Archives for 2025

Our attempts to teach towards openness, towards possibility, towards new glimpses of an uncharted future mean that teaching can be demanding, even confounding. One way I learned to embrace this approach was by incorporating rituals in my course designs. The use of rituals in classrooms allows students an experience that ...

Imagine quickly stepping out for a coffee break between classes. It sounds simple enough: latte or mocha? But for international students, especially those with F-1 visas, that seemingly easy choice turns into a mental checklist: Am I carrying my passport? My I-20 form? Do I have a valid driver’s ...

As I head out to teach my off-campus Jan term class, Backpacking with the Saints, I look at my syllabus again and think about how I assess learning in an immersive experience. That is, how can I give a grade for things like hiking and praying and journaling? Am I ...

Continuing on themes from the last blog in this series, another antiracism pro-tip for classroom teaching comes both from a story an early-career mentor of mine told me, and then directly from the mouths of my own students: for the love of God, always assign groups in class! If you ...

I spent my first week as an assistant professor contending with what I have deemed the “Dropocalypse.” My Introduction to Judaism class was full before the ink on my contract was even dry, and I was eager to teach students at a new institution. I posted the course website several ...