I’m sitting here, a bit tired, waiting to go to my evening class, and I started thinking about what my life as a teacher is and should be, and what it is I do and should do as a teacher.

Being a teacher is not playing with lab rats or peering into test tubes. It’s not being alone in front of the computer writing Random Thoughts. It’s not hiding in or wandering through a library or seeking asylum in some archive. It’s not displaying at a professional conference. It’s demonstrating not expertise in a subject. Being a teacher is being caringly, challengingly, lovingly, excitedly, and engagingly engaged with people.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

What kind of teacher impresses you? That’s an interesting question some of us have been trying to answer on a discussion list. I thought it would be interesting to pose it to you. Here are the kinds of teachers who impress me. Who impresses you?

I am impressed with the teacher who from moment to moment, in those small and unnoticed and unremembered acts, engage the students caringly. I am never impressed with people who merely proclaim for all to hear, “I care about students.”

I am more impressed with a teacher who has compassion for and respects the dignity of each student than the teacher who merely loves the subject, for that teacher recognizes that nothing is more important than strengthing the spirit within each student, nothing is stronger than the spirit within each student to overcome whatever hurdle we face.

I am impressed with the teacher who is far more than merely cerebral.

I am impressed with the teacher who teaches quietly and well, who realizes that the quieter the teaching the more the classroom resounds. I am impressed with the teacher whose faith in the potential of each student, in the face of everything seemingly to the contrary, remains whole, remains total, and remains complete.

I am impressed with the teacher who will not sit idly by and watch the degradation and denigration and diminunization of a student.

I am really impressed with a teacher who believes that an education is something that inspires students to risk doing, not something that is done to students.

I am impressed with a teacher who punches his or her ticket more as a person than a professional.

I am pressed with these teachers because I know that if we teachers succeed in sharing our love for the students, if we succeed in sharing our belief in them, if we succeed in sharing our love of learning, if we can be the sparks of faith, excitement, and curiosity, the flame will be kindled and the fire soon will be ablaze and the learning will surely follow.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

I know you wrote me off-list, castagated would be a better term, flamed in e-mail terms, but I think it warrants an on-list response. I’m really sorry you think me arrogant, high-and-mighty, self-righteous, and meddling, and that I am self-congratulatory and self-promoting when I share my Random Thoughts. I don’t mean to be. And, please to not take this message as a flame, for it is not intended as such.

I admit that there are times I want to say, to scream, “why is it so difficult for our colleagues to…..” But, I just say to myself “take it easy, Louis. You’ve been there. You know the pain it took to get here. You have to be careful, be more tolerant, or at least understanding, of others.” That’s why I have a policy of never lighting backfires if I am flamed or engaging in a flame or adding a flame to a firestorm. Now, you and others may pounce on this admission of fraility and fallibility, but I WOULD BE arrogant and self-righteous if I did otherwise. There are times, a few I hope, that I slip up. I find myself sometimes having less patience than I should though I try to bite my tongue and lip. People who are called educators who protect themselves and their vested interests at the expense of students and do to students what their conscience is or should be ashamed of anger me. I get rattled by self-described educators who just meander around cashing in their paycheck and waiting for that three month summer vacation. Teachers who gaze into cyberspace rather than in students’ hearts worry me. Teachers who look at computer screens and ignore the face of each student frustrate me. I am concerned with teachers who lovingly clutch their subject instead of caringly embracing their students. I wish teachers see what I see and hear what I hear and feel what I feel: that each student is lit from within, that each is the most beautiful picture in the world, that each is the most beautiful sounding instrument you can hear. I get disappointed when I hear that teachers don’t see that each student counts as much as a single note on a symphonic music score or each brush stroke on a canvas.

That may be a bit unfair, and I have to struggle to understand that each person is unique in his/her own way and has his/her own personality, that each person has his/her own beliefs and values, strengths and weaknesses, hang-ups and up bringing, training and experience, fears, and routine. At times, I have to catch myself and step back to realize that if anyone wants to change or is to change, such change is difficult and takes time. I have to be aware that if I am with strong conviction, I shouldn’t ever walk away muttering in something of an arrogant huff, “what’s the use”, but I should engage them and use the power of persuasion and discussion and debate to convert them or at least to consider the possible legitimacy of my ways. We all tend to migrate towards a routine in our way of thinking, living and working. I feel I am a better person and a better teacher if I’m challenged and forced by myself and others to explore new avenues. I don’t want my life or my teaching to grow stagnant and my heart to dry rot and my mind to fossilize any more than I want my muscles to get flabby. Sometimes I forget what anxiety it takes, what difficulty it took me, to venture out, expand my horizons, broaden my experiences, tackle something new, see the untold and unseen possibilities. Habits, comforting and safe and predictable as they are, take time to break whether they are habits of studying, teaching, learning, self-perceptions, or perceptions of students and colleagues.

And so, as I just told someone in England, I cherish my experiences as special memories. And, I don’t think it is selfish and pompous–to use your words–to do so. If a student’s light is out or is flickering, isn’t it our responsibility as teachers to try to kindle or rekindle it and blow it into flame? I know I need all the help and support and encouragement I can get. I think others do so as well whether they know it or not, whether they admit it or not. You know, we all owe someone who has stepped in and help when he/she has seen us staggering under a heavy physical, emotional and/or academic load: a friend, a teacher, a family member, whoever. They’ve shared their strengths and experiences, bolstered us up, walked with us, lit the way. Shouldn’t we do, or attempt to do, as pay back–as a thank you to those who have been there when we needed them–any less for students and others? I hoard those stories as sacred memories. They tell me what teaching is all about. They are pick-me-ups when I am down and need encouragement. I think they can be for others on this list as well. They tell me that teaching is about making a difference in someone’s life and helping someone get a chance. I hope they do the same for others. I know the personal stories and experiences related by others on this and other lists do that for me.

By the way, Kim just called. It’s been 10 days since she has had a drink and I have bitten or picked at my nails.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

The number of responses I’ve been getting off-list to that students’s journal is blowing me out of the water. I’ve been hitting the keys so much that I’ve worn the prints off the tips of my fingers So, as I’ve done on other lists, I’d like to respond to you on list. I’ve been thinking alot about that student whose journal entries I wrote about, and the several discussions in which I’ve been embroiled because of it, over values and education, subject vs. student oriented education, attitude vs. performance, as well as changing from a teaching to a learning classroom environment.

I find it strange–well, maybe not so strange, but at least interestingly human–how we purveyors of change are ourselves afraid of change, how easy we talk of changing things out there and changing others and yet are so fearful about even considering changing ourselves that we heavily barricade the doors to our professional and personal ivory towers. Yep, just shows how truly human we teachers/professors are inspite of our degrees and scholarly resumes.

You know, I think it’s sad that we marvel at instilling in students what they had possessed so naturally as children and has been sucked out of them by so many educational systems–the insatible desire to know, an uncontrollable curiosity, a unquenchable thirst to braille everything. So many come to my campus–and others as well having had innumerable conversations at teaching conferences–after climbing–or pushed up–the 12 rungs of k-12 as self-denigrating, glassy eyed memorizers, copiers, passive listeners, note takers, corner cutters, grade getters, test takers–even many honor students–voided of that natural curiosity of the child, that sense of wonderous discovery, that exhilaration of adventure into the new, fulfillment of learning, and so much faith in themselves squeezed out of them. It’s tragic that by the time they come into my class, the classroom has become a stressful battleground, a painful hellhole, a joyless bore to be endured and suffered–and survived–rather than an exciting Eden of growth, change and discovery.

Most of us in academics do so well with the information thing and we do so poorly with the caring thing. It would be nice if we approached education with a “whole” vision, with an understanding of educational bio-rythms, that recognizes the organic unity, inseparability, and interaction of intellect, emotion, spirit and action; if we treated the classroom as a gathering of sacred ones and respected the students for the unique individual he or she is; if we interacted with each student as we would others to interact with us. I think caring about someone, having them understand you really want the best for them as persons rather just as vats of information to be filled opens new horizons for the humanity of both the teacher and student.

An e-mail friend on another list said it best. He reminded me, that teaching is like a roundtrip. You get paid back for what you give. Or, as Popeye, the Sailorman, once said, “Youse gets out what youse puts in.” I think he’s right. The best teachers are givers who look beyond themselves, beyond the limits of their subject and the confining walls of the classroom and the boundaries of the campus, who are outwardly oriented, and don’t allow much time for ego.

These exchanges got me reflecting on what Jerry Garcia called that long, strange road of change that I have experienced since my epiphany over four years ago that started me on my inner journey. I suddenly realized–or at least was reminded by an e-mail friend—that the fear, grief, anxiety or whatever, which exploded that fateful day at my son’s school, about which I write in the published collection of Random Thoughts, had challenged the very nature of my personal cosmos and invaribly, as it had to, that of my professional universe as well.

I say professional universe as well because I came to the realization that I can’t separate me the teacher from me from the person. I act according to what I think things mean and who people are and who I am. Who I am is critical, for who I am will produce different results from what appears at first to be the same teaching technique. Differences in what we perceive ourselves to be, students to be, and education to be will result in different judgements about the same things. We can’t be told to organize a class in one way when we ourselves are quite different people. It may not fit with our experience, our personality, or our inability to offer an alternative. We have to understand how our personal view and experiences influence our teaching,

Each of us live in an ordered universe which is unique and personal to us. This universe is build upon our connections with ourselves, other people, things, events–past and present. I can strive for my potential only to the extent that my perception of myself and others is broadened and deepened, and then broadened and deepened still further, and constantly broadened and deepened. So, “that’s me”, “my personality”–as I painfully learned–is always or should be always changing. I found that I had to at first argue against myself and then later merely engage in an ongoing conversation with myself, for I was and still am changing and the old ways of doing things were beginning and still are causing serious inner conflict or at least a nagging conscience. I realized that if actualization of my potential was possible, it could come only if I sharpened by perception, sentience, awareness and consciousness of myself. I realized that my teaching was an intricate pattern of relationships with the students in which my motivations, desires, belief, need and dreams are intricately woven together in the fabric of my self-knowledge and defintion. If I wanted to know and define myself as an individual and professor I would have to examine the patterns of my relationships with myself and the students. I saw that I needed to guide, define, select, evaluate, systnesize, not what’s out there, but what’s inside here. If it remains meanningless, it escapes our awarness. We miss it. It doesn’t register. We can only unlock that part of ourselves and participate in the richness of what it is to be truly human.

To learn about myself, I learned that it requires a constant awareness of myself. That involves an attack on self-depreciation as well as as well as self-inflation–both of which are probably self-deception– and observing and evaluating–as best we can–as well as how we act out what we believe.

So, the task it is not a simple or easy–maybe that’s what makes it worthwhile–one of replacing elements of those lost relationships. That’s probably not even possible. No, the task is to rebuild one’s entire universe, to create both new meaning and new life.

From my own experiences, I understand how people who are put or put themselves in wrong life situations or acquire outlooks can really lose their soul and spirit, how life can leave scars, and how tough it is to possess a spirit strong enough to struggle not to be defeated. We’re all fighting to fill voids. Times of suffering are not just past events; they’re life-long struggles. The voices are never silent. They’re like tire marks left on the soul. Learning can be a kind of rekindling of hope. a lighting up of dark experiences. And so, it is our responsibility to practice a social gospel in whatever form is required, not a bell curve or academic abortion. And, I am talking about me as well as them.

Maybe, as I struggle to do that I better understand and relate to students–and other people–who find themselves in adverse, debilitating, restricting, denigrating life situations not completely of their own making, but which I faithfully know they are capable of remaking even if they don’t. I started thinking that maybe that’s why I find myself more sympathetic to students who face the same task, students who come to our campuses as the first in their family to go to college, students who are removed from their families for the first time, older students leaving careers to begin new ones, students entering a significant new phase of life and having to rebuild their entire universe, students bearing the weight of personal abusive baggage, students hearing and heeding degrading, depreciating, denigrating voices. I think you’re right. These scary and challenging changes, which I have experienced–and am still experiencing–and rocked the very foundations of my being, and those students are facing, these shared experiences, form the “real” basis for connections, compassion and love that is the foundation for support and encouragement, as well as the nutrients for growth and development.

Among the ways, I have closure with my classes is to bring in two apples and a knife. I cut one as most people cut apples, length-wise, and showed them the hard-to-eat core and indigestible pits. I told them that so many people including themselves believe that at their center is such an unappetizing core and pits, and some in the class hold themselves back because of that attitude. Then, I say, “but what if you and I cut the same apple a different way”, and I cut the second apple cross-wise and showed the STAR that appears at the center. I tell them that I believe that at each of their centers is a star and it is for them to believe that a star exists at each center, One way I have closure with my classes is to bring in two apples and a knife. I cut one as most people cut apples, length-wise, and showed them the hard-to-eat core and indigestible pits. I told them that so many people including themselves believe that at their center is such an unappetizing core and pits, and some in the class held themselves back because of that attitude. Then, I cut the second apple cross-wise and showed the STAR that appears at the center, and told them that I believe that at each of their centers is a star, but that isn’t enough. It is for them to have the courage to wonder why I see what I see, to risk believing that a star exists at their center, to have the courage to cut their own apple cross-wise and seek that star.

So, one of our roles as educators is to create an environment in which the student, with our involved support, can cut the apple the right way, in which such recognition, acknowledgement and expression of those inner feelings and subsequent cosmic reconstruction can occur for both ourselves and our students.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! I just came in from a very, very cold walk draped in icicles. Even though I was the only nut out on the street at 5:00 a.m. it was a far noisier walk then you would expect. That’s because with every step my breath instantly froze and smashed to the street clinking and clanging broken glass. 20 degrees with a wind chill factor of 4 degrees!! My nose is a bright, rosy red. Rudolph, eat your heart out!!!

Well, I turned on the computer and found more off-list responses to my latest Random Thought. Most of them are off-list. If most of them weren’t so heated, you would have thought from their chill that I had left the windows in both my office and home open and that my computer was in danger of freezing. And, once again, though I tried, the messages are piling up faster than I can answer them and are threatening to divert time I devote to the students. But, deserve an answer all of you who took the time to write do. So, with your indulgence I’d like to answer on list all of you who have written me. I hope no one takes this type of reply to be impersonal. I really do not mean it to be.

I have found over the last five years that I was altering both my personal and professional life as I was altering my attitude toward myself, my craft, and those around me. In that process I came to some conclusions. They probably aren’t original, but were and are for me. I discovered that our schools in and of themselves have no inherent quality. They are neither boring nor interesting, frustrating nor satisfying, dull nor fascinating, joyful nor anxious. They are what we perceive them to be, what we make them out to be, what we let them make us out to be. We can have, for example, a class of challenging students and an institution of imposing administrators and goodness knows what else, and bemoan our misfortune and be discouraged; or we can have a class of challenging students and and institutions of imposing administrators and goodness knows what else, and accept the situation as an exciting, adventurous challenge. Either way, we still have a class of challenging students and an institution of imposing administrators and goodness knows what. It’s a matter of attitude. If we must point fingers, I have learned how difficult it is to first point them at myself. I have discovered that if I wish to sing, I must find a song and a stage, and I will find a song and a stage; and if I wish to wail and rip my clothing, will find a dirge and a funeral. We have to admit that we are as happy or as sad, as satisfied or as frustrated, as encouraged or as discouraged, as we make up our minds to be. I truly believe our attitudes and moods are our choice, and it is our attitudes that determine what we see and hear when we are looking at and listening to both ourselves and the students.

I started becoming an excited and fulfilled teacher as I stumbled on and wrestled with two other realizations. First, I became almost apologeticly far less cavelier about generating that “no pain, no gain” atmosphere for students to breath in the classroom–exercising power at the front of the classroom asking students to do my biding–when I reluctantly had to see and admit that I didn’t like being in the similar position of being among the powerless forced to grovel before and do the bidding of the higher authorities be they Dean, President, Chancellor, Regents, John Q. Public or legislator. It was not fun to admit that I was violating the golden rule by doing unto students what I did not like or want or fought against others doing unto me. It was tough to acknowledge and be sensitive to the double standard I was practicing. It’s tougher to eliminate it, and I haven’t completly attained that goal yet. If you don’t understand what I mean and think anxiety is good for the soul, if you don’t think that as the level of anxiety increases hesitancy grows, if you don’t think that as the level of anxiety rises performance lowers, if you don’t think that as the level of fear of failure or being wrong or looking stupid or being penalized proportionally increases the spread of intellectual and emotional paralysis and diminishes the inclination to take risks and be creative or imaginative, if you don’t think that anxiety is a hammer-lock that turns your head to look over your shoulder substitute the word “student” with “teacher” or “educator” or “professor” and replace the nitty-gritty student-centered words like “grade”, “essay”, “project”, “test”, “recommendation”, “graduation” with teacher-centered words like “livlihood”, “salary increase”, “promotion”, “tenure”, “contract”, “evaluation”, “accountability”–just to mention a few.

My second realization was that my happiness and fulfillment rested on a set of my attitudes, not a set of circumstances. After some tough soul-searching and a difficult spiritual journey that have yet to end, I concluded that I wouldn’t, couldn’t, be a happy or excited or fulfilled teacher as long as I concentrated my aim on the targets of a certain salary level, size of my reputation, the extent of job protection, the title of my position, length of my resume, and so on. The real bullseye for an excited and fulfilled teacher is to be a person who has a a sense of purpose and mission in what he or she does, a belief in what and who they are, a rewarding sense of what they are doing, a love of people; who understands that caring about others helps everyone who gives it and receives it, who sees that you cannot truly help a student without helping youself.

Some of you have asked me, tongue-in-cheek, how do I sustain my passion for teaching day after day after day. You’re asking me the wrong question. Ask me if how do I maintain my belief in the students and my interest in life.

Let me take the first. I approach each class as a gathering of diverse, special individuals, not as a roster of names. I work hard not to lose sight of the unique individuals behind the ID numbers. Each student is a person with feelings, hopes, dreams, and fears whom I as a teacher have the power and opportunity to touch with my words, feelings and actions. I am always amazed at the power of a Tootsie Pop hurtling through the air towards a dour face, of a soft tap, a simple touch, a soft word, a second of listening, a moment of stopping to care, a friendly glance. Each person is an undiscovered masterpiece. Each person has a talent to be developed and a potential to be sought. Each person is capable and significant who has the capacity to make a difference if he or she would acquire the courage and take the risk to use it. Most students will not remember those teachers who merely knew their subject and transmitted information. They will, however, remember most those teachers who cared about them as sacred people and pulled for their success. It won’t matter in the future how long my resume is or how widespread my reputation will be. It will only matter if I somehow magically and mysteriously am a gift in the life of a student. I don’t think I can do much better as a teacher than get students to believe that, help them start finding them, aid them in seeing what’s going for him or her, and make them feel great about themselves. It’s the small people behind the podium who are negative about students, put them down, belittle their ambitions, and dash their dreams.

Now about life. There is so much out there yet to learn; there is so much room in me for change; there’s so much learning and growing to happen in there. Even at the youthful age of 55, with all my honors and prestige and experience and accomplishments, I still have things I want to stop doing, maybe must stop doing; I still have things I want to start doing, maybe should start doing. I still have nightmares to confront and dreams to come true. For me, everyday must have a sunrise; it must be a constant renewal, a constant adventure, and a constant discovery of something new. If it isn’t, if what I do and what I am has become a sunset, whatever I do has lost its vitality, I’ve lost my vitality, and it isn’t worth doing.

By the way, Kim and I have abstained for the last five days!

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

Went out walking late today. The sun was already up, people were out, cars were whizzing around me. That’s okay. I needed the distracting movements; I needed to watch out for cars since I am accustomed to walking in the middle of the roads dthe wee hours of the pre-dawn morning when every sensible person is comfortably asleep; I needed to keep my mind off things–ten things. It was a difficult walk this morning, not because of the cutting chill but because I was fighting to keep my mind on my exercise, struggling to keep my stride while experiencing something to akin to the DTs. I haven’t bitten my nails in a whole day, and I am in the throes of withdrawal. I had been walking around campus yesterday with clenched fists to imbed, hide and protect my fingers in the palms of my hands; I have been struggling to keep my mind on other things; I have been wrestling against the urge to delude my teeth with pencils or pens or Tootsie Pops. You see, I am a habitual, hard-core nail-biter, have been ever since I can remember. Oh, have I developed a dexterity of upper body movement to get at the last morsels of my appendages that would be the envy of any ballet dancer. When it comes to tips of my fingers, I can pick, nip, chip, get at, cut and tear far better than can any vulture or hyena. Nothing could ever stop me–parents, teachers, doctors, friends–from munching on those deliciously hard protrusions, not threats of the boggie-man, not promises of rewards, not pencils or gum or toothpicks, not pepper sauce or any other foul tasting slim, not distractions. In fifty-five years, nothing has worked. I am quick to bite my fingernails to the quick, to snack on my cuticles, to nibble here and there like a dog rummaging through a garbage can. Wisps of blood and annoying aches, even a bandaid or two, are not strangers to my fingertips. The stumble at the end of my fingers looks like a war zone. But, I arose this morning and told myself, “‘JUST THIS DAY’ your fingers will not come within a mile of your mouth and you will not pick at them.”

For all of this anxiety, I have Kim to both blame and thank. It was about her that I was playfully cursing under my breath with every step. I have to back up to yesterday for all this to make sense.

Yesterday was the first day of the winter quarter. And, I always do in my effort to create a supportive and encouraging classroom learning community, I began class with a series of “getting to know ya” and bonding exercises that will last about three or four days. Among the first of the exercises is a biographical interview of fun and revealing questions. The students are grouped into fours and I am in one of them. I find that the students don’t just ask and asnwer the questions in a rat-a-tat fashion. They begin to talk to each other, explain and discuss their answers, get to know each other. What you would think should take only about twenty minutes usually goes on for about two classes. Well, worth the time, I assure you. Anyway, there I was interviewing Kim and she me. One of the questions is, “what is something I wish I could stop doing?” Kim’s answer, couched in obviously feigned laughter, was, “drinking.”

“Well,” I said, “if you want to stop, why don’t you.”

“It’s just at night with the girls and guys. But, you’re right,” she sighed. I should. I really do want to.”

“Tell you what,” I proposed, “every day you come into class I’ll ask you if you had a drink the day before as a reminder.”

“And the weekends?”

“Want me to call you?”

Her eyes lit up. And, without me asking, she gave me her number. I have to call later this morning.

Then, she asked me what is something I wished I could stop doing. I held out my hands with my fingers curled to reveal the battleworn ends.

“Scratching?”

“No!”

“Oh, biting your nails,” Kim giggled, wrote down my answer on the bio sheet, and we went on to the next questions to ponder and laugh about.

At the end of the period, as the students were filing out of the classroom, at the door Kim turned towards me and yelled out, “Hey, Dr. Schmeir, you have to stop biting your nails.”

“You’ve got it,” I replied instinctively, and she disappeared into the hall. And I shuddered and I realized what I had agreed to.

Needless to say, anxiety was on my mind this morning. By coincidence, the necessity of having anxiety in the classroom is being discussed on one or two e-mail discussion list. It is not a new topic, but Kim raised an interesting question or two that I was mulling over this morning.

So many of us at the head of the classroom say that anxiety is necessary for the students to experience if they are to learn. They sound like medieval monks telling their flock, “endure my children and reap the fruits of your suffering in…..” I have often and recently read and heard that professors are doing the students an immearsurable serivce–doing it for their own good–when they draw them on academic racks, put when they tighten their mental thumb screws, when they whip them with intellectual cat-o-nine-tails, when they sear their soles and souls with evaluating hot coals, when they threaten them and point fingers at them and laud power over them and distance themselves. The more student shivers and quakes, so I am told, the more they appreciate and can seize the opportunity they have to learn. “No pain, no pain,” the saying goes. Anxiety creates a series of lessons that must be experienced by the students if they are to understand. Anxiety is necessary as an enrichment ofA that experience: character can only be developed by the fires of suffering; adversity strengthens their soul; reaching for the summit of a mountain knowledge would be exhilarating only if they had to overcome and fearfully traverse obstacles of academic crags and crevics; anxiety is a cataylst that inspires achievement. The “touchy-feely” stuff, I have been told on more the occasion, being less firm and more affirming, modeling less the caring about power and more the power of caring, twisting hands less and holding them more, remaining less distant and aloof and connecting more, all this sparing of the academic rods, spoils the students.

What I am wondering is this. If this is all true–that there is no gain without pain, that visions are sharpened and heights of goals are lifted and success achieved by experieincing discomfort and difficulty–why, then, is it that so many academicians seem to want to their teaching to be problem free? We proclaim to students that learning is not easy. Well, who said that teaching is should be easy. If the academics without anxiety supposedly is academic death, why isn’t anxiety-free teaching akin to rigormortise? Why do so many wish upon a star that they could teach with ease, quiet, and comfort? Why do so many moan and groan when things don’t go their way and students don’t do what they want them to do? Why do we get so unsettled when things get unsettling? Why do we want order and try to get rid of problems as quickly as possible as if we were excising a painful boil? We say students don’t know how to study, don’t have any discipline, can’t think, can’t do this, don’t know how to do that, won’t do this, but so many of us try to ignore their difficulties or sweep them under rug by saying it’s not part of our job description to teach them these things. Why are they so negative about classroom problems, challenges, and difficulties–maybe even afraid of them? If we’re not being two-faced and talking out of both sides of our mouths, if we tell the students or convince ourselves that adversity is the spice of academic life–the hard road to learning and growth and development–and if we aren’t really just saying, “do as I say and not as I do,” I would think that we would welcome anxiety as a sign that we are alive, learning, growing, and involved in the life of the classroom rather than just a cold body present in the room. It seems to me that teaching, just like learning, doesn’t come easy or cheap, shouldn’t come easy or cheap, not for us anymore than for the students.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–
——–