The Random Thoughts of Louis Schmier

“So,” asked Julia as we continued our conversation of last week, “if teaching is tough, how do you keep at it?  Don’t you get tired of it, of us?”

“I focus,” I answered.  ”You don’t know the power of focusing although you use it and don’t realize it.  It’s a heart skill that too many people ignore and don’t learn.  But, it’s not just focus; it’s the kind of focus and on what I focus that’s important;  it’s the kind of focus that sends out caring rather than anger, encouragement rather than frustration, connection rather than disinterest, commitment rather than fear, and community rather than strangerness.”

I told her that focus tames frenzy; it applies brakes; it gives you a sense that you’re not out of control; it organizes your mind and heart.  When I’m focusing, I’m not caring about students in a class; I see the class as a gathering of “sacred ones;” I hear that angel reminding me that each one is created in the image of the divine; I’m caring about one person, one at a time.  It’s an unconditional, locking in kind of focusing:  believing in focusing; having faith in focusing; having hope for focusing; loving focusing.  And, that is an uplifting, invigorating, recharging, and inspiring focus for me.  When I focus I’m abiding by my “Ten Commandments of Teaching” and my “Teacher’s Oath;”  when I focus she or he is important to me; I notice her or him; I’m there to help her or him become the person she or he is capable of becoming, often to help her or him change the way she or he is looking at her/himself and life.  It’s a determined focus that gives me an effective focus, a purposeful focus, an empowering focus.  I told her that it’s both a state of mind and of heart.  It’s a filtering state that allows me to know on what to concentrate, and what to ignore.  That way, there’s little to distract me, little to throw me off track, little to frustrate me, little to annoy me.

“But, how do you do that for all of us at one time.  God, you must get uptight a lot, concentrating so much. Don’t you get drained?” she said in surprise.

“No, not really” I answered.  I told her that my focus is not an uptight focusing.  Sure, I’m moving my spotlight from person to person, and my eyes are in a state of conscious REM.  But, it’s not like I’m a stalking, muscles taut predator about to pounce on some unwary prey..  It is an intent and it is an intense boring in on one student, but at the same time it’s a relaxed reading of every student.  I focus to understand, not command; to teach with each student, not to teach to each of them;  I don’t work for the university; I work with each student.  It means to break barriers, build bridges, create connect, establish community.  That’s important because strengthening connection with students, eliminating “strangerness” and “aloneness” is the best way to help them achieve.  That means I have to be awake, alert, aware, attentive, attuned, alive, mindful, and to have a strong sense of otherness.  It’s an easy stillness, a still inner energy. No anger, no frustration, no anxiety, no disappointment, no fear.  Just opportunity for improvement, understanding, preparation, care, purpose.   No bouncing around like a ping-pong ball; no uncertainty, no desperation, no frantic, no “this-or-else.”  Focus and relaxed are not antonyms.  Focus and burnout are.  The way I focus makes me relaxed and not worrying about being careless.  It’s not a boxing match.  It’s a dance.  It’s a focus on both self and other in a way that creates and maintains a connection.  I told that if I don’t know yourself and am honest with myself, how can I decide who I should become; if I don’t know what I am, how can I figure out where to go; and if I don’t know my talents and abilities, how can I know what to do.  In this state of focus, trivial outside events do not have the power to distract or annoy me. They lose their “tug ability.”  I simply accept them, ignore them, move past them, and continue working on what’s truly important to me.  I just pay attention, close attention, not just to what I’m doing and what each student is doing.  I carefully see his or eyes, I see his or her face, I listen to her or his body language.

In fact, as an aside, I told her that focus is my best form of evaluating what I’m doing in class.  I don’t really look at the end of the term questionnaires. If anything, they’re too late.  But, to see and read the eyes, face, and body every day.  They’re the best on the spot evaluation; they offer the real shot at flexible, on-time adjustment and adaptability.

“How do you stay focused through everything,” Julia asked.

“Well, lots of ways.  I take one day at a time.  Right now I’m focused on today.  For example, are you still using the ‘uplifting word for today’ I taught you? I asked

“Yes.”

“Great!  Is it working?” I asked.

“Well, it helps me see the good stuff all around.  I pull a card and think about what I can do to live that word that day.  It’s like writing a script that’s telling me what my attitude should be and how I should act no matter what happens.  It’s hard.  I know, before you say it, it’s hard that makes it important.  If it was easy, I wouldn’t be bettering myself.  Today my word is ‘happy.’  So, I’m being happy about lots of things; I find ways to be happy; and I see the reasons to be happy, like talking with you.”

“That’s called focus.  I do it, too.  Today my word is ‘smile.’  And, talking with you is reason to smile.  Do you exercise?”  I then asked.”

“Yes.”

“That’s another way,” I told her.  I explained that my pre-dawn walks, for example, give me a break from yesterday, recharge my batteries, and help start the next day fresh.  It’s a mobile meditation that keeps me at ease and centered.  Still another way is not to take back-to-back classes.  I refused to teach that way.  You and I need a quiet place where and when we have getting down time and getting up time.  Our brain and heart need a shift.  We shouldn’t be in a desperate, rushing, frantic, helter-skelter.  During those depressurizing breaks I stroll the campus, talk with students, blow bubbles, sip a cup of coffee, close my eyes while sitting on a bench, take deep breaths, watch and listen to the birds, look at the bushes and flowers, imagine the students in the upcoming class, organize and prepare both my heart and mind.   All that allows me to shift gears, to exit one state of focus while entering another, to let go of one class and reset myself for the next one.  I also have developed a conscious sense of myself.  That means I’m aware of my emotions, both positive and negative, and fight to make sure I hold tightly to the former and that it far outweighs the latter–and not let the latter get to me.  And finally, I have an end-of-the-day  glass of wine, a piece of cheese with my Susie during out ‘just to’ getaway time.  ”And when I’m with her, I know all is right with the world and I set myself right.”

“I’ve got another question,” Julia said.  ”Don’t you miss us?”

My answer is the last part of our conversation.  After I come back from Hawaii.

Louis

I bumped into a student on campus last week as I went to the Union to get a couple of bags of coffee grounds from Starbucks for my flower garden.

“Hey, Dr. Schmier, how are you doing in your retirement?”

“Pretty good–now.”

“You know, I’ve changed my major from accounting to education because of you.”

“I don’t think so.” I replied.  ”I may have inadvertently helped you nudged yourself out from where you were to where you wanted to be and to what you wanted to do.  I may have asked the questions to help you ask your own questions of yourself, but you had the strength and courage to accept the nudge, ask the questions, come up with the ‘right’ answers, and follow them.”

“So, I got a question for you.”

“Shoot.”

“If you could give me one sentence about teaching that says it all, what would it be.  Now, here, don’t think about it.  What would it be?”

“God, you’re kidding,” I sighed thinking “How do I get into these things.”  ”There is no one sentence.  I can think of a bunch of ‘one sentences.’  Remember how I said to beware of the distorting simplifiers?”

“Do it anyway. Just one.  The one that boils everything down to what you think, feel, and do.  Now, no thinking.  Feel it.  It’s a sort of one of those Rorschach tests I learned about in Psychology.”

“Let me think.  Then, I’ll send you that one sentence.”

“Give them to me, now.”

“Can I explain it?”

“Sure, but don’t get long-winded.  I’ve got a class in an hour.”

“Okay,”  I said, “Here it is.  ’Teaching is tough.’”

“I was ready for you to say something like, ‘teaching is love’ or ‘teaching is caring.”

“It is. It’s my first principle of teaching.  It’s at the top of my ‘Teacher’s Oath.’  But, it’s tough to put that love into action.  It’s easy to write it down.  It’s easy say it.  But, to choose to love, to make it a way of  teaching?   Love is both a noun and a verb.  It’s an intention, but it’s also an action.  That’s hard because you have to honor your own complexity as well as the complexity of each individual in the classroom.”  I went on to tell her that too many of us are looking for or accepting the simple, easy way; all you need is a teaching method, some technology, and a strong dose of content, and, ‘poof,’ you have it.  Well, you don’t.  You don’t because there are no easy answers, no magic technologies, no sure-fire teaching manuals, no ‘nothing to it’ formulas.  Teaching is not like traveling a smooth, paved, well-lit road.   If it was, you’d wilt.  Each day is, should be, must be, like being a pioneer traveling in the wilderness.  Most professors walk into a classroom with an attitude of “anyone can teach,” “teaching is just talking,” “all you need is to know your discipline.”  Too many, believe, have been led to believe, that there’s nothing to it and there’s no reason for any intense preparation; that it doesn’t compare to the training needed to be a scholar, a researcher and publisher.  You don’t need the tenacity of dedication and commitment that research requires.  So, too many don’t relish problems, distaste ‘disruptions,’ avoid challenges, dislike discomforts and inconveniences, skirt difficulties.  And, when it doesn’t go the way they want, when a certain “teaching trick” doesn’t work, when students don’t do want they command, when the technology doesn’t prove to be a panacea, they moan and groan with a finger-pointing  ”students nowadays” complaint; they get frustrated, angry, resigned, and indifferent.  Those false expectations are stifling, wilting, stagnating, atrophying, petrifying.  You can’t make a difference by being indifferent; you can’t be on your toes when you’re flat-footed; you can’t hit the target if you’re not aiming at it; you can’t find different attitudes and ways if you’re set in your attitudes and ways.

“‘Better’ doesn’t spring from ‘easy,’ I told her as I ended my explanation.  ”Nor does learning and growth and transformation.  Deeper ruts are dug by ‘easy.’  Doors are kept shut by ‘easy.’  ’Easy’ is not a springboard for new questions, fresh hope, a drive to learn more, a lever to raise sights, a push to become more.  But, once you understand that and choose to accept–and it is a choice–that teaching is hard, the hard stuff doesn’t matter.  ’Hard’ does become important because it’s no longer a barrier, or an excuse; it becomes opportunity and possibility.  So, yeah, ‘teaching is tough’ says it all.  And that’s the way you want it to be.’”

“And that’s why you always said to us in class when we complained that the projects or working together or remembering to journal or watching the films and YouTube clips on the computer were hard that ‘it’s hard that’s important’ and ‘the road to achievement isn’t lined with “it’s easy” signs.’”

“It’s true for you as a student and for me as a teacher,” I admitted.  Then, I added, “And, by the way, thank you.”

“For what,” she asked.

“For being you.  There’s no greater sweetness then to realize, to honestly realize, to realize deep down, that having come to the end of my teaching career to realize I have taught.  Thank you for being one of those realizations.”

There was lots more to this conversation.  Julia missed her next class.  But, more on that later.

Louis

Well, I’m getting myself in the groove to give a webcam session for Florida Gulf Coast University–you know that March Madness No.15 seed dream team that sent No.2 seed Georgetown packing–and then an all day workshop on creating a motivational classroom environment at Hawaii Pacific University in Honolulu a week later.  Susie insists on sitting next to me on the planes flying to Oahu–with a detour to Maui.  I can’t for the life of me understand why.   Anyway, to crack my adrenal floodgate ajar, I’ve been rereading my heavily notated Richard Boyatzis’ RESONANT LEADERSHIP, and reading two books that just came in:  Mark Goulston’s REAL INFLUENCE and Todd Rose’s SQUARE PEG.

As I read these three books, I constantly nodded my head in silent agreement as I drifted back over sixty-five years to P.S. 160 on Manhattan’s East Side and into Mrs. Satchel’s first grade class.  It’s really a challenge for me to think of Mrs. Satchel without grimacing.  Kindliness and Mrs Satchel are not synonyms for me even if I do everything I can to believe that she had my best interests at heart.  But, it’s tough.  Mrs. Satchel was diminutive in size and wrinkled in spirit.  She looked like a unwrapped, shriveled escapee from an Egyptian sarcophagus with a heart that was equally mummified.  I can’t tell you how many times she angrily rapped the knuckles on my left hand with a wooden ruler during penmanship lessons.  These weren’t gentle reminding touches.  They were Simon Legree whacks.  There was no displayed love in any of the hard blows that echoed off the walls of the classroom.   She could tell satan was in the classroom and that I in danger of being enlisted into his horde of devilish minions.  No, there was no odor of sulphur; there was just my sulfurous refusal to use my right hand as I learned to write my ABCs.   And, she was going to be a Daniel Webster who’d send Mr Scratch packing and save my soul by getting me to write with my right hand.  Now, there was no rebellion in my refusal to abandon my left hand; there was no defiance in ignoring my right hand.   I was and still am totally–and I mean totally–wired as a southpaw.  But, she saw the use of my left hand as a sign of mephistophelean disobedience.  She was going to ram that square lefty peg into a right round hole.  Nothing I could say mattered.  Nothing my parents wrote in their replies to her notes mattered.  The more her yelling, that ruler, and the notes to my parents failed to get me to forego my left hand, the more she became a condemning medieval inquisitor, and the harder and louder the torturous ruler came down.  ”Stick out your hand, Schmier” was a stern command that sent shivers through my spine.  I’d go cold, twist my lips, shut my eyes tight, hunch my shoulders, and constrict every muscle in my body in anticipation of the painful descent of that ruler.  Many a day I went home with such swollen and reddened finger joints my parents thought I was in street fights, especially at the times when her ruler had drawn blood–until my father angrily accompanied me to school one day and forcefully told Mrs Satchel in no uncertain terms to back off.

In the end, Mrs. Satchel failed.  I write with my left hand.  Mephistopheles won.  My beloved Susie always says that there’s more than a little impish devil in me.  But, there is never a day, never a time–never–when I pick up a pen or pencil–with my left hand–that I don’t go back to those dark, painful classroom days when I failed penmanship day after day after day.  And, it is because of Mrs. Satchel refusal to accept me as I was that my handwriting has more than a strong resemblance to unintelligible and indecipherable Sumerian cuneiform.

Now, before I go any further, let me firmly state that what I am about to say is not only for faculty vis-a-vis students, but for administrators vis-a-vis faculty and staff as well.

Many people have asked me over the years why I poured so much time and effort into reading daily student journals, about 160 each weekday.  If I wanted to give a cryptic answer, I’d merely say, “Mrs. Satchel!”  She’s a piece of my history that is a reminder to me that I simply wanted to be one of Boyatzis’ resonant classroom leaders; I didn’t want to be a dissonant teacher such was Mrs. Satchel.    I wanted to walk in “their” shoes; I wanted to go to where Goulston calls “their there.”  ”There” I could see each student as one of Rose’s square pegs.  You see, if you want to exercise the powers of persuasion and influence, if you want to be, as Richard Boyatzis says, an inspiring, magnetic, motivating, influencing, persuasive “resonant leader,” if you want to improve lives, if you want to point the way to a kinder and better future, if you want each student to reach for her or his potential, don’t fool yourself into thinking, as Mrs.Satchel did, that you will convince anyone from a position of what Goulston calls commanding “our here.”

No, the key to successful teaching is influence and persuasion, not authority.  If you want to help “them” get the most out of themselves, shake their world in a very gentle, caring, and loving way.  Get to know them, as personally as possible, as much as they’ll let you.  Connect.  Communicate.  Create a genuine rapport.  Strengthen personal relationships.   Be in a unconditional “carefull,” “believefull,” “hopefull,” and “lovefull” mode.  Start with “their,” not “your.”  Don’t act as if they’re already in on the know of how and the why of things, and are on your side of the podium.  Get out from your perspective.  Back off from your stereotyping.  Let go of your generalizing.  Approach them as the square peg each of them is, as the one size that fits none.   Meet them on their terms, from their assumptions, from their points of view, from where they see things, and from their experiences.  Pick up on things that are important to them.  Get and show a sincere  interest in them.  Drop your defenses.  Listen to them, to what and how they speak with their lips, eyes, and bodies.  See them as they are.  Go to them where they’re at.  Go into what is going on inside them.  Get and show an empathy and an awareness, that you understand what they’re dealing with, that you understand who they are, that you’re willing to connect with them on a personal level, that you’re offering opportunities for making things better.  Show them that you “get it,” that you “get where I’m at,”  that you “get me.”   Strive more for mutual understanding more than agreement.  And, as you do that, you’ll have a better chance of minimizing misunderstandings, fears, unresponses, disappointments, frustrations, and even anger.

And, I’ve also learned that it’s all about creating a super glued bond of what the Greeks called “philia,” love that serves others.  For when you love, you care; when you care, you respect; when you respect, you notice; when you notice, you empathize; and, when you empathize, you put all your heart and head into vitalizing the power of your attention.  Do that, and you’re both here and there.

Louis

The other day I met someone whom I didn’t know.  The introductory part of our conversation went according to a simplistic script:

“What do you do?”

“I am a university professor.”

“What do you teach?

What should my three word answer to that second question be?  I walk into a classroom.  Is the answer a “what” or a “whom?”  A “what” answer is a discipline, content, transmitting, cut-and-dry one that comes from “my here:”  ”I teach such-and-such.”  A “whom” answer is one that goes to what Mark Coulston in his REAL INFLUENCE calls “their there:”  ”I teach students.”  But, exactly who are they and where is “their there?”  That is, who are the each of them?  For which ones am I the teacher?  Am I the exclusive teacher for the “A” student, for the vocal student, for the “honors student,” for the interested student, for the self-motivated student, for the eloquent, for the able-to-wrtie student, for the question answering student, for the discussion student, for the agreeable student, for the needs me less student, for the round pegs?  For whom?  I walk into a classroom.  Am I the inclusive teacher, as well, for the reticent student, for the fearful student, for the can’t write student, for the memorizing student, for the average student, for the disagreeable student, for the poor student, for the shy student, for the indecisive student, for the needs me more student, for the square pegs?   For whom am I the teacher?  I should be the inclusive teacher, not the exclusive one.  Complexity and diversity aren’t vices.  Generalizations and stereotypes are.

Louis

Proverbs 17:22 says “A happy heart doeth good like medicine. A broken spirit drieth the bones.” And I believe that, after I had received this message the other day.  ”I don’t know if you remember me, but I was in your class last spring semester.  My name is Connie Turkson, and I just want to say, thanks for everything! You taught me how to believe in myself. I ended up transferring to Mount Holyoke College, and I love it! I have been successful! Thanks ….”  Connie, I’ll just say who would have thought.  Jenny, an also who would have thought.  I know, I had hoped.

I’m not practiced enough to squeeze my feelings about Connie’s words, or even Jenny’s, into one tweet.  But, the theme in her short but crucial message is so fundamental.  It is at the  core of my relationships, methods, experiences, vision, philosophy, outlook.  It is the foundations of everything I feel, think, and do.  It is the findings of hard science research by the likes of Boyatzis, Goleman, Seligman, Fredrickson, Csikzenmihalyi, Lyubomirsky, Gilbert, Rose, Brooks, Kanter, Amabile, etc, etc, etc. It takes issue with the worship of a trinity of “thingology” of pedagogy, content, and technology while not explicitly factoring in people.  Let me pull up a couple of other “big guns.”  I read two articles in the Harvard Business Review.  In the first, Harvard’s John Kotter says that in business efforts to change people, despite all the talk, efforts, and money spent, are more often than not doomed to failure.  That’s no less true in academia when it comes to both faculty and students.  The second article in the HBR is a study by Harvard’s Teresa Amabile which gives insights into why the ineffective or failure rate for change is high.   The answer is that we so often address the outer stuff of things, the “how” and “what” of technique, method, content, and technology. We seldom address, she said, the “who” of the inner person.

As the likes of Jenny and Connie show, the way people feel and think about themselves is what really matters in what they decide to do and what they actually do.   Every professor, every student is just a woman or man, which is to say, a fallible human, playing out strengths and frailties. That’s crucial and we can’t escape it.  The way each choses to express herself or himself is the way she or he is usually perceived and judged.  To act caringly is to be seen as caring; to display a gentle heart is to be accepted as being gentle; and, to speak kindly is to be perceived as kind; and, to act respectfully is to be seen as respecting.  To act otherwise, is to be seen as otherwise, and too many of us too often seem intent on being down on most students while exerting little effort to help them bring themselves up.

In their journals, in class, outside of class, in conversations, and in their work, I watched a slow happiness makeover.  I watched both Connie and Jenny slowly and at times agonizingly begin a transforming process, coming out from their dark into an ever-increasing brightness.  Once they saw it was safe, they slowly and cautiously began to break their shackles of self-disbelief, self-denigration, self-demeaning–one link at a time.  I saw  shakiness slowly evolve into firmness, anxiety into confidence, hesitation into steadiness.  I saw them begin to feel better about themselves. I saw smiles beginning to form and a spring appearing in their step.  I saw the “how I feel word” on the whiteboard change from tired and fearful to joy and fun.  I saw them redefine challenge from barrier to opportunity.  I saw a boost of energy, an increase in productivity, an improvement in how they got along with others, and greater achievement.  In an academic culture that is fixated on the “thingology” method, content, and technology, consciously focusing on helping people to flourish, to empower them to be positive about themselves, to acquire self-confidence and self-esteem, to have hope, to have faith in themselves, may be far more important in revving up energy.  So, prompted by Connie, as well as by Jenny and a host of others, here is my five-in-one pseudo-tweet in the spirit of John Tesh’s “Play Music In the Key of Love”:

Part I:       Love!  Love1 Love!  Love and its host of kindly positives hallows while cynicism and disinterest and its minons of pernicious negatives defile.

Part II:     Love is your most powerful classroom tool.

Part III:    Love is not a magic wand however much it works magic.  However sincere, love cannot be created with ease, comfort, and quiet; it has to be worked at; nor can it be exercised for a selective moment or so.

Part IV:   Love must be sustained as a way of life; you can’t merely be a person who loves; you can’t merely be a person in love.  You have to be love.  And, love in the face of challenge is both an expression of character and a character builder.

Part V:    And, as Jenny and Connie demonstrate, invest in love and it will pay untold dividends; fill your inner treasure chest with love, and you’ll finds ways to enrich your life and theirs with untold joy, satisfaction, fulfillment, and meaning—and accomplishment.

Louis

First tweet:  Open yourself.  You look when your eyes are open; you see when your mind is open; you understand when your heart is open.  Never be closed to any student, only be close by and close.

Second tweet:  If I believe and act at 72 what I believed and acted at 50, or at 60, or at 70, or even yesterday, I haven’t and am not living.  Nothing in life, including the classroom, stands still, or is a still place, however far too many believe or wish.

Louis

I’m still thinking about Jenny.  If I tweeted, I would first tweet this:  When it comes the classroom, if you pay attention, you just might learn that the classroom is a very complicated place filled with very complex individuals.

And, then, I’d send a second tweet:  To paraphrase Fat Albert, if you pay attention to each student, you just might learn something essential about each of them.  What you learn is that Ella Wheeler Wilcox was right:  a weed is only an unloved and unwanted flower.

A final tweet would be:  Learn, then, to focus first on humanity, not on method or technology or information.  It’s loving attention that changes the odds for all the tomorrows.

Louis

The other day I was walking across the campus when I heard a joyful scream coming from behind me.  ”Dr. Schmier!”

I turned.  It was Jenny (not her real name).  She ran up to me exclaiming.  ”I making good grades in all my classes.  You were right.  All those conversations you had with me.  Everyone said I couldn’t do college.  I believed them even though I was here only because it was expected in me.  But, I do have it in me!  I’m going to try to make Dean’s List this semester!”

Acting as a telepath, I looked at her with a quizzical smile, hoping that she heard me say that she had used the wrong verb.  She must have either heard me or read my face.  She corrected herself.  ”No, I know.  ’Do or do not; there is no try.’  And, if I want it to be done, it can be done; and, if it can be dome, I will do whatever it takes to do it.  I hear you.  I will ‘do.’  I will make Dean’s List.  And, it’s because of you!”

“It’s because,” I countered, “you believe.  Let me know and we’ll celebrate together.”

I gave her an approving smile and said, “Remember, ‘impossible’ is only in your mind; it’s not in your soul.”

She jumped at me, gave me another hug, and whispered in my ear, “I feel so alive.  I’ll never stop believing in me.  And if I ever hesitate again or listen to someone dissing me, I’ll hear you saying ‘believe,’ and I will.  Thank you.”

While those words, that hug, and the sunny, confident smile on her face blurred my vision, they made the bright morning a bit brighter and the day a bit more worth living.  When I got to my garden.  I noticed a dandelion among the amaryllis, saw Jenny’s smile, and said to myself something A.A.Milne wrote, “Weeds are flowers, once you get to know them.”

Louis

I’ve just read four studies on employee motivation to which I was directed by an article in HBR.  Interesting and pertinent stuff.  There’s the 2111 study by Yoon Jik Cho and James Perry called “Intrinsic Motivation and Employee Attitudes: Role of Managerial Trustworthiness, Goal Directedness, and Extrinsic Reward Expectancy,” the 2010 study by Timothy Judge, et al called “The Relationship Between Pay and Job Satisfaction,” the 2002 “Five Factor Model of Personality and Job Satisfaction” by Timothy Judge, Daniel Heller, and Michael Mount, and finally, the 2001 study by Judy Cameron, Katherine Blanko, and W. David Pierce called “Pervasive Negative Effects Of Rewards On Intrinsic Motivation: The Myth Continues.”  If I understand them correctly, the first concluded that employees who are intrinsically motivated are turned on and tuned in three times more than employees who are extrinsically motivated, and consequently are happier, feel better, and get more done.  The second study found that you can’t buy motivation and involvement with salary and position; and if you can, not much beyond the need to provide the material basics.  The third study found that the happier, more self-confident, more kindly and caring, more attentive and more aware,  more attentive people are, the more they tend to see the glass as half full and to like their jobs; that employees’ personalites, their attitudes and emotions, are much better predictors of happiness on the job, hence productivity, than are their salaries.  But–and this is a big “but”–the personality of the managers, not the employees’, was the most important determinant of the extent the workers enthusiastically work at their work.   And, in fact, the fourth study supporting, Deci’s WHY WE DO WHAT WE DO, issued the warning that a primary focus on and use of extrinsic rewards may be a demotivating force.

The first point is that all these studies remind me of the 1999 classic study by Ed Deci, Richard Ryan, and Richard Koester, “A Meta-Analytic Review Of Experiments Examining The Effects Of Extrinsic Rewards On Intrinsic Motivation ” that  found negative effect of external incentives on intrinsic motivation, and positive effect of internal motivators such as autonomy, ownership, and connection.

The second point is that intrinsic motivation is a stronger predictor of job performance than extrinsic motivation.

The third point is that people who focus too much on what I’ll call “things” are more often than not are evaluating themselves by their paycheck and position, playing the comparison game, and preventing themselves from enjoying their jobs.

And finally, none of these mega studies are talking about the elements of “thingology:”  technology, content or product, and production method.  They’re all about people; they’re about attitudes of service, meaningfulness, purposefulness, and relevance; they’re about the driving or halting force of emotions, both positive and negative.

So, I wonder if we should extrapolate all this from business job to academic job, from business managers to academic administrators and faculty, from workers to students, from the business workplace to the academic campus and classroom, from business pay and position to academic salary, tenure, promotion, grades.  After all, the one thing both places have in common is people.  So, maybe we should add people to the mix of technology, content, and pedagogy if we want to increase teaching and learning motivation and achievement across the academic board.

Louis

I had just finished having a deep conversation with a colleague of mine, Danielle.  On the way home, as I was thinking what we talked about, I bumped–almost literally–into a non-traditional student who was in my last class.  We stopped to chat.

“How’s retirement going?  You weren’t too happy on that last day.”

“Fine,” I quickly and jovially answered.  With a deliberate pause, I then said with an enticing seriousness, “Now.”

“I was wondering.  Now that you’re out of the classroom, what do you think is the most important thing you can do now that you’re retired?” she asked.

“Up falling!” I shot back slyly as verbal chumming bait.

She looked at me with the puzzled look that I expected,  ”What’s that?”

Hooked her.  ”It’s a performing jazz term.  It means before you go on stage you get the adrenalin flowing, get into the groove.”

“By keeping busy?”

“By being the right kind of busy.”

“What’s that?”

“‘Fun busy’ and ‘meaningful busy.’” But, first by ‘busy listening!’”

“Listening?  To who?”

“To life!”

“To life?”

Recalling my earlier conversation a few minutes ago with Danielle, I admitted to her that when I reluctantly decided to retire, to retire against my wishes, it was an emotional challenge that kicked me out of place where I loved to be and kept me from doing what I loved.  I was angry, sad, and certainly not glad.  I thought I’d lose community, a sense of purpose and accomplishment, and an important line of demarcation between work-at-loving to do days and weekends; I thought I’d lose a feeling of personal identity that would be difficult to replace late in life.   I thought I’d be lost; I thought I would lose that ‘itch;’ I thought it was over.  I had weakened my ‘how of happiness.’  I wasn’t feeling good; I wasn’t all that calm; I was languishing; I lived less my ‘word for the day;’ I changed the scope of my mind; I reshaped my life and the world around me.  All that bled into my feelings, thoughts, and actions.  Blissful I wasn’t!  A bear I was.  I didn’t listen to Susie. I didn’t listen to my dear friends. I didn’t listen to some insightful students.  I didn’t listen to myself.  And, I didn’t listen to life itself.  You might say that I was allowing myself to get swamped by rampant dysfunction.

Then, it happened, I told her as I had just told Danielle.  A moment of “divine timing.”  It was a pre-dawn walk on chilly December 1st, Saturday morning, the first morning of my retirement after the Friday that was my last class of my last semester of my last year in the classroom.  I was feeling as black as the darkness around me when I heard a piercing, chastising voice.  It was life.  ”Your recent choices of how you see me stinks!  Have you forgotten what I’ve been teaching you?  Where’s the resiliency, purpose, adventure, courage, and flourishing I helped you acquire?  For the last 22 years, I’ve told you that while circumstances are powerful, people are far more powerful.  How many times have I shown that you that while you don’t have control over me, you have control over you and how to respond to me.  How many times have I shown your doors?  How many times have I thrown chance in your way to show that you that my real name is ‘change,’ that the only thing about me that doesn’t change is that I am always changing?  You had an epiphany in 1991 and I showed you how well you had hidden your self from yourself and revealed to you the treasure chest of sacredness, nobility, uniqueness, and potential buried deep within you chest  yet to be dug up, filled with the riches of love, belief, hope, and faith..  You had cancer and I showed you I am only about grateful ‘is,’ not regretful ‘was’ or fearful ‘will be.’   Your head nearly exploded from that cerebral hemorrhage and I showed you that you that I am not some convenient and safe planned out  script of a rehearsed play.  Now, you’re unexpectedly retiring and I’m showing you again that there are new doors you didn’t know existed that will open onto new paths you didn’t know about and which could take you into new worlds beyond your imagination just as the doors you came upon over the past twenty-two years.  Turn the key, twist the knob, open the door, step through the doorway, and walk whatever new path to who knows where as you have done with other doors.  Stop being anti-serenity!  Stop being at war with yourself.  I’m warning you; you’re going to be finished if you think there isn’t unfinished business out there.  Stop thinking and feeling from a place of fear and get back to your indefatigable fearlessness.  Express yourself, take chances, don’t be held back or held down.  Be restless!  Break the rules!  Defy expectations!  Do you hear me? Do you hear what I am saying?”

I stopped walking.  Looked at the stars above, took a deep breath, and nodded.  So, now I am now awash with happiness; at peace; optimistic, having a growth mindset; feeling the exuberance of exploration and creativity; having fun; driven by a sense of purpose; filled with appreciation, joy, gratitude, and love; bringing out the “better” in me each day;  I can follow my bliss by feeling blessed where I am, when I am, and who I am, intensely blessed, ‘up fall blessed.’   I don’t care what anyone says.  I know that cure for meaninglessness is meaning, for purposelessness is purpose, for sadness is happiness, for anger is joy, for being adrift is direction, for idleness is activity, for apathy is passion.

I am self-medicating myself with a prescription of the heart medicine of listening:  listening to life; listening with my heart; listening to understand; listening to live; listening to live now.  And, listening to Susie.  None of this is malarkey, platitudinous, cliché, new-age cheeriness, soft, fluff.  It’s a continuation of years of often brutally honest self-reflection, sometimes painful thinking, at times fearful feeling, reading, discussing, studying, learning, transforming, and adventurous applying in both the life of the classroom and life outside the classroom and now life after the classroom.  It’s a blend of experience and the hard, sound scientific findings of Ed Deci’s intrinsiic motivation, Mihaly Csikzenmihalyi’s intense “flow,” Barbara Fredrickson’s deep, heartfelt “positivity” and “love,” Martin Seligman’s “optimism” and “flourish,” Robert Brooks’ “resilence,” Sonja Lyubomirsky’s and Daniel Gilbert’s “happiness,” Teresa Amabile’s “creativity,” Richard Boyatzis’ “resonance,” Carol Sweck’s “mindset” and “self theories,” and a host of others.

The point is wherever and whenever, if the body sticks around while the brain wanders off, a longer lifetime becomes a burden on self and society.  Extending the life of the body gains most meaning when we preserve the life of the mind. You have to keep your synapses snapping.  Your brain needs exercise or it will atrophy.  You’re through when you’re through changing, learning, transforming, being engaged.  So, nothing will work out if you don’t work at it. If you want to be easy on yourself, get out of the easy chair.  You won’t rock in a rocking chair.  You won’t pop eating popcorn on a couch.  Right now, I’m at an emotional spa and getting back in shape.  After all, being emotionally fit is as important, if not more important, as being physically fit.

As I said in an earlier Random Thought, I’m exploding with things to do; I’m taking giant baby steps in developing a new life.

Boy, could I have a heck of great conversation with Barbara Fredrickson or Sonya Lyubomirsky,  and even with Martin Seligman.

Louis