The Wabash Center's Dialogue On Teaching

Schools have a lack of preparedness for students and colleagues who are recent immigrants. What theologies inform the practices, policies and procedures of educational institutions concerning support for recent immigrants? What kinds of advocacies are needed in learning communities? When is the stranger not to be considered strange and why is that so important?

How are you? The response to this question can be weighty during the COVID 19 pandemic. What we teach can be disturbing. What adjustments in our syllabi and teaching practices might aid in care? What could go wrong while attending to the needs of students? Why are classrooms never to be spaces of therapy? 

What is at risk for those teachers who teach about the connection between religion, the siege on the Capital Building and racial progress? What kinds of evaluations are levied against the professor whose work is noticed for its impact upon the public? What happens when administrators do not know how to respond to assaults on faculty whose work is contested by those beyond the school? What is the toll of societally transformative teaching upon the faculty person? 

When the student body becomes majority people of color - what is the response?  Who are the leaders capable of grappling with intersectionality?  What is public accountability?, who wins?, and what is lost? 

All of us are experiencing the pandemics differently; the shifting and changing varies. Yet, gaging the classroom and the learning by our students is integral. The losses, responses, and disruptions of COVID 19 has dulled skills and left many teachers feeling as if we are simply muddling through. What does it mean to learn to recalibrate? How do we respond when there is no one right way? Dr. Nancy Lynne Westfield hosts Dr. Sarah Azaransky (Union Theological Seminary). 

Teaching as a focus of institutional change might be a lynchpin in creating sustainable schools. What if we free faculty to teach, then redesign institutional shifts around their teaching? What would it mean to collaborate beyond the seminary walls and into the neighborhoods? What would it take to suspend judgement of institutional mistakes long enough to experiment for change? Dr. Nancy Lynne Westfield hosts Dr. Ben Sanders, III (Eden Theological Seminary).

Informed definitions of trauma are needed. Classrooms are never spaces for therapy. Ways of developing trauma awareness, self-care strategies and referrals. Creating spaces of respect, regard and care are needed for faculty, administration, and students. Dr. Nancy Lynne Westfield hosts Dr. Lisa Cataldo (Fordham University).

Learning about teaching during the Covid lockdown. Combating transactional teaching. Approaching scholarship for and with the public.  Creativity required for the larger questions and teaching.  Dr. Nancy  Lynne Westfield hosts Dr. Randall Balmer (Dartmouth College).

What meanings do youth place upon these pandemics? What are the fears of young scholars challenged to work from home? What strategies have scholar-parents devised to teach from home? How has this moment of pandemics heightened the fear of early career faculty concerning issues of presumed incompetence? Dr. Nancy Lynne Westfield hosts Dr. Sarah Farmer (Indiana Wesleyan University). 

Revamp the syllabus so assessment is fair, generative, and manageable. Thriving as an early career faculty might mean new and different kinds of assignments and assessment. Get rid of assignments that overwhelm and cause suffering. Dr. Nancy Lynne Westfield hosts Dr. Roger Nam (Candler School of Theology - Emory University).