You never know. Things happen in the strangest places in the strangest ways when you are least expecting it. It’s about 5:00 a.m. I desperately want to meander the dark streets, but because of a silly pain in my neck, my lovely and controlling DI, has ordered me “restricted to barracks.” So, here I am, sipping a cup of freshly brewed coffee, both restlessly and fulfillingly thinking about a telephone call I got late last night.

I was lying on the couch was reading student journals as I do every Wednesday. The telephone in the kitchen rang. I didn’t pay any attention to it. I was glued to each word of a journal in which a student was pouring her heart out about fearing she would be disowned and kicked out of the house by her parents when they learned she was pregnant, and about a boy friend who wasn’t wild about the sudden prospects of being a future father. It was only a few minutes earlier that I was reading a journal from a student in another class in which a student was braggin about getting drunk every night saying she was having the time of her life when in fact other entries revealed that she was running away from life.

I vaguely heard Susan say, “Just a minute.” She came into the spare bedroom room that doubles as a study with a curious “who would call this late” look and handed me the phone. I thought it was a student who was going to explain why he or she could be in class during the skit presentations. It wasn’t.

The caller was a student whom I’ll call Robert. Robert hadn’t been in class for a few days. There was a deep sadness in his voice. I knew why. He had called me two days ago to tell me that his father had died and that he would not be in class for a few days. I told him to take as much time as he needed. Last night he called to tell me that he didn’t feel he could return to class and was dropping out of school for the quarter, and yet in his time of great loss expressed concerned about how his withdrawal from school would affect the two other members of his triad–strangers whom he had only met two weeks earlier–since he wasn’t able to do his part of the triad’s skit. I expressed my condolences, supported his decision, told him that I always had an ear and shoulder if he needed an extra one, explained that I would see to it that his triad members wouldn’t in any way be hurt even if I had to play one of the characters they had created for the skit, and told him that I hoped I would see him in one of my future classes. He assured me I would. Thinking that the conversation was over, I was about to pull the receiver from my ear, lay it on the cocktail table, and go back to reading journals. It wasn’t.

“But, that’s not why I really called,” he suddenly went on. I jolted my attention back to his voice. “I knew the people at student services had called you this afternoon. There was something I wanted to say to you personally. I wanted to say, thank you, for what you did.

He caught me by surprise. I hadn’t spoken but a few words to him during those introductory days of our “getting to know ya” exercises. I told that I didn’t understand. “What did I do?” I asked.

“That first day, you told us about yourself and especially about how and why you stopped biting your nails and the pact you made with that student.”

Robert told me how one of the students, the only one to drop the course, thought I was “soft and sappy.”

“I told him,” Robert quietly and slowly said, “I was impressed that you had taken the risk of respecting us as young adults and sharing yourself….. I’m 24 with a little more experience that most of the other students. I’m–I was–a nasty nail biter, too. But, you so impressed me that I decided right then and there that if you could stop after almost fifty years of nail biting, with 30 years on you, I could do the same. So, I made a silent pact with you. I just want you to know that I haven’t bitten my nails in two weeks. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

“I’m proud for you,” I sincerely replied.

Then, he hit me with it. “I just want to tell you that I ordinarily would have my fingers in my mouth and still have them there in hard times like this if it wasn’t for you. Doing something as hard as stopping my nail biting has made it easier for me to deal with my father’s passing. And I know now I can overcome other stuff I believed I wasn’t been able ’til now. I told my fiancee that I have a new motto in life like the motto we made after we all got up and sang alone. It’s: ‘I stopped biting my nails; I can kick ass!’ Well, I just wanted you to know you’re doing very important things. Goodbye.”

I felt a lump gathering in my throat. About all I could muster was a raspy “Thank you. I truly appreciate that, and I want you to know that you’re doing very important things yourself. Take care, and I’ll see you in class in a couple of months. Keep clean.” And, we both hung up.

I took a deep breath, put down on the couch the journal I was holding, thought, “you never know,” and wrote this crude poem on the pad I was using for make notes about the journals. I’d like to share it with you. I call it “The ONLY WAY”

The only way I won’t make a mistake when I share myself
is not to share.
The only way I won’t make a mistake when I think aloud
is not to feel.
The only way I won’t make a mistake when I try to do something
is not to do anything.
The only way I won’t make a mistake supporting and encouraging a student
is not to be supportive and encouraging.
The only way I won’t make a mistake loving each student
is not to love.
The only way I won’t make a mistake believing in each student
is not to believe.
The only way I won’t make a mistake when I speak out
is not to speak.
The only way I won’t make a mistake when I see and listen
is not to look and hear.
The only way I won’t make a mistake when I take a stand
is not to take a stand.
The only way I won’t make a mistake trusting a student
is not to trust.
The only way I won’t make a mistake when I put myself in the spotlight
is not to out from the shadows.
The only way I won’t make a mistake risking something new,
is not to take risks.
The only way I won’t make a mistake when I teach
is not to teach.
The only way I won’t make a mistake reaching out to a student
is not to reach out.
The only way I won’t make a mistake experimenting with a new method
or technique or technology
is not to experiment.

The only way I won’t make a mistake trying to change
is to accept paralysis.
The only way I won’t make a mistake trying to grow and develop
is to accept atrophy.
The only way I won’t make any mistakes
is to accept safety.
The only way I won’t make any mistakes trying to make a difference
is to remain indifferent.
The only way I won’t make any mistakes
is to believe there’s nothing to learn from making a mistake.
The only way I won’t make any mistakes
is to be fearful of making mistakes.
The only way I won’t make any mistakes
is to accept slavery, and do and think
what others tell me to do and think.

The only way I won’t make any mistakes
is not to do anything.
The only way I won’t make any mistakes
is not to live.

The only way to make a mistake
is to believe that each “only way” is not a mistake.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

Cold. Cold. Cold. Brrrrrr! It is, however, a civilized cold. Only 23 degrees, not like in Baltimore where I was Friday and the wind chill was a savage and windy 25 degrees below zero! Though bundled up in walking grubbies that doubled my weight, the real protecting antifreeze this morning were very warm thoughts about a very rewarding conference of the community college teachers in Maryland which I attended at the end of last week and where I gave the conference’s keynote address, “The Humanity of Teaching.” It was one of those unexpectedly fulfilling conferences where several hundred community college faculty had enthusiastically gathered for a two day “teach-in” about teaching. None I met had come to promote themselves or merely to add a line to their professional resume. These dedicated people, persevering in the face of administrative and political and budgetary obstacles I at times found hard to imagine here at VSU, take their teaching seriously. Most importantly, they appreciate and value their students. They were focused, energetic, resolved to better themselves so that their students would be better educated to have productive careers and live noble lives. In workshops, they gathered to teach, to listen, to exchange, to ask, to answer, to learn. In clusters and pairs, meandering around halls, sitting at tables and snacking, standing around and sipping coffee, they quietly shared their ideas and experiences and travails. They didn’t talk research and publications, they talked people. They didn’t flaunt their resumes, they broadcasted their the joy and satisfaction that they receive from generously being committed to their students. You could easily sense the hunger and thirst to seize opportunities to talk with colleagues from around the state about teaching. You could see their flexibility and how they were on the watch for opportunities for improvement; how so many had the courage to risk something new, having faith in their capabilities to bring it off with success. All the people I met and with whom I talked were authentic and demanded nothing less of me. I’ve never been at a conference where the participants laid a trap for me that I unknowingly walked into–or for anyone else for that matter– to see if there was a contradiction between my espoused values and my behavior. “We just wanted to check out if you were really real,” one of them laughed. When it comes to “walking” that all important mission of teaching in higher education, of being dedicated to students, of giving generously themselves, most of these good people could teach us in the colleges and universities more than a thing or two. It was one of those rare conferences from which I think I received more than I gave. I wish I could thank them all, each one of them, for graciously welcoming me and taking me into their fold, for I know that I left a better teacher and person.

It was during one of these coffee and danish clutches that a professor from Chesapeake Community College asked me what I thought was the first principle of teaching. “I don’t know what THE first principle of teaching is,” I told him, “but I know what mine is and where to find it.” I went on to say that my first principle of teaching is so deceptively simple and yet so mysterious. You won’t find it in a textbook of any discipline or in a laboratory test tube or on a library shelf or in a computer program. You’ll only find it within each of ourselves, where it should be since teaching begins from within.

I told him, and later others, that my first principle of teaching is: Teaching is love. Those three words have been profoundly transforming on my self-perception, my perception of others, my sense of the value of teaching, my understanding of my craft’s mission, and my actions. During the last six years, as love appeared on my list of teaching principles and as it climbed up that list and went into the top ten and finally has emerged as number one, I increasingly saw myself with teary-eyed surprise. It has opened my eyes, unlocked my heart, fired my energy, raised my spirits, freed my soul–first about myself and then about others– and warmed the classroom. It now drives me to be whomever I am supposed to be and do whatever I must do.

Love is not something to snicker about or dismiss, or even to be uncomfortable with. When you strip away all the opaque layers of educational varnish and academic paint of methodology, pedagogy, technology, philosophy, test scores, class grades, GPAs, lesson plans, administrative memos, chains of command, politics, budgets, and at times theology, and get down to the bare wood of teaching, the plain and natural grain of love shines forth in all of its wonder and beauty.

Now, when I say, “teaching is love,” I don’t mean ardently embracing my subject or tightly hugging to my cheek the stuff in print or having a passion to be in the classroom or having a fire for learning or having an excitement for ideas or having a fervent commitment to a particular method, technology, and philosophy. When I say “teaching is love,” I mean the kind of habit of the heart that intoxicates me with students; I mean the habit of the spirit that holds up every individual student before me as a unique, miraculous, and sacred creation; I mean the habit of mind that proclaims that every student is important and valuable. When I say “teaching is love,” I’m talking about the wellspring of my respect for, valuing of, caring about, and concern for each student so that I enter each classroom each day as a practioner of inclusion rather than exclusion.

To say that teaching is love is to believe in the best of people, in their unique potential, and to never stop finding ways to get each of them to believe. To inseparably connect teaching and love is to insure that every moment I teach is a moment, that teaching a sensation rather than a performance. To talk of love is to get fired up about people and get them to light the fires within themselves. To talk of love requires that I respect each student, that I assume a responsibility for the well-being and success of each student, that I value each student–and I never want to lose something of value. Love will not allow me to give up the fight for each student�s right to succeed. It gives me strength to help students discover their strengths. It rushes me into illumination, struggling to turn what is too often a darkening, foreboding, painful, boring dungeon of a classroom into a lighted, enjoyable, exciting, uplifting cathedral of the spirit. To talk of love in the same breath with teaching is to make the classroom into an inviting oasis where I welcome–and at time, lure–all to come to nourish their souls, spirits, and minds. To talk of love in the same breath as teaching is to talk of constant newness, daily discovery and creation, with all of its dazzling color and splendor.

To be sure, I am an academician. I am an educator. I am an intellectual. I am a scholar. I am a man of books and ideas. I make no apologies for that. But, if I am not first and lastly a person who loves other people, if I am not a standard-bearer holding high the banner for humanity, I am nothing and what I do matters little. To say that teaching is love requires I look at each student with awe and wonder and never lets me stop for any reason to get all students to awe and wonder about themselves; it requires that I never let any student go nameless, faceless, hide in the shadows, be alone in the crowd; it demands I dream about each student and never let’s anything stop me from trying to get each of them to dream about themselves; love is believing that each student is a treasure chest of breathtaking “yeses!” and awesome”wows!” and incredible “ooohs” and amazing “aaahs”, and doing whatever it takes to help them unlock that chest, lift open the lid, peer into the rich contents, and reach into to grab hold of that prize cache.

I find that love is the cause of more miracles than is method and technology; it is the source of more successes than grades and test scores and honors; it is more infectious than is the intellect. It, rushes into the lungs, flows in the veins, gets down into the bones, enters lives, and touches the soul. When we truly live love–not just mouth it–as the first principle of teaching in the classroom, the chance of what we say and do has a better chance of taking root and staying; when we truly live love as the first principle in the classroom the chance of what we touch has a better chance of sticking.

As the letters from Patrick and Trudy–and Sandra now that I think about it–show, the power of love doesn’t abate; it’s influence never stops. Like the pink Ever-ready bunny, it keeps going on and on and on and on. It keeps echoing and reverberating in students’ hearts–it keeps shouting an awakening “Boo” in their souls and minds–long after the sounds of a lecture have died away and the print on test scores has faded out.

Teaching IS love. Without it my classroom would be as cold and stiffening as those icebox outside–as it once was. It is that simple. And yet, it is not that plain. Like the beautiful grain of exposed wood, it is that humanly magnificent and that humanly complex.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

To listen to myself. That’s why I walk the streets in the wee hours of the pre-dawn mornings: to keep an appointment with myself that is as serious as any other on my daily calendar, to allow myself to enter and walk inside my inner space. It’s my “just to….” time to be in my own scenery. When I walk I take myself out of sight, away from where things are happening, out of the line of fire, free from clogging traffic. It’s a time when I retire to my inner closet and bid farewell to the world for an hour or so, when I can settle with myself and not have to sort through others and other things, when no one’s eyes are on me; I’m not in the spotlight and not on the spot. Out there on the streets ,sheltered by the pre-dawn�s blackness from all distractions, it’s only me with myself when I can weigh my “dos” and “oughts”, when I can assess success and failures, when I can reap disappointment or satisfaction, when I can muster strength and courage for the day to come, when I am true with myself. The streets are a place to shake things out, where I turn on the X-ray to my soul, where I can listen for the sounds and look for the signs and signals that stir my emotions and freely express my inner voices. It’s a form of mobile meditation and medication. It is a time of learning from what I encounter. It is for me the most revealing, the most painful, the most uncomfortable, the most releasing, the most easing, the most satisfying force because this is the closest I come to honest soul-searching. It is an intimate time and demands nothing less than truth with myself. As I roamed among the dark moments before the day, when shadows hide threat and exposure, when the day’s sounds have yet to echo, I am left with the truth of introspection. On these darkened streets, I drive both my body and my spirit, force myself to face issues, new situations, new people, new inevitabilities. I am my most relentless critic and advocate; I drive myself to reflect and interpret; I force myself to face an ever-changing series of circumstances and people. I face within myself the reality of the new dawn that I must pressure myself to face up to the external pressures and accept the responsibility of taking some action. On these streets, where I can quiet the voices so I can find and hear my voice, I ask questions and seek answers.

This was particularly important this morning as I pondered another “gift” a student, whom I’ll call Sandra, from last quarter sent me over e-mail a few nights ago. This is what she wrote:

I just got back from break and read my e-mail. I saw all that sucking up stuff by Trudy and Patrick and didn’t want you to get a swelled head any larger than you already have. I want you to know that I think Trudy or Patrick are full of kissing-up shit, not that I think you’ll pay any attention to what I have to say except to kiss me off like everyone else does. But I�m going to give you a different kind of present and get this stuff off my chest.

I lied in my evaluation of the class, but I think you know that. Still, I want you to know that I don’t think you’re God’s gift to teaching at VSU. I thought our class was the most stressful and waste of time I’ve ever had. Yeah, I got an A in your class and for the first time learned some history, but don’t let that ease your conscience. I had difficulty because of all that working with others you required. I don’t like working with others. I don’t want to work with others. And I never will. I don’t know how to talk with my mom or anyone else in my family so why the hell should you make me talk with strangers? In the beginning, when you came into class with your boombox and wearing that neat Grateful Dead shirt I thought it would be a new and rewarding experience. Boy, was I wrong. It was a horror. All that getting to know you shit, sitting in a circle, the three of us in our triad, at the front of the room, looking at each other having to work with them, every day is a crock. The two other people in my triad were nice and I did only what I had to do, but I wasn’t and I’m still not in the least bit interested in getting to know them or helping them or encouraging them or anyone in the class or working with them and interacting with them as if we were a supporting a family. Families suck. They don’t do none of that. I can’t do that with my family so how do you expect me to do it here at VSU in your class or expect anyone else to do it with me. And, I’ll be damned if I’m going to let anyone else decide my grade especially when the only thing my family is worried about is a grade and GPA. I’m not going to risk disappointing them some more than they already have let me know that I already have with my baby, drinking, and drugs. I never cared or care for this hands-on stuff. When I walk into a class. I just expected for you to do your job, to lecture and not care whether I am there or not and for me to take notes in the back of the room, memorize the bunch of facts that I need for a test, be tested and get my grade and get out. I’m not getting paid to teach me. You are, and you didn’t do it. You’re supposed to tell me what to do and what you wanted so I could do it. Just like all the other professors around here. “Do as you’re told.” Everyone else does. Where do you get off thinking that you can be different from everyone else. That’s how I’ve been conditioned to think and act, and I’m comfortable with that because that’s what I know and it’s easy that way. But, no. All your stupid rah, rahs “take a risk”, “it’s your skit”, “believe in yourself”, “be your own learner and discoverer” frustrated me, pissed me off, and stressed me out. How could I believe in myself when no else does? Just because you went out of your way to talk to me and loaded me up with Tootsie Pops in the hall didn�t fool me none. I saw through you. Putting on the act that you care doesn’t impress me at all. I didn’t want to be noticed. I wasn’t going to get slammed again by trusting someone. It happened too many times. Go give your caring about me and teaching is love and your each of one is important stuff to someone else. They’ll be the sucker. I don’t care about anyone else and I sure as hell am not going to get to the point of needing to rely on anyone else again. Shit, I have enough trying to care about myself. The only thing I cared about was what grade I was going to get so I could get my people off my back. Did you care about that? No. ‘Grades don’t matter,’ you said. The hell you say. I know you gave me an A, but I had to work my ass off and do all that weird, stupid skits and scavenger hunts and role-playing and drawing and short-story writing crap. Now let’s see if you have the guts not to come up with some excuse to change my grade because of this letter. I also want you sweat a bit like you made me sweat by knowing that I told the student who will read my sealed letter that it was a FATAL mistake to register to take your class and that they should get out while they can. And, I bet you’ll erase this message just because I’m honest rather than send it out like you did with Patrick�s and Trudy’s precious, oozing letters.

Once again I faced the daily phenomenon: going from the most appreciative, encouraging, and inspiring attitudes to some of the more depressing and discouraging ones. A letter like this is difficult to talk about. I’m not wild about sharp criticism anymore than anyone else may. I have to admit that I wasn’t wild about receiving it and hesitated to share it. When I read it I was overwhelmed by a feeling of helplessness and sadness about the debilitating anger and crippling pain, and bridling fear swirling within and tormenting Sandra. I don’t blame her. I guess I didn’t find the way to teach to reach her or stretch and strain sufficiently to reach to teach her. Nor could she. It’s a shame. She has such ability and potential, but doesn’t herself see or believe it. She did not intend it as a gift, but after a few days of agonized pondering, I now realize it is truly a gift to me. More important, it’s an unintended gift to herself because it’s probably the first time she’s mustered the courage to take the risk of being honest in a long time. I don’t think she thought about that or realized it. I hope she reads this.

Anyway, I have to admit that when I first received this message I wanted to draw inside myself, close in myself, or remove myself from others. I guess it’s natural that when we get such a letter like this, we tend to focus on our own feelings, our own sense of mistake and failure. We become saddened, sorry for ourselves, maybe depressed, or worse, ignore it. But, I would be a lesser person if I camouflaged my own hurt, fears and disappointment by casting this letter off as a meaningless, “She didn’t get it” or “What does she know” “Oh, well, I can’t reach them all.” Having read the letter maybe about twenty times, I decided that letters like this, maybe more than the celebrating ones of support and encouragement and praise, force me to reflect harder, to articulate my beliefs more consciously, and to teach harder. .

I went back to read the letters from Trudy and Patrick. And as I read all three letters as a collection over and over, I recalled the first team meeting of the VSU football team this past August at which I talked to the players about the importance of their academic studies. One thing that the head coach said struck me. “We have a saying on this team,” he pronounced. It’s ‘Next play.'” He went on to explain, maybe warned is a better word, if a play results in a great tackle or block or sack of the quarterback or run or pass or a field goal or a touchdown, no one should don’t get caught standing around admiring his achievement; no one should turn and throw up his hands as he delights in the roar of the crowd. “There’s a game to play,” he emphasized. He went on to say as well that if a player made a mistake that resulted in a fumble or interception or missed tackle, he shouldn�t get caught slumping around feeling sorry for yourself and wallowing in the moans of the crowd. “There’s a game to play,” he shouted across the hall. “The other side doesn’t care about you. Those guys are applauding or booing. So,” he asked, “what happens while you’re standing around with either your hands up or up your ass, while you get over-confident or lose your confidence? Those other guys are throwing and running past you. They score before you know what hits you and we lose the game.” I remember him finishing up his pep talk by warning with something like, “There’s sixty minutes to a game. You can bust them for an entire game, but all your focus and hustle can be canceled by a few careless seconds of stupidly applauding or booing yourself.”

It’s no different in the classroom. The second I start to teach defensively because of letters like those from Sandra or over-confidently because of words like those of Trudy or Patrick- -in the coach’s terms to start to play not to lose instead of playing to win or forgetting that I can lose–afraid to make a mistake or thinking I can never make a mistake, chances are I will stop teaching effectively. The moment I start bragging, “I can teach this class in my sleep,” I am asleep and have gone into perpetual hibernation; the second I stop being on my toes, nervous and alert, I’m just standing around flatfooted and marking time. Thankfully, it always seems to happen that just when I may be in danger of thinking that I�ve got a handle on it, someone or something tells me what I can do with that handle, gives me a swift kick in the butt, screams �boo� in my ear, and reminds me that I must always have an internal critic who bullies me along, who won’t let me stop, who tears away at the slightest smugness and complacency that might start appearing, who ready to deflate any arrogance that might start expanding into any available space with the pretensions of hot air, and who keeps me restless..

Letters like Sandra’s make sure my teaching isn’t “micro waved”; that the classroom is not some non-nutritional fast food place; that my teaching doesn’t get any easier; that I have to teach hard every second of the “game”; that I must always think about it, talk about it, reflect on it, work at it, have the guts to do it. Ever searching, sifting, refining, developing, changing, adapting is an ethical responsibility of this noble endeavor called teaching so that when I teach I know, at least for this moment, I pressed it, fought for it, gave it all I had at this moment for that person.

The fall quarter is over and I’m starting the winter quarter. Next play!

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

These are hectic times at VSU. It is the beginning of the Quarter. Courseless students are aimless wandering the halls, standing outside faculty offices, crowding departmental offices, hat in hand, heads drooped, palms extended, begging, “A course. A course. Kind sir could you give this poor wretched soul a course?” “A class for the needy.” I was expecting any minute for unkept, bleary-eyed students to hold up make-shift signs reading: “Will work for a schedule”, “Have a family, need a course.” It’s awonder that we don’t have students standing on corners, playing musical instruments or vocalizing, open music cases lying before them, with signs: “Classless, veteran, family, any course will be appreciated.”

So, there I was this afternoon, preparing for a keynote address I am to deliver next week, when I hear this meek voice. “Dr. Schmier, could you help me?”

I turned and asked, “What can I do for you?”

“I’m desperate for a course. Is there room in any of your classes?” a student pleadingly asked.

I sympathetically looked over my class rolls and told him that my classed were filled, that I may be able to squeeze him in if someone else didn’t show up, but that I couldn’t guarantee him a seat until tomorrow. Then, his patience snapped. “I don’t know why I have to take a dumb course like history,” he muttered loud enough for me to hear. “Stupid core. I’m pre-med. It’s no good in my major. I’d rather take courses in science that I can do something with than history and in political science and psychology and sociology and all that other useless junk. None of this will help me get into med school or when I’m in med school.” He looked up, as forcefully asked as if was verbally grabbing me at the collar, ” Tell me, how is history going to help me diagnose some patient’s sickness or cure him? I mean, be real. Knowing something about some dead people and a few dates isn’t gong to make me a better doctor or help me write a precription. When I was sick and went to the doctor, he never said a thing about the Civil War. I’ll never use it. Tell me! Some of my friends are worse off. All they can get are dumb courses in art or philosophy and ‘stuff’ like that. And they’re business majors. It’s a stupid waste!”

In reply, I merely asked, “What does your adviser say.”

“He agrees. He thinks it’s stupid for me to waste my time and money when I can take important courses, but he told me that he couldn’t to anything about it and I’ll just have to suffer until I can get to the good stuff. So I guess I’m stuck and if I’m forced to take course that won’t do me any good, I’d just as soon take it with you. At least, my friends told me you weren’t boring. But, I still think it sucks!”

I got him into my class.

You know, in this age, when so many would have higher education offer little more than sports and white-collar vocational education, when so many both inside and outside the academy condemn what is called the liberal arts–or any course outside a student’s major department for that matter–as “stuff” and “junk” that is supposedly “dumb” and “useless” in getting trained for and carrying out a job, this ill-advised student’s attitude isn’t unique. But, as I recently told a number of colleagues I think I have an answer for both for him and his myopic adviser.

Now, I’m not going to speak for the other disciplines. I’ll just speak up for my own. First, I am committed to Plato’s assertion that I as a teacher have a social obligation to teach beyond the confines of the classroom and the subject matter and especially the major so that the students will be improved human beings; so that they can take responsible positions not just in a profession or business, but in their personal and social roles as well. It’s impossible for me to separate thinking about a course from thinking beyond the course, to separate thinking about what kind of professionals the students will be from thinking about what kind of people they will be at the end of the day and the term. I want to make a difference. I want my students to feel changed after 10 weeks. I don’t want to just filled them with more information.

Everything and everyway I teach is designed to connect history with the lives of the students, to connect the students with themselves and each other. I feel that it is my responsibility to make what I and the students do in the classroom important in their lives. Forming them into triads and using such methods as role playing, abstract drawing, skit writing and presentation, short-story writing, scavenger hunts, chain essay writing, I stand aside and let the students discover for themselves, let them see that they can discover, let the most mundane fact come alive with the force of personal discovery, let them chatter amongst themselves, let them learn how to cooperate and support and encourage and respect each other, let them learn to listen to and consider other points of view; let them utilize a variety of modes of expression; let them learn adaptability and flexibility; let them present imaginative creations, ask them to share the excitement of revelations.

Second, I can think of no one so ill prepared as a professional, citizen, person as someone trained only in a single discipline only by those in that discipline. I say this because the more I teach the more I oppose unnatural separateness and compartmentalization of people, subjects, and the silly conflicting metaphors of the “ivory tower” and “real world”; and the more I understand the ecology or “wholeness” of knowledge, nature, and people: of spirit, emotion, mind and body within each person; of diverse individuals and peoples; of the disciplines into which we have artificially divided existence; of people and nature. The more I teach, the more I feel I have to familiarize students with the forces that have shaped and continue to shaped their lives as well as those of others of different experiences, backgrounds, races, genders, national heritages, cultures, religions, and ethnic backgrounds. At the same time, the more I feel I can’t let them lose sight of the fact that the consequences of those past events and forces defy time and are very real and personal.

In a way I’m lucky. Some may say that it is easier for me to do that as an accomplished historian than it may be, say, for a mathematician. As a sidebar, I don’t think that it true, not when I think about Copernicus, Newton, Einstein, the non-scientific forces that acted upon them, how they and what they did reflected those forces, and how they influenced those forces. Back to history. History contains a natural, organic wholeness as the sum story of what people hope and dream and do–although you wouldn’t know it the way it’s study has become jargonized as some of us historians deperately try to demonstrate that we are objective social scientists using scientific method; how it has become politicized, culturize, divided, subdivided and fragmented into more narrow and separated concentrations. My discipline is somewhat all encompassing; it includes and is involved in all the sciences, all the arts, literature, religion, philosophy, technology, education, economic, business, culture, every human twitch. And, if I perform my task and carry on my mission as a teacher, as I see it, I can help students understand that their personal troubles and experiences and views are social issues that have meaning for a lot of other people–and vica versa. At the same time, I can help them understand contemporary issues, not to mention their personal issues, with the perspectives of the past.

You know, I have to admit that there are times I am uncomfortable with, almost am enveloped with as sense of annoyance and irresponsibility about, teaching history. How often am I, as an historian, treated as academia’s second-son, a passing thought, low on the order of priority–and pay-scale. I mean here are these students coming to campus to prepare themselves to secure their niche beyond the classroom and campus in society’s megaeconomy. They come to our campuses whose faculty and administrators increasingly tout their institution as white-collar vo-tech institutions, looking for their place in society’s economic scheme of things; looking myopically for a better job, more money, higher position in society; they come to the campus screaming, “I hate history”, thinking–and often being told–that history is a boring, useless bunch of facts–names of dead people, battles, treaties, places–they had to memorize for a short- answer test often prepared by an athletic coach for whom the school administration had to find a classroom. They don’t see why they have to take a course that is not “needed for my major”; no one tells them why they, as business or science majors, with the eyes to the future, have to waste their time studying about the past that’s “done and gone” and that no one has told them has any bearing on understanding the real, contemporary world. Even our majors or those thinking of becoming history majors ask the classical, cyclical question, “What can I do with a degree in history besides teach history?”

So, here I am, concentrating on introducing Bismarck or Peter the Great or even the pilgrims to students who have been bored to tears in boring classes, who have had history classes that were as exciting as walking through a cemetery in the winter, that have had and have classes that reduced these once vibrant human beings to “cohorts”, cold statistics and charts, inanimate poster images, to lifeless names, meaningless wars and battles, unimportant dates, archaic treaties, royal genealogical lists, distant and detached events, believing that the subject belongs more in a dusty attic with all the other relics of the dead than in a living room among the living.

At times, I feel the need to justify myself to them in non-historical terms. I tell them that I have them work in triads because they will need to start learning communication skills, people skills and how to work with others and in teams in whatever professional or corporate setting they may find themselves; I explain that I make sure that the triads are gender and racially mixed because they will meet and work with diverse people; I discuss the various non-lecture, collaborative projects and exercises in terms of how they have to learn to become their own learners, how to learn how to pick up the salient points in a document or statement on their own, how to learn what makes people tick from a few seemingly disconnected words or actions, how to believe in their abilities and capacities, how to have vision, how to learn to put their trust in what they do whether as students, business people, professionals, parents, voters.

As it turns out, my best history classes are alwasys life classes. It’s my task to get students to see and feel for themselves that history is not a sedentary subject about who signed what treaty or who shot whom or who married whom or who invented what. I struggle to get students to understand for themselves that history is about real people who once were, with hopes and dreams and fears and hang-ups just like them; to conjure up ways for the students to bring a Socrates, an Otto von Bismarck or a Sojourner Truth or a Thomas Jefferson or a Margaret Sanger or a factory worker or even an Adolf Hitler into my class alive, fleshed out, blood flowing through their veins and arteries, air rushing in and out of their lungs; to figure how to get the students to walk around each of them, see them, touch them, hear them, talk with them; to see them joke, laugh, itch, cringe, doubt, scratch, make love, be human. I find methods and techniques to let them make meaningful, animate adventures out of the subject, by breathing life into the historical figures and showing that they were just as human and fallible as the students and faced life’s challenges just like them. I back off and let the students understand that they are a product of thoughts, actions and decisions made by those who came before them–a top layer of a piece of layered plywood. I let the students see that ideas are not just ideas; they’re forces that change people and societies and the world. And I work hard to show them, for them to see for themselves, that each of them has no less the power to change themselves, other people, their society, other societies, and the world.

This doesn’t trivialize or dismiss history as subject matter. Just the opposite. Every time I pull it off, I find that the students begin to like studying history and acquire a greater awareness of the role the past plays in their present lives, and learn a lot of history that sticks far more than if they were merely sitting around listening to someone talk and tell, and studying merely to pass a test. Every time I pull it off, far more students see the value and meaning in history and far fewer students ask “why do I have to take…” or “what can I do with this” or “what good is it” or “is this really important?”

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

I was cleaning out an attache case in my study just now that I hadn’t used in quite a while. I get into these housekeeping fits only on the rarest occasion–usually under the duress of a stern ultimatum from my laser-eyed Susan. Anyway, inside the case I found a crumpled napkin from a pub in York, England. As, I unballed it out of both curiosity and as a reminder of the pub�s delightful pints, I discovered scribbled on it a “long-lost and forgotten” Random Thought that I had jotted down in the summer of 1995 while at a neat international conference on collegiate teaching in York, England. I obviously had stuffed into the case as in a safe place where I knew it wouldn’t forget it. It didn’t work.

I don’t usually send out Random Thoughts on back-to-back days unless the spirits so strike me. I doing it this time for fear of forgetting oncce again this Random Thought I would like to share with you. Anyway, having read it I think it’s as timely now as it was then. Here it is:

We’re in the majestic 700 year old York Minister. Susan and I have been playing tourist all day and my feet ache. It’s a nice July late afternoon, cool by south Georgia standards, warm when you talk with the people who live here. As I’m writing these words, I’m sitting on a bench that seems to be placed here for tired tourists. Above me the ceiling of the nave rises several hundred feet! It’s daunting. I can’t help looking upward constantly and feeling both humbled and uplifted. A few feet away a choir is softly practicing a chant that nevertheless resounds, but doesn’t echo, through the Minister. The murmur of respectful whispers and the muted shuffling feet of the numerous visitors act as a muffled backbeat to the resonating voices.

As we entered the Minister, the rays of the fading day�s sun were bathing the tips of the gray stone spires in soft amber. Now the light is dancing on the rich emerald greens, ruby reds, deep blues, saffron yellows, browns, white and a host of other glorious colors of the medieval stain glass, carrying a kaleidoscope of color on its rays as it passes through the panes, and splashing buckets of color on everything it comes to touch.

This Minister is a powerful prayer built in stone. It is as eloquent as Dante’s Divine Comedy. I feel it opening my spiritual pores. It begets faith, an energy, an excitement. It beckons, instructs, waters, nourishes. It binds the people in community; it brings the people in contact with their inner spirit.

It’s presumptuous to condense into a short paragraph a description of something that combines beauty and truth, faith and knowledge, art and mechanics, humility and bravado. The few grammatically unparalleled words will have to do: Awe. Breathless. Dynamic. Humble. Marvel. Vision. Magnificent. Devotion. Love. Gentle. Energetic. Beauty. Majesty.

I am impressed how inspiring this cathedral is. It’s cornices, naves, facades, columns, vaults, figures, color, sounds, sights create an atmosphere that is releasing, uplifting, comforting, calming, embracing, supporting, and accepting. It’s carved poetry, sculptured faith and knowledge, windowed drama, and chiseled art charms the senses and arouses the soul and stimulates the intellect. As I feel the need to express myself and my pencil glides across the wrinkled napkin–it feel almost sacrilege that the napkin is from a near-by pub–I’m amazed how conducive the environment it is to creating good feelings, how encouraging it is to thinking good thoughts, and how it urges the doing of good works.

And, having just attended some sessions and preparing to present a workshop at an electrifying international conference on collegiate teaching which I highly recommend–the First Year Experience–my thoughts of my classes are never far away. So I am thinking of my classrooms where I teach and students learn, of recent renovations, and of new buildings on the drawing boards as my institution passes through its years of puberty–from college to university–with seemingly little reflected and articulated meaningful vision and guidance.

I wonder what are the new classrooms going to look like. What beliefs and perceptions and attitudes–who we are, who the students are, what is the purpose and goals of what we do, how do we get to those goals and achieve those purposes–that are going to be written unthinkingly with glass and steel and plastic and concrete? Are they going to be models of dismal and prosaic professorial industrial production line, cost-saving, efficient transmission of information? Or, are they going to be inviting and electrifying centers of effective student learning and meaningful human growth?

Maybe your classrooms or those of your children’s are like mine. I am struck how strikingly contrasting the stirring atmosphere of this cathedral is to the asphyxiating climate of the classroom cells to which I will soon return. When students enter a classroom their pens and pencils do not flow less easily as mine does here, their spirits are uplifted less than they would be here; it’s harder for them to think good thoughts than they would here; it’s more difficult for them to feel good than here; it’s tougher for them to be confident; and, therefore, it’s rougher for them to perform well.

Yet, the classroom is supposed to be a place like this– something of a cathedral in itself–that stirs, kindles, fires, sparkles, releases, lifts, encourages, receives, supports, changes. It’s supposed to be a blooming oasis that feeds, waters, and nurtures the mind, spirit and soul of each student who enters it. It’s supposed to be a flourishing center of human betterment. Yet, if you look at the faces of most of the students who enter, sit, and leave those rooms, most classrooms are anything but electrifying. They’re more like blown fuses. Few open students’ emotional or intellectual pores. The classroom are essentially sterile and uninspiring. At times, they’re wilting and debasing.

It’s presumptuous to condense into a short paragraph a description of something that is so prosaic. A few grammatically unparalleled descriptive words come quickly to mind that are almost antonyms to those I used to characterize my feelings about this cathedral: Sameness. Cells. Dungeons. Antiseptic.. Discouraging. Bleak. Desert. Bland. Gloomy. Enclosing. Boring. Separating. Cold. Common. Weighty. Cheerless. Passive.

I am, like you, however, subject to the tyranny of the existing architecture. I sure can’t move my classrooms to this noble place any more than I can bring its colonnades, vaulted ceilings, or stain glass windows into my classrooms There is little I can physically change other than move the chairs so students can see each other and get to know each other, and begin to enter into supportive and encouraging community with each other. Many of you, with classrooms of tiered fixed benches, don’t even have that luxury. But, now that I think of it, as I struggle to created a classroom learning community, I do have the opportunity and power to introduce this cathedral’s stirring atmosphere.

The truth is that if our present classrooms are to be an exciting places, if teaching is essentially a “people activity”, it has to be the result of the “people factor”–the efforts of initially the teacher and then of both the teacher and enlisted students. We shouldn’t allow ourselves the excuse, “The way the classroom is built won’t let me….” We must create a climate, a presence, an emotional atmosphere, in spite of and without the help of the physical layout of the land if necessary. We must bathe the classroom in the uplifting floodlights and positive choruses of embracing welcome, affirmation, and encouragement that enhance self-worth and confidence, and brings out good feelings, thoughts, and deeds. Then, perhaps we can stir students, kindle their light, get them fired up, get them to sparkle; then we, as an oasis, water their talents, nourish their ability, feed their self-confidence, tap their potential to learn and grow. And, iIf we truly succeed, with the assistance of the students, we will have transformed the classroom into the inspiring cathedral it should be.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

Well, I got up early this morning bright-eyed an bushy tailed even though it was only five hours into the new year. I put on my walking grubbies, opened the door and got hit by a blast of hot hair. My first walk of the new year and it was warm as hades. I can walk because I don’t do up New Year’s eve, had a quiet dinner with some close friends, toasted the new year with a glass of wine and kisses, and hit the sack. So, this morning I’m rested and don’t have to fight any blurry-eyed, headachy mornings after the night befores.

As I sweated along the January street as if it was July, I was thinking about the traditional salute: “ring out the old, bring in the new.” What does that mean for me as a person and especially as a teacher. I think it means simply all things change, that I have to change or atrophy, and that teaching follows life.

I think I have a teacher’s eye, that is, a unique perception, sensitivity, love of people, vision, creativity, imagination. I have a sense of mission, a dedication, a commitment, a persistence. I have a faith that my efforts will bear fruit on most trees, if not today somehow in some manner weeks, months, or even years later. But, I don’t think that is enough. It’s not enough to want to keep being a good, effective teacher; I must want to become a better, more effective teacher. I have a courage, perhaps a brash courage, to devote myself to my art, to publicly express the emotions of my inner self, to stake my existence and my sense of being on my talents, and above all not to rest on my laurels and past accomplishments, but to risk: to risk moving on, to risks new things, to risk stretching the possibilities, to risk not always succeeding, to risk doing all that out in the open.

Maybe it’s that audaciousness that separates the artists from the pretenders, the masters from the journeymen, the craftsmen from the technicians. If I want to remain in prime time, if I want to remain alive, if I want to remain vital, if I want to remain happy, if I want to remain excited, if I want to remain on top of the world, I have to change and let nothing become routine. If I want to remain awake, I can never believe that I can teach in my sleep. I have to work hard and never let believe that it gets easier. If I want to stay wound up, I can’t let myself coast or wind down. I can’t merely drift with the current of inevitable change around me, but must bask in that change and seize opportunities for the sake of my growth and development. I can’t continue to believe exactly what I have always believed, feel exactly what I have always felt, thought exactly what I have always thought, do exactly what I have always done. I have to search for new approaches, experiment with new techniques and methods, make new mistakes, throw things out, leave things out, introduce things, freshen up the tried and true, start fresh. I have to share with you and the students my enthusiasm, excitement, ideas, experiences, foul-ups, achievements, and my willingness to try new things. I have to continue to look for, discover, and bring out what�s yet inside me. No, I should be strung up if I ever just hang around complacently saying that I’ve got the hang of it. If I can pull that off, nothing will wilt and yellow. I won’t need a front-porch rocking chair or cane or walker as long as I keep my spirit limber by uncovering new mediums, styles and methods of expression; as long as I am intoxicated with people; as long as I move to higher plateaus in how I feel, think, and do; as long as I am always hungry and I never feel completely fulfilled and continue to move towards fulfillment; as long as I accept the truth that nobody reaches their full potential and nobody exhausts all their resources.

And so, for the coming year, I have no resolution. I have just a wonder and a hope. I wonder what there is still within me waiting to be brought out and hope that I will have the courage to either bring it out or let it be brought out.

I and my family would like to wish you and yours a happy and straight journey for the new year.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–
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