My approach to teaching is largely pragmatic. When I began, I was most familiar with the two styles my professors had modeled either in lecture courses, supplemented by small, graduate-student-led discussion sections, or in seminar courses, which expected that all students participate equally. I quickly sensed the need to adapt these models to my situation. My classes were too large to treat like seminars. Not all students participated equally, and I began to worry that some felt excluded because of their gender, religion, sexuality, socio-economic status, ethnicity, or race. But lecturing also seemed inadequate. I sensed their need to be engaged and challenged individually. Most had come through a system of standardized testing that encouraged them to memorize and regurgitate information, which left gaps in their learning skills. I wanted to listen to how the class was understanding the material, but given my teaching load, it was not feasible to assign a graded writing assignment for each class or to require them to meet with me individually throughout the term. So I looked for approaches to teaching that would better serve the atmosphere I wanted to create: to make the classroom more interactive, to broaden the scope of the discussion, to deepen the dialogue, and to keep me abreast of students’ progress. I find the chance to get to know my students and watch them grow as thinkers and as people singularly rewarding.  So I looked for strategies that would better facilitate those kinds of interactions.

I began to see that didactic instruction through the lecture, though pedagogically indispensable, was more effective when framed by activities that encouraged students to engage actively with new ideas, experiment with the material, discuss it with each other, and receive corrective feedback along the way. Viewing the lecture as one among many teaching tools at my disposal helped me approach each class session less like a one-way transfer of information and more like a workshop in which I could guide students while they practiced the analytical, synthetic, and interpretive skills necessary to achieving the desired learning outcomes. This model of teaching is student-centered because it invites the students to collaborate actively in their own education. Students often report that the mixed activities help the period to feel shorter and more interesting. The hybrid approach to lecture and class activities widens the scope of participation; a greater diversity of students feels comfortable sharing their perspectives. It also deepens the quality of student engagement; the increase in student performance is notable, and research confirms that student-centered teaching methods especially benefit students from underprivileged backgrounds. Students appreciate the ways that the study skills they learn in class transfer to other contexts. The dialogical structure also keeps my ear to the ground and helps me to assess and respond to student needs in timely and effective ways.

In text-based classes, I frequently rely on a “think-pair-share” activity to elicit active engagement. Each student develops and articulates ideas in a small-scale context as they reflect individually on a primary text or idea. The class re-convenes only after each student has participated in small group discussion on the same topic. The open-ended activity gives students the opportunities to make guesses, to explore their experience of the material, and to make connections in conversation with their peers. The individual component ensures that each student will benefit from the initial, focused effort to recall, comprehend, analyze, and synthesize the material. The conversational structure widens the scope of participation. Students report that the validation they receive in small group discussion empowers them to speak to the whole class. The activity also prepares students to comprehend and appropriate the lecture, which consolidates the prior conversation, provides a conceptual structure, adds depth, and fills in details. Because the (partly extemporaneous) lecture clarifies potential misunderstandings of the material, it also serves as a form of immediate, gentle, corrective feedback, which fosters perseverance, rewards effort, and encourages students to learn from their mistakes.

Because research shows that spaced recall activities aid long-term retention and deeper learning, I punctuate the course with low-stakes quizzing in order to provide students with frequent opportunities to recall and restate what they have learned. This deepens student engagement and dramatically improves performance by disrupting the tendency to cram for high-stakes exams. Students often note that the midterm was easier than they expected. I reply that the exam wasn’t easier; the frequent quizzing had “tricked” them into learning the material! The regular feedback provides students with an external reference that reflects their progress to them, corrects false perceptions of fluency, and identifies areas of weakness or misunderstanding. As a result, students who find themselves frustrated by their poor quiz performance despite “knowing” the content tend to seek help earlier. My grading system rewards improvement and encourages them to learn from their mistakes. The quizzing also helps me locate common misunderstandings, to identify struggling students, and to assess student growth throughout the semester.

The student-centered approach has also empowered me to more actively attend to students’ affect and to identify emotional obstacles to participation. Students not only appreciate it when I communicate care for them, but it also affects how they approach the class. I regularly ask my students to reflect in writing on their experiences of learning so that I can better understand how they hear things that I have long taken for granted. I often discover anxieties that prevent them from engaging more fully. Usually relatively simple fixes help students to come to class better prepared to take advantage of the resources at their disposal.

Because I treat class like a workshop that punctuates lecturing with activity, I structure my syllabus and assignments based on the specific skills, concepts, and themes that I want students to internalize. My Introduction to Christianity course, for example, exposes undergraduates to early Christian beliefs and texts as they flow from the rituals and moral practices of scripturally formed, first-century Jews. I make a list of concepts and skills available at the beginning of the semester. The list begins with the scriptural stories, characters, and themes necessary for students to make sense of first century Judaism. The coursework helps to familiarize them with the Bible, and in class we focus on developing the reading skills necessary to interpret it. The earlier, conceptually simpler material lays the groundwork for the greater complexity of Christian doctrine, which I present as the meaning that first century Jews attributed to the rituals and practices surrounding their worship of Jesus. I end the course by examining how contemporary Christian sacramental practices make relatively abstract doctrines like the trinity, hypostatic union, or soteriology intelligible.

In general education courses, the writing assignments progress according to Bloom’s taxonomy. The first, early paper prompts the class to read, comprehend, apply, and synthesize several short texts about the study of religion in the liberal arts. In the second paper, they apply their newfound knowledge to some aspect of popular culture that interests them. The third, most heavily weighted paper compares and contrasts two perspectives on a topic, giving students a focused opportunity to comprehend, analyze, and synthesize two overlapping perspectives.

Classroom Diversity

These practices are motivated by the desire foster a hospitable, collaborative, empowering, affirming, and diverse classroom in which every student feels safe and free to learn and to test out new perspectives and ideas. I am guided by the conviction that difference is not an obstacle to be overcome, but a gift to be received. I believe that students feel silenced, isolated, and marginalized because when systems of shame convince them of their unworthiness. My goal as a teacher is to honor the space that each student’s dignity demands. I approach this goal in multiple ways. First, I seek to empower all students by modelling a respectful, civil, rigorous, honest, and ethical mode of engagement. If I structure my class to meet the learning objectives, then the way I teach is meant to foster diversity and openness. Second, because shame harms even those who are not marginalized by it, I focus on overcoming shame-based obstacles to participation. I frequently ask myself, “How will the queer student, the minority student, the immigrant, the international student, the survivor of sexual assault or abuse, the working-class student hear this?” Third, because I am aware that a subject as sensitive as religion can be especially volatile and difficult to study, I try to leave plenty of space for individual conversation. This involves building opportunities for pushback into class discussion, inviting students to critique me in respectful ways, validating emotions in ways that are professionally and developmentally appropriate, and making myself available outside of class.

I have learned a lot about my commitments to classroom diversity on the ground—from my interactions with students, especially the ones who chose to take multiple classes I offered. Here I will describe formative experiences in relation to three groups of students who have been drawn to take more than one class with me: women of color, LGBT students, and evangelical students. Early on, two women of color had confessed that the nationally heightened racial tensions had exacerbated their feelings of marginalization on campus. So I was especially concerned about how they might feel when we discussed black theology in our mostly white contemporary theology class. I wanted them to feel free in class, and so I met with them privately to open a conversation with them, and I encouraged them to communicate any concerns that they developed with me. As I expected, they engaged actively and constructively in the class discussions—increasingly as time went on. After the semester ended, I received a copy of the letter they had written to the President of the university on my behalf. It stated that I had “fostered a type of scholarly environment…focused on… broadening [their minds] to ponder new concepts and ideas that can be applicable to all aspects of life. His discussions and intellectual insights allowed us to open our minds and forced us to further our own discussion outside of the classroom with our peers. We are forever grateful for his compassion and willingness to work with us to succeed not only in his classroom but everything we do.” The next semester, some of the same women took another class with me. I was touched that they regularly requested to bring friends to class when we discussed reparations, racism, and economic oppression. I discovered the classroom’s power to empower students to take their intellectual, social, and moral concerns seriously. Similarly, LGBT students in my Christianity classes, many of whom had painful relationships with church, noticed that I avoid heteronormative examples and assumptions when I teach. I make a point of depicting a wide variety of relationships in the examples I use. They noticed this, and so felt safe approaching me to discuss their experiences with church. Our conversations opened up theological questions they had, and they chose to do extra work for their final paper so that they could write a paper exploring the theological issues about sexuality that had alienated them from their families and churches. They reported back to me about theological conversations they had with their parents after that semester. And I even overheard one of them the next semester recommending one of the readings I had given them. It was special to me that in the same contexts, conservative evangelical students enthusiastically took multiple classes with me and sought me outside of class to discuss their questions and concerns. The various groups of students found the classroom accommodating to them all. At one point, I taught a seminar in which all these groups—and some non-religious students—felt safe and comfortable engaging one another as we discussed difficult topics.