The Random Thoughts of Louis Schmier

No, I’m not still in a holiday mood. Then, again, maybe I am. No, I’ll take that back. I am. I always am. But, especially this cold, 35 degree morning. Curiously, my “resilient word for today” is SEE. Curious, because this morning in the cold, crystal pre-dawn I could see crystal clear in the dark because of a crystal diamond I received from a dear friend at the Lilly-South conference on teaching and that now holds an honored place above the computer. The warmth inside me, fueled by three days of schmoozing with colleagues who are my dear friends, the warm hugs and kisses that greeted me when I arrived at the conference, as well as the warm hugs and kisses at the end of the conference, are my best cold weather gear.

Maybe this is why on this particular dark morning I see so much light. You know, the dawn has secrets to tell us about ourselves. Seeing, rather than merely looking at, something so grand as a cloud, a star, the moon, the rising sun, a tree, a bush, something not made with human hands, it is hard not to get enveloped with an insight, a wisdom, a patience, a peacefulness, a humility, and, maybe above all, a gratitude. To be sure, these are the times that are trying our souls. At the conference, these times were weighing on the sub-text of everyone’s souls. I can understand that. Between being furloughed and the rising cost of my medical insurance through the university system, my take home pay has taken a heavy hit, a very heavy hit. So, as I told many people this past weekend at the conference, is that all there is to who we are and what we do? Is it merely salary, tenure, resume that get me up each day, that get me going, that keep me going, that impact on how I feel and what I think, and what I do? Is it merely this that lets me sleep comfortably at night? Is it merely this that is the gauge of my worth? Am I to resent, worry, grumble, complain, and sulk that someone in high places doesn’t appreciate education or me as an educator? Am I to go to my closet to put on my hair coat or sackcloth? Am I to go to my fireplace and put ashes on my head? Am I to curse someone out? Am I to flay myself? Am I to let the situation sap my strength and slow my gait? What good would all that do? A heavy heart isn’t exactly uplifting. An empty spirit isn’t fulfilling. Self-pity is never a strengthening agent. I’m positive that you can’t build much worthwhile with worthless negatives. Sure there are problems, challenges, difficulties. But, at times like these we should not underestimate the driving power of commitment to something greater and higher and beyond us. That empowering purpose makes us more persistent than the persistent problems around us; it is a vision that helps us look past blinding confrontations; it is a significance that strengthens us so we can overwhelm overwhelming difficulties.

When we feel down and things around are chilly and dark, we just have to look up at the stars and treasure the things we treasure. Things can be very beautiful and things can be very ugly. I guess having survived a cerebral hemorrahage I shouldn’t have survived I’ve learned I cannot wait for anyone or anything to offer me encouragement and support. That’s my job. I have to keep playing each day what I call “the keep game.” I have to keep stoking the fires of my inner core. I have to keep going, keep learning, keep working, keep changing, keep growing, keep persisting, keep improving, keep believing, keep hoping, keep loving, keep adding one day on top of another. I have to keep seeing that each day is a blessing rather than a burden. I have to keep knowing that each day is as an opportunity for me to make a difference. I have to keep believing that each day is there for me to bring the unique value that is me and to bring out the unique value that is in each student. And. I have to keep walking each day on the road to some possibility. All–and it’s a big “all”–I have to do is to keep reaching deep inside and find the goodness that is always there, to keep feeling the positive purpose that nothing can take away from me, to keep feeling worthy and relevant, effective and capable, and keep helping each student help her/himself become a better person knowing, feeling, that all the difficulties don’t begin to add up to the beauty and joy.

So, I appreciate the beauty, so much that I won’t let the ugly either slow me down or bring me down. There are so very many good things in my life right now. I got, I always will have, plenty of great reasons to be exceedingly thankful. I am alive; I am not on the unemployment line; our house isn’t being repossessed; we are not out on the streets; we have heat for our home; we have medical insurance; we have clothes on our backs; we have food on the table; we have a family of two sons, their wives, and three grandmunchkins; and, above all, I go to sleep each night and wake up each morning seeing my beautiful and angelic Susan lying there next to me.

Am I being Hallmarkish? I don’t think so. I’m being very practical. Feeling how bad things are is depressing, inhibiting, and enslaving; feeling how good thing are is uplifting, energizing, and empowering. It’s gratitude, not ingratitude, that lights up the room. It’s thankfulness, not thanklessness, that warms the room. It’s a loving and filled heart, not a loveless and empty heart that makes the world a better place, at least my world. Is purpose, not purposelessness, that gives me reason to eagerly look forward to this day.

Louis

     There are moments when serendipity reigns and you don’t ask questions. This morning, getting myself deeper into the groove for the Lilly-South conference on teaching in higher education in Greensboro this weekend, sipping a cup of freshly brewed coffee, I opened my e-mail box. As I scrolled down and exercised my forefinger on the delete key, I came to a message. Its subject heading caught my eye, “Be Short.” Intrigued, I opened it. It was from a university professor. She didn’t tell me anything about herself. I’m not sure if the question she threw at me in her short message was hurled as a snide challenge or offered as a prayerful plea. Anyway, she tersely wrote, “I don’t have time to read your lengthy epistles however I enjoy the very few I do copy and later read. I just want you to give me one sentence that sums up your attitude about teaching. That’s all the time I have for.” One sentence! A few words! A couple seconds read! Interesting. Challenging! That beats in spades the five minute soliloquy my dear friend Todd Zakrajsek of my beloved UNC gives some of us at the Lilly-North conference. Well, to paraphrase the Bard, all things are ready if our hearts, soul, and mind be so. I guess mine had been readied for this as I’ve been reading myself mentally and spiritually to mix with and learn from some very neat people at the Lilly-South conference.

      As it turned out, and here is where serendipity poked its nose into my affairs, before I had turned on my computer, before I had brewed a pot of coffee, I had, as I do every morning, blindly put my hand into my cat-in-the-hat hat and pulled out a word from the heap of what I call “resilient word for the day” that lay hidden at the bottom. Each morning, I go through this ritual to get the word that I plan and struggle to embody that day. Today, as serendipity would have it, the word I had selected was “amazed.” Amazing! Again, sometimes you just don’t ask.

So, I read the message again, slowly; took another sip of coffee, slowly; looked at my word, slowly; and, my fingers started dancing on the keyboard, quickly: “Don’t be afraid to be amazed by each student and don’t be afraid to be amazing.” One sentence. A reduction, as my son, Robby, the chef, would say, intensifying the flavor! How about that! I’ll let her think about this one. I’ll let me think about this one. Now, I’m off to live my own word all this weekend: to be fearlessly and unabashedly both amazed and amazing at Lilly-South.

Louis

Just came in from a four mile walk in what can only be described as a “return to sanity” temperatures. No more, as someone said, cryogenics for the living. It was a delightful, shorts and t-shirt, pre-storm, cloudy 65 degrees. And talking about sanity, I got an e-mail yesterday from a professor at an eastern college asking me, “How do you keep what’s happening on your campus from driving you insane?

“Nothing!” I answered. And, then I added cryptically, “And, everything!”

By “everything,” I meant simply that whatever abyss the mind creates, the heart can bridge. So, at the end of the day, my day, I know that the only part of the universe I can truly effect is my universe, that all I can truly control is me. The vision I follow is my vision. My most important job in the service of each student is to be my authentic me, to live what is true to me, to let my light shine to show a way, to share my insights and energy, to have emotions and thoughts and actions that flow freely from the core of my spirit, to make the contributions I can make, to offer the gifts I have to give, and to refuse to become someone others are trying to make me into.

So, in a strange way, those already existing 150 student super classes and impending 350 student super-duper classes have done me a favor. What is coming from the depths of my being is growing more intense and more concrete as it works its way outward In my classes, I am more keenly on the lookout for and am more consciously aware of the wonders in the classroom we call students; I focus even more intently and intensely in order to evoke the sublime from the mundane; I concentrate more on seeing in the supposed ordinary the extraordinary; I am even more committed and dedicated; I persevere even more on creating a caring, supporting, encouraging classroom community resting on the pillars of unconditional belief, faith, hope, and love for each and every student in those classes with me. I may not be able to change the world, but I sure can influence my world and, as Ghandi said, be the change I wish to see in the world. Am I displaying my romantic realism, as my older son would describe it? Sure, but there is nothing weak, passive, or naïve in that being. I don’t forget, as Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead once said, “Choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil.”

That is why each day I consciously focus on my why, on “what is my vision,” on “why am I here,” on “what is my purpose,” on “what is meaningful,” on “what is significant,” and “what is fulfilling.” I focus on why I feel, think, and do what I feel, think, and do. And, then, I focus on living my why. I focus on not getting caught up and dragged down in the day-to-day academic and administrative clutter. I focus on treasuring, admiring, and appreciating each student. I focus on having faith in, belief in, hope for, and love of each student. I focus being a servant teacher. I focus my “big picture” and the constant struggle to make it so.

Hey, before you say anything, I’m no Thoreau who thinks I can withdraw from the “real world” and make the classroom into my Walden Pond. At the same time, I know that what I hold in my heart and soul, I will see in my world. When I am hopeful, faithful, peaceful, believing, and loving, everything has an aura of hope, faith, belief, and love about it. I know that where my passion, attention, commitment, dedication, perseverance are constantly and consistently focused, is where my teaching will go. I also know that having and believing in a vision, a purpose, a why, is not enough. Vision requires responsibility, reflection, articulation, and implementation. It entails awareness and otherness. It calls for service. It demands I put my committed, dedicated, persevering money where my mouth is. It may even call for discomfort, inconvenience, and risk. But, and it is one heck of a “but,” at the moment I compromise on my vision, I would lose the way of my why, the flame would die down, the joy would be lost, the meaning would lose its meaning, and the fun of it all would be gone. We only honor our vision when we uphold it during the hard times, not just during the easy ones. I am that romantic realist. I admitted it. It’s my body armor. I won’t and don’t let people cloud my vision. I’ve got better things to do than spend all my time warding off the naysayers. Instead, I daily focus on and live my why. I am just not going to accept any invitation to do or be otherwise.

Don Quixote, move over. You’ve got company in dreaming the impossible dream. Impossible? Coming to think of it, as I tell the students, impossible things are done every day.

Louis

Anyway, to reconcile these seemingly irreconcilable truths of which I spoke, we shouldn’t believe we’re the smartest persons in the room. You may get compliance, but you won’t get commitment with an imposed “be reasonable and agree with me” posturing or a submissive, hat-in-hand “yes, sir.” We all should have a lingering awareness and admission that way down deep, buried somewhere, in each and every one of us, there is a little of this psychosis in each and every one of us. One way or the other, no one should be seduced by a feeling of innocence, or be carried away by one’s own self-righteous, or be warped by “eeyore-ish” certitude, or be swept up in blaming someone or something else, or be duped into thinking there exists a simple formula and that the choice is a stark either/or in successfully walking the tightrope. For example, I know many members of the faculty are cynical because don’t know, want to know, understand, and respect the enormous pressures being exerted on the highest administrative offices.

So, should we accept disconnection, miscommunication, and distorting simplification? Should stop taking heed? Should we stop exerting our own pressures? Should we stop listening? Should we stop asking? If we do stop, from where will come the understanding and respect? From where will come the determination, the saying power, the moral imagination? From where will come the dedication to replace mere undedicated obedience? From where will come the joining of forces and high morale to meet and overcome adversity? Remember that in both supposed opposing yin and yang there are a connecting, balancing, and interacting “y” and “n.” So, I will ask some, just some, of my questions. What is the vision of higher education? What is the purpose of it all? Are higher educators evolving or devolving as many in both administrative and faculty levels remain ignorant of or ignore what science is telling us about learning? Does size, then, really matter? That is, are these increasingly one-dimensional, distant learning, large classes merely an enlargement of the disconnection that is already going on in too many of our smaller classes? Are we really using our creative juices to find our way through these demanding times? In these days of necessary sacrifice, who and what are we truly sacrificing? In these heady days, whose heads are we lopping off?” Are we merely protecting to the death what we perceive are the needs of our resumes, our scholarship, our tenure, our research, our publication–and our sports? To save handing out pink slips to faculty, are we’re increasingly pink slipping the education of many students in larger classes, especially in those “super” and “super duper” classes? Are we going from deep water learning into the shallows of grade getting and threatening to run on the destructive shoals with these classes? Are we succumbing to short range immediacy of “right answers” at the expense of very expensive sacrificing of lasting “true answers?” Whom are we really serving? Are we asking students to carry extra loads while we faculty members resist truly increasing our loads? Are the offerings of both the value of a true education and the humanity of the student being placed on the sacrificial altar? Is the sacrifice we’re talking about the sacrifice of the student and by the student, especially that novice first year student, and not really for the student? How do we graduate good students who are more importantly good persons? How do we help that student learn how to make a good living and live the good life?

Where is Solomon when you need him?

Time to be a cold grump!  I admit it.  And, it has nothing to do with the temperatures outside.  

             Well, the economy has done it.  It’s pushed my campus over the edge, or, at least, it is offered as the excuse.  True, on my campus, like most campuses, it’s been crunch time.  Our budget is looking more and more like a luscious plum shriveling into a dried prune.  On the other hand, our enrollment is growing like a sweet succulent Georgia peach on a branch in spring.  This push-pull had been putting enormous pressure on our facilities, course offerings, administrative staff, faculty, the truth of our mission statement, and the honesty of the glowing words in our recruiting brochures.  And, it’s going to get worse.  To meet these challenges, challenges that would cross Solomon’s eyes, VSU is speeding up its pace on the low road to ever increasing its size of classes.  We broke ground in December for a two million dollar “lecture hall” building with two 350 seat classes.  We already have instituted “super” 150 student classes.  Now, we’re entering the realm of “super-duper classes.”  I’ve heard these classes being called “strategic options” in terms of “immediate needs.”  Immediate and tactical? Sure..  But, long-range and strategic?  No.  Others call them “adaptive efficiencies.”  Efficient they may be when it comes to information transmission.  Effective when it comes to deep learning?  I seriously doubt that; the recent science about learning questions that.  We’re doing bigger, more efficient classrooms, but not better, more effective ones.  We’re disconnecting when the science says we have to connect even more.  We’re still in what I call the “medieval mode” of educating when all the science on educating says we have to come up-to-date.  We’ve created more classroom space in which we can transmit information to more students in one shot.  But, we do it at the sacrifice of vital inner space.  Unfortunately, too many people think you can change the form without having an impact on the essence, that you can alter the size without touching the perceived and actual value. So, I argue that such super and super-duper classes are really “herding corrals,” “dehumanizing crowds,” “impersonal throngs” in which a student will be lost as an individual.  I am glad I was out of town at the time of the dedication.  I don’t think I would have attended in any event.  What that brick and mortar and glass stand for is the “right answer” to the economic pressures, but not the “true answer” about the essence of an education.  It is so against both my philosophy of wholeness education and what cognitive science’s current research on brain activity is teaching us about learning.  It sets in inflexible concrete the prevailing myths of higher education that I’ve recently talked about, that is, that higher education is merely a bulimic process of teaching as talking and stuffing information down a student’s throat on one hand, and learning as merely hearing, note-taking, test regurgitation, grade getting, and GPA amassing on the other.       

            This lecture hall building, and the already in place “super classes” are symptomatic of the higher education’s core struggle between its Yin and Yang.  It is not always peaceful co-existence and easy balancing act between a host of seemingly irreconcilable “right” and “true” truths.  Education is part emphasis on research and discovery in the lab, archive, and field while it is part ignoring or resisting the results of up-to-date research and discovery when it comes to classroom teaching.  Education is part professional when it comes to scholarship and part amateur when it comes to classroom teaching.  Education demands we academicians be up in and on the scholarship of our discipline and doesn’t demand anything approaching that we be equally up in and on the scholarship of teaching; it is part making the hands-off proclamation that “students are adults” and a part so often tightly dominating and treating them as children.  Education is part idealistic and part realistic; it is part Ivory Tower standing apart from society and it is part a part of society;  it is part fiercely independent of society and it part meekly dependent on society; it is part developing people and communication skills, and it is part developing critical thought skills; it is part developing the independent individual and part promoting both teamwork and social interdependence; it is part encouragement of individual creativity and imagination, and it is part imposing conforming “do what I want;”  it is part test taking and grade getting, and it is part learning; it is part of “the now” and it is part “of the future;”  it is part doing what is assessable and part doing what is beyond assessment; it is part controlling and part granting autonomy; it is part an information transmission business and it is part a people business; it is part emotional and part intellectual; it is part knowledge amassing and part character building; it is part personal transformation and part professional credentialing; it is part learning how to live and part learning how to make a living; it is part servant teaching and part being served; it is part hopefully nurturing and part cynically weeding out; it is part warm, embracing, empathic, and compassionate through Bridge, First Year Experience, and Learning Community programs, and part unaccepting, uncaring, disengaged, clinical, and distant in those super and super duper classes; it is part very human and part very technological; it is part dedication to each student and part dedication to the discipline; it is part student centered and part professor centered; it is part fearlessly proclaiming that we academicians are masters of our fate and part fearfully accepting that we academicians prisoners of “the system.”   

             So many academics proclaim that students have changed over the years.  Have they?  Really?  With over forty years in the classroom, I think not.  Such proclamations are defensive rationalizations.  Our institutions have changed.  Our missions have changed.  Our role in society has changed.  Our visions have changed.  But, most of us academicians fight not to change, clinging by our fingertips to deeply entrench provincialisms.  I can’t help coming back time and time again to the often damming, but shunned and ignored PBS’ “Declining By Degrees.”  It’s as if Karal Capek will be roaming our campus from now on taking notes for another sequel to R.U.R.  We may be becoming big enough to serve institutional and faculty needs, but will we remain small enough to really serve societal needs and know who each student is in order to serve their individual needs?  Those students in those super and super duper classes will be sent into a deeper twilight zone.  They will be there, but they will be so remote it will be as if they are not there.  They will be far more on their own, inexperienced and immature, thrown to the wolves.  They will be far less connected.  Their spirit will be less cultivated, if cultivated at all.  Invisibility will arise within them.  

             What am I talking about?  I just heard a startling statistic.  In our “pre-super-duper” class stage, one-third of our first year students are already on academic probation.  I haven’t verified that number.  But, if it’s anything approaching accuracy, I wonder who really bears the responsibility for that situation. 

             More later……

Louis

A “brrrrrrrry” good morning. I just came in from getting the newspaper and I my frozen face is as Carolina blue as my UNC scrubbies. My hands are so cold that the hot cup off coffee I’m tightly holding to thaw out board-like fingers almost turned to coffee slush. The temperature here in supposed warm and sunny South Georgia is lower than it was in Tahoe last week: 17 degrees, 12 degrees if you factor in the wind chill!!!! Later, its ice skating on my koi pond and snow boarding down the fire ant hills for me!!! Brrrrrr!!! Double brrrrr!!!

Talking about cold, stirred by some stuff on higher education that I’ve been reading, by some more stuff I’ve been reading on research on how each of our brain operate, by what the SACS study we’re suffering through for reaccredidation I know won’t study and comment on, and by starting to get into the groove for the start of the new semester tomorrow, I was thinking about some chilling questions this morning.

Do we professors know, really know, what we’re doing in the classroom? Oh, I don’t question that the profs know the stuff of their discipline, but do they know, truly know, how to teach it? Most don’t. Are we professors trained in leadership and public speaking, both of which are requirements in the classroom? Most aren’t. Do we professors know, really know, or care to know, who is in the classroom with us? Most don’t and don’t care to. Are we professors really trained for the classroom with the same rigor we are trained in our scholastic discipline. Most aren’t. After being in the classroom for over 45 years, I have come to the same conclusion many others, both inside and outside higher education, have reached: teaching in higher education is largely haphazard, largely confined to the realm of tradition and guesswork, at best to on-the-job, trail-and-error, seat-of-your pants, almost intuitive navigation, to unverifiable claims and presumptions and assumptions and stereotypes and mythologies. They all revolve around the usually unexamined and widely accepted propositions that if you know it, you can teach it; that teaching is little more talking or controlling discussion; that education is solely an information transmission and skill development business rather than a people business; that professors are the paragons of inhuman, emotional-less objectivity; that learning is hearing, note-taking, test taking, and paper writing; and that the legitimacy of this process is evidenced by the test grades, course grades, and cumulative GPAs.

As a result almost everything is focused on the blind rituals of scholastic education, which are formal, structured, and supervised–and worshipped. And, the SACS study will not change that, for it has been my experience of having undergone three previous such processes that the people of the SACS study will only study “outwardness” as they swarm all over our campus. They’ll look at, discuss, and raise questions about courses, programs, resumes, assessment, objectives, and, of course, those supposedly know-all-and-see-all syllabi. They, like most of us, will give little, if any, thought to emotional, social, and character education, which remains generally ignored, unsupervised, informal, and haphazard. They won’t go into personal inwardness: the flow of spirit, attitude, personal vision, inventiveness, creativity, uniqueness, renewal, refreshment. That is sad, for, as David Brooks once said, since the latter, which governs how and to what ends we use the former is much more important to our personal, professional, and social long-term happiness and the quality of our lives.

Yet, coming into what is proving to be an anorexic picture of higher education is cognitive science’s revealing, challenging, but richly nutritious research on the brain. It’s uncovering the nature learning. It is, therefore, revealing what I call a bulimic process of serving up, ingesting, and vomiting up that information with very little time and effort given to digesting that information into knowledge and wisdom; that both teaching and learning is based on a highly unnatural, inefficient, ineffective, questionable, and subjective, fear inducing, threatening, stifling, and often debilitating reward and punishment system on both sides of the podium.

Teaching is an ancient craft which has had very little refitting over the millennia. Until recently few people really had any idea of how the traditional way of teaching and learning affected and was affected by the workings of the brain. Well, that is beginning to change, and for the first time we are seeing the fields of brain science and education coming together. But, at the same time that togetherness spotlights a reality: what the science says we should be doing in our field and what we are still doing are fields apart.

This relationship is new and still awkward. To be sure, there is a ton of bandwagon, scholarship-of-teaching hyperbole weighing down a lot of good “brain-based” research. But, at the same time, the good stuff is more often than not falling on deaf ears. While the brain research is giving us a lot of food for thought, there are seven other inter-related traditions in higher education are at work that are squelching most appetites to alter eating habits. First, there is the Ivory Tower’s too often lofty, remote, self-validating, elitist, and isolating “what do they know” that breeds resistance to change and disdain for any sort of answerability and accountability. The result is that you will often get reluctant and resigned compliance, but not enthusiastic commitment and dedication. Second, lip service notwithstanding, there is the heavy emphasis on research and publication and a depreciation of the scholastic value of teaching in the hiring, promoting, recognizing, awarding, and tenuring processes. Third, there is the fear-ridden, self-centered, stifling don’t-rock-the-boat, submissive what-do-they-want quest for the job guarantee of tenure. Fourth is the prevailing inadequate training for the classroom. Fifth is the deafening, blinding, paralyzing, and atrophying “I know how to teach. I’ve been in the classroom X years” syndrome. Sixth is the wide spread, and often counter intuitive belief, that technology in and of itself is the panacea for all of academic’s ills, that it can meet all of its contemporary challenges, and carry out all of its missions. And finally, there is negative, fear inducing, and debilitating overwhelming misuse and abuse of the faculty grading system we call “assessment” more as admonition and punishment than as improvement, growth, and change.

Nevertheless, there is possibility of transformation, of turning higher education on its head, if we find the courage, strength, commitment, endurance, and perseverance to retrofit this ancient craft beyond merely slapping on a new coat of paint, give it the prestige it deserves, allow for and promote creative experimentation and exploration, and alter its course by replacing dead reckoning with a modern scientific compass and GPS system.

How to do that? Well, as Paul Harvey would say, that’s the rest of the story.

Louis

Well, it’s that time when the old year is leaving us and the new one will soon be upon us. Susan and I have started our frantic holiday travel. We just returned from a delightfully hectic and little planned out few days in Mexico. At this moment, we’re in our frenzied unpack and pack mode. Without any respite, we’ll load up the car in a couple of days with a bunch of Chanukah presents for almost a week of “grandmunchkin spoiling” in Nashville. Then, the day after we get back, without a chance to catch our breath, we’ll be hopping a plane for San Francisco on a comparable ten day mission. And finally, without missing a heartbeat, we get home next year in time for me to get ready to go right into the new semester classes. This time of the year is always a “whew” time.

As I was on the plane heading back to Orlando from Cancun, I started jotting down some lines as I realized that our success of being south of the border for the first time was the result of expecting a bunch of unexpecteds, how we calmly greeted them, without a care went with the flow of things, and took in stride anything that came along. This is what I scribbled down:

“You know, what I like most about the new year? You know what I will toast on the night of 2009 December’s last day? That is, if I’m still awake and don’t DVR the dropping of the Times Square’s ball (Susan and I don’t do the New Year’s Eve drinking and horn tooting party scene). I’ll pour a quiet glass of champagne then or on 2010 January’s first day and lift it to this coming year’s surprises, to all the coming unawares, to the inevitable reshuffling of the deck, to the complexity of it all, to what I cannot now know, to what I cannot now guess, to what I have no clue, to what I cannot now control, to what I cannot now guarantee, to the out-of-the-blue bolt of lightning, to the unpredicted, to the unexpected, to the unfamiliar, to the without warning, to the out of nowhere, to the unforeseen, to never stepping into either the same river or class, to all the twists and turns in life’s road that will keep me from falling asleep at the wheel, to the unplanned interruptions that like an earthquake will shake me from the doldrums of routine, to the as yet unknown challenges that will keep me from atrophying, and to the unanticipated adventures that will keep me questing for truer answers.”

“I was reminded a couple of weeks before the beginning of the Fall semester, when unexpected disaster literally threatened to tear all my courses apart, that while the way ahead is pathless and everything is shrouded by uncertainty, how we meet each challenging “what’s going to happen now” is both a character revealer and builder. For however fearful “new” may be, however a challenge it offers to the security provided by the status quo, as recent research on how the brain works shows, it also has the power to quiet and keep in check “fear,” that mother of all stress, that deadly killer of both curiosity and imagination, that great inhibitor of action, that extreme dreader of things, that deadly intimidator, that pernicious imposer of stagnation.”

“To be sure, I cannot dictate to Clotho, the Fate who spins the threads of human life, but I can decide how I will weave her yarn and design the clothing I wear. Like it or not, want it or not, all of these “without warning,” in my personal, social, and professional lives will invariably come knocking at my door in the coming year, as they have in the every past year, with their possibilities and potentials, with their failures and achievements, and with their sorrows and joys. I have the power to decide how to greet them, to answer the “now what” question they pose. I can smile, confidently open that door to all of these “all-of-a-sudden,” welcoming in, embracing, adapting to, adopting, and giving meaning and purpose to them. Or, I can grimace, use up a lot of time and energy struggling and straining to keep the door shut tight and fearfully cringe behind it. That choice is not as easy as it sounds, for fear, that ancient survival mechanism in our brain, puts up a heck of a fight, defending the tried and true, strengthening the walls of routine, often deepening the ruts, and refusing to go gently into the sweet night. It’s mortal combat between the comfort of the familiar and safe on one hand and the discomfort of the unfamiliar and dangerously risky on the other.”

“But, as M. Scott Peck had once said, our shining moments are more likely to occur when we are deeply shaken from our smug comfort and complacency. After all, what else but “new” can teach me lessons from the rich experiences of everyday life, pose alternatives thoughts and feelings and actions, alter courses, transform hopelessness into hopeful, disbelief into belief, resignation into expectation, an ugly “ugh” into a beautiful “wow,” blah into spirited, unhappiness into bliss, dream into real, plod into dance, “no” into a “yes,” numbness into aware, pessimism into optimism, and callousness into love? What else would keep me better focused on and moving towards my vision, as well as working my way there? What else would offer me a tool to avert being hypnotized into sleep walking into class and teaching in my sleep? What else would stimulate my mind, heart, and soul? What else would keep every fiber of my being on full alert? What else would rouse my curiosity? What else would fuel my imagination and creativity? What else would give me the chance to sow, blossom, and ripen? What else would give me an opening to become a better person? What other occasions would be as exciting, adventurous, enriching, satisfying, meaningful, and significant?”

So, will you raise your glass with me? Here’s to the wondrous blessings of discomforting serendipity in the coming New Year! See you and talk to you all in 2010! May you each be joyful and blessed in the inevitable coming unknowns of the New Year!!

Louis

      I was listening to that Christmas song which says, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year.” Yet, while we celebrate Chanukah, Christmas, and Kwanza with shopping, giving presents, cooking, vacationing, traveling, feasting, partying, lighting up, and decorating, many of us miss the point of it all. By merely decking the halls with boughs of holly, by merely burning candles, by turning holy days into holidays, we lose our perspective. This is the most wonderful time of the year because for a few weeks we’ve found connection and put off contention. This is the most wonderful time of the year because for a few weeks we’ve replace the sadness and gloom in our hearts with comfort and joy. This is the most wonderful time of the year because for a few weeks we’re moved by the spirit of generosity. But, we shouldn’t wrap our presents only with paper and we shouldn’t light up our houses with only bulbs and candles. Instead, we should wrap and brighten with hope and love. For while the trees and decorations and celebrations are seasonal, while so many gifts are returned or broken or forgotten or tired of, a truly loving and giving heart is not.

      Now, what does this have to do with the classroom? Everything! Let me tell you why yesterday was one of those most wonderful times of the year. At the end of closure yesterday, when we each reflect on what if anything meaningful we will remember from our class experience, I asked if anyone had any final “words for the good and welfare of the class.” A student whom I’ll call Sam suddenly jumped up in front of the class to speak.

      I cringed. “Now what,” I silently moaned to myself.

      I was totally unprepared for the gift we were about to receive. You see, Sam had been what could only be described as a student from hell. He had played the demonic role of the cackling smart aleck. Disruption, sarcasm, and disdain seemed to be his middle names. I had been on his case and in his face all semester. He wouldn’t journal; he wouldn’t write the conversations with the assigned photographs; he wouldn’t work on the projects. His class attendance was erratic. When he came, he was always late. His attitude was one of smugness, arrogance, and even defiance. He didn’t take much of anything seriously though he said he did. He didn’t care what effect his actions had on his community. He never communicated with his community members inside or outside of class. He and I had gotten into it in class on more than one occasion, especially when he challenged me by first refusing to bring in donuts as a result of blatantly using his cell phone in class. Every time I laid down the law, he’d twist and bend and break it. But, something, something I couldn’t put my finger on, told me something was there, not to surrender, not to cut him loose as I had with another student, and to be there as that man of many second chances. It was a sixth sense that told me that he was testing me, daring me to lose my cool, seeing if my money was where my mouth was. So, I kept on pulling him aside for brief, private “you’re better than this” chats. I kept parrying his mocking thrusts. I kept encouraging and edifying him in emails. Two weeks ago, Sam did a one eighty. His body language, facial expressions, general demeanor completely changed. He was seriously journaling; he was working hard on the commercial project; he came to class every day. Was he scared of failing? Was he doing the right things for the wrong reasons? I wasn’t sure. I was afraid to hope. 

     I had come up to him Wednesday and asked him, “What hell is going on?”

     He answered with a smile that was rid of any sign of smugness, “I got it. It may be too late, but I finally heard you. I’m beginning to see what you see and decided it was time to stop disrespecting myself and everyone around me. You’re right. I’ve got to dare to dare if I’m going to get anywhere. I’ve got to start living your words and make them my words.”

     To say I was stunned would be a proverbial understatement. Sometimes you accept and just don’t ask why. Today, it all paid off. He displayed such humility and courage. There was, standing up there in front of everyone, not only admitting that he had been a disruptive force, not only thanking me for never giving up on him, but most of all, publicly apologizing, with a sincerity in his voice and a tear in his eye, begging for forgiveness, for the disrespect he had shown to me, to his fellow students, and to his community member. I stood there amazed, dumbfounded, speechless, screaming with a tear in my eye and a “yes” in my heart as everyone yelled and applauded. After class, his community member came up to me, deeply touched by what Sam had done, to plead his case even though she said she had raked him over the coals all semester. What a wow! What a holiday present. It was the most wonderful time of the year.

     So, in the spirit of the season, I ask if you have ever thought about the atmosphere you create in the classroom when you invest your teaching with the glorious message and meaning that each person unconditionally is sacred, noble, valuable, and worth every ounce of effort? Have you ever thought of the impact you have when you refuse to give up on a student? Have you ever thought that this is truly the greatest story ever told and the true miracle of the lights, and should not be lost among the passing academic bells, bows, and baubles of lectures, technology, tests, grades, and GPAs? Have you ever thought about how good you feel after you have encouraged and supported someone else, been respectful and thoughtful, believed in and loved, been kind to or smiled at her or him? Have you ever thought how good that other person feels? I don’t really have to say anything else to advocate that we should never miss the opportunity to be thoughtful and respectful, to give encouragement and support, to be kind to and to smile at, to have faith in, to have hope for, and to love.

     We have to love and admire–if not to support and encourage–those academicians who can bring their loving hearts to the campus and into the classroom, who feel each day in that classroom is a wonderful time of the year. They know that warming emotional sunshine has a better chance of helping things grow than does a chilling overcast; they know that where faith, hope and love grow, miracles blossom.

     Susan and I want to take this occasion to wish each and every one of you a very Merry Christmas, a Happy Chanukah, and a joyous Kwanza. And, may each of your coming days be a wonderful time of the year.

Louis

      It’s 3:45 am.  Can’t sleep.  Maybe I was thinking about a phone call I got last night.  It was from a student whom I’ll call Jane.  Her voice had a trembling, pleading, desperate tone to it.  I could tell she had been crying.  “Dr Schmier, I need someone I can talk to.  If I don’t, I’ll explode.  I have so much work to do.  I just can’t do it.  It all seems so small.  You’re the only one I have to turn to.  Do you have a few minutes for me?  Please. Just a few minutes.  Promise.”  I went into the dark living room, sat down, and listened to sobbing, confused words and broken sentences.  The few promised minutes ran into over an hour.  She talked about her semester-long distracting, depressing, and near paralyzing agony, and it was truly agony.   That’s all I’ll say about what was tearing out her guts.  It was not the first time I had listened to her, and it was not the first time she refused to talk with a trained counselor.  She ended with “Thanks.  Now I don’t feel alone.” 

      That last word, “alone,” stuck with me.  So, as I sat on the porch in the rainy dawn sipping a hot cup of freshly brewed coffee, as the beauty of the day drove back the dark, I was thinking about Jane, about how the beauty of connection drove back the dark of isolation, and about elephants.  Yes, elephants.  Why?  Because there are elephants in the room all over our campuses.  There is so much isolation, disconnection, aloneness, and loneliness on our campuses among both students and faculty.  Rousseau was right. We humans are wired to connect.  We don’t do well when we perceive and feel that we‘re alone. We don’t like isolation.  We need and want and seek the company and companionship of others.  Our brains are designed to be social.  Daniel Goleman in his Emotional Intelligence and Primal Leadership tells us that; Richard Boyatzis in his Resonant Leadership tells us that; Edward Deci in his Why We Do What We Do tell us that; Jacqueline Olds and Richard Schwartz tell us that in their Lonely American  ; a recent study by Nicholas Christakis, of Harvard Medical School, and James Fowler, at the University of California-San Diego that appeared in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Learning titled Alone In The Crowd tells us that; the studies on brain activity such as that by Gregory Berns of Emory University in his Iconoclast tell us that. “Alone” fires up our greatest fears.  The primitive part of our brain, the amygdala, equates “alone” with becoming “prey.”  All this research says that someone who feels disconnected and alone has more negative feelings and interactions than non-alone people.  The most reliable antidote is not academic degrees and scholarly resumes.  It’s not in emailing, texting, or twittering.  It’s not found on YouTube or Facebook or My Space.  It’s not in the electron communication of distance learning.   The true and lasting cure is in face to face, eyeball to eyeball, tactile touching the flesh, connection; it is, as Daniel Goleman asserts, in an evolved version of primal grooming behavior.   Each of us, student and faculty and administrator alike, needs and seeks the crucial companionship that carries with it the essential “you’re not in it alone” security, assurance, encouragement, and support network.

      Is it any wonder that threat and anxiety rule the emotional roost on our campuses?  Yet, it’s not easy to control these elephants.  Students do it outside the classroom by rushing to rush sororities and fraternities, to join clubs, to participate in theater and bands, to play on teams, to twitter, to Facebook, and to avoid being “single” by hooking up with each other.  We academicians try half-heartedly with occasional faculty socials or teaching circles, but ultimately too often turf warfare stands in the way.  We all, students and academicians alike, need, whether we admit it or not, genuine and strong connections with others on a personal one-to-one basis.  Students certainly don’t get it in our classes.  More often than not, they feel isolated in our classes by both the academic culture and physical structure.  It’s eyes front, spotlight on the speaker at the front of the room.  It’s eyes front, gazing into the computer screen. It’s eyes down, taking notes.  It’s eyes front, memorizing the nape of someone’s neck.  They don’t feel wanted, embraced, noticed, and cared about.  And, the result is they just feel scared, controlled, threatened, endangered, lousy, and uninspired.  Then, we wonder why—if we wonder about such things at all–the classroom experience is usually not memorable to them.  As for the faculty, let’s just say it’s usually plagued with a divisive and disconnecting “us versus them” attitude. 

      But, when anyone does seriously take aim at these elephants, it’s too often taken met with resistance.  They’re accused of being un-academic and attacking “academic freedom;” they’re being un-American by attacking individuality; and “group work,” as a colleague on my campus once told me, is a loophole that promotes “legalized cheating.”  Students, we, are personally and trained as soon as we come out from the womb to see ourselves as self-reliant people who do not depend on others.  We’re taught to push aside Donne’s idea that no man is an island.  We’re told to be self-made men and women.  We are told to idolize rugged individualism.  We’re told to be the heroic iconoclasts who stand out in and away from the crowd.    That’s what all this “I don’t want to rely upon anyone for my grade” echoing in the classroom means.  It’s what a lot of this call for “academic freedom” means.  It’s a stigma to think otherwise.  It’s blasphemy to think no man is an island.  Because it is socially unacceptable, because it’s an embarrassment to talk of it, that aloneness and loneliness gets lost in both the student’s and our stories.   

      Let me offer a caveat from the start.  I love being alone on my pre-dawn walks.  It’s my time for my inner journey of reflection, contemplation, self-evaluation, and connection.  But, that’s far different from isolation, loneliness, and aloneness.  Students and academics come on campuses that are balkanized by individual, departmental, school contentions over budgets, programs, courses, new positions, grants, not to mention professional jealousies and sense of threat.  The feeling of being set apart from rather than being a part of a group—be it a department, a school, the university or college, the classroom—where we’re not in touch with each other, where we can’t share the load, where we can’t get support and encouragement can become demoralizing, paralyzing, and have an impact on our well-being and performance. 

      Those recent sociological, psychological, and anatomical studies are showing that this sense of isolation is a major cause of self-defeating attitudes.  And, increasing the size of classes isn’t helping.  That is why we have to take community seriously.  That is why we need learning communities among faculties and administrators.  That is why we need learning communities among students.  That is why we need community in the classroom.  We have to communicate with each other.  We have to find common cause among each other.  We have to pay full attention to each other.  We have to experience each other. We have to understand each other.  Empathy is the key promoter of kindness, support, compassion, encouragement, respect, faith, hope, love.  We have to create and strengthen these meaningful connections to be free and fully functioning persons.  It with these connections we can deal positively with demands, pressures, prodding, controlling, and cajoling swirling around us.  It with these connections that we can better explore, risk, experiment, develop, and take on challenges.  It’s with these connections is what we can become all that we capable of.  We must, as I say in my workshops on creating a motivating classroom environment, break barriers, build bridges, and forge community.  We have to do it throughout the campus.  We have to live four simple and profound words, as well as helping others learn to do the same:  YOU ARE NOT ALONE!  That may sound like a cliché; it may sound trite; it may seem so obvious. But, I’ll tell you this from having discussions with faculty and administrators in workshops, having schmoozing conversations in hallways at conferences, talking with students, and reading hundreds of student journals:  those words reverberate to the depths of all people’s souls—all people’s souls. 

       That the feeling of being disconnected just might be the deadly salmonella of education’s food for thought should give us pause and some food for thought.   

 Louis

This year, in the face of furloughing, absence of raises, and the impending appearance of very uneducational 350 student herd-like mega-classes here at VSU, my spirit, my soul, my heart, my will required me to remember. To be sure, remembering my vision in the face of the clouds that would otherwise obscure that vision is an act of will; it’s an act of faith; it’s an act of strength; it’s an act of refreshment and flourishment; it’s an act of determination, perseverance, and commitment. To forget is an act of disconnect. Feeling despondent saps and deenergizes. Feeling weary and faint of heart is losing hope. Feeling resigned is an act of surrender. Feeling anxious takes out the fun. Feeling resentment is hobbling. Feeling insecure is to falter in the service, in the loving-kindness, of others. Feeling self-pity is not to tenderly cherish.

The problem for many of us, too many of us, is that we have allowed the process of counting our blessings to deteriorate into the habit of counting upon our blessings. We are proud, rightly proud, of our titles, positions, tenure, and resume. But now we are anxious, overly anxious, to maintain our privileges and power. We are proud, rightly proud, of our personal achievements, but we are anxious, overly anxious, to maintain an image of success. When the act of counting our blessings leads to the anxious condition of counting upon our blessings then it is extraordinarily difficult to be grateful.

No, while I cannot control circumstances, I can control how I react and respond to those circumstances. I believe that Thanksgiving is about remembering. Gratitude is attitude, and that makes it more than an American festivity. For me, that means having my empowering words constantly and unconditionally in front of my mind’s eye and my heart’s eye: hope, faith, belief, empathy, kindness, compassion, respect, connectedness, otherness, awareness, awakeness, optimism, renewal, and, above all, love. I have to do more than speak these words. I have to soak them into my spirit, my heart, my thoughts, and my actions. I have to become one with them. I have to declare them to others, show them, and live them. As I do that, meaning, purpose, and significance steady me. I never run scared; I don’t totter and lose my balance; I don’t waiver and lose my sure-footedness; my confidence is not shaken; I handle whatever comes along; I smile; I am kind; I respect; I stay the course; I move gracefully; I feel comfortable in my own skin. I know I’m making it. And, as I am those words and those words are me, I move from merely “making an effort” to be thankful to the kind of thankfulness that’s so much a part of who I am and what I do

In that spirit, Susie and I wish each and every one of you and your families a very happy giving thanks day. May you see that the negativity around you is just weather that will pass. May you see all the sweet, the beautiful, the loving, the abundant, and the joyful possibilities in your life. And, may you experience all the blessings of a grateful heart.

Louis