It’s about 9:00 in the morning. 36,000 feet somewhere over South Carolina on the second leg of my trip home after two days at a magnificent conference of the Organizational Behavioral Teaching Conference at Western Illinois University. I am physically and emotionally tired, but like this plane my spirit is soaring high in the clouds. I am enveloped by a strong and warm sense of community and fulfillment that won’t let me shut down either my mind or soul. I find I have unexpected emotions about this conference that few others have stirred. Just three days earlier I was anxiously flying in the other direction believing I was Daniel about to go into the lions’ den; now I am going home with nary a scratch but with newly forged friendships. I went west anxiously wanting to get the conference over as soon as possible; now, as the clouds roll by, I am sad that the conference has come to an end and regret that I am heading home so soon. I went as a stranger in a strange land–an historian among people associated with teaching in business schools–and am returning with warm feelings as an adopted member of the family. I was initially greeted correctly and politely with introductions and handshakes and left with warm back slapping, embracing hugs, and kisses. I went not believing that any session at a conference of business academics could really of much interest to me; now I depart having experienced more personal growth in two days then at most other conferences I have attended. I had planned to give, but received far more. IT was something else, something magical–at least, for me–that has stirred something within. As I was about to lean back and close my eyes, and think a while about just what that magic may have been, a little girl from across the aisle came over to me and started smiling at me. I smiled back. Then, she asked, “What’s your name?”

I told her, “Louis. What’s yours?”

“Sam.” Then, she put her finger to her lips, leaned over, and whispered, “It’s really Samantha, but that is such a yukkie name.”

“No,” I said with a grin. “I know a nice and beautiful witch named Samantha that does nice things for people.”

“What do you do?” she asked with a spontaneous and innocent giggle.

“I’m a teacher,” I replied.

“What do you do?” I asked as I offered her a Tootsie Pop.

“I can turn around and jump at the same time.”

“I can make myself look like a fish,” as I sucked in and puckered my lips.

She giggled. “I’m flying in an airplane.”

“You are?” I feigned surprise. “Me, too!”

“Where are you going,” she asked next.

I told her. “And where are you going,” I asked.

“To see Mickey Mouse,” she laughed.

As she started to tell me all about her trip to Disney World, our delightful conversation was cut short. Her mother pulled her away with an admonishing, “Don’t disturb the man.”

“It’s no disturbance,” I protectingly advised.

“She shouldn’t get in the habit of talking with strangers anyhow,” I was reproached with a feigned smile.

And that was that. The little girl’s glow disappeared. But, she wouldn’t be deterred. Nor would I. Every now and then, we turn and sneak a peek at each other, wink at each other, or lick on our Tootsie Pops on the same beat, or quickly raise our eyebrows a bit, or faintly smile, or wrinkle our noses, or make unnoticed funny faces.

As we secretly communicated so her mother wouldn’t notice, I started thinking about three words that I had heard in a session at the conference. They’ve been reverberating inside me since Larry Levin used them to define spirituality at the beginning of a powerful session on spirituality in the classroom presented by Judy Neal from the University of New Haven. He said that spirituality is “listening to children.” How true. We may have brute authority in the class room and we may have intellectual power. But, without the child, there is no spirit, no meaning, no purpose, no humanity. Without the child, the classroom becomes a cold, bleak, loveless orphanage.

It’s the child in us that brings constant freshness and enthusiasm; it’s the child within that makes both us and the students spontaneous actors and constant discovers; it’s the child within that makes us all learners, experimenters, players, dreamers, explorers. For the child, no nook or cranny is too dangerous, no object too valuable, no obstacle too insurmountable, and no place too sacred to investigate. It’s the child in us that keeps us crawling, digging, and climbing. It’s the child within that sees, listens, feels, and smells the world. It’s the child that endows us with our sense of wonder, of freedom, of joy, of surprise, of risk, of trust, of spontaneity, of flexibility, of adaptability, of fantasy. It’s the child within that drives us to mine our creativity, inventiveness, imagination, authenticity, caring, love. It’s the child within that urges us on to tumble over our mysterious surrounding to discover the wonder of our vast existence. It’s the child within that tells us to trust our perceptions, acknowledge our feelings, proclaim our worth. It’s the child within that endows us with our uninhibited, optimistic, and zestful view of learning and life. It’s the child within that ultimately digs out the exciting, magical, and wonderful “me”, that drives each of us to strive for our own uniqueness, potential and authenticity.

It’s the child in us that makes us magicians with the power to conjure up, transform, and cast out. To be in touch with students, to feel deeply each of their moods, to experience fully each of their magic, to sense the wonder out there and in each of them, to sense the wonder in ourselves is to be in touch with the children within. It’s the child in us that creates the mystery of each student each day in each classroom, that reveals the spirit of each person. It’s there, waiting to be called forth even if we deny its existence or don’t experience it. It’s the child that gives the class its spice, that casts out boredom, that creates an ecstacy and rapture in learning, and proclaims that there is wonder out there in every moment of every day. Starve the child within and the music of the class room dims, the paint loses its brilliance, the glaze is chipped, the taste loses its spice, the dance stiffens, pages are torn out, the poetry is less read and understood, the guiding light goes out, the love loses its intensity, the magic is done, the spirit dies, the celebration ends, and we stop wiggling our fingers and toes. All that remains of the nourishing oasis is a parched desert of meaningless, dull facts. The pleasure of learning is replaced by the pain of it, the love of it by the hate for it, experience by telling and direction, noisy excitement by quiet and boring routine, spontaneity by dulling discipline and order.

It’s sad that so many of us were children who now have forgotten how to be them or are afraid to be them. And so, we have sadly so neglected the child within us and the students; we have so lost the capacity to play at learning and learn by playing; we’ve allowed our precious “child” to atrophy and thereby have fossilized the spirit of the class room. It really is sad that so many people, as they grow older and acquire greater reputation, tend to lose their playfulness and hurl insidious prohibitions against anyone who would be a child. It’s too bad that so many academicians, who have themselves fossilized, see the attempts to retain youth as pathetic signs of naivete, immaturity, superficiality, insincerity, serendipity, silliness, impropriety, childishness, waste, weakness, and even irrationality. It’s sadder because most people have submitted. Our academic culture certainly is conducive to it with all those people, their degrees, resumes, and titles draped around their neck, telling us–as a colleague told me the other day when he heard music in the class room–that learning is “serious business”, that I should stop “fooling around,” “remember your position,” and “act your age.” But, in fact, I think we should applaud those teachers who cling to the child within them and encourage their students to allow the child within them to be a dynamic dimension of their personalities, who know how to teach and learn and play and have fun all at the same time, who get down on their knees and talk with the child within face-to-face, who stay in touch with that wonder and never forget it, who remember how to live life and teach life. People can teach and learn hard without it being at the expense of the child within them, at the expense of losing that wonderful capacity to play and have fun. No, the spirit of learning is the spirit of the child. And so, we teachers must love and nurture and nourish the “child” within. Not to do so is to lose the capacity to braille the world, to be involved with it, to wonder and dream, and to live.

And so, holding up an unwrapped orange Tootsie Pop in salute and blowing a bubble or two, to Larry’s definition I would only add, “and listening to the child within ourselves and others.”

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

Good morning. It’s 4:34. The sun has yet to appear over the horizon. It’s nice in here in front of the computer, sipping a cup of aromatic freshly made coffee, munching on some freshly picked succulent blue berries, and engaging in conversation. Outside the air is so heavy with humidity that as I walked I had to be careful not to inhale too much of it for fear of drowning. Flying armadas of annoying gnats and attacking mosquitos danced along my route as they patrolled, lying in wait to pounce upon some poor unsuspecting soul crazy enough to negotiate the dark streets at this early hour. But, I was ready for them. You can’t walk in this southern American rainforest without being awash in bug repellant unless you want to come back looking like you broke out with a case of combined instant measles and chicken pox.

As I whiffed and waved through the billowing clouds of the pesky insects, I word kept “bugging” me. It’s a word that is as tiny as a gnat, but for many it can be no less as annoying and threatening as a verbal mosquito. That word is “WHY.” Add a question mark to it and its simple three letters become a sentence that packs a whollop which belies its diminutive size and which usually is given only to larger and abstruse words, more complicated phrases, and more convoluted sentences. Add a question mark, to paraphrase Isaiah, and it becomes a provocative word of birth or of death; a word of invigorating breezes or a devastating whirlwind; a word of growth or of decay. It can be an ally or opponent, a friend or foe; it’s a comforting word or an irritant; it’s an exciting word or a foreboding one; it’s an invited guest or it’s an unwanted party crasher. The one thing you can say about this “bugger” is that it penetrates all masks, pares away all layers, breaks through all walls, and reveals the innermost being!

What got me started thinking about this word was that when I returned from a ten day trip, I was greeted with, overwhelmed by, 839 e-mail messages in my mailbox! After I had vigorously exercised my deleting index finger, what remained was a large cache of messages which centered around two questions which were being discussed separately but coincidentally on several lists. The first was: “why are students resistant to collaborative teaching?” The second was: “why are professors hesitant about using group learning techniques?” Two interesting and important questions that talk of issues dear to my heart and soul. But, as I read each message, that word, why, kept jumping out at me as so many people deliberately danced around it with a series of evasive and defensive “because” and “why nots.”

I think, however, that when we discuss anything about education we have to acknowledge that technical quality and creative spirit, function and art, technique and soul, doing and impact can be joined in a lasting, meaningful and purposeful marriage only with taking of vows that consciously and honestly answer the question “why do you take this….”

If we have the courage to take such vows, it helps us get to the underlying inner causes of our actions, ideas, perceptions, evaluations, and values that drive, push, pull, tug, hinder, encourage us. I say it takes courage because that penetrating, paring and revealing little “bugger” lays us bare. It turns our attention away from what we are doing to who we are; it directs us away from outward technique and towards our inner elves and asks that we take a perilous inward journey; it demands that we recognize that what we do is an extension of who we are, and that we are operating from a deeply held set of beliefs which may not be appropriate to what we are supposed to do or be consonant with our other beliefs; or, we may discover that something we take for granted as a part of the natural order of educational things, and is therefore unchangeable, may in fact be a social construct we unthinkingly accept for the sake of safety and convenience, and therefore may have to be changed.

I have discovered–and it’s not a pioneering achievement–that any technique which I might employ or think of using–stick drawing, brain storming, mind mapping, games, skits, role playing, and scavenger hunts for the triad of students to braille themselves, each other and the material–is in and of itself neither automatically conducive to nor a barrier to learning. It is the mood–that human and mysterious and magical air–of the classroom that is critical for any technique that I might use to have a meaningful and lasting impact on both me and the students in and beyond the classroom. For me that mood means sincerity and commitment. It means that for me, for the classroom, for the students any technique I use must fill the atmosphere for both me and ALL the students–as partners–with a crisp and refreshing and sweet smell of individuality, freedom, creativity, imagination; every inhale must take in a lungful of life-sustaining, GENUINELY generating, nurturing, trusting and caring air. It means that I must constantly remind myself that teaching is above all a marvelously creative people thing, and teaching should help me to reflect upon the wonder and mystery of life, my life and that of others with whom I come into contact as well as about those whom we talk. It means it’s something I love. It’s part of my soul. It’s the creating, the taking the risk, the working at it, the growing that keeps me going. I feel empty and perhaps aggravated without the classroom. It means it is something I do not want to miss; it is something the students should not want to miss. We all should feel we cannot reject the invitation to the dance. It means that whenever I and/or students leave a class, that time with each other should have created satisfying and awesome and dynamic and challenging–as well as fulfilling and joyful–images of an autumn leaf, a frozen brook, a quiet meadow, a melodious forest, a crimson sunset, a purple sunrise, a yellow spring flower, a spider spinning its web, a warbling bird fashioning a nest, a birthing lamb, a dawning day, a romantic dance with a lover, maybe even an erupting volcano. And finally, it means that teaching must very centered and reflective, almost a meditative thing; that the retention of any technique can’t be defended with a passing “because” or with a mere “it has always been done that way” or an “it’s easier for me.” At the same time, no technique should be adopted with equal whim because it’s “the in thing” or “sounds good” or “looks interesting.” No technique or belief should be kept or discarded or adopted without a penetrating, paring, and revealing “why;” without a deep and articulated reflection, without constant re-examination, on the meaning, purpose and goal of and education and how it fits in to what it is we should be doing in education.

Since whatever goes on in the classroom ultimately reflects the spirit in which it occurs, creating and maintaining this spirit or allowing it to flourish is an even greater challenge than adopting or adapting a technique. With all those students and with us, there will always be some stale or pungent aroma; there will always some issue or personal problem that must be addressed which impacts on effort and performance. I accept this, along with working out the kinks of a new approach or adapting an old one to new students, as an essential part of my craft that fuels my change, development and growth. And if a class fills with the whiffs of some acrid fumes, it’s not a time for defensive finger-pointing or recrimination or a time to lunge out the door. It’s a time for some honest fumigation with self-reflection, self-examination, and self-correction and adjustment. That, too, is a tough assignment. To struggle to purify the air day after day after day is demanding. I don’t think it is as impossible as a lot of people would have me believe. I am always suspicious of anyone who says he or she does not experience any problems or wants to do something without facing the risk of experiencing problems. Something always goes wrong, something always doesn’t work, something always isn’t necessarily instantly applauded by the students, sometimes something is never accepted by some students. And, since I have yet to have a front row reserved seat on the mount of Sinai, I will make mistakes. Moreover, the situations are always different from class to class and term to term. No two classes, no two terms are identical thereby by ensuring that they must be treated at best only as cousins, not identical twins; that I am engaged in constant invention and reinvention–and, at times, apology. Something always has to be corrected, changed, adjusted, adapted, adopted. It’s like a cake recipe that you keep improving on.

Reading hundreds of journal, grading hundreds of weekly quizzes, observing and commenting upon hundreds of projects, reading and commenting on hundreds of self-evaluations, working and talking and urging and supporting and encouraging hundreds of students each year is in itself a physical and emotional challenge. But it pales next to the greater challenge of helping each student, helping myself, to strive to be alive and to grow, and to be worthy of his or her–and my– own existence. But, I think that is one of the greatest gifts that working with complicated human beings affords. Solving problems is the only way I truly become a problem solver. Dealing with people is the only way I truly become a people person. Accepting change is the only truly way I follow my creative side, stay sharp and alert, keep dancing on my toes, move on, and develop and grow.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–