All summer long 天美视频 core faculty have engaged a process of , ongoing dialogue, and self-examination about race and through weekly blogging. We鈥檝e taken turns writing posts, and engaging a peer review process with each other鈥檚 work so as to stimulate deeper and even more thoughtful reflection about white-body supremacy and what it may look like for our school to become a truly anti-racist¹ learning community.

My colleague sometimes challenges me, 鈥淵ou don鈥檛 know! And you can鈥檛 help!鈥�² I love him for this. I need lots of support decentering the lie that, 鈥淚 know and can help鈥� . . . or even worse that I 鈥渒now better鈥� and 鈥渢hey need me.鈥� Whiteness Christianity groomed me to anticipate my superiority in nearly every situation. When I鈥檓 honest, it kinda felt good to choose to believe God predestined me as a uniquely vital Divine instrument for the salvation of others. Turns out this is a white lie. I鈥檝e been unlearning this theological invention for decades now. I may have been discipled into whiteness Christianity, but I am in the process of being saved from myopic, whiteness evangelical religion.

Whiteness divides. Segregation is the goal of whiteness, and completely antithetical to the Gospel. From Genesis to Revelation, we see God reconciling all facets of the relational ecosystem that is creation to each other and to the Divine in Christ. Jesus summed up all scripture saying, 鈥淟ove God and love your neighbor as yourself.鈥�³ Love and segregation are incompatible; as are love and black-body racism. The scandal of Jesus鈥� words is that love is always located in the real. Love is particular. It is needful of the other; it鈥檚 relational and proximate; never ideological, or theological, or even religious.

My emerging sense is that we cannot separate love of self from love of neighbor or from love of God. These three loves are interpenetrating, interanimating, inseparable鈥� perichoretic, maybe? If you were to really love your neighbor, you would be loving God and yourself. If you were to really love God, you would be loving yourself and your neighbor. Moreover, if you were truly able to love yourself, you would already be loving God and loving your neighbor, so鈥� 鈥渨ho is your neighbor?鈥�⁴

Dr. Willie James Jennings writes that 鈥淪egregated spaces must be turned toward living places where people construct together an every day that turns life in health-giving directions. Overcoming whiteness begins by reconfiguring life geographically so that all the flows work differently鈥︹��⁵ Here are my questions for us as a school: Where are we? Who is already here? And how might we discover God鈥檚 Shalom in relation with our neighbors? How might our 鈥渇lows鈥� work differently?

So much more needs to be said; even more needs to be done and undone. Like the man who came to Jesus you’ll read in my paraphrase of Matthew, I am infected by whiteness鈥� as are many of the systems 鈥渘ecessary鈥� for 天美视频 to operate. Systemic and personal racism have no place in God鈥檚 kingdom. The Gospel of Jesus Christ necessitates our school鈥檚 work and my personal work to be utterly anti-racist. A practical way to begin is tangibly and holistically loving God by loving your neighbor as yourself while together discovering how to reconfigure life geographically. As Jesus suggests, humanly speaking, it may seem impossible. “But with God鈥︹��

Peace,
Dwight

I鈥檝e reimagined this passage, Matthew 19:16-26, within this context, and written it below:

鈥淎 highly privileged, White seminary professor came to Jesus with this question: 鈥淭eacher, what good thing must I do to know eternal life?鈥�

鈥淲hy ask me about what is good?鈥� Jesus replied. 鈥淭here is only One who is good. But to answer your question鈥攊f you want to receive eternal life, keep the commandments.鈥�

鈥淲hich ones?鈥� the White professor asked.

And Jesus replied: 鈥溾�榊ou must not murder. You must not commit adultery. You must not steal. You must not testify falsely. Honor your father and mother. Love your neighbor as yourself.鈥欌��

鈥淚鈥檝e done all that,鈥� the White man replied. 鈥淲hat鈥檚 left?鈥�

Jesus told him, 鈥淚f you want to give it all you鈥檝e got, go interrogate your privilege, learn antiracist ways, all the while seeking reparations and equity, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.鈥�

But when the White man heard this, he went away sad, for he was very privileged.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, 鈥淚 tell you the truth, it is very hard for a White person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. I鈥檒l say it again鈥攊t is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a White person to enter the Kingdom of God!鈥�

The disciples were astounded. 鈥淭hen who in the world can be saved?鈥� they asked. Jesus looked at them intently and said, 鈥淗umanly speaking, it is impossible. But with God everything is possible.鈥�

Resources

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M-i-crooked letter crooked letter-i-crooked letter crooked letter-i-humpback humpback i. We all know it spells Mississippi. Mississippi is a state in the Deep South, flanked by other southern states, but different than Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, Georgia, Louisiana. I think uglier in their hate, savagery, viciousness, murderousness. I know this Mississippi, and I am terrified. The implications of coming from Mississippi, the racial scars. Mississippi holds the dark, rich soil, bloodied soil I come from, the Natives I come from, the Blacks I come from.

I will take you back to a moment in time, maybe 1965, in Mississippi. Close enough. Maybe it was a Saturday, could have been a Sunday. I was walking with my Daddy. I call him that because as a little girl, that was how I addressed him. I was a little girl, five years old. We were by the courthouse. By that time I knew of “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

鈥淒addy, why don’t they take that monument down?鈥�
My Daddy replied, “Maybe they will someday, little one.”
鈥淒addy, that is wrong.鈥�

I grew up in the Deep South. I have seen the KKK in the back of a pickup truck, walked the Edmund Pettus Bridge, lived desegregation. Racism. The word, flat, does not capture for me my feelings of witnessing it, the inequities, everywhere injustices. Everywhere, specifically against, towards, located specifically in Blacks…violence, hate, shaming, motivated dehumanizing. In essence, saying “You are nothing.” And in my experience, projections from the inside of southern Whites鈥� minds into Blacks. They were, and are victimized by Whites.

I continue to commit to being honest about my hate, shame, and racism. To keep seeing the “monuments,” the literal ones, and the ones in my mind, and to take them down. And not as I said as a five year-old, nor as my father said, “maybe they will.” There is no “they.” There is no 鈥渕aybe.鈥�

There are so many angles here that need to be addressed. It is for me, the very important question of feeling the feelings of another person. As Franco Scabbiolo would say:

鈥淔eeling the feelings of the other person. The Bible is working through this issue: the question of feeling something different from you, and a lot of people don鈥檛 want to feel or are rejecting feelings.鈥�

There is an intolerance of difference: some people cannot tolerate difference. From a psychoanalytic point of view, racism is a profound inability of being able to feel different sorts of feelings. I know from my experience, us Mississippi whites, who immediately, consciously and unconsciously, generate a feeling of rage, uneasiness, defensiveness, fear of difference, fear of the other; what we call the 鈥渙ther.鈥� Racism is a profound issue of fear. From my experience, us Mississippi Whites鈥� tremendous impulse to survive and attack is a very primitive fear and explodes violently into Blacks. And sometimes it is organized hate through the build-up of our paranoia. In the Deep South, the culture, our culture, my culture, is organized around racism and there is a psychic reality ingrained in many of us. And it is our psychic reality, built so early in our development, that informs our picture of the world鈥攊ncluding our picture of self鈥攁nd other people.

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I waited.

As I waited, flashing through my mind was the question, 鈥淪hould I use my state-commissioned authority to enter without their permission or should I wait until the door opened and I was invited in?鈥� And if the door opens, I pondered, should I exercise my authority to remove the children with no questions asked and get the hell out, or should I stay, ask questions, and create conversations and together collaborate a plan for the care of these children?鈥�

The door opened and our story began. We would spend the next two years together navigating our differences. As I continued to return, one day I noticed I did not hear the voices of the children yelling 鈥渕oonias, moonias.鈥� Rather, it was the children themselves who opened the door and let me in. Slowly we had moved from Moonias-Indian (First Nations) to the use of our given names.

As we came to know each other by name, we also grew to care for the other as we worked together to create a safer place. It did not go well nor did it end well. But in the process, this family, along with many of the Maskwacis tribe, became my first teachers about race, power, privilege, hatred and the fallacy of 鈥渨hiteness鈥� as a norm. Whiteness, as I would later come to understand as a fabrication benefiting the White race and devoid of any meaning other than maintaining power and privilege, had to be yielded and re-imagined.

Yielding, at the time, came in the act of return. One of the lessons I learned was the importance of simply 鈥渟howing up.鈥� One morning, I received a message from the police that the children of this family were sitting in a cell at the police station waiting for me to take them home. The children had been caught breaking into several stores the night before and the police could not get in touch with their mother. The children had directed the police to call me. As we drove back towards the reservation one of the children spoke up and said, 鈥淩oy, if you would come see us more often, we would be better.鈥� The words struck deep. And they have never left me. That small child, speaking from deep within their heart, was very wise. For we are all made better when someone shows up.

But how we show up, I would learn, is another question. Though we did not have the language of at the time, we both knew, at a conscious and unconscious level, the danger handed down by my people – the assault upon their culture. They had every reason to be wary of me.

And I was wary of myself. I barely 鈥渒new鈥� myself and hidden in me, given my culture and privilege, was a deep bias of our indigenous people. So how would I show up? Did I feel comfortable enough in my own White self to not abuse the power and privilege of my whiteness?

Perhaps because of my youth, my idealism, if I did nothing else, I returned. But my confidence in continuing to return was because the Maskwacis slowly welcomed my return. Their acceptance of me as the White man that I am challenged me to accept them as the persons that they are. I believe it was they who initiated in me the idea that, 鈥渢o be useful in this world, the best I can do is to be me and not try to be you or attempt to make you me.鈥� This was a challenge to my previous understanding where difference was expected to accommodate my whiteness. What I have learned is that it is in the grit of working through difference, misunderstandings, misrecognitions, ruptures and repairs 鈥� where transformation takes place.

I have been a decades long student of the philosopher Martin Buber whose work entitled is essentially a classic. A quick read of Buber often leaves the reader thinking the I/Thou encounter is simply a moment of meeting when two persons come to understand the other and tension is released. But the I/Thou moment is not encountered through sameness, agreement or compromise. Rather, it is predicated on the recognition of difference. Genuine Encounter is the act of living in the ache and the beauty of contrast. It is the move from 鈥渦sing鈥� the other as an object for personal gain and power. It is the act of 鈥渢urning鈥� towards the other as a (w)holy other. It is the hope that two separates can find unity in contrast.

This is not achievable however, if one is unable to confirm oneself. If one is unable to live and be in their own skin 鈥� (in my case, my white skin) – the skin of the stranger will always be someone to fear, to subjugate, to own and objectify. But if I am able to consider my fear of the other as an outward manifestation of unworked issues of my own, at the least this should give me pause towards an understanding of the other as an unfair recipient of my biases. At the most, it should cause me to turn towards the other with humility with wonder and with awe.

Chief Dan George was a highly respected in the Tsleil-Waututh Nation 鈥� a neighboring nation of the Maskwacis. His book , was a companion to me during my time with Maskwacis. He said this:

One thing to remember is to talk to the animals. If you do, they will talk back to you.
But if you don鈥檛 talk to the animals, they won鈥檛 talk back to you, then you won鈥檛
understand, and when you don鈥檛 understand you will fear, and when you fear you will
destroy the animals, and if you destroy the animals, you will destroy yourself.

That day as I stood on the steps, I was asking the question, 鈥渋f that door opens what will
we do with (or to) the other?鈥� What I learned that day is to show-up and to wait to be let in. What I have learned since is the importance of reflecting upon 鈥渨hat is it that I fear? The strange other? Or the stranger that is within?

I am grateful that day that the door opened. For it birthed in me, that my/our fear of the other will destroy us. And that it is through opening the door to our differences, that we are shaped, reshaped and transformed.

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One of my concerns (here at home in progressive Seattle and at 天美视频 of Theology & Psychology) is that don鈥檛 just manifest themselves in swastikas, hooded robes, bad cops, cover-ups and white nationalist ideology. Overt supremacy causes us, those of us who consider ourselves progressive, to psychologically suppress and distance ourselves from our own bias and supremacist characteristics. Our impulse is to say, 鈥淲e are not like that!鈥� However, this psychological dissociation never allows us to get to the covert seeds of racism planted deep within all of us who are part of the White majority.

A while back I was at a party in my neighborhood. I struck up a conversation with a young Black woman. As we introduced ourselves to each other, she told me she had come to Seattle to work in the medical field. I鈥檓 ashamed to admit it, but my first thought was that she must be a medical technician or a traveling nurse. As we talked more, she told me she was an OB/GYN. While Linda and I walked home, I shared my deep embarrassment over my initial assumption. I am limited by the stories that I have access to, my bias, and my blind spots.

In the middle school my sons attended, 97% of the student population (students of color) were referred to as 鈥渕inority.鈥� The 3% of the student population who were White were still referred to as 鈥渕ajority.鈥� The mental model where the most are called minority and the few are labeled as the majority is crazy-making in the message it sends. It鈥檚 a wonder that any of these children passed the state math exam. Minority less than鈥� majority greater than鈥hink of the impact!

As a White man, I hold within me the and individual achievement. These myths infer that I 鈥渒now鈥� and I can help. However, these mental models interfere with the posture I must take to deconstruct my own racist ideas. The way forward begins with weakness and vulnerability. These are counter-intuitive to power and privilege.

What if I admit I don鈥檛 know and I can鈥檛 help? Can I sit in the liminal space that 鈥淚 don鈥檛 know鈥� creates? Can I continue to go through the painful and disorientating process of unlearning the power that affords me the confidence to always have an answer? It starts with 鈥淚 don鈥檛 know.鈥� It鈥檚 hard for White men to access the social narratives and psychological categories necessary to live into weakness and vulnerability when we have been called the majority. It鈥檚 hard to live into the ambiguity of who I am and move into places where I don鈥檛 know where I fit in when so much of me has been afforded the privilege of self-determination.

To admit that I don鈥檛 know means that I must be in proximity to people who see the world differently than me. I must live in the middle of other narratives that decenter my own. Doug Hall, one of my professors in my doctoral program, claimed that one of the challenges for White men doing justice work is the painful process of 鈥渦nlearning鈥� power and all you think you know.

My life must be lived in and with difference, which exacerbates the feelings of vulnerability and discomfort that whiteness has been socialized to avoid. This will shake my social identity. Seattle White progressives are great at listening to public radio and accessing public libraries. But, public transportation? No thank you. Public schools? Not my kids. The position of proximity is one of vulnerability and illumination.

I cannot read my way out of the problem of my perceived power and the deconstruction of white superiority. It won鈥檛 happen at one protest or one church service. The protest march or the BLM sign in my front yard might make me feel better when I feel powerless to prevent police pushing their knee into the neck of George Floyd; however, these events serve merely as an inoculation if only done in isolation. These moments of crisis serve as an indictment鈥攔evealing how far I am from the problem and from a network that is building systemic change.

Where do I live? Where do I shop? Where do my kids go to school? Proximity illuminates the issues and affords me the gift of stories other than my own. Deconstructing the isn鈥檛 simply about having more diverse friends. It means living in a way that sees and feels the impact of police brutality, the opportunity gaps in education, and the inequity of politically underrepresented neighborhoods. Until those problems become my problems, nothing will change.

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As the poet Claudia Rankine describes in her , Black life is a condition of mourning. Our Black brothers and sister, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters don鈥檛 live with the thought or the hope that the latest act of racial violence will be the last. They know that the sin of racism in America is deep and long and face the reality of that daily in ways that I will never experience. As a White woman with unearned privilege, I have the 鈥渓uxury鈥� of being able to express my grief and anger without fear of reprisal or violence from those in power. I have the 鈥渃hoice鈥� to engage or not engage. As Roberts and Rizzo 聽⁶ note in their recent article on racism in America, 鈥減ower enables passivism.鈥� White people鈥擨鈥攈ave been passive too long. This is where I must start鈥攁cknowledging my privilege and passivity, and grieving and repenting of that. And then I must take responsibility.

And my heart is still broken. Even as I write this, I am aware of so many Black, Indigenous, and Mothers of Color whose hearts have been broken at the deaths of their children under a system of racism and oppression, be that from violence or from neglect of our healthcare and social service systems. At a recent BLM protest, a White individual held a sign that read, 鈥淚 understand that I don鈥檛 understand, but I stand with you.鈥� So what does it mean as a White faculty member in a predominantly White institution to stand with? I start with my whiteness.

Individually and with others in my institution, I grieve and reckon with our place in this cultural moment. As a psychologist and an educator, I am called to lifelong learning. But that is just the starting place for me as White woman. A responsibility that comes with privilege is to speak out and act against the injustices that go back to our founding history in America. This is a process that will continue to unfold and take shape, both personally, in the classroom, and institutionally. Miguel De LaTorre states that 鈥淭here can be no faith, in fact no salvation, without ethical praxis. To participate in ethical praxis is to seek justice鈥� 聽⁷. I will continue learning, and I must also acknowledge the harms of our current systems and actively seek justice(Micah 6:8). Healing will occur in our communities as we take action. As a teacher, this action will include my commitment to continued research and personal learning, inviting voices of color and diversity in my syllabi and reading assignments, and working to make my classes and our institution places of safety and welcome for all students and employees.

It will get messy. It is messy! These are hard conversations to navigate and hold in our body/mind, but they must happen. It is especially difficult that most of these conversations must happen virtually, rather than with others in the same space. We are experiencing layers of collective trauma. We are confronting the brutality of systemic racism in addition to the isolation brought on by COVID-19. Anger, grief, fear, despair, uncertainty鈥攖hese are all appropriate responses to pandemic and racial trauma.

Even though I may not fully understand, I grieve with the BIPOC communities. Our collective grief and action can lead to cultural shifts. We are not victims of our culture, we shape our culture. Text, soul, culture鈥攖his is a crucial part of our mission. I have much to learn, and I and students to stay in these conversations and to continue the work of grief, self-reflection, and action. May this lead to a more loving, just and equitable culture鈥攆or all of us.

鈥淭he role of the teacher is not just to listen, to extend care and compassion, but also to wait in the silence of grief and concern for the notes of humanization to emerge and to amplify those notes so that a student can be reminded that they are, even in times like these, a being becoming, emerging. Even in this moment, even in pandemic and tragedy and fear, we are all nonetheless鈥攁nd in some ways, more so than when comfort and peacefulness abide鈥攊n a process of becoming more human. As we are confronted by the aches and diseases of our culture, we can be reminded that culture is distinctly human, and so part of our common project.鈥� Sean Michael Morris 聽⁸

Links that I have found helpful in learning/praxis/taking action:

• Resmaa Menakem鈥檚
• Claudia Rankine,
• Layla Saad鈥檚 workbook,

References:

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As I heard this message, I nodded my head and felt in my heart that Tisby was correct in starting with this story. I agreed that we all create a culture together, and only together can our society change. Those who are White in America, however, have more power and voice and benefit most when nothing changes. Tisby鈥檚 call is for all Americans to and societal structures that are harmful for all of us: White, Brown, Black, other, in-between, out of the norm, first generation, twelfth generation, etc. We as Americans have to do the work in our bodies, as well as our minds, if we are to heal our collective harm, our embodied hurt, and our lingering traumas. I can acknowledge this, yet I still find it difficult to move outside of what Resmaa Menekem has termed, 鈥渨hite-body supremacy.鈥� As he contends in his book, :

Social activism is necessary for changing the world in positive ways. But if our collective body is to fully heal from the trauma of white-body supremacy, we must create cultural shifts as well. White-body supremacy is already a part of American culture鈥攊n the norms we follow, the assumptions we make, the language we speak, the water we drink, and the air we breathe. This is the case no matter the color of our skin. This means we must create new expressions of culture that call out, reject, and undermine white-body supremacy.

This won鈥檛 be quick or easy鈥攂ut there is no other way.

, there is only the long path of reform, restructuring, and relearning our systems of being the United States of American. For this to happen, however, we have to feel the shift and change in our bones. New laws may be written and enacted, but until the hearts, minds, and bodies of Americans feel that all humans are truly created equal, we will remain ensnared in white-body supremacy.

If this claim about the necessity of bodily feeling and bodily healing is true, then the classrooms of predominately White institutions (PRI), such as 天美视频, present a challenge. Our students of color have always been attuned to the daily reality of white-body supremacy, but since the deaths of Trayvon Martin in 2012 and Michael Brown in 2014, our students of color have become even more hyper-attuned to the news and the realities of living in a non-white body in the United States. As a White professor, my body has not caught up to the level of anxiety and terror that our students feel on a daily basis, but I can create spaces of safety and agency. I can research and read more theologians of color. I can make my reading lists and lectures more diverse and multifaceted. As Jennifer Harvey, author of , said in a recent Wabash webinar, 鈥淏rown and Black Students Matter!,鈥� not only do White professors have an obligation to challenge the status quo around race in America, but we are guilty of 鈥減edagogical negligence鈥� if we do not work to change the dynamics in our classrooms and on our campuses.

If this kind of change is to happen, then I have to acknowledge my own lack of bodily attunement to the terror in my own body. If I am to love and teach well, then I have to learn to love my story and my body more, with brutal honesty. Also, until I can own my own White fragility and desire to be 鈥渨oke鈥� (which is a word I think no White person should claim), I have to stop and apologize to my students for not having the capacity to know viscerally their daily reality. I understand now that this apology is not just to our students of color but to all of our students. To re-create a more equitable society, .

An equitable classroom requires more mutuality and agency for every student so that we can work together to teach rather than indoctrinate, to grow our minds together rather than to mimic or repeat what was given to us. With this in mind, I will commit to decentering the white-body supremacy of the theologies in which I have been educated and formed. For this to happen, I need to do as much work on my whiteness as I do to create more diverse syllabi and classroom experiences. I believe our theology will be more robust and life-giving because of this work. Our call is not into self-hate but into a redeeming and liberating love. This is why our school鈥檚 mission is to train students toward and for the sake of loving God, neighbor, and self. I commit myself once more to this task.

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I walked away from our time with those students in 2018 understanding that things would need to change, and that those changes would not just be semantics on a syllabus but would need to include a revision of the structure(s) that had developed around the practicum process since its inception. I didn鈥檛 know what all of this meant, exactly, but I knew revision was needed, and that the restructuring needed to be significant.

Fast forward to a wrap-up of spring 2020, and the Practicum-turned-Listening-Lab department is now in a process of transition. Our work since spring 2018 has included continued shifts away from an approach to storytelling that had been more individualistic, sometimes paternalistic, and that had often favored whiteness. Rather than a storyteller being placed in a 鈥渉ot seat鈥� to defend themselves and often their people, what we鈥檙e seeking instead is a form of shared storytelling with a more collective edge and emphasis, with contributions to and support by the group as a whole. Our frame and its containers (what holds us together, or not) are changing.

I hear the need for change coming through the voices of activists and protesters that ring out across our streets these days demanding health and healing for systems and constituents that have privileged some and ousted and oppressed too many. As helping and healing professionals, our job is to listen first and to speak or respond second. The renaming of practicum as 鈥淟istening Lab鈥� is emblematic of this orientation. From where I sit, I can see where practicum processes and personnel have erred, at times, on the side of over-speak. I can see where we have given voice to those who already had it and have potentially silenced those whose voices have not typically been tended to by a society built on and by white supremacy. Our work is and will remain messy, but messy is not an excuse for allowing structures of power and privilege to remain intact and unchecked.

Speaking of messy, what will need to get even messier in the days ahead is our in-house conversations about whiteness (white supremacy). This past week I read a helpful article by a clinical psychologist named Dr. Natasha Stovall, who has an interest in 鈥減utting whiteness on the couch,鈥� per her Twitter account. In , Stovall points to how the work of counseling and psychotherapy is to tend to 鈥渢he thing鈥� that isn鈥檛 being named or tended to in the context of a client鈥檚 life. Either party (therapist or client) who is not at liberty to name that thing is/are inevitably bound by or colluding with it. If Listening Lab is one of the first places in our curricula wherein students practice sitting therapeutically with another, then whiteness has to be more explicitly named and deconstructed, even in an all-white section of students and leaders. A few years ago we began to assign Ta-Nehisi Coates鈥� work, as required reading. In as much as this has been an important marker in our discussion of oppressive systems (like whiteness), we cannot stop there.

Systems built on and by power are often fragile systems. I was recently introduced to an alternative through and his . Menakem speaks of 鈥渨hite stamina鈥� and how it can stand in stark contrast to its all-too-familiar counterpart of white fragility. White stamina is a willingness to remain in tension-filled conversations around race, despite the uncomfortability of doing so. If white supremacy invites fragility and collapse, white stamina offers persistence where none may have existed before.

Moreover, if Stovall demands that whiteness be outed as 鈥渢he thing鈥� it is, and Menakem suggests that stamina can be grown where fragility has been predominant, then clarity comes to and for a department (Listening Lab/Practicum) whose job it is to become and to remain relevant and equitable in pedagogy and praxis in a 21st Century that is requiring change, if not revolution. In solidarity to such, if we seek to be credible in our training of students to be(come) people who engage in transforming relationships, then we (Listening Lab/Practicum team members) need to be ever-forming and transforming in relationship ourselves.

There are more changes to come in the days ahead for Listening Lab. Stay tuned throughout the upcoming 2020-2021 school year for updates on such happenings. We are grateful to remember that goodness has come from the practicum processes through the years, and we are eager to continue the revision and growth that is to come. We have our work cut out for us, but we also know there is no looking back.

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