Category Archives: meta (about the blog)

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teaching as an act of care

I just reread my post from February in which I promised to post more often, beginning with a version of a conference presentation I gave in January. I’m embarrassed that it’s July and I haven’t shared that post. Instead of rewriting the presentation into an essay, I’ve decided to share an outline of my talking points. I hope you find something relevant in it, regardless of your calling.

The title of the presentation was Love in Action, and its purpose was to remind us (myself and fellow Christian university faculty) of the value of caring work and to identify ways in which teaching is caring work. I began with the following reasons why the topic is important:

1. AI has made “am I talking to a real person?” a crucial question.

    2. Students are intimidated by their professors.

    3. Students who feel safe are more willing to take intellectual risks.

    4. Most importantly, if we take our calling as Christian faculty seriously, our work is a ministry.

    These claims were based mainly on the following sources:

    •Anecdotal evidence based on ten years of teaching online “full-time” (and a lot of course evaluations to back me up!)

    •Books on Christian love in action: Real Love for Real Life by Andi Ashworth and Making Room by Christine Pohl

    •Findings from a doctoral research project by Nat Mercer (my colleague at Grace Christian University)

    This quote from Ashworth was foundational to my thinking on this topic: “Hospitality can also mean sitting with another person over coffee, showing an interest in who they are” (p. 71, emphasis mine). I asked my audience, “Can this happen in a virtual setting as well?”

    The remainder of my presentation was set up as a series of real or perceived contrasts.

    Contrast 1: Important work vs. recognized work: Crucial work can be done in secret, as we see in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. While it is valuable for faculty members to be able to articulate the work we do, not all tasks are easily trackable.

    • Principle: Work doesn’t have to be financially compensated to be important, and there is value in doing work that isn’t formally rewarded.
    • Caveat: This shouldn’t be used as excuse not to fairly compensate people for their work.
    • For example, as an adjunct working on a contract basis, I get paid for teaching my courses. At a bare minimum, that means giving feedback on assignments and recording grades. But is meeting with students who want to talk about their career future also teaching? What about writing recommendation letters? What about reading a book I’ll later recommend to a student? (I think the answer to these questions is “yes”!)

    Contrast 2: Creative work vs. busy work: “Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.” –David Allen, Getting Things Done

    Allowing space for creativity is related to allowing space for serving others.

    Overcommitted faculty have less capacity to notice others’ needs and create ways to serve them.

    Principle: Caring takes creativity.

    Contrast 3: Students: problems or people?

    I know I need a “heart check” when I start thinking of my students as problems, annoyances, or tasks to deal with.

    Practical ways to remind myself that my students are people: praying for them by name, offering/saying yes to phone/Teams conversations

    Principle: If we want our students to think of us as real people and not just machines that grade their work, we also owe it to them to view them as people.

    Contrast 4: Rigorous vs. relational (which turns out not to be a contrast after all)

    Attachment theory posits that people with “a secure base from which to explore the world” are more willing to take healthy risks.

    Nat’s research on academic rigor and faith integration: “the impact of the expression of grace and mercy by professors and the way students persist as a result of these values”—Nat Mercer, email communication, 1/6/2026

    Principle: Being kind and caring toward our students does not mean compromising academic rigor.

    Contrast 5: Transactional vs. self-giving

    I read the poem “Those Winter Sundays,” by Robert Hayden, which gives a concrete picture of self-giving love. I also cited the research on servant leadership by Robert Greenleaf.

    Biblical servanthood is not reciprocal—Jesus didn’t sit down and ask his followers to wash his feet, nor did he resent them for not doing so. But he did tell them to do the same for each other!

    Principle: Teaching can be incredibly rewarding, but even when it isn’t, God calls us to keep giving.

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    coming soon–more posts

    Hi everyone,

    If you’re still here, thanks for being a loyal supporter of my blog. I started it in 2011 (as penelopeclearwater.wordpress.com) as a place to post a couple of book reviews so I could get free copies of the books. Over the years, I’ve written about all manner of topics–most recently, focusing on online teaching and learning–but recently (as you may have noticed) my posting frequency has fizzled out, with 2025 having the dubious distinction of being the blog’s least active year ever.

    There are good reasons why I haven’t been posting as much–life events have led to a great desire for privacy and less time for writing. Simultaneously, though, I’ve been sensing an invitation to get back into some creative activities I’ve enjoyed in past years, as well as trying some new ones. These have included activities from cross-stitch (an old hobby) to crocheting (a new and challenging one) to making Christmas cards (a new and delightful one) to making origami birds (a fun one-off project I enjoyed on one winter evening). I’m also slowly getting back into writing more than just emails and grading feedback. I’ve been writing a haiku prayer every Wednesday for almost a year now, and just this past month I finished and polished up a short story to enter into a contest. And this leads me back to my blog. I want to start posting regularly again, even if “regularly” at first means just quarterly.

    Right now, I’m working on turning a conference presentation I made last month into a post, so you can expect that soon. But for now, I just wanted to say thank you and let you know that I’m still here!

    Sincerely,

    Tess

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    what my online students can expect from me, part 2: appropriate grading feedback

    This is the latest post in a series about expectations in online education. You can read the previous post here.

    You can expect me to give you grading feedback in an amount and kind appropriate to the assignment. I use the word “appropriate” instead of “substantial,” a term greatly emphasized at one of my institutions in relation to grading feedback, because I don’t think all assignments require substantial feedback. For example, when I am grading students’ participation in a peer review discussion, it’s probably enough for me to say, “Thank you for your participation.” When I’m grading a topic proposal, I might record a three-minute video giving the student guidance on narrowing down the topic and starting to look for sources, but I probably won’t launch into a nitpicky critique of their APA format. However, when I’m grading a final/summative paper, I will give feedback on all areas of the assignment–content, organization, research, mechanics, and documentation–and my comments will likely consist of several sentences each. But still, there will be issues I overlook (intentionally or not), because my goal is to give students useful suggestions for improving their writing, not to discourage them by making the paper illegible with overlapping marginal comments on every sentence (the digital equivalent of a paper bled through with a red pen). I know from personal experience how discouraging this can be!

    I hasten to admit that I’m not perfect at this. I often worry about whether I’m giving enough grading feedback, whether my comments make sense, and whether I got the tone right. And there are definitely times, usually when I’m on vacation or just really not feeling like grading, when I give a completion grade on an assignment that I probably should have taken the time to carefully assess using the rubric. But I think I largely succeed at my goal of making the overall message of my grading not “Here’s what you did wrong” (though I realize some students will still read it that way) but “Here are some things you can consider doing differently next time.”

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    what my online students can expect from me, part 1: collegial communication

    Last week, I wrote about the top three expectations I have for my online students. Now, I’m going to write a few posts focused on things my students can expect from me. I’m choosing to write these posts exclusively in the first person because I think it’s more difficult to make safe generalizations in this area as compared to the area of my last post. But I’d love to hear from other online faculty members–are your expectations similar?

    You can expect me to reply to your communication and not be annoyed about it. First, I want to clarify what this does not mean. It does not mean I’ll reply to your emails, text messages, or voicemails (I do sometimes get those!) immediately. I go to bed pretty early, and I put my phone in sleep mode when I do. Another rather countercultural practice I have, which I believe has done wonders for my mental health, is that I do not receive email notifications on my phone. I sit down to check email, usually on my computer, at designated times when I’m ready to focus on email. So this may mean that, especially on weekends, a student may go 24 hours, or slightly more, without receiving a reply from me. But here’s what this expectation does mean: When I respond to your message, I’m going to read it carefully and give you a substantial answer. (And yes, I may occasionally say, “Go look at p. 24 in the APA guide” or something similar, but I won’t be snarky about it.) I’m not going to be annoyed at you because, as I explained in my post last week, email and other personal communication forums are where I do some of my best work. In fact, right now I have a student who’s been sending me some fairly lengthy emails a couple times a week–sometimes to ask questions, other times to say she appreciated something I said in a video, etc.–but I’m not irritated at her, because our email exchange is allowing us to build a collegial relationship. Also, it helps that when she doesn’t expect a reply to one of her messages, she will actually say that in the subject line.

    I’m always baffled when students are profusely grateful that I responded to their emails, when to me this seems like a bare minimum expectation. Apparently, some professors aren’t doing this, or they’re giving their students the impression they’d rather not. I’m thankful for this simple practice that allows me to tailor my instruction to individual students, build relationships, and get good course evaluations in the process. 😉

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      revisiting the idea of home as a co-working space

      Since I’m sharing our home today with three dogs (we’re dog-sitting for my in-laws), my husband (who is doing an all-day virtual professional development training in his home office), and our friend who just moved here and is staying with us until her apartment is ready, I thought I’d share a post from nearly four years ago about home as a co-working space. Though things have changed (Jordan is back at his worksite most days; I have a permanent workspace in the corner of our living room; we regularly get a wide variety of birds at our feeder, and I’m learning their names pretty well), I think the ideas explored in this post are still worth considering.

      home: the new co-working space
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      writing goals for 2024

      As I think about my goals for the new year, I’m considering how I want writing to fit into my life in 2024. I have always seen myself as a writer, but after a few highly productive years leading up to the completion of a novel in 2019, I’ve been in a dry spell, at least by comparison. I do a lot of writing for my work–mainly emails and grading feedback–but in this post, I’m thinking about writing that is both more enjoyable and less ephemeral than those, important as they may be. So here are some writing goals I’d like to focus on in the new year.

      1. Get back into the habit of writing in my notebook for 15 minutes a day. I started doing this in September after I read Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg and wanted to rediscover the joy of writing, especially in longhand (a practice Goldberg speaks highly of). Throughout that month, I wrote for 15 minutes every morning. Most of what I wrote will never be shown to the world (though this post was a result of one particularly productive day), but it was a good practice, and I’d like to get back into it consistently in 2024.
      2. Research and revise two short stories based on incidents in the life of Christ that I drafted in 2023. These stories resulted from my daily writing practice. They are quick sketches that need research give them accuracy and authenticity. I may use my research and revision process to help me develop some resources for my students (I wrote about this idea here), but even if I don’t end up doing that, I would like to get these stories into a state that I’m happy with.
      3. Reread Sam’s Town to help me decide whether I want to work on the sequel. Sam’s Town is the novel I self-published in 2019. Soon after I completed it, while still riding a writing high, I started the sequel, Sam’s Home. But then I got married, moved, and lived through the pandemic, and the few brief attempts I’ve made to pick the manuscript back up haven’t really gone anywhere. So in 2024, I’d like to reread Sam’s Town in hopes of recapturing some of that excitement. Even if I ultimately decide not to make writing the sequel one of my goals for this year, I think I’ll enjoy revisiting those characters who played such an important role in my life for several years.

      Three is a magic number when it comes to goal-setting, so I’ll stop there. What are some of your goals for 2024, writing-related or otherwise?

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      Don’t ask your students to do anything you haven’t done yourself.

      This post is part of a series on bringing a human touch to online education. See the series introduction here.

      I recently wrote a rough draft of a story, provisionally titled “Sunrise at the Sea of Tiberias,” and I know it needs some historical research. So I have an idea: I’m going to do the Writing in Your Field Project, the major multi-step assignment in my graduate writing class, along with my students.

      I have never done the project, and I know that’s a classic teacher mistake: expect my students to do something I haven’t done myself. I know what some of the common challenges of the project are based on student feedback, but as I often tell my students regarding their research, there’s no substitute for firsthand experience.

      I’m thinking of taking notes on my experience as I go through it (maybe using a combo of written and voice notes), then creating some supplemental videos/documents I can share with students and maybe eventually make an official part of the course. I would also like to write about this experience, with a teacher audience in mind, on the blog!

      I hope to start this project soon, when (I’m hopeful) some extra space will be opening up in my grading schedule. Stay tuned for details!

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      Let them hear your voice.

      This post is part of a series on bringing a human touch (cue the Bruce Springsteen song) to online education. See the series introduction here.

      Today I have a simple tip to offer you, yet I’ve received more positive student feedback in response to this practice than almost anything else I’ve ever done as a professor. I would like to invite you to consider making videos for your students. And I don’t mean scripted lectures shot in multiple takes with official-looking title cards provided by your institution (though there can be a place for those). I mean short, personal, off-the-cuff video responses to students’ assignments. Here is a short account of my experiences with this practice.

      I teach two research classes in which students submit a major project in several steps, the first being a proposal. Though the assignment instructions for the proposal are relatively formal and lead students to take it seriously, I treat it as a formative assessment–that is, not a finished product but a stepping stone. So instead of making corrections and deducting points from the rubric, I read each student’s proposal, then use the recording feature embedded in our learning management system (Canvas) to make a short video (2-5 minutes) expressing enthusiasm for their projects and giving them some advice about things like the scope of the project (students often start out a little too ambitious), pitfalls to avoid, and sources that might be helpful. The videos tend to be longer if I know something about the topic and have specific source recommendations to make or if the student seems to have had a little trouble understanding the assignment. But in all cases, I try to project excitement about their ideas and let them know that I’m a helpful resource.

      The videos don’t take long to create because I shoot them in one take, without doing any editing and without even writing down notes first. I am pretty good at speaking ad lib–others might want to jot some notes first (and I do sometimes miss important things I meant to say or should have said!). Video grading gives me a break from writing, which constitutes the bulk of my work, and it allows students to see my face and hear my voice, letting them know I’m a real person who’s invested in them and their writing. The students love these videos–I get more positive feedback on them in my course evaluations than on anything else. Often the videos initiate a warm and enthusiastic exchange of questions and ideas that continues throughout the course.

      Next week, it will be time for me to make proposal feedback videos for my new set of students, and I am genuinely excited to make them–not something I can normally say about grading. I encourage you, if you are a teacher or any type of communicator (aren’t we all?), to find ways to let the people you work with hear your voice. It will lay the foundation for trusting relationships and make your future written communication less likely to be misunderstood. Try it out and let me know what you learn!

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      online education for humans

      Sometimes I wonder if my students realize I’m a real human being, not a machine who grades their work. When students are surprised that I answer a pretty reasonable request in the affirmative, or that I reply to their messages at all–that’s when I really wonder. But I can’t be too critical of my students’ assumptions, because there have been times when I’ve forgotten that my students are real human beings and not machines composing assignments. When all you see of a person is a) their writing (which may or may not sound like something that came from a real human being–we’ll talk more about that in a later post) and b) a tiny, low-quality profile picture, seeing that person’s humanity can be a struggle.

      This will be the topic of my next few posts. We’ll talk about strategies that online faculty and students can use to remember and respect each other’s humanity. And as always, I hope these posts will have a wider application, offering useful advice for all of us who live in this world where so much of our human interaction is mediated by screens.

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      what’s new and upcoming

      Hello! I hope you’re staying warm and cozy on this winter morning (it’s one degree Fahrenheit outside here in northern Indiana). I’m just dropping in to let you know that I’m planning to be back soon with some new posts on creative writing. For now, check out my latest podcast episodes at https://anchor.fm/tess-r-martinus. There’s a zombie episode, a board game episode, and some opportunities to hear from people who mean a lot to me. Listen and let me know what you think!