The Random Thoughts of Louis Schmier

      69! Yesterday! Ugh. Double ugh! At least, I got to dive into Susan’s deliciously wicked birthday cheese cake it took her two days to bake. Yesterday shouldn’t have been. My three mile power walk this morning shouldn’t have been. By all odds, I should be dead from a massive cerebral hemorrahage not many survive. But, I’m not. Here I am, alive, as one of those very lucky ones. Of what and of whom is there to be afraid after surviving something like that? What today is there not to appreciate after that? For what today is there not to be grateful? And so, though I just turned 69, I don’t feel–I refuse to feel–in any way spiritually, emotionally, mentally, or physically decrepit. I pride myself that I am keeping my body and soul in peak shape. I feel, as I impishly label myself, that I am a spry “experienced teenager.” I’ve learned from experience, whether it was my epiphany in ‘91 or beating cancer in ‘04 or coming out from this hemorrahage as if nothing had happened, that the greater part of happiness or misery depends on my dispositions and not on my circumstances or on others. Oh, sure, we can and do blame students, administrators, colleagues, something called “the system,” something equally ethereal called “society,” and now the economy for a “the devil made me do it” attitude. It’s easier that way. The problem with blame is that you surrender your independence, your sense of control, your self-control, your inner peace, your inner harmony, your self-respect, and enslave yourself to the beckoned call of circumstances and others. You make yourself into the proverbial leaf helplessly thrown about by the wind. But, in the end, attitudes and feelings and actions are all us. Situations and other people do not create feelings. Nothing or no one can make us mad, for example, we do that to ourselves. We each have to take the responsibility for whom we are; that we create whatever feeling we wish to feel, whatever attitudes we wish to have, whatever actions we wish to take, in each particular situation with each particular person. Why are some people happy and other people sad, determined or resign, in the same circumstance? It’s because that is how each has chosen to be.

       The problem or the solution, then, is that when we respond the same way often enough, it becomes an unthinking habit. Feelings seem to come automatically, even though they never have to be. We can unlearn, break old habits, learn, and acquire new habits. The way we feel about what we do, about the purpose and meaning of what we do, about students and colleagues and administrators was and is and will be a choice, conscious or otherwise. When we do take that responsibility, we acquire control over ourselves and, more importantly, find an inner calm. And, then, we can choose to change, to let go of, to create, and/or build upon what we feel.

      I once said that growing pains aren’t only for children. Ph.D. isn’t Latin for “Complete.” We each should walk around with a sign hanging around our necks reading, “Under Construction.” Why? Because who we are is not determined and defined by what we have accomplished and already know; who we are is determined and defined by what we’re willing to learn, reflect about, and change toward. Surviving my hemorrahage has taught me that my feelings profoundly influence the life I experience and I am responsible for the selection that gives real power to the purpose and meaning and significance that lives within me and what I wish to do. I define me by what I love to do, by my curiosity and imagination and creativity, by my personal vision, by my sense of purpose, by my sense of meaning, by my sense of significance, by the difference I strive to be, by whom I have become, by whom I strive to become, not by what others think of me or want me to do.

      I define myself by reaching out to touch a student, and thereby change the world and alter the future. To do that I’ve said over and over and over again that I want to be that person who is there to help a student help herself or himself become the person she or he is capable of becoming. It’s a feeling that stirred when I had my epiphany in 1991. It is even stronger now that I’ve survived unscathed that cerebral hemorrahage. When you’ve done it, when you’ve smelled it, when you’ve felt it, when you’ve tasted it, it feels so significant, so satisfying and so fulfilling, that you want to do it again and again and again. What drives me is an unquenchable thirst for adding value to the lives of others. It is that sense of significance, that sense of mission, that purpose, that sense of meaning. I’m as much if not more passionate; it drives me to work harder, to find new ways, to do more, to give more, to be more dedicated and focused, to be more aware, to be more alive, to be more empathetic, to be more compassionate, to have a greater sensitivity to those around me, to have a deeper sense of otherness. I consciously work every day to be sure that I am proud of what I do and of who I am, and that I hit the sack at night with a satisfied “yeah.” I’m always adapting, adopting, reshuffling, reloading, retooling, especially this semester when I unexpected got blind-sided by a change in copyright laws that nearly gutted all my classes. It’s not easy; it’s not quick; it’s not automatic. There’s no rabbit to be pulled out from the hat. There’s no magic wand. It’s challenging; it’s not neat; it’s not even pretty; it’s a never-ending story; it’s demanding of time, energy, and attention. How long will this elation and dedication last? I don’t know. But, I do know three things. First, I learned that fulfillment is in the creating, doing, and giving. It comes from having–no, making–an opportunity to make a difference, and doing it generously and with abandon. Second, curiosity and imagination and creativity are more than looking at stuff, dreaming about stuff, making stuff up, and making stuff. They are about expressing, in all sorts of limitless ways, what it means to be immersed in a limitless set of challenges, opportunities, and possibilities, and putting your own special stamp on them. . And finally, I learned from my cerebral hemorrahage to concentrate only on today. So, as long as I am in physical, mental, and spiritual shape, I’ll keep enjoying the dickens out of whatever and whoever are today.

     Think about it. This morning after the birthday before, I got out of bed, jumped out of bed, as I do every morning and will in mornings to come, ready to dance with Susan and then skip to class, with an invigorating, meaningful, purposeful, and significant “yes!” Today, I get to do what I love doing and doing what I love with people whom I love.

     And, this pre-dawn morning, after a cleansing three mile power walk, I had the added pleasure of downing a huge smile-inducing, artery-clogging, caloric overdosing slice of Susan’s scrumptiously sinful birthday cheese cake.

Louis

       Boy, I just got cussed out yesterday off list from a professor at a western university for being a “Glenn Beck type” because my last short Random Thought was “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” Her message was not what you would call collegial. I mean it was smoking. Knowing she sure doesn’t know me, I just replied, hoping my calm came through, telling her that I am confused. I asked her to enlighten me about what is so “destructive of academe” about advocating beyond mere window dressing and lip service that classroom teaching is as important as research and publication? That is so “dangerous” when I take the stand to testify why an education should be more than mere professional credentialing? Where is my “conservative wing” politics in saying that an education should be more than white collar vocational training? How am I among the “narrow minded” when I assert that an education should be more than merely a job engine, that helping someone learn how to live is as important as helping her or him learn how to make a living? How am I “pushing an ideology” when I firmly believe that part of an education should help develop a therapeutic civility that would act as a vaccine against toxic incivility? Where is the “religious right” in my educational philosophy that part of an education must also help promote a genuine, sincere, and habitual inner dignity and moral strength that displays itself in kindness, respect, trustworthiness, honesty, caring, and just plain decency?

       Am I objective? No. But, then, who honestly is?

     Do I have an agenda? Yes. But, then, who honestly doesn’t?

     I am not a one-dimensional, either-or guy. I call myself– I pride myself in being–a helping, multi-dimensional “wholeness teacher.” I am concerned with touching a student’s heart as well as her or his mind, of inspiring her or his spirit as well as sharpening her or his intellect, of helping her or him acquire people skills as well as the information and skills in her or his discipline, of helping her or him acquire critical feeling skills as well as critical thinking skills, of helping her or him see how noble, sacred, valuable, worthy, and important she or he and all others are, of helping her or him become an honorable person rather than merely a test-taking, grade-getting, accumulating high GPA honors student.

       I am an ardent advocate of conscious, purposeful, and pervasive character education. I don’t think when it comes to the classroom we can be what I call “character atheists.” And, when we interact with students, there is no such thing as practicing what I call “value neutrality.” It’s pretty simple. There isn’t a so-called “objective” bone in anyone’s body. No one is an untouched island. Everything we do or say, everything we feel and think, sends out messages that reveal those beliefs and values that underpin, shape, color, and drive our attitudes, emotions, thoughts, and actions. At the same time, those beliefs and values act as a filter on what we see, hear, taste, touch, and feel. One way or another, by hook or by crook, we shape our values, we have impact on others, and so we shape lives no less than others influenced and continue to influence the course and shape of our lives. What we don’t advocate, we inadvertently–or overtly–dismiss and put down. When we don’t’ promote positive values beyond merely a paragraph on plagiarism in our syllabi because we take an “it’s not my job” or “I’m not comfortable doing that” or “what will they think” or “I’m not a priest or parent or counselor” stand, when we don’t consciously feel we have a responsibility to actively help influence ethical perspectives and shape the behavior that stems from them, we are in danger of graduating–as we have recently seen all around us–destructive moral dropouts. If that be Glenn Beck-ish, so be it.

Louis

     I’ve been toying with the idea of replacing my computer. But, it’s proving to be formidable and unnerving. Everywhere I go and everything I read and everyone to whom I talk indicate that all the files I’ve got backed up using Windows XP will not be read on Windows 7 or Mac, and all the programs I’m running on XP will not run on 7 or Mac even with some convoluted tweaking, that the new won’t speak or easily speak to the old. They just aren’t all that compatible. It almost sounds like I’d be trying to listen to my old LPs on a DVD player. Whether my fears are well founded or not, on this soggy morning that, some stuff that happened–or did not happen–in class yesterday, and some journals entries I’ve read this past week all have gotten me to thinking and wondering.

      What, then, is the shelf life of all this information we transmit, verse in, train for, test, and grade?   What’s the shelf life of such attitudes and habits and values as trustworthiness, curiosity, commitment, perseverance, endurance, imagination, compassion, service, self-discipline, creativity, dedication, humility, respect, empathy, kindness, courage, authenticity, honesty, responsibility, fairness, and caring that we should be advocating, promoting, instilling, and modeling?

     Which will prove to be timely and which timeless in the shaping of lives: information or character?

Louis

       I was just reading a message from a professor at a mid-western university who was belittling students by making fun of their “silly bloopers.” And I thought: the stories we tell about students reveal who we are, who we believe they are, and the nature of our relationships with them.

Louis

I just came in from a meditative walk thinking about a bunch of journal entries I’ve been reading since I came back from the Lilly-North conference. Aside from the ravages of H1N1, aside from Homecoming Week, aside from the coming of that silly Fall Break next week, and aside from all the “abnormal” slings and arrows of “normal” student life, lots of highly personal and deeply distracting, debilitating, paralyzing, heart breaking “stuff” is going on inside students and outside the classroom at the moment that’s darkening the climate of the classroom: an unwanted pregnancy, a frightening lump and prospective biopsy, an accidental death of a father, a brother fighting in Afghanistan, a sister overdosing, a sudden divorce proceeding of parents, an unexpected hospitalization of a grandfather, a close aunt diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, a brother in a serious car crash, a saddening funeral of a close friend, a tearful placement of an Alzheimer afflicted grandmother in a nursing home, a broken engagement, a mother discovering she has breast cancer, a chronic auto-immune disease, and on and on it goes. It’s sapping their strength. It’s grinding down their spirit. It’s obviously having an impact of their ability to focus. It’s undermining their performances. How do I know? I’m reading their daily journal entries in which they choose to talk to me about what’s preying on their minds, hearts, and souls.

If we are interested in student accomplishment, how can we not struggle to be empathetic, how can we not care, how can we ignore all this “outside/inside stuff” that effects the student, how can we say that none of this is of our concern, how can we not get involved, how can we not deal with it? Most of us are not that uncaring, cold, and distant. Yet, in the intellectual climate of ivied academia, too many academics believe that a classroom education is solely about transmitting information and developing analytical skills, and that the other “stuff” too many of them denigrate as “touchy feely” either has no place in academia’s hallowed halls or should be left to others.

Eighteen years ago, as part of my epiphany, I slowly began to realize that we academics have to be cardio-centric, for at the heart of an education is the education of the heart. Think about it. Thoughts are useful; information is important; analytical skills powerful; but, they’re not the whole of either education or life. And, their power is nothing compared to feelings. Feel about it. Whether we go ahead and take action depends on whether we feel like it or not. It is how we feel that pulls us and pulls on us, creates our reasons, generates our attitudes, and powers our action. It’s not what we know. Whatever we avoid, whatever we engage, we avoid or engage because we don’t want to or want to experience the feelings that we assume it will bring. Have a desire to feel frustrated, annoyed, upset, discouraged and angry? Then you will find plenty of excuses for feeling joyless and blaming others for having dealt you a bad hand. Want to feel alive, empowered, enthusiastic, passionate and joyful? Then you will find plenty of reasons coming at you from every direction. What I mean is that if you want to reach out and touch a student, if you want to make a difference in a student’s life, if want to help a student perform, if you want a student to transform, you must realize information and reason does not appeal to or move either us or a student. Emotion does all that. It’s the engine. It’s the pusher. It’s the resonator. It’s the adrenalin getter-upper. Emotion stirs people; emotion drives attitudes; emotion spurs moods; emotion guides actions; emotion powers movement. We are primarily feeling people who think and act. It’s that “appeal to a person’s emotions” thing.

I once heard John Madden say that a lot of people think the game of football is played on the field. They’re wrong, he said, it’s not just about ability, talent, and technique. There’s more to it than the X’s and O’s of a play. Most of the game, he asserted, is played in the hearts of the players. And, when a player isn’t playing with his heart, he’s not into the game. So, too, in the classroom, at the end of the day the heart is where most of the academic game is played.

Louis

        As I read her words over and over and over again, I started thinking about a sequence of feelings and attitudes: impact a student’s heart, and you alter her or his story; change her or his story, and you affected her or his perceptions; affect his or her perceptions, and you’ve touched that student; touch that student, and you’ve altered the future and changed the world.

       Madeline reminded me again of the smallest, most useful, most powerful tool each of us have at our disposal in the classroom to make a difference. It has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with us. It has nothing to do with giant leaps or dramatic U-turns. It’s proof that every little thing you feel and do leaves a consequence in its wake, that supposed little things can make huge differences, and that those small things quickly add up to big differences. I want you to think about this: every stirring in our heart stirs and matters. So many of us think we only speak with our mouths. But, I tell you, researchers tell us, we speak so loud with our bodies, with our hands, with our faces, and with our eyes that our words are drowned out. So, both inside and outside the classroom, both inside and outside us, something so simple as a sincere smile not only turns on the lights of the likes of a Madeline, but it magically turns walls into doors. Sneers blind; faith opens eyes; scowls deafen; hope perks up the ears; frowns chill; love warms up; grimaces numb; empathy sensitizes; sneers paralyze; compassion moves. A simple, genuine smile improves all of us. When we sincerely smile, we are more confident, enthusiastic, upbeat, and convincing. We even look better when we smile. A simple, genuine smile from our heart is an aura of our own positive outlook on life that we extend to envelope others. When we sincerely smile, we immediately add value to our encounters with others. When we sincerely smile we see, listen to, and empathize with others who are otherwise not there when we are dour and scowled. And, that makes that simple, small, useful, powerful act of just sincerely smiling, anything but small and meaningless. It’s actually so powerful that it can lift the heaviest of hearts.

Louis

Very early Sunday morning. Sleepless leaving Traverse City. Thoughts and feelings are racing through my mind and heart. In the plane somewhere over the East coast heading for Jacksonville, rushing home before Kol Nidre. Feeling heady after three whirlwind days of the Lilly-North conference on collegiate teaching. I really don’t need this flying metal cigar to feel high. Susan, sitting next to me, her suitcase crammed full with new delights, is delighted she raised the economy of Traverse City by at least two points. I had three days of non-stop, uplifting, and often intense, schmoozing and education with new and old friends: Todd, Deb, Sarah, Jim, Laurie, Gregg, Cal, Tamara, Ann, Gail, Barbara, Corrine, Sherry, Lou, Chris, Crina, Nancy, Dan, Bettina, Joe. And the list goes on and on and on. I owe them. They replenished, renewed, revitalized, and rewarded me. The neat people at the Lilly conferences do that to me. I’ll probably still be up there long after the plane has landed.

How do I sum up such a satisfying, fulfilling, and certainly educating experience in thirty seconds? This way: the more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the students, the more we can cut through oblique and dehumanizing perceptions and generalities and stereotypes of students, the more we can herald each student as a sacred and noble and unique human being, the more we can focus on a faith and hope and love for each student, the more we can cast a bright spotlight on their “becoming,” the more we can learn and accept and apply what is being learned about learning, the less taste we’ll have for negative and destructive weeding out.

Louis

We academics have some the most unrealistic notions about students that have nothing to do with who they truly are.

Louis

      I feel myself sliding inside myself. I feel myself slowly getting contemplative. An introspective mood is enveloping me. The ten “Days of Awe,” Jewish High Holy Days beginning with Rosh Hashanah and culminating with Yom Kippur, are upon me. I actually get an additional dose of deep reflection because the Lilly North conference on teaching is wedge between them. So, beginning at sundown today until sundown ten days from now, I will face unrelentingly the demand that I get out of my head and into my heart and soul. Things are starting to slow down. Things are starting to get profound., To light that way, I am ask to ponder a simple, but profound question. It’s purpose is to make my vision clearer, make who I am more purposeful, and what I do more meaningful: How did I not realize my potential this year, and what do I need to do to correct that shortcoming and make sure that I am better able to follow by vision and to fulfill the purpose for which I am in this world? I think that is a question we in academia should ask about ourselves and what is it we do. So, here goes:

        We are told in the First Commandment, “you shall have no other gods before me.” Yet, so much of academia seems so polytheistic. So many of us are constantly fashioning our own enslaving academic golden calves. We worship idols of information. We throw ourselves prostrate before the graven images test scores, grades, and GPAs. We pay homage to the deity of resume. We race after research, grants, publication, renown, promotion, and tenure in adoration of the divine rat. We grovel before the false god of edu-technology. We perform the ceremonies of lectures, tests, quizzes, grades, GPAs, and “standardized assessment instruments.” And, then, having blindly performed these rituals, having drawn up a magnificent syllabus, having written a brilliant set of mini-conference papers we call lectures, we convince ourselves how great we are as devoted educators. The real issue here is mindless idolatrous worship ritual performance in which all too many academics have replaced the living of educational life with empty lip service and lifeless institutionalization. We have substituted the process itself for the spirit of education, and have begun worshipping something other than education: the rituals and ceremonies themselves. Where’s the purpose, the vision, the meaning? Oh, the prophet Micah would have a field day with us.

       In a subtle, but very real sense, by adopting this attitude those academics have slipped away from educating towards schooling and credentialing. Everyone listens and so many put on a long face and/or nod their heads to show that they, too, are gravely concerned. Everybody agrees abstractly that something really must be done. But when the conversation is over, when the meetings have concluded, when the Monday after the weekend conference comes, nothing is really done, and most academics are relieved to slip back into the adoration of or safe submission to the current system. Ritual piles upon ceremony, reinforced by all these accreditation processes, until all education is turned upside down. These habits infect everything they touch, for we become more concerned with “how do you grade that” than “did they deeply learn,” more with “what” and “how” than with “why,” more with statistics than vision and purpose, more with producing grade-getters and test takers or transcript primpers or at best merely informed people rather than innovative thinkers and better people. We produce few students who appreciate that the collegiate academic experience as worthwhile in its own right. The idea that we can help a student become a whole person, a better person, begins to disappear as the definition of education focuses on classroom structure, job-getting content, and credentialing as the only things that matters. As my good friend, Don Fraser, told me, most of us academics see the wrong “C word.” Instead of seeing the “C word” of caring and compassion and community, we have a barrel vision and only see the “C word” of curriculum content.

Louis

      The dark, pre-dawn air hung heavy. It was damp, clammy, warm. Everything was blurred by a slight, enveloping fog. As I longed for the calming effect of the starry sky, I thought how in academic certainty can be so fog our senses. And, I thought of another word for Kenny to add to our Dictionary of Words for Good Teaching. Fog. Now, when we think of fog, words like “uncertain,” “lost,” “adrift,” and “blurry” probably jump into our minds. But, when you’re in a fog, when you realize you’re in a fog, you are forced you to lose your complacency, to heighten your senses, to put your antennae on full blast, to squint your eyes and look more intensely, to perk up your ears and listen more closely, to become acutely aware of your surroundings, to focus your awareness, and to concentrate your otherness. In a fog, if it’s not heads up, it’ll be bump into or fall down. So, I’ve found that when it comes to students it is only in a fog that you can hope to see, listen, feel, and think crystal clear. Let me tell you what I mean as I turn the relationship of fog and certainty upside down.

      So, I ask, “How many of us academics live in a house constructed of the often deafening, blinding, distant, numbing, and clinical bricks of certainty, and objectivity? How many of us allow those bricks to create a barrier between us and each student, as well as between us and ourselves? How many of us are swept along by such currents of presumptuous certainty as “in my day” and “student today are?” How many of us so often pretend that the personal context and individual circumstance don’t exist, that they exert no effect on either us or the students, and consequently are of no concern to us? It’s what I call a fog of certainty that can only be dissipated by the breezes of uncertainty.

       I recently told someone, “As I read each student’s daily journal entry, as I read each single word the students write on the whiteboard each day at the beginning of class about how they feel, when I face each student, I am faced with the acknowledged knowledge of not knowing enough about the individual life of a student that is impacting on her or his performance. I can clearly see that I don’t have a complete and certain picture that a preconception, generalization, presumption, or stereotype suggests I have. When I see each student, I see difference. I see a different perspective. I see a different life. No one is without heritage; no one is bereft of experience; no one is devoid of conscious and subconscious memory. Every person is an alternative life to my own. Every one has a unique personal history. It is the basic American principle of diversity: every person is a unique, noble, sacred individual. Each person has different alloys of strengths and weaknesses. Each person lives differently, walks different roads, has different experiences, calls on different memories, has different approaches to life, gets sick differently, has different needs, has different ailments, has different senses of the future, carries different amounts of baggage, has different opinions, totes different types of baggage, and heals differently. Each person dreams differently, copes differently, risks differently, fears differently, believes differently, manages differently, remembers differently, experiences differently, enjoys differently, pains differently, and suffers differently. Each person looks and sees, hears and listens, and thinks and feels differently. To think that none of this comes into play each day, to deny the fact of individual identity, to ignore the truth of individual experience makes us vulnerable to the most pernicious dehumanizing effects of opinion, presumption, assumption, perception, and stereotype.”

      Only when we realize we are groping through a fog of certainty, can we hope find our way out into that clear air of uncertainty. Only then, will we make the Herculean effort to see and listen to and get a feel for each student. In the end, if you don’t love the true mystery and diversity–and challenge–of it all, you’ll miss the humanity of it all. And, I’m not sure we can really get the real education job done if we don’t care about, deal with, and take into account this very human equation.

Louis