I had just open the door to go for a walk when the security motion light suddenly came on. My eye caught a barrage of yellow micro-bursts erupting to my right like a series of exploding flash bulbs. I turned towards my neighbor’s high wooden fence, nearly hidden by the rain-soaked, glistening, thick foliage of a luffa plant I had sown a few months earlier. The light shown on the bright flowers that polka dotted the luffa’s green lushness as if Marc Chagall had come along and just splattered large splotches of yellow from his palette. The hum of bumble bees filled the air as they began their day’s erratic dancing from one golden platform to another. Already some long seed pods the size of oversized zucchinis are lazily hanging from the vines. I stood there for a moment looking at the wall so covered with life. I felt a sense of amazement and excitement. Who would have thought that out from such a tiny, innocuous thing as a half inch long seed something so much larger and beautiful would come?

I turned and started off. I hadn’t walked a few steps out onto the dark street on this drizzly, moonless morning cooled by autumnal 50s when images of that luffa plant intermingled with thoughts of a student I’ll call Mary who meekly had walked into the classroom Friday, three days after class began.

I first met Mary as I was walking across campus. He came up to me telling me with an obvious anxiety in his voice that he had just late-registered for my class. He was a first year student, his schedule had been messed up, he was desperate for a class, and heard good things about me and my classes. I shook his hand and told her that I was glad to have in class. Then, he asked, as if he didn’t want an answer, if it was true that he had to get up and sing and do other things in front of the class.

“Yeah,” I told her noticing the nervousness written all over his face. I gave her a reassuring thumbnail sketch of the class saying something like: “Everyone does. It’s a participation class. We all get into the material. We discuss the material. We touch the material. You and your group will write and perform skits in front of the class. You’ll go on scavenger hunts and get up to show and explain to the class what you brought in, and will discuss the material in class. I don’t just stand and talk, and you don’t just sit and listen and take notes.”

“Oh, I can’t do that,” he said with a panicky voice. “I’d be scared to death. I’ve never been able to get up in front of people. Maybe I should drop the class.”

I suppose I didn’t have to bother and could have disinterestedly said something like, “Whatever you decide”, and walked off. But, I didn’t. I persisted.

“Well,” I sympathetically said, “maybe that’s something you have to work on. In our class, we get to know each other. We become like a family, work together, and support each other. It’s a place where you can take a risk. What do you think you’re afraid of?”

“Being embarrassed, I guess…looking stupid…being wrong. I’ve always been that way. I can’t even ask questions in class. I don’t know if I can do it.”

“I do. Do yourself a favor, believe in yourself, and give it a chance,” I said quietly.

The conversation went on like this for about five minutes when Jason walked by and I called to him. I introduced him to Mary saying that Jason has been in my class last winter. “Jason, if you’ve got a few minutes, tell Mary how you used to be afraid to talk up in class. Tell to her about the class. Mary, I hope I’ll see you tomorrow. I want to have you in the class.” And, I walked off leaving the two of them talking and sucking on the Tootsie Pops I had handed them.

That was Wednesday. Thursday morning Mary wasn’t in class. I was disappointed. When I got back to the department office, I found Mary’ drop slip in my mailbox. I was really sorry to read it.

Friday, just as class was about to begin, Mary meekly walked through the door.

“Dr. Schmier, I know I dropped this class, but can I still get back in–if you’ll have me now? I gave it a lot of thought and decided maybe it was time to try to change and this class may be the place.”

I looked at her with a warm smile, extended my hand, and said, “Glad to have join us. Sit over there with that group.”

A few minutes later, I said, “Mary, we’ve been introducing ourselves to each other. So, why don’t you stand and tell us something about yourself.”

Mary slowly rose and said a faltering “I’m Mary”, and whispered a few words about herself. Then, some students asked her to answer a couple of questions taken from the biographical exercise. Next, as part of a personal scavenger hunt I’m trying for the first time as part of my “getting to know ya” exercises, I and each student rose to describe the item each of us brought to class to best describe ourselves. When each person in Mary’ group finished and his turn came, Mary rose without being prompted and hesitantly said, “Well, I didn’t bring in anything since I just signed up for the course. But, I would have brought in a paper weight because I often think I don’t belong here. That weights heavily on me and holds me down a lot.”

Wow! Talk about being caught off guard by such openness and honesty. I nearly fell off my chair.

After class, Mary came up to me and asked for assurance. “Did I do okay?”

“What do you think,” I replied.

“I thought I did good.”

“Then, why ask me? But, I think so, too. Congratulations. You did great. I was impressed. I am so proud for you. Aren’t you.”

“Yeah, but did I look and act nervous?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t matter.”

“See? I told you. I was so scared. Think people noticed?”

“Hey, what they noticed was that you did it and trusted them with your honesty. You weren’t the only one who was nervous. It’s okay to be nervous, but this time you didn’t let it control you.

“I did do it, didn’t I.”

“It’s a step. But, don’t just say that you did it. Think this weekend about what that says about you and what’s inside.”

I guess I was doing the same thing this morning as I stared at the luffa plant. Mary, like so many students, is very much like that luffa seed. You know what it took for that luffa seed to grow into this huge wondrous flowering, fruit-bearing vine? First and foremost, it needed my commitment, love, and devotion. It was with great expectations and anticipation that I planted that luffa seed. Small as it was, my faith in it was strong and my hopes for it were large. I didn’t approach it negatively by saying “It can’t,” “It won’t,” or “It never will.” In fact, I didn’t know what kind of plant would emerge. I had never seen a luffa plant. I planted that seed with an attitude of “I’m helping to give you a chance to do your thing”, “let’s see what it is you can be”, and “let’s see what we get.”

And so, I carefully prepared the soil, mounded it, made sure it was well drained. With equal care I planted the seed, insuring it was placed at the right depth. I looked over the tender seedling and protected the delicate and vulnerable sprouts. As it grew, I encouragingly talked with it and I excitedly guided it along the wall. And, now, with faith and hope rewarded, I reveled in the blossoms of both my labor and that seed’s potential.

And now, after having a brief glimpse into Mary’ potential, I wonder why is that we will dirty our hands, crack our nails, scrape our skin, strain our backs, pull our muscles, spend our time and money as we plant, feed, trim, prune, train, spray, water, protect and nurture that seed as it sprouts, grows, blossoms and fruits. But, so many of us will not be so caring and nurturing, so protective and supportive, so committed when it comes to those human seeds we call students. I wonder why is that so many teaches want only to see students as fully grown, low maintenance plants in full bloom in need of only a bit of pruning here and there. The tragedy is that when we think that way, we unintentionally act like a scorching sun, a withering drought, a devouring insect, a choking week, or a drowning torrent to any student who appears to be any less than a mature plant.

I think if we were committed to students like Mary as much as we are committed to insuring that a seed will grow into a beautifully flowering plant, we would find in our students, like a seed, that there is so much potential impressiveness in something apparently so ordinary; so much potential grandeur in something apparently so simple; so much potential beauty in such apparent plainness; so much potential to be unfurled in something seemingly so limited.

I think I’ll give Mary an orange Tootsie Pop when we meet in class. Because of her it has been a good week–for both of us.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

I was sitting on the floor in my office, a Tootsie Pop in my mouth, casually reading last quarter’s student journals as I prepared for the start of the new academic year, when a passage jumped up at me:

I’ve learned a lot about a variety of life’s things in the two years I’ve been here, it would surely take up this entire book. I am grateful for that, and I am a stronger person for them. Strange isn’t it that most of what I learned and what has affected me had nothing to do with the class room. It’s been in the fraternity and in the dorms and in clubs and just having to deal with different kinds of people…Until now, I’ve never had a memorable class room experience and don’t really know anyone who has…

I put the journal down and wondered who are the teachers on our campuses, where does a lot of the learning taking place, and what kind of learning occurs. I don’t think the answers are as obvious as you might suppose.

When so many of our students come on campus, whatever be their GPA or whatever scholarship they may be on, whatever their age, from the very unscientific questionnaires I give them at the beginning of class, the academic rigor they are about to face is usually the least on their mind. The pressures of the campus lifestyle are what they’re thinking mostly about. They find to their dismay that the campus is a new ball game, new rules, a new stadium, new officials, new players. Campus life offers them an independence, need for self-reliance, and demand for self- discipline that few have ever known and have been prepared to exercise. It demands that they make so many decisions that had usually been made for them. They arrive excited about their new-found freedom, but quickly find that using it properly is not easy. They’re confronted with an incredible number of temptations, distractions, and demands on their time and energies that place so much stress in their lives: living away from home for the first time, having to decide whether to go Greek or not, having to balance sports and academics, having to handle their own money, having to juggle the requirements of a job, having to deal with the demands of family, having to decide on majors that will determine the course of their lives. So many students have problems with simple personal matters that mothers or maids took care of: cleaning their rooms, doing laundry, making their beds, maintaining proper hygiene, deciding what to eat. They have to face the social problems of when to go out, where to go out, with whom to go out, when to come home, when to go to sleep. They have to face the problem of setting priorities and dealing with the distractions of endless cycles of parties, pledging, rush, athletic events. Still others have to balance the multiple roles of husband or wife, father or mother, and job holder.

Little goes on outside the class room which does not impact on what goes on inside the class room. Nothing is easier for a student unaccustomed to having someone look over his/her shoulder, whip in hand, laying down the rules, to succumb to the temptations of countless distractions, and to fall behind. So, my question is, who shall help them learn how to deal with such demands? Who shall assist them to meet the challenges college life poses, to fulfill their responsibilities, to acquire a self-discipline, to deal with other people, to acquire a new vision of themselves that will serve them far beyond campus for the rest of their lives?

The answer comes down to a definition of education. Far too many professors believe that the only important concerns of education are confined to the narrow vocational limits of subject matter and requirements of developing professional skills. As such they see themselves as members of an aristocracy endowed with a divine right to rule the campus. They believe that they are academia’s “first born,” claiming all the consequent attention, rights and privileges. They see themselves as the centerpiece of the academic creation over which they have dominion, and that the campus operates for their convenience and all exist to serve them. For them, all other considerations pale in significance compared to the knowledge they impart in the classroom. After all, how can any one equate the responsibility of transmitting the knowledge of organic chemistry, political science, Shakespeare, business management with such frivolous concerns as parking spaces, treatment in the infirmary, things to do on the weekend, quality of food, spending money, temperature in the room, availability of washing machines, amount of hot water, having to commute, etc? And when asked to be concerned with these out-of- class issues, so many professors, will scornfully raise their eyebrows and profess: “I’m not their mommy and daddy.” “I’m not a baby sitter.” “I’m not going to wipe their noses.” “Don’t ask me to hold their hands.” “It’s not my job to coddle them. I’m not here to entertain them.”

Too few professors believe education must include the broader “wholeness” mission of helping a student to develop a basic set of personal and social values. It defies my logic to think that there is little meaningful teaching and learning outside the classroom. I also believe there are so many different types of learning that a student needs to know to evolve into a contributing citizen and a better person. Aside from the subject content of academic courses and an array of intellectual skills with which professors wish to solely concern themselves, there is an essential and integrated plane of social and communal learning. Students have to learn how to live with a complete stranger who may have different values and lifestyle, how to judge character, how to pick and choose new friends, how to deal with peer pressure, how to relate to someone of a different race, gender, religion or creed, how to judge character, how to resolve disputes, how to compromise, how to pick and choose friends, how to get along without going along, how to make that transition from family to the world out there, how to make that transition from boys and girls to young men and women, how to be ready for the challenge as a mature, self- assured person living and working in a still discriminating society. The classroom may prepare the students to earn a living. Contrary to the assertions of teaching and research faculty, however, much of the most important lessons of how to live occur outside the classroom. In fact, I’m not sure that most significant and long-lasting learning doesn’t take place outside the classroom far beyond the limited academic concerns of most professors. Many of these learnings go on in fraternity and sorority houses, on the athletic field, in the dorms, in clubs, in the Student Union, and in a host of non-academic settings under the guidance, leadership, and instruction of a group of dedicated people who don’t deserve to be dismissed and ignored and demeaned as “second sons.” They are not amateurish coddlers or baby sitters or entertainers. They are educators concerned with the well-being of the students on the campus and are entitled to be recognized and respected and treated as professionals!

The crunch of the issue is to recognize that the professor must share the honored role of a teacher with others on campus who labor outside the academic domain of the professor. Fellow students are teachers. An RA is a teacher. Counselors are teachers. Placement officers are teachers. You can find teachers in the staff of Student Development or Student Life or Student Affairs. The truth is that the one person who touches a student and alters his or her life or causes them to remain on campus, is usually not a professor.

I think we professors have to start working with and accepting as colleagues the caring, concerned, involved, committed people in career planning and placement, student activities, advising, student union, student newspaper, health services, counseling, testing and a host of others that labor under that umbrella term “Student Development” or “Student Affairs” or “Student Life.” They may be non-teaching faculty, staff, or even students; they may not have the degrees or scholarly resumes, but they are important members of the campus community serving professional roles and fulfilling vital educational functions no less important than what takes place in the class room.

Like the first born who see in the second-son a challenge to his exalted and vested position, so many professors fear that as they share space in the ivory tower, as divisions are overcome, as walls of the inner scholarly sanctum are breached, as non-teaching faculty and staff cross over boundaries and mingled with them, they will become nothing. But, community is the shape of our being and of the academic society to which we belong. Whether we professors like it or not, acknowledge it or not, we are in community with students and with those outside the class room concerned with the students; we are implicated in each other’s lives. We professors cannot avoid contact with the consequences of student personal problems; we cannot close our eyes to the impact of student social distresses, cannot turn a deaf ear to student anxieties and difficulties. We cannot lose an awareness of the existence of such pressures in the life of the student. With visits, conversations, programs we have to awaken ourselves to the reality of the problems facing the students that impact on them, their academic learning, and ultimately on us.

Community, however, is not a collective entity that cancels out the role and position of professor. If we call and treat others on our campus as colleagues, our authority will not be weakened, our elevated and privileged portion will not be eroded, the spotlight on us will not be dimmed, and the academic ethos will not be corrupted. Community is a network of relationships among individuals, unique self, each with a purpose, an essential function, integrity and identity. It is that network which we call a college or a university which are the spiritual bond that tie us together in our efforts to prepare future generations. No, greeting those who labor in the interest of the student outside the classroom as equals, to coordinate our efforts with theirs–yea, even to seek their counsel and assistance–can only augment, not diminish, the benefits of all our efforts. The added radiance of another candle in the room does not diminish the illumination of existing candles. To the contrary, the added light affords us the better opportunity to see better how we can help the student see the way more clearly and make ourselves more enlightened and effective educators.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

No walking today. No weather report. I was just reading Jacob Bronowski’s _The Ascent of Man_ for the umpteenth time. I always learn something new each time I pick it up and travel through its pages. This time I haven’t read but a few pages when I was struck I something he said at the very beginning of the first chapter. Maybe it was because lately I’ve been involved in, engaged in, and even embroiled in a variety of separate but related discussions on several internet lists that revolve around the issue of self-reflection and change of technique and attitude. Bronowkski said that every age sees itself as a turning point, a culmination of the search for ultimate truth. Its new material successes and creations, new ways of seeing humanity and the universe, convinces it that its vision is the last and final word. And so, it tries to freeze that vision as a finished construct, fighting off all challenges as if change had come to a halt.

As I finished reading those passages, I was bombarded by a host of thoughts about professional humility, commitment, change. For sometimes, I think what Bronowski said of culture is also is true of all too many of us in education. It seems that the longer so many of us teach, the more we think we have arrived, the more we’re likely to entrench ourselves in our personal standpoints and professional positions, the more it appears to us as if we have discovered the right ideals and principles of education and the right techniques of teaching. To protect our turf, so many of us seek out only those proofs that keep us in power and support what we’re already doing. We don’t hunger as much, if at all, for a challenge to our practices except in the most innocuous and peripheral fringes. We don’t thirst as much, if at all, for any contests to our outlooks. We rarely listen because I think we afraid it might show us that what we do could quite possibly have been misconceived and counterproductive. Instead, we suppose our convictions and guiding ideas are eternally valid. We try to bind and distort students in our image, for our own safety, convenience and comfort, and usually in the name of being student oriented. And, we, therefore, make a virtue of unchangeably clutching tightly to our proclaimed visions as we press them tightly to our chests with such _ex cathedra_ declarations as “I’ve been teaching for X number of years and I know….” or “I know I am ……” or “I know how to…..”

That word, know. It can be like cholesterol. The more we use that word, the less careful we seem to guard against how it can clog and harden our philosophical and pedagogical arteries; how it can make our convictions and principles grow increasingly rigid to the point of intolerance, so rigid to the point where we are blind to other sights, deaf to other sounds, insensitive to other feelings, and paralyzed in the face of change swirling around us.

Yet, when I began to take my inner journey four year ago, I learned that my life and my teaching is both an active state of being and an ever-changing state of becoming. It must be a continual process of creation if for no other reason than we as teachers have to meet the demands and needs of the ever-changing people in the classroom from hour to hour, day to day, term to term whether the number of the course changes or not. To my discomfort, I found that for such a professional epigenesis to occur, if I was to actualize my own potentialities and capabilities, I had to accept responsibilities for my situation. If I was not becoming all that I could be, it was because it was me who was not changing. If things were no done, it was me who had not done them. If I was dissatisfied or reaped little satisfaction, it was me who had chosen to be there.

Therefore, if I was to respond to that changing environment of those in the class, no one could do that for me. No one could change me. Only I could can do that. Only I could can want to do that. No one could make me a better teacher. Only I can do that. Only I had to decide if I wanted to and could brave the uncertainties to do that. Only I could accept the challenge of being a better human and professional self. Only I could embrace myself and start renewed. Only I could decide if I wanted to engage fully in that wonderful mission of teaching. Only I could take the risk of embarking on a voyage without any assurance of where the trip would take me or what I would find when I got there. All I knew was that I had to change. That I think is one of the real challenges–no, the courage–of teaching. I discovered that it that required an honest self-scrutiny, something of confession. It demanded a willingness to be self-critical in a searching, but positive way; not to passively accept the way I was, but to take a critical look at how I could become better. It required a willingness to change and seek new ways of doing things, getting new attitudes and outlooks, altering perspectives, self- conceptions, and change perceptions.

This kind of quest for knowing, I was to find out and still face, requires a readiness to face your own short-comings as a teacher–maybe as a person as well–even when it hurts to do so, when its frightening along the way, and when doing so means admitting mistakes and acknowledging fallibility. We may have to stop looking “out there” and begin peering “in here.” We may have to stop blaming other people and such ethereal non-entities as the system or society, and take the upon ourselves the full responsibility for have created the state of our own professional lives.

Being reflective and self-examining of who I am and what I do never was easy. It still isn’t, because for there is an ever-present uneasiness. The problem is that I always feel that, with my fear of heights, I’m on a high wire paradoxically struggling to keep my balance between humility and faith in myself. In one ear, I hear the sweet voices of humility telling me that it’s a virtue to pay attention to others. At the same time, the strong voice of faith is telling me to have a commitment to my own judgement, the strength of my convictions, and to have the courage of being myself. But, if I listen too much to either, the inner ear of my soul is disturbed, I lose my balance, and fall. If I let the utterances of humility drown out the other voices, I surrender myself totally to others: I receive but do not give; I listen but not speak; I am touched but do not reach out to touch; I submit but do not challenge; I answer but do not question. On the other hand, if faith in myself is too loud, the exact opposite occurs: I stop thirsting, hungering, searching, exploring, experimenting; I ban curiosity, seeking out new things; I become intransigent, inflexible, taken with myself, and shut out all who disagree. So, I always find that there is a tension between the two within me. I think this tension is productive for it forces me to be sensitive to the need for a stereophonic sound that helps me to decide when to listen and hear and when to speak and be heard, when to accept and when to resist, when to yield to the tug and when to tug back, when not to apologize for a stand and when I must apologize for taking a stand. Hamlet would say that the rub is that there is no true formula, no guaranteed technique for striking a balance between reverence and idolatry, between self-abasement and self- aggrandizement. Each time I take a step on the high wire of self-reflection and evaluation, each step I take into and out from a classroom, each step I enter a discussion, each step I take to live both my life and profession, each step I talk in my struggle to realize the completeness of my teaching, the world has a difference appearance and therefore a different meaning and purpose. Moment by moment, class by class, student by student, term by term my weight shifts, my center of gravity changes, I wobble, and I have to reestablish my balance, sometimes fight to maintain that balance, between humility and faith as I prepare for the inevitable next step.

Maybe the easing of discomfort is to accept the fact of its irresolution. Maybe Jung is right when he said that the serious problems in life–and I might add, teaching–are never fully solved. The meaning and design of a problem do not lie in its solutions, but in working at it incessantly so that we’re saved from both stultification and petrifaction. The never-ending demanding search, I guess, turns the bottles and keeps the sweet, clear wine from clouding, and ultimately protects it from growing turbid and sour. I guess that’s the demanding price I have to be willing to pay if I want to be teacher and person I want to be.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–