The Random Thoughts of Louis Schmier

Well, those uneducational things that have little to do with deep and lasting learning we call “final grades” are finally in. Took me a couple of “late nighters,” since my first priority was nursing Susie. Anyway, the semester is completely over for me.  By my reckoning, I just ended my 44th year here at VSU, and I don’t intend to stop counting.  You know neither longevity nor age itself doesn’t stop anything, attitude does.  That is, only I stop creating, I stop imagining, I stop experimenting, I stop risking, I stop improving, I stop growing, I stop changing.   I am, like everything else, the embodiment of change, a proverbial work in progress.  I am not a “human being.” I am a moving, dynamic “human becoming.”   My routine is to never let anything become dull, boring, “in-my-sleep,” rut-ish routine.  I am a sculptor, always chiseling, chipping away here and there, reshaping everywhere my life sculpture.  I am an artist on whose life canvas I am always painting, a stroke here, a scene change there, a change everywhere.  My life, any life, is a work in constant process.   It is a curious paradox that as I accept me for who I truly am, I then can transform me into becoming.

So, what have I learned in these 44 years of teaching, 71 years of living, as well as having survived both cancer and a massive cerebral hemorrhage, about what really matters?  A bunch of things that I use to keep me on the move.  But, if there are any items that should be at the top of that list, these are the five:  first, education has become too “thingified,” that is, degrees, resumes, publications, grants, renown, titles, tenure, grades, GPAs, recognitions don’t really bring lasting inner peace and fulfillment as too many people expect;  second, what matters is not what you have, but what you feel about and do with what you have.  That is, it is always your choice, and your attitude is always your choice;  third, education is not an exercise without human beings, that is, the beat of the classroom is the heart beat, not the clicking computer, not the clicking clickers, not the turning of lecture pages, not the scratching of notes; fourth, the vision in your heart and soul directs your line of sight and what you see; and last, but maybe first, get up with a “yes,” enthusiastically get going, and live every aspect of life joyously now.

How do these five teaching impact on my teaching–and my personal life as well?  Well, as I get older and gain more experience, the outer shells have been stripped away.  All the “what have I done” resume crap drops away revealing the significant soulful presence of “who I am becoming” stuff.   I’ve found that a lot of people, far too many people, are asking “where’s the beef,” but are really looking for and accepting “pink slime” filler.  They may truly want a newness, sometimes even a purpose, for their teaching, but, they are restricted by what I’ll called a “negative fixedness,” that is habits of perceptions which blind and deafen them to who is inside them and right in front of them. They so fixate on a negative reality; they care more about the security for their job, more about what others will think and do, than for their soul and their happiness.  They seem to forget that there’s risk in everything; they seem to forget to accept, manage, or learn how to manage risk and transform it into achievement.  Instead, they let a habit of fear become more powerful than a habit of purpose.  They close their minds and hearts, and consequently are prone to raising drawbridges and shutting doors.  They want a new teaching method or approach on their quick, easy, comfortable, convenient, guaranteed, and safe terms, and let their fears deafen and blind them to what the latest research on learning is recommending.  They want results but not at the expense of remaking their lives, of opening the gates to their protective walls,  preferring to live by guarantee, rationale, and old habit rather than by intuition, inspiration, purpose, vision, new habit, and significance, never realizing that what they fear is far more often benign than malignant, never understanding that protective walls are also imprisoning walls.  They weren’t ready, didn’t feel a strong need, to change what Charles Duhigg calls a “keystone habit,” to “rechunk” thoughts and actions, necessary to reprogram the other attitudes and routines in their professional and personal lives.

Where’s the “beef?”  It’s in a steady and unswerving dedication to a vision. And, the vision?  My vision?  I’ll keep it simple.  For me, teaching has come down to seven words:  ”Do it unconditionally for each ‘human being.’”   I’ve learned to strip away preconceived, impersonal, cold, distant, disconnected perceptions inherent in the surface label “students;” I’ve learned to go deep and see each of them instead as a “sacred human being” or “noble and unique person,” and a class as a “gathering of diverse ‘ones.’”   I’ve learned to guide myself by one question and one question only:  ”What will make each person’s life better and help her or him live the better life?”   It’s a vision that can’t pry me from believing in, having hope for, unconditionally loving, and plying what I do in that classroom in the service of each of them.

So, if you want a resonant, positive, growth mindset and believe you can help change a life–and that is THE essential “if”–, if you want the sense of satisfaction, fulfillment, and significance of what it is you do in the classroom–and that is THE second essential “if”–, if you want to be in the service of others–and that is THE third essential “if”–you have to change your routine.  You have to learn to listen closely, see intensely, think hard, connect tightly, feel deeply, roll up your sleeves, be patient with yourself and others, go into the risky “scary zone,” challenge any “negative fixedness,” create and experience a “positive reality,” be a “disruptive innovator,” be a “resonant leader,” create and enjoy, know and admit to what you don’t know, populate that lonely extra mile, walk more on that road less taken, be in it for the long haul, move incrementally but significantly.

But, take care, this is not as easy, quick, simple, risk-free, error-free, guaranteed, or “in-my-sleep” effortless as it may seem.  Nothing worthwhile is.  But, if you want to get into and stay in shape you have to keep that heart pumping not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually as well.

Louis

Took a very brief respite from nursing Susie while her cold rush therapy machine eased the pain in her shoulder.  Haven’t gotten around to putting together those very uneducational things called “final grades” due next Monday.  Am in communicato with students.   First things first, and helping Susie recover from her surgery comes first, last, and only at this time.  If heaven can wait, so can final grades.  Anyway, I was sitting by the pond.  No walking.  Muscles ache.  Little sleep.  All night medication and icing down regimen meant I was on the den couch next to Susie in the reclining chair with my eyes closed and ears cocked listening for both the timer and Susie.  Haven’t gone deep in two nights.  It may not be restful for me, but it’s comforting to her.  And, that is all that matters.

It was dawn.  Keeping the patio door open so I could hear Susie through the screen doors if and when she needed me, I braved the awaking mosquitoes and sat by the fishpond, sipping a cup of freshly brewed Tanzania Peaberry coffee, listening to the sooth sounds of the waterfalls.  Heralding first light, some birds chirped above me in the branches of the pine and magnolia tree that majestically stand guard over the pond.  You know, some would just look at those trees and don’t see a thing; some would see so many impersonal atoms or impersonal laws of nature; some would see so many board feet for construction; and, some would see both a miracle of life and a life full of endless miracles.  Jack Kornfield said, “Those who are awake live in a constant state of amazement.”  It’s true.  If you do things “in your sleep,” you won’t have your eyes, ears, and heart open.  If you don’t open your eyes, you won’t see;  if you don’t open your ears, you won’t listen; if you don’t open your heart, you won’t feel.   If you aren’t awake and alert, you won’t see, listen, and feel the miracle that is today; you won’t see the beauty that is you, others, and everything around you; you won’t act from a perspective of those beauties; you won’t feel how good and powerful it is to be alive; you won’t understand and appreciate how extraordinary each day is; you won’t understand how extraordinary each person is; you won’t see the boundless potentials in each day and each person; you won’t see, listen, and feel below the superficial and shallow surface to what really matters about things and people; you won’t be able to imagine the amazing possibilities around and in you, as well as in others.

And, if Kornfield wasn’t talking about being in a classroom, as I am sure he specifically wasn’t, I am.   So, in the spirit of both him and Thurgood Marshall, higher education needs more teachers who are alive, who aren’t just getting by.  By that I mean teachers who are wide awake, peering through a human window into the classroom, looking at classroom caterpillars and seeing butterflies, understanding that educaton is made out of people, fueling a curiosity about each student, living mindfully of who is in the classroom with them, relating to students joyfully, opening themselves to even the smallest things, teaching engaged with other lives, delighting in the beauty that is the classroom, being nurturers, reminding themselves that it is good to be in a place filled with endless possibilities, going that sparsely populated extra mile, having a vision and living it, letting themselves be a conduit of learning’s immense joy, being empathetic of the inner and outer battles we’re all fighting, feeling empowered by an ability to make a difference, overwhelming the difficulties with unmatched joy, transforming obligations into opportunities for spectacular achievement, and knowing how good it feels to be in awe of each moment they’re in and of each person they are with.

Louis

This reflection may get me into trouble.  But, here goes.

A few days ago, I was sitting at the Union struggling with a hard, wrinkled, overcooked, sorry-I-ordered hotdog for lunch as I waited in my “office” to talk with a student.  I always talk with students on their turf rather than in my department office.  Anyway, I have to admit that I was in a funk.  The semester was coming to an end which is always bittersweet for me.  But, I was really thinking about Susie, about all the pain she has been suffering in her shoulder, about her impending surgery next week, about the painful rehab she’ll have to endure for months to come, and about how in the coming weeks I was going to willingly pull all-nighters in order to be her caring slave while pulling together final grades.

I glanced up to see if Trissia had arrived.  She hadn’t, but my eye caught a young man, dressed in a spiffy coat and tie.  I didn’t take much notice.   I did when he suddenly stopped, turned, and approached me.  I quickly learned that he was a member of the faculty whom I did not know.  Heck, I had never seen him before.  Anyway, he stood there and without introducing himself, looked down on me as it turned out both literally and figuratively, and said, ‘You’re Schmier, aren’t you.”  I looked up and nodded.

“You have those ‘cutesy’ classes with music and donuts.  I’ve seen your students walk around wearing gold stars.  You give them out for good behavior?  I hear that you don’t lecture or give tests, and that you have the students sing, draw, act, sculpt, interview you, and do all sorts of silly things in your classes.  And, you call that teaching?”

He made each “you” sound so accusing.  After taking a deep breath, a long and deep breath, I slowly replied,  ”No, I call it learning, deep and lasting learning, learning history and learning what they are capable of being.”

“It’s a wonder you don’t have them dance,” he smirked.

“Dance?” I softly asked.  ”That’s a neat idea.  You know, lately I’ve been thinking seriously about having them do an interpretive dance as a project to learn the material, really deeply learn it.  I might give it a try in Fall semester.  Good idea.  I’ll have to give that one a lot of thought over the summer.  Then, your spies can tell you how it went.”

“You may think this is a joke and treat this school as a kindergarten,” he continued, “but let me tell you it is not, and you make it harder for us who feel this is a serious place.  Your classroom is a travesty. ”

Whoa!  Now that was getting too close to the line.  Talk about hurling a tomato!  He sure caught me at the wrong time.  Well, actually he caught me at the right time.  Twenty or more years ago, in that other time and other world before my epiphany, I wouldn’t have taken this sitting down.  And, I have to admit, I came so close to reacting with an explosive “who the hell do you think you are” or a “who the hell do you think you’re talking to?”  But, I didn’t.  Wouldn’t have done any good anyway.  So, I ducked his verbal missiles.

Though I was not in the mood to deal with this sudden, unexpected, and unwarranted chastisement, especially from some young self-inflated whelp whom I didn’t know, who didn’t have the curtesy of introducing himself, and who didn’t know me beyond ‘I hear,’ I kept my cool.  Hiding my annoyance, I took another “why me” and “I don’t need this now” deep breath and smiled.  Calmly and quietly, I kept my seat, looked up–literally, but not figuratively–and I replied very slowly and deliberately with something like, ’First, I’m Louis.  Now, I don’t do ‘cutesy’ or ‘silly.’  With my wife and kids and grandkids, yes.  But, not with students, in class.  There’s nothing kindergartenish about asking students in the Holocaust class to wear a yellow star with ‘Jew’ written on it wherever they go and with whomever they’re with, seven days a week, and reflect in writing each day on how they were treated and felt, in order to de-intellectualize the subject and to help them personalize the emotion of being the objects of curiosity, ridicule, question, separation, and exclusion before they’re shipped off in overcrowded boxcars to be exterminated at Treblinka or Auschwitz.  Gutsy, maybe, but nowhere near cute or silly.  As far as the other stuff in the first year classes, I and the students do all that you say and more, and I take what we do very seriously.  We just have fun learning, ‘serious fun.’  But, of course, you know that the opposite of fun is boredom, not work.  And, boredom is one of the worse corrosives on learning.  Anyway, everything I do has a reflected purpose that I share with the students.  And you know that being asked to do something that seemingly has no purpose is another corrosive of learning.  Everything you listed has what I call ‘my “why.”‘   The ‘cutesy’ and ‘silly,’ as you call them, are all based on the way I experiment with and apply the findings of recent scientific research on learning.  It’s no different than engineering students at Georgia Tech being asked to figure out how to drop an egg off a ten story building without breaking it.  You should read some the literature; it’s fascinating stuff–and challenging to what we traditionally do.  You know, that lecturing and testing and grading stuff.  I’m waiting for a student, but she won’t be here for a while.   So, if you have time, why don’t you sit down and we’ll talk about it.  You owe me a few minutes to allow me to ‘defend’ myself even if I don’t need defending.”

“I have to go to my class,” he shot back with a slight sneer on his face and something of a snide tone of voice, “to do some serious (his emphasis) teaching.”

I continued to give him a kindly smile, ”Some other time, then.  Give me a buzz and we’ll have lunch or whatever together.  Or, give me your e-mail address and I’ll send you a bibliography of the literature on learning.  Make it a good day.”  He turned.  And, he was off without ever having given me his name or department or e-mail address.  I almost felt I was at the end of a Lone Ranger episode asking, “Who was that masked man?”  I looked at the half-eaten, now cold hotdog.  I pushed it away.  It had left as bad a taste as my unknown colleague’s arrogance and self-righteousness.

While I waited for Trissia, I grabbed a napkin, pulled out a pen, and jotted down somethings that was similar to a comment I later sent to the NY Times in response to a David Brooks editorial:  ”How many of us–faculty, students, administrators–in higher education tend to confuse credentialing with educating?  How many of us tend to confuse “a wasted course” with “a course in my major.”  How many of us tend to confuse stagnation with tradition?  How many of us tend to think that just because we know our discipline that we know how to teach it?  How many of us confuse training for the lab or archive with training for the classroom?  How many of us confuse publishing that article or getting that grant with touching a student.  How many of us tend to confuse trappings and structure with essence?  How many of us tend to think that she or he who has gotten the highest grade has learned the most?  How many of us confuse ‘easy’ with valuable, ‘hard’ with ‘impossible,’ ‘important’ with ‘significant,’ ‘challenge’ with ‘barrier,’ ‘valuable’ with ‘values,’ ‘fun’ with ‘frivolity,’ and ‘serious’ with ‘pain?’  How many of us tend to confuse ‘can’t,’ ‘don’t', and ‘won’t?’  How many of us tend to confuse ‘work,’  ’boredom,’ ‘serious,’ and ‘fun?’  How many of us tend to confuse test with true assessment? How many of us confuse technology with panacea? How many of us confuse transmitting information and developing skills with ‘modeling’ vision, purpose, and meaning?  How many of us tend to confuse honor student with ‘honor person?’  How many of us tend to confuse ‘getting a good job’ or getting into a graduate or professional school with the ‘job of living the good life?’ How many of us tend to think that the best student has the brightest future?  Our system is so grade-ridden, it doesn’t make the grade; it is so dependent on the test that is doesn’t pass the test.  How many of us make the student experiences as closed as the classroom door? And, then, how many of us wonder why students close their books and why they don’t see learning as an unending, exciting, open-ended experience. The grade, test, GPA, recognitions, awards, the degree–and the quest for tenure–all have become ‘serious’ debilitating surrogates for ‘the joyful life-long love of learning.’”

Am I being too harsh?  Maybe?  But, think about it.  Think about my unknown arrogant, self-righteous, disrespectful colleague, an extreme example as he may be.  Think about it long and hard–and honestly.   I have, still am, and always will.

Louis

I just put down Terese Amabile’s THE PROGRESS PRINCIPLE.  In it she says that higher purpose leads to better performance, and better performance results in greater achievement.   That is, reflected upon work, purposeful work, meaningful work, is the single most factor in achievement; that loving what you do and doing what you love, that having a “why” for what you do, that caring about what you do, has an enormous impact on the proverbial “bottom line.”  One passage I underlined said, “People are more creative, productive, committed, and collegial in their jobs when they have positive inner work lives. But it’s not just any sort of progress in work that matters. The first, and fundamental, requirement is that the work be meaningful to the people doing it.”  That’s true for students when they ask, “Why do I have to take….;” it certainly is true for us when we ask, “Why do we have to….”

Chance or choice, that is the question:  Are we to be an actor merely reading the lines handed to us or are we to be a playwright penning our own lines?  I learned that what happens to me doesn’t mean much; what I do with it does.  Do I obsess over how tough the challenge is and make it an obstacle or do I find the strength, courage, imagination, and creativity to work through it and make it an opportunity?  That is the question.  Our happiness or misery, our sense of meaningfulness or meaninglessness depends on our disposition.  Unless we want to be blown about haplessly by the winds of chance, we must live by choice, not chance.  We can make all the excuses we want, complain all we will, retreat into all the resignations all we wish, level all the blame we can muster, but as I finally admitted two decades ago they don’t offer much; pride, belief, vision, meaning, significance, confidence, hope, and commitment offer a heck of a lot more.  We have control.  The question is whether we choose to use that control or not, whether we choose to be, as I help students to learn to be, our own voice rather than an echo of someone else’s.  Sure, it’s hard to stand up and resist that pressure.  Sure, it’s easy to be safe and secure, to avoid conflict or confrontation.  Sure, it’s easy to go along in order to get along.  Sure, it’s easy to see it as a matter of personal and professional survival.  Sure, it’s easy to do what others want in the quest to secure tenure, what a colleague called “the guarantee for a life-long job.”  Sure, it’s easy to rationalize that “once I get…” But, take heed.  As the easy, safe, comfortable, convenient short run lengthens and runs into the long run, as habits of “giving in” deepen and take hold; life becomes increasingly transformed from a “wow” to an unexcited “ho-hum” and/or to an anguished “arrrgh,” and gets more and more tragically smileless, old, lifeless, tough, depressing, and unrewarding.

Choosing, then, is not about taking the path towards quick or easy or safe or comfortable or convenient or guarantee.  Academia too often changes at a glacial pace, a tweak here, a hone there, and an adjustment somewhere.  It’s what Clayton Christensen, in his INNOVATOR’S DILEMMA, would call “sustaining change.”  Academia has become a culture that is averse to inconvenience, discomfort, challenge, risk, mistake, and anything that is perceived as a threat to the granting of tenure or promotion.   Satisfaction, fulfillment, significance, however, comes from, as Aristotle said, how you choose to deal with that mixture of the good and bad times, with the successes and failures, with the safe and dangerous, with the easy and challenging.

Experiences stretch you when you let them have an impact.  If we choose to live, we have to choose to make mistakes, to walk the challenging road; we have to choose to develop a vast capacity for failure and pain rather than seeking guarantees to avoid them; we have to choose to be emotional and subjective; we have to choose to dream, imagine.  Subjectivity versus objectivity, emotion versus reason, spirituality versus rationality are all false dichotomies.  If you choose to live justly and respect each and every student, if you live lovingly and have compassion for each student, if you live humbling and focus on the students rather than on yourself, and help each student to learn to live the same way, to remake themselves into the noble and sacred being they are, you’re engaged in them all.  Chances are, however, if you’re not engaged in them all, you’re not really engaged in any.

So, two decades ago, at the ripe old age of 50, I started discovering that the best adventures occur when we  choose to venture into new, unmarked terrain.  I surprised myself and for reasons I’m not sure I understand to this very day, I suddenly–literally, suddenly–began choosing own my own life and not worrying about those others; I choose to walk a road, my own road, to becoming young.  In the autumn of 1991, as I unexpectedly felt fierce, hot tears streaming down my cheeks like lava flowing from an erupting caldera, I chose to make it the springtime for the rest of my life; at that moment, I chose, consciously chose, that as I got older, I would not become old.  That Fall, I chose and still choose to rise and not to let anything become old hat, routine, and stale.  That September of 1991, I chose, and still choose, to heed Dylan Thomas; I began to rage against my dim light, and chose no longer to go gentle into that good night.  Instead, I chose to learn to let my age burn and rave, to sing the sun, to blaze like meteors and be joyous, to replace curses with blessings.  I chose and still choose for my words to fork lightning, for no deed to be frail, to embrace the newness and richness of each moment.  No, I chose and still choose not to pass mildly by.  There will be no dying light, no grieving of what could have been, no surrender of my life inside this breast of Louis Schmier.

Louis

I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Rik Smits on left-handedness.  Boy, he sure hit the proverbial nail on the head.  I am living proof of that.  I knew exactly what he was talking about since my life spans the times when being left-handed was condemned and is now supposedly celebrated.  Or, at least, tolerated.  You see, I am a southpaw; I am as “southern” a southpaw there is.  I’m so left-handed I joking say that if I must have a stroke, I hope it occurs in my “left brain” so it only effects my right side.  I won’t miss it.  Then, last year when the orthepedic surgeon said I had a small tear in my left shoulder’s rotator cuff  (don’t swing on the jungle gym at 70 with your grandmunchkin), I gladly offered up my right shoulder for surgery as a surrogate.

Seriously, when I was in first grade at New York’s P.S. 160 in 1946, I was deemed a menace, possessed by Satan himself (my Susie says I do have a little devil in me).  Literally!!!  It seems hard to believe, but Mrs. Satchel, a diminutive, not very nice person who always had a scowl on her face and in her heart (if she had a heart), who looked like she had just stepped out from an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus, took it upon herself to take the lead in the fight against the dark force that was controlling me.   With the passion of a not-to-be-deterred fanatic on a mission, for her there was no such thing as going too far.  She saw only weakness and danger in my strong side.  For her, nothing good was associated with the left side.  To put the proverbial fear of God in both me and the other students, especially during penmanship, she would point her bony finger at me, with fire in her eyes and threat in her voice, angrily saying to the other students, “Do you want to be evil like Schmier?”  She used that word, “evil,” over and over and over again against me.  I was only seven years old!  It was unmerciful persecution.

I vividly still remember the times she would rap my knuckles or the palm of my left hand with the heavy whacks of a wooden ruler in her struggle, in her words, “to drive out the demons.”  When I wouldn’t compromise and write with my left hand as if it was contorted by a twisting muscular constriction that feigned being right-handed, she got angrier, more determined, and hit me harder.  Many was the time I would come home hiding my swollen, bloodied left hand in my pant or coat pocket, run to the bathroom to pour cold water over it and wash the blood from my knuckles or palm, and then keep it from view, hoping my  mother or especially my father wouldn’t notice.  It was sheer brutality.

One day, my older brother saw my bloodied knuckles and asked if I had been in a fight.  I made the mistake of telling him about Mrs. Satchel. He and I weren’t close.  He ratted me out, telling my father that I had told him that I had gotten into a street brawl.  Showing dad my bloodied knuckles, in my defense, and since he was astute enough to notice I didn’t have any other cuts or welts on either my right hand or face, I had to tell him about Mrs. Satchel.  Now, my father was a stern, demanding man.  He was controlling and authoritarian, but in his way he was extraordinarily loving.  He never laid a finger on me or my siblings, and scorned any type of corporal punishment.  His eyes, stentorian voice, and force of personality were enough to cower anyone.  The next day, against my silent wishes, dad went to school with me.  He and Mrs Satchel had a talk.  I watched and listened.  It must have made a heck of an impression on my young mind and soul because I vividly remember that meeting almost word-for-word as if it happened only a few minutes ago.

To sum it up, Mrs. Satchel wouldn’t back down. To this very day, I can see her now telling my father why she walloped me so hard that she had drawn blood–on more than one occasion.  I saw my father’s eyes when he heard that this one incident wasn’t an anomaly.  She didn’t notice his lips tightening and went on.  She explained that I had a disease that demanded curing; I was possessed by a demon who required an exorcism; I was a backward child; I was plagued with mental, physical, and psychological abnormalities; I needed special treatment.  She told my father that I didn’t belong in a regular class; I was rebelliousness; I was stubborn; I was a non-conformist; I was clumsy; I was goofy; I was messy; I was malicious; I was unorthodox; I was a deviant; I was sinister; I was a challenge to authority.  And, I had to be forced into line.  About the only thing she left out was the cliche that hurting me hurt her more.  No apologies.  No second thoughts.  It was medieval.

Now, Mrs. Satchel, who had made me into the embodiment of all those negatives associated with being left handed, was herself the embodiment of all the biases against left handers.  I am sure that if she were alive today, she’d say she had cared.  I would say that she was selfishly careless with her uncaring type of caring, loveless with her type of loving, disrespectful with her type of respect, that she had a passion that lacked both empathy and compassion, and that she was arrogant and self-righteous.  She could not understand my father’s firm disagreement and order not to touch me again.  After all, she was being merciful; she was being responsible; she was being a healer; she was being helpful; she was ridding me of my sinister ways; she was fighting to change my “negative character.”  God, to this day, some 65 years later, I remember the exact words she used in her defense:  ”We all should pray for him and fight for his soul by driving out his evil.”  To which my father firmly replied, “He’s not the evil one in this room.”   I think it finally sunk in that dad was a force with which to be reckoned.

After that conversation, the ruler never came down on my left hand again, but it had left its scaring mark,  Nevertheless, the verbal assaults or what she called “godly discipline” continued.   I won’t tell you about the number of times Mrs. Satchel accused me of cheating on classroom assignments and tests.  I must admit that it did seem that I was looking at other students’ work because I had to turn my body awkwardly and uncomfortably, and even painfully, to write on those damnable right-handed desks.  She would yell at me for all to hear to “give in,” to “stop trying to be different,” “be normal,” and to write with the “‘right’” “godly” hand like “every other person.”   I was the odd kid out.  Because of her, I was mercilessly taunted on the playground and in the lunchroom.  She even did it, but, as Paul Harvey would have said, that’s the rest of the story.  I do remember that often, if wasn’t for my father, sometimes I wished she would hit me with the ruler rather than assault me with those words.   It was barbarism.

Then, two decades later, came the social, cultural, and political revolutions of the ’60s that fought for women, homosexuals, African-American, and student rights.  A little known off-shoot of those battles was the quasi-successful fight for lefty rights.  I was free–kinda. Today, I am seen in a bit more kinder light, but I am still a battle ground.  You should read some of the supposed “scientific left-handed facts” about me.  Google them.  Compared to right handers, I am angrier, a better leader, more embarrassed, more prone to illness, more prone to commit a crime, more of a boozer, more artistic,  more fearful, better at sports, will have a shorter lifespan, more fearful,  more imaginative, sloppier (Susie would vigorously agree with this one), shyer, and more creative.  And, it goes on.

The subtle prejudices are still there.  It’s still an adventure to find left-handed tools; it’s still tough to use a right-handed scissors or cutting knife; a left-handed classroom desk still is a rarity; and, I still have to contort my body to sign a fixed, right-facing credit card swipe terminal at a check-out counter.

When I heard at a parent-teacher evening, my left-handed son’s second grade teacher tell me that we should “convince” him of the “wrongness” in using his left hand and get him to use his “‘right’ hand,” that moment in the mid-1970s took me back to those days in the dark ages of the mid-1940s.  True, she didn’t invoke Divine sanction of her attitude.  But, as I firmly told her to leave him alone and to deal with his left-handedness, and don’t either pressure him or punish him, I sighed silently to myself, “At least they’re no longer using a ruler.”

What’s the point of this story?  I have never forgotten Mrs. Satchel.  She is my warning memory of the consequences of being toxic rather therapeutic, and as Abraham Mazlow might say, she was as toxic as they come.   She is my constant reminder that, as Haim Ginott wrote:

I am the decisive element in the classroom.
It is my personal approach that creates the climate.
It is my daily mood that makes the weather.
As a teacher I possess tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous.
I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration.
I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.

So, I am always on high alert to what I say and do, to how I feel; to my attitude; to my body language and vocal tones; to my facial expression; to keeping sharp my senses of mindfulness, otherness, awareness, and alertness; to seeing more than mere looking and to listening more than merely hearing; to practicing my RO6; to unconditionally loving, believing in, and having hope for in each and every student; and, to being the guy who is there–unconditionally–to help each student help her/himself become the person each is capable of becoming.

Louis

It was black this morning as I went out onto the silent pre-dawn streets and into me.  For me, no spiritual, meditative, philosophical, or even cognitive exercise is as powerful as silence, as experiencing the “joy of stillness,” as quiet exploration of your inner self, as just being a sacred, noble, unique “me.”  In that hour of silence I feel more grounded.  No static.  No noise.  No distraction.  No demands.  Only presence.  In that darkness emerges immeasurable light that carries me on my vision of dedicated service to each student.

As I returned from my two miles of mobile mediation, the dawn had broken.  In the growing light, I walked through my flower garden filled with early blooms.  That’s what happens when there is no winter.  I thought of how our fantastic ability to create pulls us out of the dark and into a world of vibrant color, and to imagine the future. Every gardener knows this, and of course you do not necessarily need beds, seeds, or bulbs to be a nurturing gardener.  We can be gardeners on our campuses and in our classrooms.

Knowing that we each have that intriguing adventure within reach, I started thinking of an exchange I’ve been having with a self-denigrating student.  I’ve been encouraging her to seek professional help in finding ways to stop listening to the voices of darkness that she’s allowed to weigh her down and to replace them with believing voices of light that will uplift her.  My thoughts turned to a poem I had written a long time ago in dedication to a dear, now departed, friend.  I had titled it “You Tell Me; You Don’t Say.”  Avoiding the resurgent and voracious mosquitoes that would surely carry me off if I sat by the Koi pond (another sign of our absent winter), I came into the house, got myself a cup of freshly brewed coffee, sat in front of the computer, pulled the poem up, read it several times, and sent it to her.  It began and ended with:

You tell me what you know….

      You don’t say who you are

You tell me what you do….

      You don’t say who you are

You tell me what you have….

        You don’t say who you are

How often students define themselves and we define them by assignments, scores, grades, courses, GPAs, sports, sororities and fraternities, selected majors, honors, awards, and recognitions.  How often do we define students and ourselves by religion, skin color, ethnic background, political persuasion, social status, nationality, gender, sexual preference, and even being southpaws?  How often do we define ourselves by our titles, positions, degrees, grants, publications, and expertise?  How often do we define ourselves by whether or not we are tenured?  How often do we define ourselves by our award, honors, and recognitions?  How often do we define ourselves by our roles as husband or wife, son or daughter, father or mother, boyfriend or girlfriend or just plain friend?   How many times do we define ourselves by our cars, houses, clothing, jewelry, charitable acts, investments, income?  How many times do we define ourselves by our vocations, advocations, hobbies, or anything we do?  Why do we have to supply that information for people to know us?  Why do we have to have that information to know ourselves?  Maybe “judge” is a better word than “know.”

What if we didn’t have this information or these descriptions or these labels?  Would we realize, then, that this information is often an opaque curtain between us and ourselves, not to mention between us and others, between actuality and appearance?  Would we reflect more often on who we are when we’re not in these roles, when we’re without our resumes, when we’re without our status, when we’re without our relationships, when we are not doing these things, when the facades are taken down, when the curtain is parted, when the mask is off?  Would we be more attentive to who we are when we shed these identities?  That is the question the Bard asked when he had Polonius advise Laertes in one breath with the insightful warnings that “the apparel oft proclaims the man,” and “to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”  Why, then, can’t we just be true to ourselves and just be a “me,” a sacred, noble, unique human being?

For me, to be a “Louis,” and that rhymes with “phooey,” to be a “just me,” is to have a radical trust in life.  No strings attached.  No bravado.  No status.  No conditions.  No “what’s in it for me.”  I’ve found that students will tend to trust me more if I trust myself because they will see me, warts and all, see my authenticity, and come to know me. And that’s crucial for a viable classroom.

You know what a classroom is?  It’s not a history of this or biology of that.  It’s a bunch of people, human beings, bumping into other human beings, most of whom are awkward, off balance, inexperienced, and fearful.  From reading journals, students would love to seen for who they each are.  We can give them that.  It’s tough, but it’s the best chance for me and each of them to connect and have a meaningful experience.  We have to be gardeners, planting, cultivating, nurturing, growing into, and living three virtues:  belief or faith, hope, and love.  These virtues are too often hidden in plain view.  We can see them if we make way for them through our own loving-kindness.  These virtues give to everyone a meaning to be blessed and to bless.  They, like gravity, hold you down while soaring to great heights.  They’re the most liberating teaching force in the classroom.  They’re forces of renewal and resilience.  They place you not only at the head of the class,. but in the heart of the class.  They let you revel in playfulness, meaningfulness, joyfulness, purposefulness, light-heartedness, fulfillment, achievement, and significance.  They endow you with  the power of a question mark: to search, to be aware, to be attentive, to see, to listen, to have an otherness.  It is up to us to live them each hour in order to keep alive the vision for what lies behind these virtues.  These three virtues are verbs; they are our greatest tools to help us fully live our hours.  They always have the power to force us to remember and draw us back to what is true and beautiful at those times we forget and drift off.

You might ask, “Why me?  Where were all the adults for these students to keep their innate wonder alive?”  You might say, “It’s not my job.”  I say, “No matter, for we are now here.”  We have to weary of our whining about this void.  Instead, we have to step up to the proverbial plate and be that person who is there to help each student help her/himself strive to become the person she or he is capable of becoming, who will be in a student’s company to help her or him rediscover the joy and mystery of both her/himself and the world around her or him.  Do that and you will help generate miracles in life; do that and in the muddled mess of the classroom somehow and sometime you will spot a glory to celebrate.

I just told that student that there are plenty of obstacles that can stand in her way. She shouldn’t be one of them.  Her own thoughts, feelings, attitudes, assumptions and fears can hold her back just as surely as a solid prison wall. And yet, just as she created those self-imposed obstacles, she can bust through them.  That is, she is her greatest problem, and she is her best solution.  The same is true for us.  Instead of fighting against ourselves with weapons of resignation, frustration, negativity, anger, disinterest, distraction, and even fear, we can marshall the amazing power of our thoughts and feeling to more fully enable ourselves.  To paraphrase the Sufi, if you put the classroom between you and these three virtues, the classroom becomes an obstructive obstacle; if you use the classroom to live these virtues, the classroom becomes your friend, filled with potentials and possibilities, and you’ll make joyful efforts.   Do that, and exclamation marks will replace dour periods.  And, then, what you do in the classroom will have a better chance of having more meaning than merely getting a grade on an exam, going far beyond the physical confines of the classroom, and lasting long after the term is over.

One final word, before you sweep this away with a contemptuous wave off,  just know that this isn’t just philosophical “clap trap,” or New Age fuzziness, or Zen “touchy-feely.”  This is also the hard, neuro-science and cognitive psychology of giving a care.

Louis

Once again I interrupt my reflections on responsibility and choice in the classroom.  The interruption is caused by a student journal entry I just read this morning.  She wrote:  ”My philosophy professor realized the stuff we have been learning for the past two weeks is not any material that going to be on our test so I just believe I learned something that isn’t important and that I will never use.  What a waste.  It’s not just the two weeks.  It’s that this is such an unnecessary class for what I want to be.  I mean, let’s get real.  It has nothing to do with my biology major any more than do some of my other classes.  And to boot, my advisor agrees with me and told me he doesn’t know why we are required to take this useless Core stuff.  And, this course is supposed to mean something to me?  I mean why won’t someone tell me why I have to waste my time and parents’ money taking this useless class?”

Oh, the sins of a credentialing education.  Oh, the sins of so often converting our campuses into only white–collar vo-tech schools.  Oh, the sins that so many academics believe the same thing.  And, don’t blame her for these attitudes.  She didn’t come out from the womb with them; they weren’t built into her genetic code.  They are a “learned response.”.  She, like most students and parents, was well taught in it; she, like most students and parents, learned it well; and, she, like most students and hovering parents, accept it without question.

Do you think this student is unique?  I know she isn’t.  I wage a battle against this prevalent attitude every day.  But, I ask, if you believe it is your responsibility to address this myopic view of the classroom experience; if you believe in “deep learning,” in “life-long love of learning,” in a liberal arts foundation found in what we call “the Core,” what would you tell this student?  I know what I will say to her if she gives me the chance, but first I sent her a copy of a Random Thought I shared way back at the beginning of 1997 titled “Why Do I Have ToTake” and told her to read it before we talk–if she wanted to talk.

Louis

I know.  In this series of reflections about choice, I have spoken about the view from “in here” rather than the doing “out there.”   It almost sounds like something from Alice in Wonderland:  you’re outside and must go inside so that once you’re inside you can go outside.  But, thinking about it, part of my epiphany was a realization that responsibility is a partner of confidence.  Choosing to be responsible for who I am,  is the only way I can be confident of and feel accomplished for what I do.  After all, when I blamed others for my situation with a “they made me do,” wasn’t I saying to myself that I was not strong enough?  When I expected others to supply good fortune, wasn’t I living on their terms?   When I lived according to “what do they think,” wasn’t I surrendering any chance of being successfully me?  So, my epiphany was to go inside and ask my heart what it already knew–and listen.

My bottom line question for my heart, then, was:  How would would you feel and how would your classes look and operate if your main focus was on loving, caring, respecting, believing in, having hope for unconditionally about each person in that classroom, including yourself?  It was an easy question to ask; the hard answers were hard to accept.  From my experience, I assure you that you will have to go inside for the answers.  I also assure you that you won’t find them just waiting there for you.

The challenges are real and are not to be taken lightly.  You see, if you decide to risk the journey, and it is a venture into the dangerous unknown, you have to keep in mind a few things that the cognitive and neuro scientists tell us.  They say that because we all have the same brain, but have different stories, to be an individual is to be a variation on a common theme.  They say that too often we focus too much on the variability at the expense of the commonality.  They say that our brain does not objectively “see,” but subjectively “perceives,” that is, we see things not as they are, but as we are.  They say that while we tend to project ourselves onto others, how and what we actually know of ourselves is vastly different from how and what we can know of others.   They say while it may be bitter to see achievement through another’s eyes, we must acquire an awareness and otherness, for we can observe and learn from the emotional experience of others.  They say that the wise choices do not focus on what we get or do, but on what we truly and deeply emotionally experience.  They say that when we imagine how we will feel upon making a choice, we find it impossible to ignore the influence of how we are feeling now.  So, they say that there’s no simple formula for making any choice; there’s no simple, quick, easy, painless, and surefooted teaching method or technology that we can choose objectively.

Now, my two decade journey has been characterized by a learning and applying toe-testing, cool, balanced “caginess” rather than “jump in” or “jump on the bandwagon” or “all in” audaciousness.  I, nevertheless, reached where and who I am with slow, cautious, incremental, selective, experimental, and continuing choice.  I think Clayton Christensen would say while that I started off as a “sustaining changer,” tweaking here and honing there, I unintentionally and inadvertently became a “disruptive changer.”  Trust me, it took indomitable conviction to follow the north star of my developing, reflected upon, and articulated vision; it took a meaningful and purposeful and significant drive to step confidently ahead; it took an inner passion to keep moving forward; it took the fervor of a missionary to create new values.  The cognitive and neuro research, however, says that frequency is more important than the quantity or intensity.  The small, habitual stuff, the daily nuggets matter much more than occasionally hitting the mother lode.  It is as Leo Buscaglia said, “Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.”   So, if you choose to go inside in order to do outside, do it with while being ”KISSED”:  Keep It Small and Significant Every Day!   Graciously and unconditionally make faith in, hope for, belief in, love of, and kindness towards each and every student your daily personal and style,  knowing that a small step on a great journey is never small.

To be sure, you have to choreograph each step in your own dance, compose each note in your own song, write each word in your own script, and paint each stroke in your own mural.  All I know is that when I sing my own song, when I dance to my own choreography, when I perform my own lines, when I feel obligated to enlarge my world and the world around me, that’s when I experience purpose, meaning, and fulfillment–and help students to feel the same feelings; what’s when I refuse to have pathological view of “what’s wrong with today’s students,” but have a therapeutic focus on “what’s right with today’s student’s.”   And, that’s when I am truly happy: when I truly love who I am and who I am constantly becoming; when I have a durable and enduring feeling of well-being; and, when I have a quiet satisfaction with what I am doing with my life.  I may not be able to put it into words, but when I feel it, I have no doubt of its reality and importance.  And, maybe most important, I know there is so very much more to being an educator than that resume, title, and position; so much more to being than those things you can list.

All you have to remember is that very, very few people, and that includes me and you, can truly flourish if he or she doesn’t care about her/himself or anyone, or feels no one cares about them, values them, notices them, supports and encourages them.   Then, the only way to teach, is to accept unconditionally each person each second in that classroom as that unrepeatable miracle.  ”Kindsight” will give you so much insight.  Do that, and you will be determined to learn, practice, and apply methods and techniques and technologies to teach in that way.

Louis

Over the decades, from my experience and transformation, I’ve concluded that there are only two fundamental choices in life.  The first, is the choice to take the outward route and align ourselves with what we done:  with our credentialed authority, resumes, publications, degrees, and titles; and, we then can define ourselves by what other people think about us with their recognitions and rewards based on what we have done.  The second, is the choice to take the inner route and align ourselves with who we are: we can define ourselves by our spirit, our nobility, our sacredness, our humanity for which there are few recognitions and rewards.

Each choice rests itself on choosing between fear or love.  It’s an either/or choice.  It’s a matter of choosing of wanting to be in a state of fear or a state of unconditional love.  When a student says, “I’m stressed,” that’s fear. When a faculty member says, “I’m not comfortable doing that,” that’s fear.  When a student says, “I’m not good at,” that’s fear.  When a faculty member says, “But, I don’t have tenure,” that’s fear.  When a student says, “I have to drop….,” that’s fear.  When a faculty member says, “I’m not good with….,” that’s fear.  When a student says, “I can’t,” that’s fear. When a faculty member says, “I’m not comfortable with,” that’s fear.  When a student says, “What if,” that’s fear. When a faculty member asks, “Do I need this for my P/T document,” that’s fear.  When a student asks, “Will this be on the test,” that’s fear.  When a faculty member says, “You know what my colleagues will think,” that’s fear.  When a student says, “I’ll do anything not to be single,” that’s fear.  When a student utters a self-effacing negative, it’s her or his fear speaking.  Neither isn’t stressed, isn’t unable, doesn’t hate, doesn’t like, isn’t good at, doesn’t know; that student is afraid, afraid of being wrong, afraid of getting a lower grade, afraid her or his parents won’t be proud of her or him, afraid of having the wrong boyfriend or girlfriend, afraid of choosing the wrong major, afraid, afraid, afraid.  It’s no different with each of us academics.

Fear.  Constricting, restricting, enslaving. Imprisoning.  I knew it well.  It was a dear, corrosive companion of mine, but it was no dear friend. Then, somehow and for some reason, maybe it was the power of crisis, I chose to let go of things past, to get off the worn path of accepted action, to let my epiphany shift my consciousness, to strike out on new paths, and so it took me somewhere else in the very same physical place I was already at.  It was a place where I no longer gave fear a seat at the table.  It was a place with open front doors, not locked cell doors.  That energizing and liberating somewhere else is called “love.”

Love.  There, in that place, love is so transformative that its incandescence drives away fear’s darkness.  Yet, unlike an article, book, grant, degree, title, position, love can’t be neatly line-itemed on a resume or neatly packaged in a Tenure and Promotion portfolio. To paraphrase something I read, it’s like a star:  you can’t put your hand on it, but it sure is a guide to follow to your potential.  I had stumbled on happiness.  I slowly found that real inner serenity, fulfillment, meaningfulness, purposefulness are not about doing something outside you; they’re about touching that potential that is within you.  I slowly learned that judgmentalism, anger, condemnation, resignation, anxiety, and weeding out don’t “fix” anything.  No amount of fear, living and modeling it, is going to make anyone fearless.  No amount of resignation is going make one person excited; no amount of being sick of anything is going to make one person better.  No amount of negativity, is going to result in any positive thing.  Unconditionally treasuring your own magnificence, unconditionally treasuring the magnificence of each student, does.

But, the problem is:  whom to specifically love.  So, for the past two decades, each time I go into a classroom or talk with a student, I ask, “Who is right in front of me to whom I must pay attention?”  It’s a seminal habit to have, for that question has helped me do everything I do to cut through that obscuring veil, “student,” to connect with the each individual person.  To do that, I’ve replaced looking with seeing and hearing with listening:  as we do the various beginning-of-the-term “getting to know ya” exercises, when I read each student’s journal daily entry, when I look at the “how I feel” word each student writes on the whiteboard, when we briefly discuss the “words for the day” at the beginning of each class, when I read and listen to each face and body.  It also showed me that the answer I seek is usually inside me and inside each student.  We may be busier than busy, but we cannot let that question or the truth of the answer get lost in the shuffle.  If we do, we lapse into and are imprisoned by impersonal, stereotypic, generalized, and skewed assumption and perception.  The result more often than not is a misinterpretation or what the psychologists call “attribution error.”

Sure, most of us don’t pay attention to character development as part of our job description.  We display an uneasiness when we’re faced with the language of morality beyond the clinical word “plagiarism.”  But, I have come to believe that you cannot fully consider student achievement or lack of it merely by looking at tests, papers, projects, grades, or GPAs.  Other than that intellectual and academic word, we tend to reject any responsibility to consciously instill virtuousness.  Now, I’m not talking about Zen or Greek philosophy, or even Judeo-Christian theology.  Well, I am because I’m talking about respect, kindness, cooperation, consideration, compromise, self-control, reliability, self-esteem, self-confidence, service, and all that which goes into living by the entire Golden Rule–or my Teacher’s Oath.  Like it or not, we’re moral evaluators and we are actors in a morality play.  Haim Ginott reminds us, each of us, whether was like it or not, is a spiritual leader; we can chose pathologically to be self-focused, uncaringly or conditionally pulling a few students into our own limited ego while disdaining and disrespecting and discarding most others rather than unconditionally honoring each of them; or, we can chose therapeutically to make care our core, to accord each student the unconditional dignity and respect to which each is entitled; we can chose to approach each student with the realization that there is no condition to loving and no limit to loving.

With unconditional belief, kindness, empathy, compassion, service, learning, we can help ourselves and each student have a chance to think and feel differently about ourselves, her/himself, and others; to grow and transform, and thereby muster the courage to walk new roads.  After all, whether credentialed faculty or yet-to-be credentialed student, isn’t achievement made by those who do what they were afraid to do, made by those who expand their horizons, , made by those who discover that there are no limits to learning and improving and achieving, made by those who see what they can become by nudging themselves away from their stationary “I am,” made by those who do what they did not previously know they could do, made by those who reach for what they cannot yet touch?   Neither student nor us can push forward by fearfully staying safe and comfortable; or, bring new passion and strength to our lives by avoiding the path least traveled; or, discover amazing and untapped ability by holding tightly to the tired excuses, worn rationales, and outdated assumptions;  or, unwrap and use the transcending gifts of discovering new experiences, new skills, new knowledge, new self-esteem, and new self-confidence by accepting the limits of the old.  Leo Buscaglia was right on point, and the recent cognitive and neuro-research backs him up.  Nothing is meaningless and wasted when we live from a social place; from a place holding hands, connecting with, and being in community with love.

So, it boils down to this, we have to go beyond displaying our credentials and helping students get credentialed.  We have to teach both our discipline and life.  We have to live and model four all encompassing life values:  an unconditional open and generous heart to all, an unconditional empathy and compassion for all, an unconditional kindliness and respectfulness toward all, and service in the interest of others.

Louis

As I walked the wet streets this morning, an old question started once again to buzz in my head:  ”Do we really believe anyone can truly flourish if no one cares about them, values them, notices them, supports and encourages them?”  It was triggered when I was at a Bar Mitzvah party last weekend.  I was mulling around after dinner with a bowl of ice cream that one of the servers, a student who had been in class with me, had “stolen” from the kitchen for me–the perks of giving her an “A.”   A woman came up to me, drink in hand, a flashing party hat on her head, a smile on her face.  She gently rested her hand on my hand that was holding the bowl.  She introduced herself to me. I looked at her.  I could barely hear her over the party’s deafening “noise” coming from the banquet room being played by the DJ who felt that volume was proportional to musical quality.  Anyway, she leaned into my ear and said in a few darting sentences, “Dr. Schmier, I know you don’t remember me.  I’m….(too noisy to hear) and I’m a teacher at….(again, too noisy to hear).”  Honestly, I was being polite since I was focusing on my ice cream, that is, until she hit me square in heart’s eyes, “I was one of your freshmen students ten years ago.  I saw you and just wanted you to know that of all of my professors, you were the most important.  I never forget you.  You’re with me in my class every day whispering in my ear.  I want to thank for loving me when I didn’t and showing me that I was worth loving myself.  You changed my life when you helped me see what you saw and set me on the right course.  And, because of you I am helping my students struggle to do that, too.  I just wanted to come to you and thank you when I saw you standing here.”

I was stunned.  Caught by surprise, I froze with a spoonful of ice cream half way to my open mouth.  Slowly, I replied with a subdued, “Thank you.”  But, before I could gather my composure and add that she should thank herself for having the courage and mustering her newfound inner strength to make the hard choice of getting off her loveless path and to walk her own loving road, she was gone.

“Loving.”  Thinking this morning of that word she used,  I know that all which is embodied in that “heart-word” was at the heart of my epiphany twenty years ago.  It was, as Carl Jung would have said, what I had chosen to allow a certain and sudden realization to take hold of me rather me having it.  That meant there was no letting when things got uncomfortable, inconvenient, and downright painful.  And, trust me, they did, for the realization was a very uncomfortable one of a need to transform my “self.”  Heeding the realization, I held my breath and consciously took the deep plunge inside looking for the answers to my five essential questions:  ”Who am I?”  ”How did I get here?  ”Where should I be going” “What am I here to do?”  and “Why does it matter?”

The quest for answers took me on a journey traveling from an exclusiveness and selective distance to an inclusiveness and unconditional connection.  It was a change in my understanding about self-reliance.  It took me to a higher and deeper place where I slowly, carefully, hesitantly risked being vulnerable and leaving my protective ego behind.  I slowly and carefully, chose to move from an authoritative, masked, self-centered “spotlight on me” to a vulnerable, trusting, and loving reliance on a nobility and sacredness and uniqueness of my humanity.  And, I then quickly expanded my questioning to an inclusive sixth one about each student: “Who are you?”  The evolving answers helped me to decide that I should be teaching each student, not merely my transmitting the information and skills of my discipline; to see that each of us, including each student, is special; that, in the spirit of Psalms 82:6, each student is a human being, possessing a “sacredness,” a “godliness” if you will, who is too valuable to simply disrespect, easily dismiss, or quickly discard.  No, instead of being arrogantly and coldly weeded out, each student should be empathetically and compassionately nourished.

That change has become my only coin of my realm.  That realization even has had an impact on my exercise routine of daily jogging, later power walking, and lifting weights.  Triggered by a dear friend’s heart attack at 35, my workouts first had been out of a reluctant and fearful desperation to get back into physical shape.  They slowly transformed into avid work-ins to become emotionally and spiritually relaxed, fluid, and  ”in shape.”  And, as that transformation too place, I slowly learned that the body and spirit that walk and work together have “heart” health together, that both are wondrous things if maintained and treated with respect.

So, slowly, oh so slowly, I acquired an awareness, otherness, and attentiveness.  I became aware of my memories and acknowledged my hurts, which made me attentive to theirs; I became conscious of my self-serving, selective, and discriminating perceptions about myself and others, which made me attentive to theirs; I became conscious of my ups and downs, heartaches, and thrills, failures and successes, with which I made a “been there, done that” connection with them.  Now, each time I feel myself becoming judgmental and critical of myself, colleagues, and especially of students, I think “heart.” When you think heart, your empathy appears; when your empathy appears, your compassion rises; when your compassion rises, you reach out in the service of others; when you serve others, you get to know their “heart stories;” when you get to know their heart stories, your heart opens; when your heart opens, you think “heart;” and it starts all over.   I call this my “Loving Edge.”

You may only look at this woman as a result of living that Edge, but you also have to look at a lot of the hard work that goes into keeping that Edge keen.  Using my Ro4 method to avoid what the psychologists call attribution error, I consciously started correcting myself, pulling back, and stopping myself.  I no longer say, knee-jerk “How can they do that?” or jump to a quick conclusion “How can they think that way?”  or automatically reflex “Student nowadays aren’t ….”  I no longer send them negative and demeaning, and pathological denigrating messages.  Instead, I stretch out my hand, open my heart, and broaden my mind.  In responses to their journal entries, in small talk, in the “words of the day” I write on the whiteboard and we discuss for a few minutes at the beginning of each class, I just send them a positive, uplifting, empathic, supportive, encouraging, compassionate, and therapeutic, “You’re better than that.” ” You can.”  ”You’ll surprise yourself.” And, I when I do that, there are better chances that things will happen; when things happen, transformation can occur; and, that’s when miracles have a better chance of taking place.  I discovered that if I chose to align myself with my nobility and sacredness and uniqueness, everything I feel, think, and do will go in a certain direction, and I will align myself with each of their nobility, sacredness, and uniqueness.  And, then, I have opportunities every minute of every day to get to that place and to stay in that place; or, if I go astray, to get back to that place.  When you have given joyfully, without hesitation or reservation or condition or thoughts of gain, you never know.  Someone may come up to you while you’re eating a sinful, purloined bowl of ice cream, and tell you that it was all worthwhile.

Louis