It began as a hard walk this morning, but it didn’t end that way. I really didn’t want to go out. I had all the excuses not to go out: I couldn’t trust that the respite from the morning thunder storms would last and with my luck I’d be caught in a torrential downpour two miles from the house; the wet streets and puddles would turn my shoes into sloshing lead weights within a few blocks; I had just gotten new shoes and the backs of my heels were still tender from their newness; and finally, my legs and back so ached from a weekend of bending and kneeling as I planted about 600 caladiums in my yard that I wouldn’t be able to finish my route in the first place.

I decided, however reluctantly, to give it a whirl. And to my surprise, it wasn’t long before the aches in my muscles and the reluctance in my head disappeared. I the heavy, noisy, thudding of my feet transformed into a light, almost silent, rhythmic step. I felt as if a fog was clearing out and my spirit was being uplifted. And, I began walking with an unexpected smoothness and ease as I felt this revitalization overcoming me. About two miles into my route, I started thinking in amazement that there is more to walking than form and equipment. There is also, as my old college soccer coach use to tell us, attitude.

It wasn’t long before I was comparing that old revelation about my walking to my teaching. There are more components to teaching than equipment, technique, and information. Teaching is not just the lectures and handouts that a person carries into the classroom, or even the technology and technique a person carries into the classroom. It’s also that attitude that a person carries in his head, the commitment he carries in his heart, and the passion in he carried in his soul.

Some people talk of wholeness learning, but that can occur only when there is wholeness teaching by a whole person. For, it’s not just the mouth that teaches. The eyes teach. The entire face teaches. The body teaches. The heart teaches. The spirit teaches. Education is not just shared information. It is more of shared affection. Our words, whether they are spoken or written or acted, are confessions of faith about ourselves and others. Like it or not, no matter what the subject, we’re teaching–and the students are learning–safety or danger, joy or despair, confidence or fear, care or neglect.

Emotional forces, I think, for teaching and learning, are both essential and powerful. I can think “what to do” with my brain, but it’s my heart which says, “take a chance. Go ahead,” and it’s the faith in my soul which drives and directs me by saying “it’s the right thing to do.” No, the teacher and person are one and the same no less than the student and person are one and the same, and what guides a teacher to do and how to do it extends from who he or she is.

For me, these guidelines are more than rules of behavior or attitude. They are confessions of faith written into my soul which I constantly struggle to use to pilot my spirit, my feelings and actions; to use as a beacon to show the way in what I try, what I caress, what I polish, what I discard and forget, what I reject, what I shun, how I act, and how I judge. They are written into my syllabus, on the door of my office; when I am in the classroom, when I am walking across the campus; when I sit down and when I rise up:

Rule #1: Give a damn! Care! Love! Don’t just mouth it, live
it!
Rule #2: Focus on the student and his/her learning. You can
worry about the SUbject and your teaching later.
Rule #3: Don’t enter the classroom expecting students to
fail. Expect them to learn and succeed.
Rule #4: A class is a “gathering of ones”, of diverse,
individual, sacred human beings.
Rule #5: No one in this “gathering” is dumb and unwanted.
Rule #6: Every student is entitled to the personal, equal
dignity of a human being. Demand that each person
respect him/herself, and demand that each person
treat everyone with respect.
Rule #7: No one’s face gets erased. No one goes nameless.
No one is left in the background. No one is allowed
to be overshadowed by anyone else.
Rule #8: Every student starts with a clean slate. Don’t
judge a student by the ring in her belly button or
the tatoo on his arm or the whispers of
other people or a Gpa or the accent of their speech
or the….
Rule #9: Love every student. It’s OK to be disappointed or
even frustrated with their lack of effort or
success, but don’t stop loving them as persons.
Rule #10: No class is finished. I can’t think of anything
more boring than teaching a subject the same way
twice.
Rule #11: Teach today as if there will be no tomorrow. Do
not let disappointment distance you bit by bit from
the students. Be eager to see any student the next
day. Fight discouragement. Keep the fires in your
heart burning bright and hot. Hang on by your
fingernails to freshness, energy, creativity,
innovativeness, experiment
Rule #12: Teaching is forever going on. It goes on every
moment inside and outside the classroom. Every
contact with a student is potentially a teaching
moment.
Rule #13: The 3Rs, as someone said, don’t mean a thing if they
don’t make the student more humane
Rule #14: Don’t be afraid to let the students know that you’re
trying something new to make them powerful learners
and that you need their help
Rule #15: Remember that teaching is a journey. It’s not an
event or a destination. It’s like climbing a
mountain that has no summit to reach. You just
have to learn to love climbing.
Rule #16: And above all, have lots of Tootsie Pops to go
around.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

It’s a chilly and rainy 4:45 a.m. down here. Not the kind of day in Georgia that Ray Charles would sing about. I couldn’t walk this morning and felt yuk. I was just lazily going over my e-mail messages with little on my mind as I sipped some newly brewed life-sustaining coffee. Then, I received a jolt. I read a message from a graduate student in which she told me about a chemistry professor, Chair of the Faculty Senate, who talked before her class as a guest speaker about faculty governance. In the course of the discussion a student posed a tangential question: “What about the development of the student, outside academics?” Don’t you hate it when students ask such annoying questions?

The professor’s answer made me shudder. Annoyed, I got up and left the room, picked up an umbrella, and like Gene Kelly, went for a short walk in the rain. I couldn’t get out of my head what she told me was that professor’s reply. “I am a professor, not a teacher. I am here to profess, not to teach.” Boy, have I heard before. In fact, only yesterday–verbatim–from a colleague with whom I had a conversation about research. Her argument was that students were taking up valuable research time. “How can I profess to them,” she had asked, “when I have to spend so much time teaching them?”.

As I started walking, my mischievous mind started playing games. Scriptural passages began popping into my head. After just a few soaking blocks, I came back. So, here I am, in front of the computer with a hot cup of coffee at my side and a tootsie pop in my mouth and an academic version of Genesis:

In the beginning God created the university campus. God
saw the campus, that it was good; And God said, “Let
there be students.” And God blessed them; and God saw
that it was good. And God said, “Let us make professors
in our image, after our likeness; and let them have
dominion over the students in the classroom”; and God saw
that it was good. And God blessed them, and God said
unto them, “Be fruitful in your labors and multiply your
resume, and replenish the campus, and subdue it; and have
dominion over the students in the classroom, and every
saw it was very good.”

I sometimes think that so many professors believe that there actually exists such a divinely written, infallible, academic Genesis. We believe that we, the sole ones created in the divine image, are the centerpiece of the academic creation. That all exists for our convenience, to serve us. We look everywhere to find evidence of such dominion: in our age, our degrees, our titles, our position, our publications, our professional resumes, our regalia, our rituals and rites, our command of information, and even the way we dress. We promote everything that fosters our power over the world of the classroom. We resist as blasphemy everything that attempts to establish an ecological mutuality with it. We oppose anything that inconveniences us or distracts us from our higher scholarly calling. We reject anything that wishes to replace the narrow spotlight that shines only on us with an embracing floodlight that lights up everyone together. We condemn as heresy everything that asks us to come down off the pedestal and be a part of the other creatures in the classroom. We distance ourselves and keep others at hand’s length.
Why this urge to “control”, to be put “in charge”, to be separate from? Is it about ego? Is it about power or authority? Is it about innocent, unthinking habit? Is it about a fear or inability or disinterest in being a part of the classroom, of mixing shoulder with the “non- professions,” the amateurs, the common students whom we call adults but whom we really think of and treat as children or adolescents–no matter their age? Is it a fear of feeling and relationship with other human beings? Is it about an anxiety of the world itself? Or maybe it is about the unknown, of how we might have to change and be changed if we engaged in personal conversations with the others in the world of the campus, if we became real and human.

Within those walls of the ivory tower, we academics have developed our own ethos. These beliefs, rituals, attire have provided a distinctive personal and professional identity and meaning. But, I think that walls which separate also isolate. These walls so often have made professors into distant cultural aliens from other members of the campus community.

Coming out from behind the separating and impenetrable intellectual, professional, and psychological walls of the ivory tower is no easy task. To experience a metamorphosis from professor to teacher means reinventing yourself and your professional purposes. You have to confront the somewhat arrogant inbred and walled academic cultural psyche. So many professors think that as a campus ecology is formed, as divisions are overcome, as walls were breached, as the students and professors as cross over boundaries and mingle with each other, they are threatened with becoming nothing. Letting everyone breach the walls of professional and intellectual communal identity may blur the precise distinction between inside and outside, between them and us, between professor and student, between teacher and learner. It may make a person humble. It may be a lot of things. Diminishing is not one of them.

This graduate students reminded me that “Knowledge puffs you up.” How true. It did that to me for almost 25 years. But, “Love makes you grow.” I’ve known that for the last five years. In fact, on my office door is a wooden halloween skull and cross-bones I jokingly bought at a local crafts fair. It says with a smile: “Enter at your own risk.” Under it, I’ve added: “There is love in this office–and tootsie pops. Come on in.”

Others may be uneasy with that. I’m not. I say this from my personal and professional experience, from my own inward journey, to tightly hug information, to caress degrees and reputation, to pay homage to a discipline, and not to embrace fellow human beings, not to experience tenderness, compassion, caring, sharing, relating in the class room and throughout the campus, makes academic life empty and I don’t care how long is the resume and how large the professional reputation. The absence of these vital human experiences depreciates basic human values without which we end up in a class room in which our monstrous visitor is free to roam free and we unintentionally hurt each other.
Make it a good day.

–Louis–

I received a message in response to my Random Thought about Kim saying, “It often seems so hard to take risks. Not seems hard, IS hard. And I think what is so often hard about it for me — is what others will think about what I have done. I think EVERY STEP of Kim’s experience took guts. I mean, everyone in the class knew something of her agony… and everybody got a victory… But, oh God, did she have to open up and risk it all to get there…”

I hear the insidious whispers of our unwanted guest. If we learn anything, then, from Kim’s fall, it is that demonic monster who fishes in schools of students no less successfully chums faculty waters. Our degrees, resumes and reputations offer us little protection from our exposed humanity; nor do the shut doors of our offices and class rooms shield our fragilities. He trawls his nets in faculty offices, casts his sharpened barbs around the podium, dangles his poisonous bait at conferences and meetings, and gaffs so many faculty souls. So many of us are as afraid of teaching as students are afraid of learning because we’ve taken the bait of this diabolic fisher of people. We’re just as afraid to be what we are or want to be as are many students. We may get these fantastic, insane ideas, and then don’t or won’t or can’t act on them. We excuse ourselves and put ourselves off as our invisible colleague reels us in: “Oh, That’s crazy.” “What can I do to change things.” “I couldn’t do that.” “It’s not me.” “It’s not done this way.” “How will the students react?” “What will my colleagues think?” “What will my Department Chair or Dean say?”

We let ourselves, issues of promotion, tenure, professional reputation, peer support and approval get in our way of living our profession as we truly want to. We let our professional lives rest in the hands of other people; we give over responsibility for our teaching and the students’ learning to someone else. And, as long as we do, we really will not –cannot–teach fully. It’s a shame because if we really don’t teach fully we keep students and ourselves from learning fully.

If we’re afraid of teaching, we don’t experience. We don’t feel. We don’t see. We don’t risk. We don’t care! For ourselves, not only just for others! And therefore, we don’t teach because teaching means being actively involved. It means getting down and dirty. It means jumping right into the middle of everything. It means blowing it. It means stretching yourself beyond your current self as Kim did. It means taking your own risks as Kim took hers. It means taking your own fall as Kim took hers.

I have said over and over again that the students would learn so much more if they have been coached to look within themselves for strengths, passions, direction, purpose, uniqueness, self-worth, integrity, and value. But, how much better would they learn and how much better would we teach if we had first been taught to look within ourselves for strengths, passions, direction, purpose, uniqueness, self-worth, integrity, and value.

I do know how tough it is to take that fall. I’ve taken it, and continue to take it every day I enter the class room. The journey inside always is spooky. That’s what makes it worthwhile. I learned several things from my own spiritual journey. First, my professional and personal growth and change occurred only when I took a chance to trust myself and risk myself. Second, any experiment I engaged in with my life, large or small, was frightening because I was confronting the unknown. Third, the more I talked with my shadow self within me and brought it out into the sunlight, the more comfortable and confident I was with myself. Fourth, as I confronted and acknowledged my own woundedness, I saw far more clearly the students’ woundedness. I am far more sensitive to that woundedness because I am facing my own woundedness. I can empathize with the students’ pains and say “I understand. I’ve been there.” And finally, as I changed my scenery and became more open with myself and the students, they became more open with each other and me, and the class room learning became, as Kim attests, more meaningful and powerful.

Initially I decided to take that fall, that I had to take that fall, and to keep falling, to save my son. Then, I discovered that I really took my fall to save myself. For as I fell, I discovered to my initial dismay that I had to confront the questions, “What does me mean to me?” “What does teaching mean to me?” “What do the students mean to me?” I’m not sure the answers had as much to do with whether I had tenure or not, or whether I had peer support and approval or not. It had to do with a growing need to live my profession, to live my life, to be more comfortable of myself, as my gut, conscience if you will, told me I must. I discovered that I had to free myself of teaching to be liked in return and to get rewards. I had to teach to teach, and to do that I had to risk not being like and not getting the rewards. But, let me tell you one secret, the real and meaningful rewards come. Let me share with you one such overwhelming reward that came unexpectedly just yesterday. I had casually mentioned that I planned to retire from VSU in two years. This young lady came into my office very upset when she heard of my plans. “You can’t do that,” were the first words out of her mouth. “Others need you like I did.” I was speechless. I gave her a tootsie pop and a quiet, tearful “thank you.”

So many of us have potential beyond our imagination, but are afraid to let ourselves see what it may be. So much talent is lost because we’re afraid to fall. So much good is left undone because we don’t trust. I think if each of us spent as much time thinking about ourselves and teaching, about answering those questions honestly, about taking that fall, as we do planning a vacation or arranging a cocktail party or worrying about what others will think about us, we’d be a hell of a bunch of incredible teachers.

I know some people are going to make excuses. “Oh, Schmier has tenure and doesn’t have to worry” or “He’s supported by his colleagues and has the approval of his superiors.” Let me tell you a little secret. You can have all the peer support you desire and all the protection tenure has to offer, but in the end, as this person who wrote me so accurately said, when a person takes their fall off the desk… they take that fall alone.”

Let me tell you another secret. I have discovered that the second I got involved in teaching, the pressure inside me was decreasing, and I started feeling safe. I felt safe because after a while my colleagues here on campus, initially feeling threatened, threw up their hands in frustration, and protected themselves–and thereby me–with an arsenal of defensive weapons. Their big gun is that they’d say, “what’s that kook up to now?” What they don’t realize is what freedom that eventually gave me. I love being called crazy because when I am, it gives me a lot of leeway to do things I want to do. It’s almost expected of me. I can do and say just about anything and people will say–as I have heard and some my student tell me–“Oh, that crazy Schmier is drawing shields.” “He insane for letting them kick him out of class so they can talk about him.” “There he goes, just like a kid, walking down the hall with his music blaring.” “That silly guy is having his students doing skits and creating games in class. It’s so infantile” “Now he has students falling off desks. I should have known.” The students and I are having a ball and learning about ourselves and each other. We’re excited and having fun learning history. It’s the prim and proper, the sane ones, who are both worried to death and bored to tears.

So, I guess my only answer to this message is to learn from Kim as I have, to somehow find it in yourself to risk your own lonely fall, start kicking that monster’s butt out of your class and your life, roll up your sleeves, and teach. No easy task, but well worth the struggle.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

I just got back from class. I think I danced all the way–if my feet even touched the concrete. Nearly got hit by a car because I wasn’t paying any attention. I was just thinking about what had just happened in class. It is sunny, bright and warm outside, the kind of day Ray Charles would sing about; but it pales next to the brightness and warmth inside me. I feel a glow about me. I am bursting with a joy that I have not felt in such a long while I had almost forgotten such emotions existed. I am literally shaking with an ecstacy, my fingers are having trouble following my orders, and my eyes are getting foggy as I share with you what one student, herself stunned, called “a awesome happening.” I was just witness to something I have never seen and never dared think would happen. It dramatically reminded me once again that the real crisis in education is one of caring not information, of the extent to which fellow students and professor can help each other dream and nurture and be spiritual guides, how students experience what is going on inside the teacher, how every contact with students is a potential teaching moment, how a transformation in learning is rooted in the transformation of the heart, how learning is a joining among students and with teacher, what a student can achievement if he or she has the courage to tap the unique potential within, and how powerful a simple “I care” can be. Yesterday, we did the last of a week of bonding and trust exercises. The students and I already had their acquaintance hunts, introductions to each other and reflective interviews; we’ve already started journaling; each of us has already stood up and sung solo to the class. All of which were designed to break down barriers, challenge student to think and feel beyond themselves, challenge student to think and feel within themselves, to connect with themselves and each other, to sense a greater self-value. Now it was time for them to do what they would call “The Fall.” I don’t claim originality with this exercise although I don’t think it’s used in many history classes. It was suggested to me by a theater professor at a conference. It is used to develop trust and bonding in acting classes and among cheer leaders. I had decided last spring to use it in my classes. I have always had success with it. But nothing like what just happened. It blew me and everyone in that room away.

It is a simple exercise. I merged the twenty triads into ten groups of six students. Each group came up to the head of the class. One at a time, each member of the group got on top of the desk, introduced him or herself to the class from on high. As the other five members lined up and locked hands, the student would turn around, cross his or her hands across his or her chest, close his or her eyes, and then fall straight back into the waiting locked hands of his or her fellow students. As the students hesitantly climb onto the desk top, mumbling to themselves, “oh, God”, “it’s high”, “don’t drop me,” “I’m scared”, “I can’t do this”, from around the room you could hear coming from the seated students, waiting their turn or having taken their turn, supporting, reassuring and comforting, “they’ll catch you”, “trust them”, “there’s nothing to it,” “you can do it.”

And, they do it–after a few deep courage-mustering breaths. As they fall soft squeaks, squeals, loud yells, louder screams, an occasional “oh, shit”, and other utterances resound throughout the room. Mixed with those fearful sounds is an applause of voices that grows larger and louder with each fall: “thatta girl”, “good for you”, “see, you can do it”. Then, it came time for Kim to get on the desk top. She had been shaking her head with a fierce determination muttering, “Not me,” As each member of her group dropped into her hands, she’d day, “I ain’t doing no such thing. I’m not going to do it.” She waited until she was the last to go. She refused to get on the table. Her classmates with whom she had gone through bonding for week urged her on, encouraged her, reassured her. With a great deal of hesitation, he reluctantly climbed on the table. She introduced herself and then looked down at the students lined up looking up at her. “I never trusted no body in my life. I don’t trust no one.” She refused to turn around. Her classmates offered quiet support. Everyone in the class stopped laughing or chuckling. The class grew quiet. She turned around saying, “I don’t trust no body nohow.” Tears started to fall from her eyes. She stepped down, saying “I don’t know how to trust any one. I ain’t doin’ it. Period! I can’t.”

“That’s all right,” I said feeling that she was one not to push. I had a quiet understanding of how she felt as I had a flashback to that day I had to climb that sheer cliff.

Her group sat down as the next group, the last group, replaced them. I saw her watching as the last six fell into the arms of their classmates. Her face, with failure and embarrassment written all over it, got more somber with each fall. As the students were falling, I conspicuously slide off the desk, walked over to her, and swatted in front of her. Everyone was looking at me.

“Here’s a Tootsie Pop.”

“What’s that for? I didn’t fall.”

“For giving it the best shot you had today. You got up on the table and gave it a try. No one can ask more than that today. That’s worth a tootsie pop in my book.”

“You were the first to fall.”

“I’ve had to climb a 90 foot cliff. I know what it’s like to be gripped by fear. Besides you’re not the first who didn’t fall.”

“I’m not?” she asked as her face cracked a slight smile as I offered her that small consolation.

After everyone had finished, I raised my hand to say something, but couldn’t find the words right away. There was an silence. Then, I said, “I don’t think any of us should think any less of Kim and better of ourselves just because she didn’t fall and we did. I bet most of us if we had our choice didn’t want to fall but we were more afraid of what people would say.” As the class filed out, I saw a few students in her triad and a few from other triads go over an talk with her and console her. I heard one say, “You’re OK in my book. If you’re free, let’s go get a Coke.”

I thought, “Thank you, God.” But, Kim walked out, almost shuffled out the door with a dark look of defeat. I knew that insidious monster was watering at the mouth with thoughts of victory. She hadn’t unwrapped her Tootsie Pop. I thought about nothing else but her on my walk this morning, trying to figure out to counter the events of yesterday.

Today, I walked into class with bags of Tootsie Pops. They were prizes for a critical thinking “contest” I was going to have today. Kim walked in. I almost asked her if everything “was cool.” For some mysterious reason, I didn’t. She walked behind me and gave me a “hi.” There was a mysterious tone in her voice that caught my ear. I simply gave her a “hi” back.

I took role and said, “OK, I want two triads to get together who haven’t worked with each other before. Move the chairs. We’re going to have a contest. Winner gets…….” I hadn’t finished that sentence when I heard excited squeals coming off to my right. I thought it was just the normal noise of students getting ready to move around the room. Someone said something, but it was too muffled for me to hear. Heads started to turn towards the squealing. I turned my head and saw students clapping, jumping up and down in their chairs, and putting smiles on their faces that stretched from ear to ear. Then, someone made an announcement that made my heart skip a beat. “Kim is going to fall. Kim is going to fall.” A buzz of expectation raced through the class. “But, she only wants guys to catch her.” Every fellow in the class spontaneously jumped up without being asked and rushed to the table. They picked six to have what one called “the honor of catching her.”

Kim slowly got up out of her seat and walked over to the table. I and everyone else watched stunned. My heart was pounding. I could hardly breath. I couldn’t believe my eyes. She looked at the guys smiling at her. One said with assuring finality, “Trust us. We won’t drop you.” “I’m trying to,” she replied fearfully. She turned around, looked at me, and said as if talking to herself, “I’m scared. I gotta do this.” She closed her eyes, crossed her hands across her chest, she hesitated for a second as if having second thoughts, and then let go and fell back accompanied by a scream of, “GOD!”

The second Kim landed in the guys’ arms class exploded into cheering pandemonium. Everyone jumped to their feet. A roar erupted as if Mickey Mantle had just won the World Series with a grand slam homer with two outs in the bottom of the ninth of the seventh game. I stretched my arms skyward and screamed out a “YES” so loud they probably heard me in the next building. Saluting whistles pierced the air. Tears dripped down some cheeks. Mine were among them.

As Kim stood up, she turned around with a sense of accomplishment oozing from every pore in her body, and declared to me, “I’m going to kick ass in this class. You watch. I sang and I fell, and damn if I can’t do anything.”

After she sat down, I walked over and gave her three tootsie pops. Someone behind me yelled, “Hell, doc, that’s worth a bagful.” I walked back to the desk top and threw a bag of tootsie pops at a smiling, happy Kim. Nothing like a sense of accomplishment as a cathartic to self-esteem.

I has been quite a week, a miraculous week. First Heather and now Kim. I don’t what happened between yesterday and today. I didn’t ask. I prefer to believe that maybe there is something more involved, something mysterious, in teaching than merely exercises and techniques. Whatever it was, Kim grabbed on to it and came out of the shadows into the bright light today. I think I’m going to spend a quiet weekend to live those moments over and over again, and savor this profound feeling of accomplishment of having helped in some way a student to touch themselves.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

Someone asked me why I “waste valuable class time with such childish nonsense.” He was referring to what I call my introductory “stuff” exercises. Well, my answer is a question. Have you ever noticed the metamorphosis students experience as they enter a class room? Take a few minutes, get to class early, and watch. They become different people. In the halls, they’re noisy, laughing, smiling, and talking with each other. In the class room they are muted, staring Easter Island statues. It seems that as they pass through the portals they leave themselves outside. It’s is as if they have an out of body experience, leave their persona at the threshold, and bring only their “shadow selves” with them into class. Their smiles fade away into tight lips. The brightness in their eyes dims. Their neck muscles stiffen. Their faces tighten. Their tongues are paralyzed. Their cheeriness decays into a melancholy. Their body language proclaims a wish for both anonymity and invisibility. Their eyes either stared straight ahead at the hairs of the nape of the neck in front of them or downward at their desk top. There is a silent, foreboding, tenseness in the air.

I think I know why. Look at your roll sheets. All the names of the people in the class room are listed on them–except for one. He doesn’t pay tuition or even audit fees, so he is not registered. But, he attends every class. His name is not on your official roll. But, he’s there. You never call his name when you take attendance. You never place him on a seating chart. You never memorize his name. But, he’s there. You can’t see him or hear him, but you can see and feel his presence. He is not even a student. He is an unwanted, ugly, mean-spirited intruder. He greets each student at the door with his silent cackling, loathsome sneer, impish grin, diabolic gaze. In mock friendship, he seductively wraps his spiny arms around each of the students’ shoulders saying, “You can’t have fun. It’s torture in here. It’s a cold, harsh place. But, let me tell you how to make it through this class. To survive, all you have to do is….”

In class, he never sits in one seat. He moves at the speed of light, jumping, row to row, from seat to seat seeking to annoy, distract, debilitate, and incapacitate the students into silence and inactivity. He thrives on the physically organized class room that fosters isolation and loneliness. He flourishes in the asocial or even anti-social way we line the students up in isolating rows, place them apart from each other in lonely seats, and put them in cut-throat competition for recognition. He spotlights human brokenness and extinguishes human joy. He quietly taps their shoulder with his bony finger, sticks his hooked, pimpled nose neck to their ears, and insidiously whispers with feigned concern reminders of their vulnerability, of their powerlessness, of their limitations, and of their ignorance: “Don’t forget that you’re at that guy’s mercy.” “Do you really want to look dumb by asking a question.” “You know what happens if you disagree?” “Do you want them to make fun of you.” “Careful, that may be wrong.” “No one here cares about you.” “You’re alone.” “They’ll ridicule you.” “You’re different.” “You not going to get any sympathy.” “No one will understand.” “They’re waiting to jump on you and make points.” “You can’t depend on anyone.” “You’re better than they are.” “It’s a dog eat dog world in here.” “Don’t trust them.” “Do you really think you belong in here?” “Maybe he won’t notice you if you don’t do or say anything.” “No one is going to help you.” “You can’t tell anyone you don’t understand. What will they think.” “Don’t screw it up.” “You’re only mediocre.”

The students know him well. They have heard to him for so many years and in so many classes. He seems to be right so often. They listen to him. They believe him.

Who is this person? He goes by many names: stress, anxiety, hurt, confusion, fear, insecurity. But, whatever alias he uses, his MO is the same.

The only way I have discovered to wrestle with this interloper is through caring about the students, respecting them, trusting them, creating a classroom ecology that proclaims to each student “you are a part of us. I, we, want you in here. We need you as much as you need us. You belong here. And, we give a damn.” To defend ourselves against his scheming we have to join forces with each other–me and the students–find a relatedness, create community, develop a support system, and make connections among each other. As an antidote to his poison, we have to weave a web, into which we–the professors, the students and the subject of study–are drawn and woven together. We have to denounce as blasphemy everything that allows us to stand apart from others in the classroom. We have to praise whatever encourages us to be a part of each other. We have to contest anything that distances us from each other and keeps everyone at a hand’s length from each other. We have to applaud everything that establishes a ecological mutuality between everyone in the class room, that creates supportive feelings for each other, and validates a linking among each other. We have to say, “It’s OK to reach out. We’re here for you.”

I believe that when a class room becomes a social arena no less than it is an academic one that intruder has no place. That’s why I introduce every class with my bonding and trust exercises. As it happened, the best answer I could have for my detractor occurred dramatically the second day of class.

It had been a riotous, fun-packed, laughing opening days in class, of introducing strangers to each other, of strangers slowly becoming acquaintances, getting accustomed to each other, making connections with each other, breaking through the isolating walls of aloneness. The students and I were sitting around in groups talking about what they had done during the break, interviewing each other with a “Getting to Know Ya” exercise when, on the second day, what I call “A Tootise Pop” moment happened. But, I think I should take you back to where I think it all began, on the first day.

Day One, Thursday: I got to class a few minutes early, my boom box playing, a tootsie pop sticking out of my mouth. I greeted the students as they came into the class room. They returned my welcome with strange “who is this guy” looks and nervous “what’s going on” chuckles. I started to feel self- conscious. Is my zipper open? Is my hair unkept? Should I have worn socks? Maybe, they don’t like my Grateful Dead Shirt. Is Pink Floyd not to their taste? Surely, they must like Tootsie Pops. Anyway, I continued to introduce myself to each them, extending my hand: “Hello, I’m Louis Schmier. What’s your name? Glad to have you in the class…John this is Lashandra. Lashandra John. Sit down and talk to each other a while.” If I miss them at the door, I roamed around the room, squeezing between or climbing over chairs, introducing myself and them to each other. “Who are you…..welcome to the class….what’s your name….Joe meet Luchresha, Luchresha Joe. Luchresha turn your chair around and tell each other about what you did during break…” More strange looks, but the serious faces now had smiles. The silence of the lambs was now broken by the cacophony of chit-chat as strangers sat looking at each other’s faces, learning each other’s names, and finding out something about each other.

Then I asked them to get up, walk around the room, introduce themselves to ten people whom they haven’t met by telling them their name, something about themselves, shaking hands, and hugging each other.

After I called the roll, I proclaimed, “Let’s have a scavenger hunt. The people with the most finds get a tootsie pop.” They had to find fellow classmates who had pets, played a musical instrument and what kind of instrument, and who had a tatoo, where the tatoo is located and why they got a tatoo.

“You have to introduce yourself before you ask any questions and write anything down.” For the next fifteen minutes, the room was bedlam with students–and me–moving about, hurling our obnoxious visitor out of the way, jostling each other, screaming across the room, “who has…”, going up to each other asking, “I’m so and so. Who are you? Do you have….” They were laughing, smiling, and talking. No was listening to him.

After we settled down and I threw the prizes at the winners, sitting on a chair in the middle of the room, I “checked in” with them and asked them what they wanted to know about me. I wanted them to know that I was a part of the class, not apart from it. The questions came slowly. Our visitor was working hard to spread his toxin. The students slowly asked only the usual safe biographical questions: when were you born, how did you get to Valdosta, are you married, where did you go to school, how long had I been teaching. Then, one student, ignoring the whispers in her ear, asked what was my most embarrassing moment. I told them without a flinch of the time when, in the early 70’s, a bunch of us professors and wives were nearly being caught by the police while we were skinning dipping in an apartment complex pool as the climax to a finger paint party. They laughed. Their tenseness eased.

Another asked if I had any children. I told the class that I had two sons. The conversation went something like this:

“How old are they?”

“25 and 18”

“Where do they live?”

I told them that my older son, was enrolled in the MBA program at Stanford.

“He must be smart like you,” a student interrupted.

That sneaky monster! I sensed a distance, a separation, a chasm, forming between the students and me in that question that I quickly had to close. “Heck, he puts me to shame. He was ‘all everything’ in high school and at Chapel Hill. I was ‘all nothin’.’ My high school teachers voted me the least likely when I graduated high school. But, I was elected the class clown. I barely got out of college with a high C.” I could see some students starting to wave off our unwanted guest.

“And your other boy?”

“He’s living at home.” I told them that Robby had dropped out of high school and works on a construction site.

“Doesn’t that hurt,” one student asked about Robby.

I talked about fear for him when he was kicked out of school, and how I fight not to let it control me. I answered after a moment of hesitation. “I’m disappointed only if he is. It took me a long while to realize that I would hurt him more if I didn’t let him walk his own road and live his own life. But, it’s tough, very tough because I know what he is capable of doing. But, he has to find that out for himself.”

“Are you embarrassed by your younger son, being a professor and all.”

Talk about asking me to bare my soul. “No,” was my sincere reply. “Never have. I wouldn’t talk about him with you if I was. And, if I was, it wouldn’t matter. That would be my problem. My approval of what he did isn’t necessary. Only his honest approval of his own actions is needed. I suppose all I want is for him to be truly happy. If he is, I am. He is struggling to find himself. He is slowly facing himself and changing. In some ways, he may be more honest with himself than many students who come to college and don’t know why they are here.”

“Do you love him as much as your older boy?”

“Sure, I wouldn’t trade either one of them in. My love for both of them is unconditional and equal.”

I could see they were listening intently. A respectful, quiet silence filled the room as the period came to an end. No teacher had ever shared with them like that before. I didn’t know it then, but the ice was broken and we were less afraid of each other. An atmosphere of respect, trust, and compassion had started filling the room. Our agent of despair was starting to have trouble breathing. I could see it and hear it, but I didn’t really know it until the following day.

Day Two–Friday: As soon as things settled down, we went on another scavenger hunt to find classmates who liked to cook, who slept in the nude, and is an only child. The place was pandemonium. We–me as well– were on the move, climbing over chairs, laughing, giggling, and asking, “Hi, I am so and so. Do you like…..”, “Who are you? I am so and so. Do you…..” They could handle that I liked to cook, but laughed when I unabashedly said that I slept in the nude- -even at times cooked in the nude.

After I threw the rewards about the class, we circled into groups to interview each other with a “getting to know ya” series of biographical questions. One of the questions asked, “Can you tolerate ambiguity?”

Then it came. One student, with a question on her face, screamed out, “Dr. Schmier.”

I could feel our unwanted promoter of human brokenness warn, “Don’t ask.” I quickly climbed over a few desks before she heard him. She asked me, “what does ‘ambiguity’ mean? No one here knows.”

I looked at her with an impish grin. I thought to myself, “I suppose I could answer the question. But, I there’s too much dependent one-way “education” and not enough independent educational ecology. I’m going to be quiet and see what happens. She has to decide to whom to listen.” I shook my shoulders and replied, “Ask someone.”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that. It’s such a dumb question. What will they think?”

That damn s.o.b. was spreading his venom. I didn’t say a word. I raised my eyebrows, nodded my head, shook my shoulders in a “your choice” gesture, and slowly walked away to a corner of the room to suck on my tootsie pop and watch. I saw the others in the group poke her, prod her as she shook her head. They laughed and talked. God, I wanted to motion for her to do it, but I held back. Then it happened. I read her lips sighing, “oh, well.”

She slowly rose from her chair, raised her hand for quiet and loudly said, “I’m Heather. Who can knows what ‘ambiguity’ means?”

Everyone stopped talking. All heads turned towards her. I could see a slight grimace form on her face and her eyes wince slightly as she waited for the pain of the sarcastic comment or the ridiculing snicker. That miserable creature was whispering, “I told you so. You wouldn’t listen to me.” But, the barbs were not hurled.

“Vagueness,” “Unclear”, “Not precise” came the answers from all parts of the room.

She sat down with a Chesshire grin and a threw back a grateful “thank you.”

I got goose bumps. “This room is sacred,” I thought to myself. “A miracle just happened.” The students didn’t realize it, but they were beginning to share successes and achievements and to share fears, to draw on the strength of each other. Everyone went back to interviewing each other and discussing each searching biographical question. But, it was a teaching moment I could not let pass. I jumped over a chair into the middle of the classroom, raised my hand skyward, and the class quieted down.

“What just happened?” I asked with an excitement in my voice. “I want you to quietly think about it for a few minutes what Heather had done, what you had done, and what it all means.” The tumult died down. After about five silent minutes, came a series of answers: “She didn’t know something and asked us for help.” “There was bonding.” “Heather trusted us enough to think we wouldn’t make fun of her.” “She trusted us so that we would think she was dumb for asking a simple question like what a word means.” “She had the courage to admit to us that she needed help.” “She felt safe because she knew us.”

“So,” I asked, “what lesson has Heather taught us?” Think about it for a few minutes.

More silence. Then came: “We’re responsible for each other.” “We can teach each other.” “No one gets ridiculed for trying to learn.” “A good way to learn is to ask questions.” “There are no such things as dumb questions.”

I turned to Heather and gave her both a “thank you” and an orange tootsie pop.

When I came into class Monday, after mourning UNC’s loss to Arkansas, there on the blackboard someone had written: “Remember, there are no dumb questions in this class.” I got goose bumps. Dare I hope that they were struggling to say to this scraggled face intruder, “Get the hell out of my face. Get outta here, now! ” I know he will not go quietly into the night. He will kick and scream as he resists being thrown out, but maybe they are aware that he’s lurking around and may have second thoughts about listening to him. It was, indeed, a teaching moment, a tootsie pop moment. Only two days into the class, we haven’t sung solo to each other or fallen backward off the desk top into each other’s arms yet. Wow!

Make it a good day.

–Louis–