, or we fail miserably, by choosing to see some students and refusing to see others. It is this choice that makes us human and this choice that makes us good, bad, or growing teachers. In our humanness we are both vulnerable and afraid. The challenge is to muster the courage to see all the students – those like us and those so different from us that we shrink back and recoil.  As courageous teachers, we ask: What does it mean to teach in such a way that the erased student rematerializes? What does it mean to teach in such a way that the invisible-ed student reappears? What does it mean to teach in such a way that the unseen or overlooked student comes into focus? What does it mean to teach in such a way that the hiding or hidden student peeks out from behind their wall? What does it mean to teach in such a way that the voiceless student comes to voice? Can we teach in such a way that the learning experience for all would not make sense or would have no meaning if there was an erased student in the conversation? What would it mean to teach with such precision that lessons, to be successful, need the input, participation, knowledges, voice, and creativity of all the students? What kind of teaching relates to the diversity of students in the classroom without asking that every student normalize or centralize the white, male, straight, wealthy culture? What if teaching in diversity is too difficult, too demanding – creates too many problems? Then what? Still embroiled in the global pandemic, we are teaching online, we are in classrooms donning masks, and we are still reeling with societal uncertainty and fatigue. We, in these COVID riddled years, have a legitimate excuse to not see those who are erased, those invisible-ed, and the hiding students. Even though it is more work, more effort, more stress - now is precisely the time we must find ways to see them, all.

One day my father asked my brother and me why we had stopped roller skating. In those days, roller skates were constructed out of skin-bruising, abrasive metal. The design of the skates required a metal key. By turning the metal key, the skate adjusted by lengthening or widening to fit to the child’s sneakers. Once the adjusted metal clamps were tightened on the shoe, the leather strap was buckled around the ankle. Even with the key and the straps, never was the fit precise. Notoriously and painfully, the metal skates would fly off of your foot in mid-skate thus hurling the skater into walls, into trees, into parked cars. Or, the ill-fitting skate simply tripped-up the skater and you landed on the concrete sidewalk – sometimes face first. Skating was more dangerous than it was fun. We told dad we stopped skating because the skates did not work well. We told him that they kept falling off. We told him we were tired of getting hurt. With this conversation, my brother and I were hoping for new skates – the kind that were all-in-one with the attached shoe. These better skates had a rubber attachment on the toe to help the skater slow down. I wanted the white skates and my brother wanted the black skates. My dad saw other possibilities. I do not remember if it was hours, days or weeks after the initial conversation about the under-used skates that my dad redesigned our toys. The next time Brent and I saw our skates, Dad had turned them into scooters. Dad dismantled the skates, used found items from our basement, and his own ingenuity. Dad made three scooters.  One scooter had a metal milk crate as its console, was low to the ground, and meant to be ridden on one knee. The other two were ridden while standing up – one with a wooden handle bar to grip while attempting jumps or fish-tailing. The third scooter was more like a modified skateboard that required excellent balance. All the scooters had metal wheels – no key or leather trap was needed. My brother and I, plus all the kids in our neighborhood, played with those scooters for years and years. As I look back, my dad’s nurturing of the possible was quite remarkable. My Dad had a thing about wheels for children.  Dad believed children should be able to go! They should be able to travel, to have adventures, to explore – to see what there was to see. For him, wheels were a way for children to experience the world with imagination and possibility. Dad thought children should be in motion; he thought a child’s impulse to go! should be kindled. The rule in our house was that once your feet could reach the brake and gas pedals and you could see over the steering wheel – you could drive the car. My brother and I started driving when we were age 10 and 11, respectively. Dad’s ethic of go! did not stop with his parenting but was part of his vocational sensibilities. Dad was a school psychologist, special education teacher and reading specialist. He was, for more than thirty years, employed by the Philadelphia Public Schools. At his retirement party, I heard his co-workers tell story after story after story of the ways my father rescued children from incorrect placements in remedial education classes. Countless times, when other psychologists would deem that a child had no possibility to learn, to read, to excel – Dad saw possibility in the child. My father retested children who other colleagues had previously tested. Often, his report would be that the children had a higher IQ and fewer learning obstacles than previously diagnosed. My father was regularly called as an expert witness in Family Court to dispute the misdiagnosis and misplacement of children in private educational systems. My father was an advocate for children because he could see them. Dad was known by his colleagues to be able to see the possibility in even the most dulled child.   I am not saying that my dad was optimistic or hopeful or even cheerful. Most days he was none of these things. What dad modeled for our family, and gave to the children he worked for in the public schools, was much more substantive. My dad was imaginative. He would see possibility – in skates and in children. He could see children labeled as retarded or learning disabled as being productive, normal, healthy, contributing members of our community with value, worth and dignity. An unwritten responsibility of teaching is to see the possibility in students that they cannot see in themselves. Seeing the possibility in students is not a mystical gift reserved for only a few intuitive teachers. Seeing the possibility in students is about thinking up options, designing opportunities, engineering alternatives, redesigning what is offered, resisting rules that would stymy and oppression, and setting people in motion. It is about providing wheels and the permission to go! Seeing the possibility in students is about looking at the student, then looking beyond the student knowing the wheels you provide are taking them into their future and it is into that future that they must go.

My dissertation advisor and I were discussing my recently written chapter. She believed the chapter needed more work, needed a rewrite. I was passively resisting her advice believing my words were …. good. In a stern tone, my advisor said to me, “You must learn to kill your babies.” Her tone of voice and message caught me off-guard and shook me. The gruesome phrase threw me into the grasp of “student-fear” – that crushing fear that grips learners when they think their teachers are disapproving and likely to abandon them. Until this moment I had known her to be enthusiastic about my work, supportive of my writing. I knew she believed in me and the book I was composing. In that moment I did not have a response to her command/suggestion/demand. In my silence, my advisor explained that everything that I write cannot be deemed by me as being precious. I listened over the landline phone trying not to disclose my disagreement. She chided me that everything I write need not be prized nor saved. I folded my arms across my chest trying not to drop the phone. I distanced myself from her words as she spoke them. She cautioned me that clinging to every word as I write restricts me, encumbers me, and does not allow me to fully engage that which I am writing. In a muffled voice, I disingenuously thanked her for her feedback. This advice was given me in 1998. I am still thinking about the meaning and still trying to live into the intent and wisdom.  It has taken several years to say I agree with her, and even more years to practice this necessary skill of creativity and homicide. The creative process, whether writing or teaching, is only narrowed by the unwillingness to get it wrong. It has taken time for me to learn not to archive that which I delete from a manuscript. The best lesson was when I lost many, many pages of copy (irretrievable copy - computer error!) only to realize that the rewrite was stronger, clearer, and more articulate. When I was foisted into this situation, I began to learn the full lesson of “kill your babies.” My advisor was right. On November 26, 2021, Stephen Sondheim died at the age of 91. Sondheim is rightfully considered one of the titans of Broadway whose music and lyrics elevated the American musical landscape. Sondheim was an artistic genius. He was a prolific observer of people. He used his observations as a pristine storyteller to make the ordinary exciting. His body of work is a creative triumph. I was watching Sunday morning tv when the news of Sondheim’s death was reported. The newscaster, seemingly a genuine admirer of Sondheim’s craft and legacy, recounted a quote. Apparently, Sondheim was famous for telling students and budding musicians, “You must learn to kill your darlings.” Of course, in this moment, my dissertation advisor reappeared to me. Sondheim, like my dissertation advisor, believed that until you doubt yourself and the world, you cannot bring forth real change, genuine artistry, and ingenuity. Until you are able and willing to discard the feeble attempt can the creative process assist you to write, sing, or teach the masterpiece. Too often the first attempts to emerge in the creative moment is the expected, the known, the tried and true. These are the darling babies for which there can be no time or attention. These babies must be killed. Getting rid of the darlings creates space for the un-expected, the new adventure, the genuine self-expression and needed voice. Too often the first attempts are reliant upon the contrived response, the constructed environments, the established rules, and accepted conventions. Creative triumph is not born out of complacence and mediocrity. As teachers of religion and theology, our imaginations have a responsibility to bring forth new expressions meant to engage the questions of the world with new answers. Let us not stand in our own ways by curtailing, restricting, or confining the creative process. What course(s) in your portfolio needs to be discarded and re-envisioned? What lectures in your introductory course need to be done-away with and reconceived? In what ways will we assist our students in learning the skill of killing their darlings?

“This class goes soooo fast!” “Wait, we just started! … It’s over?” “Doc, time in this class flies by.” Recognizing when students are learning and when they are not can be a challenge. The above student comments are the kinds of feedback I yearned to hear. I would listen for how my students were engaging the materials and how the materials were engaging them. And, equally as important, I was listening for feedback concerning their experience of the course. Student feedback, even in the immediacy of a comment, can convey as much about student learning as reading their essays or grading their tests. When student comments were like those above, I knew I was achieving what I had planned. I knew I had suspended time in my classroom. Suspending time in the classroom has less to do with planning the content of a course and more to do with sculpting/choreographing/composing the learner’s experience in the course. We know that form and function are important to any kind of design. In using our artist’s eye, we know that form and function are operative dynamics in all teaching sessions. Function, clearly and normally in our wheelhouse, is attended to through learning outcomes, prescribed disciplinary literature and overall school curriculum. Form, attended to only sparingly and only by a few, needs our awareness and much work. Better learning happens when teachers intentionally plan the forms of learning activities rather than relying upon the stale and traditional. Better forms of teaching invite learners into experiences of being engrossed, immersed, or swept up – into new ideas, provocative assertions, or deep examinations of relevant problems, aspirations, and new knowledge. An indication that we have selected the better form for teaching is when students report an experience of time being suspended. We plan to suspend time in our classrooms so that students might become, for a little while, completely unself-conscious.  Orchestrating and choreographing learning activities to assist students with being less incumbered, less distracted, and less fearful during class requires teachers who are aware of and who revel in the flow. Entering into the flow is a common part of the creative process – a common part of daily living. Playing games like bid whist, backgammon, or video games where, at the end of the time together, it feels like time slowed as we enjoyed play, is a typical experience of the flow.  People report that while engrossed in common tasks like gardening, writing, reading, or spirited dialogue, they felt swept up or transported to a place of relief and joy. People watching sporting events, or those who participate as athletes report that during play worries melt, concerns are no longer burdensome, and they experience a sense of realness or even euphoria. The flow are moments of intensity that seem to defy time. Flow happens in classrooms when you and we love what we are working on and care about the students we are inviting into the mutual work of learning. An intensity is created. When we struggle to fall in love with our teaching work – when we can let go and work on what we are longing for, then classrooms have the possibility of giving way to flow, wading into flow, rocketing up to flow. Like the runner’s high or losing one’s self into the story while watching a movie, professors can create for students the feeling of being drawn up, swept up, in the best way. While there are many aims of teaching, few are as important as assisting students with being present, riveted, captivated while together in learning – experiencing the flow while learning in classrooms. A central goal of teachers is to learn to guide students into the ability to focus upon the task at-hand, the now, the here, the being with one another. The paradox is that we are trying, in the moments of being most present, to forget ourselves and our petty problems, and for that duration of a class session, work collaboratively on saving the world and our own lives. We are teaching so we and they can learn to let go. My suggestion for how to suspend time in classrooms might feel counter-intellectual. And, it might go against your pedagogical presumptions. My hope is that it will give you permission to tap more earnestly into your artistic self and creative processes. A key to assisting students in the classroom with the aim of better focus, resisting distractions, and being fully present, is, rather than demanding they think, invite students into activities of imagination, storytelling, and collaboration. Rather than reducing thinking to compliance with ideas and opinions, invite learners to work out complex ideas of injustice and formulate the activism, practices, strategies, and implications to do something about the injustices. There is no one way to suspend time for your students. And, the way one teacher achieves this magic will not be how another teacher achieves it. Each teacher will have their own way. Some colleagues make use of complicated student projects and learning activities. Other colleagues craft and hone their facilitation skills. I have vivid memories of being swept up simply by discussing taboo ideas, ideas for which I had not had previous opportunity to explore or consider. Complexity, provocativity, or any number of other techniques allow time to be suspended. “Professor! Where did the time go?”