Nancy Lynne Westfield, Ph.D.

We teach with aspirational dreams for our students. The right-now challenge of student formation is that we have never seen our world just-so. We are intellectual, faith pioneers in the malaise and luxury of the 21st century. This digital age has fashioned for us a threshold into terrain that is ...

Sometimes learning is accompanied by tears, theirs and mine.  The concept of mis-education is so disquieting to some students that tears are shed in the classroom.  Never has there been bold sobs or muffled cries of languished sorrow – nothing quite so dramatic.  Rather, the tears have been quiet moments of ...

God is unknowable.  So, the things of God cannot be learned – they must be revealed. What does it mean to teach our students to wait for the revelation, to be aware of the revelation, to find joy in the revelation, to trust in the revelation?  In what ways might students ...

Please indulge this low-grade rant. I believe the notion of “safe space” in adult classrooms is un-interrogated and oversubscribed.  The question is … Safe for whom?  Well-intentioned teachers, in wanting students to attempt deep conversation, wrongly presume adult students need to feel safe in order to effectively learn. Rarely is it ...

The projects have, at sometimes, crashed and burned.  There have been the occasional minor derailments.  In several instances there were irreconcilable differences and un-repairable circumstances.  Once I declared utter, dismal failure.  On the other hand, there have also been profound insights; reports of experiences of magic and awe – accounts of ...