Wesley Theological Seminary : 2004 Seminar
Narrative
Survivor: Wesley
Wesley Theological Seminary
Setting: Tuesday lunch in the Seminary dining hall during the first week of classes. Seven professors are huddled around a circular table, munching on their brown bag lunches and venting. The lunch room is crowded. Chapel has just ended.
#1: I tell you, if my class were Survivor Seminary, there are two students I would have voted off the island this morning. We were introducing ourselves. Two openly gay students from Metropolitan Community Churches had just finished when two other students angrily introduced themselves as "conservative Methodists" (whatever that is) while looking directly at the MCC students. It was intimidating.
#2: Something similar happened to me yesterday. I had two students tell me after class that they refused to tell their faith stories in our get-to-know-you exercise, because they didn't think that they would be respected given the fact that the class had already self-selected into ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ tables. They said they were wary about joining a study group; they couldn't see how it could work with so many different points of view.
#6: Top this one. In Covenant Discipleship group this morning, we were discussing whether or not whites were all racist given the systemic racism of our society. One white woman protested that I might be a racist, but she wasn't: "I'm a progressive Christian" she said. "I don't look at issues narrowly like evangelicals do," staring at several students as she spoke. One of them shot back, "I consider myself a progressive Christian who happens to be evangelical." Discussion just shut down after that.
#5: Listen, were you in chapel this morning? Our visiting theologian was trying to talk about diversity but I think he turned a lot of students off by playing the guitar, and that liturgical dance didn't help. No wonder attendance at chapel is down.
#4: No, I wasn't. Worship here is usually way too white and way too mainline Protestant. I'm used to something more spontaneous, with more freedom of the Spirit.
#2: I wasn't there either. I didn't have time. I was meeting with some commuter students who are only on campus on Tuesdays and that was the only time we had.
#5: Well, we should vote you both off the island. Faculty need to be in chapel. We need to model for our students a worship life. Tell them to meet with you another time.
#2: But they're already so stressed with all the juggling they do. Some of them are in class from 9 A.M. until 9 P.M.; it's a long day. And the traffic was horrendous this morning.
#3: I just don't let students in the door if they're more than 15 minutes late. I don't care what their excuse is. And the ones who are the weakest students are usually the ones who come in late. I had my students do a pre-class assignment for the first class yesterday and boy, do the papers stink. I can't believe some of these students were accepted. I just won't read papers that are not footnoted properly or can't even show noun/verb agreement. They get an F. I'm not going to waste my time.
#4: But some of our students are struggling with English as a second language or the legacy of poverty and poor secondary schools. They need our help, not our censure. I let my Hispanic students write in Spanish. They can express themselves better.
#3: I don't think we should allow that. They need to be able to navigate in the Anglo community of power.
#4: Then what does diversity look like? It's not easy and it's not business as usual. I had to remember that in Intro this morning, when I was going over the syllabus. A middle-aged white male with an attitude wanted to know why we had to bother with the NRSV and inclusive language since "we all know that when we use the words ‘men’ or ‘brothers,’ women are generically included." He wouldn't let it go and pushed me on why we had to read feminist/womanist articles and books since "this is the 21st century and women aren't oppressed anymore. It's just political correctness." He was angry.
#1: Don't think it's only older white males who have this problem. There are quite a few female students who wonder what the fuss is about or who think this is an issue of the past.
#4: Well, a young white woman raised her hand like Bambi in the headlights and timidly offered that she was 22 and had grown up hearing that women couldn't be pastors because they were subject to male authority and that she had never heard about inclusive language before and she was so encouraged by it. Could've heard a pin drop in the classroom. Wish I could have voted that male student off the island.
#6: But then you would've missed a great teaching moment. Our students are the best teachers sometimes. Wish we could sustain that kind of exchange in our large Intro classes.
#3: Glad to hear that these younger students we're getting now are finding their voice. Some of them have told me they feel dismissed by the older, second-career students who think they know everything. They even feel dismissed by their professors. The end result is that they shut down in class. The young ones are swimming upstream. One young man told me his friends think he's nuts to come to seminary and not make a pile of money before he's 30. Sometimes the generational tension is thick in class.
#5: But I have to say, I don't think I want a 25-year-old as my pastor; they haven't really lived yet. And they're so naive. That Superman church camp blessing at lunch yesterday was too much. Since when do we jump around to bless food?
#6: I think it's great that we're finally getting some energy around here.
#1: Think of it as good exercise; we don't take care of ourselves around here. We're overworked, well, at least some of us are. You know, I've had older students come to me who are terrified about not being successful here after being out of school for so many years. They tell me that because they're older everyone expects them to have it all together, all figured out. They feel enormous pressure.
#7: Let me tell you about pressure. I want to vote my whole class off the island. My very first teaching job. I'm going over the syllabus and The Gang of 5 in class insisted that pastoral care doesn't give a midterm or final exam because it's not a content course and that my book list was over the usual limit. They disrupted the whole class for a good half hour. I had to check with the Dean to see if I was on solid ground. They really had me going on that one.
#1,4,6: We're hearing great things about you. Stand your ground and don't let them bully you. You'll be amazed by how the class bonds with you by the end of the semester. Sorry we didn't give you a heads up.
#3: At least you had students who speak up. I don't know how to make my Asian students feel comfortable enough to speak up in class. I know that part of it is cultural. I also know that my students resent the time it takes away from class to process what the Asian students are saying.
A student walks up to one of the professors and says: "Excuse me Diane, but would you sign my immersion form so that I can hand it in to the Dean?"
After she leaves,
#5 : You let your students call you by your first name?! I don't think that conveys the proper authority in the classroom.
#2: But teaching is about being vulnerable and open, about being a co-learner with your students in class. The Spirit works in ways that teach all of us; no matter how many times I've presented the same material, the Spirit surprises me.
#5: No, no. We need to have control of the classroom. We need order.
#1: We need to pray. Did you see the Student Government letter asking us to pray before every class? They're absolutely right. I wonder how many of us really care about prayer?
#6: But this is a Christian seminary. It's bad enough that we have so many Unitarian Universalists who take up class time arguing what the rest of the class already accepts as given - Jesus' divinity, the Bible as canon. They're dangerous for our entering Christian students who haven't really been formed in a local congregation; they're confused enough as it is. I'd like to vote some of the UUs off the island.
#4: Wait a minute. The UUs are usually among my best students. They ask tough questions few have the guts to ask.
#1: Sometimes this institution acts like we're all United Methodists. You realize we don't have a placement service, as if everyone were going to be appointed by a bishop.
#5: Diversity is a real challenge around here, but I wouldn't want to teach anywhere else.
Everyone else: Me neither.
#3: We get to glimpse in the midst of all this a tiny piece of what God's reign might look like.
#1: Time for class. You know what? We need to vote ourselves off this island. I'm thinking a faculty retreat at a gorgeous resort in Maine.
Survivor: Wesley
Wesley Theological Seminary
Setting: Tuesday lunch in the Seminary dining hall during the first week of classes. Seven professors are huddled around a circular table, munching on their brown bag lunches and venting. The lunch room is crowded. Chapel has just ended.
#1: I tell you, if my class were Survivor Seminary, there are two students I would have voted off the island this morning. We were introducing ourselves. Two openly gay students from Metropolitan Community Churches had just finished when two other students angrily introduced themselves as "conservative Methodists" (whatever that is) while looking directly at the MCC students. It was intimidating.
#2: Something similar happened to me yesterday. I had two students tell me after class that they refused to tell their faith stories in our get-to-know-you exercise, because they didn't think that they would be respected given the fact that the class had already self-selected into ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ tables. They said they were wary about joining a study group; they couldn't see how it could work with so many different points of view.
#6: Top this one. In Covenant Discipleship group this morning, we were discussing whether or not whites were all racist given the systemic racism of our society. One white woman protested that I might be a racist, but she wasn't: "I'm a progressive Christian" she said. "I don't look at issues narrowly like evangelicals do," staring at several students as she spoke. One of them shot back, "I consider myself a progressive Christian who happens to be evangelical." Discussion just shut down after that.
#5: Listen, were you in chapel this morning? Our visiting theologian was trying to talk about diversity but I think he turned a lot of students off by playing the guitar, and that liturgical dance didn't help. No wonder attendance at chapel is down.
#4: No, I wasn't. Worship here is usually way too white and way too mainline Protestant. I'm used to something more spontaneous, with more freedom of the Spirit.
#2: I wasn't there either. I didn't have time. I was meeting with some commuter students who are only on campus on Tuesdays and that was the only time we had.
#5: Well, we should vote you both off the island. Faculty need to be in chapel. We need to model for our students a worship life. Tell them to meet with you another time.
#2: But they're already so stressed with all the juggling they do. Some of them are in class from 9 A.M. until 9 P.M.; it's a long day. And the traffic was horrendous this morning.
#3: I just don't let students in the door if they're more than 15 minutes late. I don't care what their excuse is. And the ones who are the weakest students are usually the ones who come in late. I had my students do a pre-class assignment for the first class yesterday and boy, do the papers stink. I can't believe some of these students were accepted. I just won't read papers that are not footnoted properly or can't even show noun/verb agreement. They get an F. I'm not going to waste my time.
#4: But some of our students are struggling with English as a second language or the legacy of poverty and poor secondary schools. They need our help, not our censure. I let my Hispanic students write in Spanish. They can express themselves better.
#3: I don't think we should allow that. They need to be able to navigate in the Anglo community of power.
#4: Then what does diversity look like? It's not easy and it's not business as usual. I had to remember that in Intro this morning, when I was going over the syllabus. A middle-aged white male with an attitude wanted to know why we had to bother with the NRSV and inclusive language since "we all know that when we use the words ‘men’ or ‘brothers,’ women are generically included." He wouldn't let it go and pushed me on why we had to read feminist/womanist articles and books since "this is the 21st century and women aren't oppressed anymore. It's just political correctness." He was angry.
#1: Don't think it's only older white males who have this problem. There are quite a few female students who wonder what the fuss is about or who think this is an issue of the past.
#4: Well, a young white woman raised her hand like Bambi in the headlights and timidly offered that she was 22 and had grown up hearing that women couldn't be pastors because they were subject to male authority and that she had never heard about inclusive language before and she was so encouraged by it. Could've heard a pin drop in the classroom. Wish I could have voted that male student off the island.
#6: But then you would've missed a great teaching moment. Our students are the best teachers sometimes. Wish we could sustain that kind of exchange in our large Intro classes.
#3: Glad to hear that these younger students we're getting now are finding their voice. Some of them have told me they feel dismissed by the older, second-career students who think they know everything. They even feel dismissed by their professors. The end result is that they shut down in class. The young ones are swimming upstream. One young man told me his friends think he's nuts to come to seminary and not make a pile of money before he's 30. Sometimes the generational tension is thick in class.
#5: But I have to say, I don't think I want a 25-year-old as my pastor; they haven't really lived yet. And they're so naive. That Superman church camp blessing at lunch yesterday was too much. Since when do we jump around to bless food?
#6: I think it's great that we're finally getting some energy around here.
#1: Think of it as good exercise; we don't take care of ourselves around here. We're overworked, well, at least some of us are. You know, I've had older students come to me who are terrified about not being successful here after being out of school for so many years. They tell me that because they're older everyone expects them to have it all together, all figured out. They feel enormous pressure.
#7: Let me tell you about pressure. I want to vote my whole class off the island. My very first teaching job. I'm going over the syllabus and The Gang of 5 in class insisted that pastoral care doesn't give a midterm or final exam because it's not a content course and that my book list was over the usual limit. They disrupted the whole class for a good half hour. I had to check with the Dean to see if I was on solid ground. They really had me going on that one.
#1,4,6: We're hearing great things about you. Stand your ground and don't let them bully you. You'll be amazed by how the class bonds with you by the end of the semester. Sorry we didn't give you a heads up.
#3: At least you had students who speak up. I don't know how to make my Asian students feel comfortable enough to speak up in class. I know that part of it is cultural. I also know that my students resent the time it takes away from class to process what the Asian students are saying.
A student walks up to one of the professors and says: "Excuse me Diane, but would you sign my immersion form so that I can hand it in to the Dean?"
After she leaves,
#5 : You let your students call you by your first name?! I don't think that conveys the proper authority in the classroom.
#2: But teaching is about being vulnerable and open, about being a co-learner with your students in class. The Spirit works in ways that teach all of us; no matter how many times I've presented the same material, the Spirit surprises me.
#5: No, no. We need to have control of the classroom. We need order.
#1: We need to pray. Did you see the Student Government letter asking us to pray before every class? They're absolutely right. I wonder how many of us really care about prayer?
#6: But this is a Christian seminary. It's bad enough that we have so many Unitarian Universalists who take up class time arguing what the rest of the class already accepts as given - Jesus' divinity, the Bible as canon. They're dangerous for our entering Christian students who haven't really been formed in a local congregation; they're confused enough as it is. I'd like to vote some of the UUs off the island.
#4: Wait a minute. The UUs are usually among my best students. They ask tough questions few have the guts to ask.
#1: Sometimes this institution acts like we're all United Methodists. You realize we don't have a placement service, as if everyone were going to be appointed by a bishop.
#5: Diversity is a real challenge around here, but I wouldn't want to teach anywhere else.
Everyone else: Me neither.
#3: We get to glimpse in the midst of all this a tiny piece of what God's reign might look like.
#1: Time for class. You know what? We need to vote ourselves off this island. I'm thinking a faculty retreat at a gorgeous resort in Maine.