On This Day

It was foggy this morning in London proportions. It was eerie. Nothing had definition. I couldn’t see more than a block ahead of me. Each lamp post was a protecting lighthouse. I suppose it was appropriate weather for this morning since most of the country and many throughout the world have been covered in a hazy shroud by the tragic events in the waters off Martha’s Vineyard.

Yet, as I took each step my own inner haze began to dissipate until I could see very clearly. I wasn’t expecting to share any thoughts this morning, but I have been sent into the depths of my spirit as JKF, Jr’s plane plunged into the depths of the ocean.

You see, I am a courtier of Camelot. I didn’t enter “into service” until mid-1963 at the age of 22, but when I did it was like I was suddenly breathing freshly oxygenated air and a refreshing wind was at my face.

Now, I am not one of those who threw himself prostrate before the feet of JFK as if he were some pharohic god-king; nor do I worship the ground that a Kennedy walks on. JFK and many members of the family lived a life that was uneven, a life that was flawed, a life that was human. Don’t we all. No, what swept me up and drew me–and still does–was an ideal that was greater than the man, greater than me. It was a call that I could make a difference, that ordinary me could do extraordinaty things, that I…WAS…IMPORTANT and do something of importance.

That call took me into the backwoods of North Carolina to register African-American voters. I only regret that it didn’t last. I didn’t then have the courage not to retreat in fear into my books and hide in the iiner bowels of the graduate library after a klansman stuck his loaded shotgun hard into my stomach as I protested a klan rally in Durham. An unexpected blind date and marriage sidetracked my intentions of entering the Peace Corps.

But, it was because of that ideal that I took up the banner once again, this time with a fearlessness, and was among those who struggled to integrate Valdsota State College beyond tokenism and struggle to combat racism; it was because of that ideal that I was a campus protester of the Vietnam War; it was because of that ideal that I require the triads in my classes be racially and gender mixed as I struggle in my small way to combat any & all prejudice, and foster mutual respect; it is because of that ideal that I believe in the unique potential of each and every student, that each student is an important human being and can do important things, that in each student is a “little story” in which exists a piercing truth, and that I refuse to be a callous academic weeder.

When I hesitate, when I am tired and forelornly ask myself if it’s all worth it, when I am thrown out of the loop, when the system seems so vast that it’s beyond my control to change anything, when everything seems so tangled like a gordian knot, when I think that what I am doing is not earthshaking, when I think that what I am doing will not have any results I hear those encouraging words, “You can make a difference.” I remember that I am important because I believe I am important. And I go on struggling to be a firm and loud voice rather than a hollow and faint echo.

Understand that this is not a eulogy to anyone. This is not a eulogy, period. I am not talking about an age gone by. As I age, as I approach my third score, that age, that calling, that belief, is a seminal, ageless part of me. My body may not be what it was even if I do power walk six pre-dawm miles every other day, but my spirit remains trim and vibrant. The flame burns brighter, the energy is more driving, the belief stronger, the comittment deeper than it had been in my youth. I am even be more youthful now than I was in my youth. My true testimony is my life, my teaching, my continual unswerving belief and faith that I can make a difference, my constant efforts to make a difference, and my uncontested knowledge that I do.

Idealistic you say? Well, maybe. But, remember reality is idealism come true.

My true testimony to the virtues of Camelot is my life, my teaching, my continual unswerving belief and faith that I can make a difference, my constant efforts to make a difference, and my uncontested knowledge that I do.

One last word. The lasting impact on me of Camelot is not the life of a man, the utterance of a few noble words, the presence of a family, the passing culture of a decade or two.

No, the lasting impact is a view of myself.

I think it was Camus who once said something to the effect that there is a lot that is denigrationg in people, but there is a lot more that is noble. I believe that and I believe I can prove that.

Just a thought this fog-shrouded morning.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

My Dictionary of Good Teaching: My Reply

Over the past month, I have been taken to task electronically by more than a few academics responding to my assignment given me by Kenny. My word PLAY especially got under their ski. In their words, I am “obviously” being “unprofessional,” “outlandish,” “frivolous,” “goofy,” “childish.” One professor from a midwestern flagship research institution accused me of being a “total disgrace to the profession!”

Their comments brought to mind two images. The first was of the time a department head came into the classroom before class began and accused me in front of students of “playing around too much.” When I asked him what he meant, he angrily answered with a demonstrative sweep of his arm, “This is a serious place. Look at all this.” I guess he meant my boom box on the desk from which coincidently was quietyly drifting “Who Am I” from Les Miserable, the “Clancy The Clown Loves Me” T-shirt I was wearing, and my “words for-the- day” that I had just scribbled (you can’t call my illegible script handwriting) on the blackboard that read: “Do not Try! Do!!–Yoda.” The second image is of the six week Governor’s Honors Program currently on campus. For six weeks each summer, the creme-de-la-creme of Georgia’s high school students and teachers learn and teach in their specific areas. But, are they boxed in classrooms? Are they chained to desks? Are pens and pencils glued to their fingers so they can silently take lecture notes? Are the teachers lecturing from distant lecturns? Are the teachers doing all the talking? The answer to all these questions is a resounding “no!” Chairs are moved about in clusters and large cirles; stuff is scattered helter skelter about; more stuff of all sizes, colors, shapes and texture plastered walls inside and outside the classroom. The place is a delightful bedlam. Students are painting, drawing, fashioning costuming, role playing, singing, dancing, pasting, cutting, measuring, performing, building, hollering, jumping, laughing, arguing, smiling, debating as they experience and learn the material, mostly in groups. They sit and kneel and ly sprawled all over the floors in the classrooms, halls, sidewalks. They are throwing paper planes in the air, dropping things down stairwells–just like some engineering students at flagship research universities. All the while, they are learning. The program directors talk of self-learning and self- discovery, creativity, imagination, and enjoyment. Why, even the teachers smile, laugh, and rub shoulders with the students.

The teachers essentially do what I do. And, the students in my classes do what the GHPers do. So, why am I a disgrace to the profession? Because I believe that every student can be a GHPer if given a true chance? They can be. I can attest that every student is like a box of crackerjacks: inside is a prize; you just don’t know what the prize is inside until you eat your way down to it. Because I pride myself on being a nurturer and refuse to be a weeder? I have proven faith and hope that every student, without exception, is capable of self-learning and self-discovery, that every student is creative and imaginative, that every student has untapped potential? Because I believe every day is a special day, that every day should be a happening when special things occur? Because I have faith that there is hope for every student?

Must I go smileless and be staid? Can’t I be a happy professor and display my joy, my love, with who I am, with whom I am, where I am, and what I do? Can’t I be a passionate and dedicated and serious teacher while being, excited, maybe even a touch at times giddy and outrageous? Can’t I voice and demonstrate my belief, faith, and hope?

At times, I suppose I am dressed oddly or “unprofessionally” as some of my colleagues would say, and appear to be carefree. I certainly wouldn’t pass the recently enacted dress code in our local county school system. I hand out Tootsie Pops; I carry a boom box through the halls and across campus going to and from class, playing an eclectic selection of music at the beginning and end of each class. In the many sweltering south Georgia days, I wear shorts and tee shirt and sandals. I can’t remember when was the last time I wore a noose of a tie and a straightjacket of a suit although I have a closet full– left overs from another life. I don’t give quizzes or tests or exams. Carefree? Guilty as charged. I am always free to care, free to show each and every student what love looks like, free to be care enought to be very serious in my teaching and relationships with each student, free to have high standards of effort and achievement. But, do I have to be somber about it? Does the landscape of the classroom have to be bleak instead of colorful? Do I have to be puritanical on campus. I am certainly not that way in my person life. Do I have to wear a mask and unifrom? Why can’t I be real in both my teaching and living? How can I not be since my teaching is part of my living? Can’t I create a happy system of cheerful, colorful learning. Is it wrong to elicit a smile, a giggle, a laugh, a spiritual connection, or simple moment of pleasure from a student during and as part of the learning process, to make those feelings inseparable from learning? If so, why? What, then, do we mean by the “enjoyment and love of learning?” We say education should be fun. So, why don’t we make it invitingly fun. We say learning should be exciting. So, why do the overwhelming majority of students say they’re bored to tears in the classroom and have to fight their inclination to attend class? Education can’t be enjoyable if we don’t let the students enjoy it. Heck, learning should be a celebrating, rejoicing party, not a mournful funeral!!

Maybe it’s that proverbial Puritanical thing. If so, I just happen to think that the Puritan forebearers were wrong to distrust enjoyment and leave such misgivings as a legacy to the American psyche. I don’t think enjoyment changes the locks so that both the keys to success and the keys to the kingdom won’t work. If I were a heretical Puritan, I’d say that we have the wrong antonyms. The opposite of play is not work. The opposite of play is boredom, sadness, or even depression. If I were a heretical Puritan, I would have left a heritage of enjoyment knowing that it is very human, cultivates the work ethic, achieves success, glorifies God, and promotes salvation. No, play is not a frivolous indulgence or a trivial pursuit.

And let me tell you why I would be the Roger Williams of education. It is my personal and professional experience that play, fun, enjoyment lift the weights of stress and smashes through the thick walls of fear. They refresh, break dull-minding routine, excite, recharge, stimulate creativity and imagination, force spontaneity, renew ability to accomplish, offer new avenues of activity, provide peeks at unseen potentials, convert stagnant “can’ts” into hesitant “let’s sees” into excited “cans,” all the while doing the required work. No a bad bunch of combinations.

I find that play permits me and the students to discharge emotions and engage the intellect in a way with what appears to be little risk but secretly accomplishes a great deal. Yet, it secretly allows, seduces, students to dare to be daring. It almost allows me to trick the students into learning.

You see, I don’t think having fun is just an activity. It’s a state of mind, an attitude, a spirit. As Mary Poppins might say, “It’s the sugar that makes the medicene go down.” I like being playful around people, especially students, because I, the professor, am not a threat and do not want to pose as a threat. Being playful, I am far less the threatening professor and incresingly the conforting, but demanding friend. Enjoyment, I find, is something like an exalted state of spirit: It allows me and the students to be both in the classroom and someplace else; it allows me and the students to be attuned to the moment of learning and not worry about the future ramifications on a particular grade or final semester grades. When the class rocks with fun, when enjoyment bounce from wall to wall, the work doesn’t attack like a dangerous frontal assault by an enemy. It sort of gently and unnoticed sachets up and quietly slips its cuddly arm under yours and hugs you like a friend.. And our classroom play generates applause and enjoyment,and smiles, not grimmaces and sneers and yawns. It also embraces development, achievement, success. And, by any reckoning, those are remarkably worthy accomplsihments. Now understand that for me enjoyment in the classroom is an alternative cultural form of the work of the learning process. It is not pure unadulterated, unalloyed, indulgent, anarchistic enjoyment. Enjoyment, fun, play have a verbal and body language; they have regulated ways of behaving; they have rules; they have meaning and purpose. There are project and discussion rules, there is a movie of laughter and gyrations and fantasy, but every frame is real and substantiative Everything a student does is real, every movement is real, every action is real, every word is real. There are real beliefs, real faiths, real hopes, real realizations, real accomplishments, real learning.

And when the day is over, according to my conversations with students and according to journal entries and final evaluations, most of them are eager to come to class the next day to see what surprise unfolds and –to use the jargon–turn out to be cognitively and affectively more capable and more comfortable. As a student in a final evaluation said, “every project was fun at the time, but as I look back on the semester now I realize every project is like reaching a greater and greater milestone when most us thought at the beginning we couldn’t walk that far. Sure there are no tests or exams, but we were examined every day and we had to examine ourselves each day. I think we will remember this stuff a lot longer than if we just crammed it for a test. I now know that I learned a lot more history than I thought I would and certainly more than in the traditional lecture, busy work class. I know I am happier with my achievements and myself. And, I know that I am not the only one that feels this way in the class.” Not bad.

You know what gets to me. So many people think nothing of acting angry and grumpy and dour and distant, of being like a threatening thunderstorm. They are self-conscious about being a rainbow, about smiling and laughing and demonstrating positive feelings and being close. They don’t show students what love looks like. They are aloof, shunning intimacy, being the perteptual observer and the real absent person in the classroom. That is strange and sad and unfortunate.

One last word. From personal experience–from classrooms and workshops–in the spirit of Hamlet, I have found that to enjoy or not to enjoy, to play or not to play, to have fun or not to have fun, ah, that is the question. The answer reveals our core sense of self. To play or not to play is an exercise of self-definition; it’s a dramatization of self-expression. It’s a play about choice: what we choose to do and who we choose to be, not what we have to do and who we must be. To play or not to play, to enjoy or not to enjoy, to have fun or not to have fun or to dare or not to dare is a script detailing the ways we are and the ways we can be; it is a demonstration of pure actuality and pure potential.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

On This July 4th

I was thinking last night, driving home from a very quiet celebration with close friends, what is with all this huppin’ it up on July 4th with picnics, flags, Sousaphones playing “Stars and Stripes Forever,” crowded beaches, parades, fireworks, and a host of other festivities throughout the country. What is the Fourth of July really all about that people are willing to endure being bloated with watermelon, over stuffed by picnic fixings, blinded by “the rockets red glare,” deafened by the “bombs bursting in air,” drained by marauding blood-letting mosquitoes, driven mad by annoying gnats and flys, cooked well-done by the sun. What is it, really? An event celebrating the birthday of the United States? Yes, but I don’t think that is good enough. A call for an annual booster shot of flag-waving love of country? Yes, but still not good enough. A commemoration of freedom and independence of thought and action? Yes, but even that isn’t really where the rubber touches the road. What, then, are all the celebrations really about? What is the best word we can come with for the true meaning of the Fourth of July if not freedom, patriotism, independence?

Read the words of the Declaration of Independence. I read them this morning. They are about an idea, a then revolutionary idea and in too many circles today still a revolutionary idea, an idea that is this great country, that makes this country great; an idea that has carried this great land all these years, an idea which has spawned every vast social movement during the 223 years since that first glorious July 4th; an idea which we have refused to let die and with with we have wrestled and fought resolutely and perennially to expand and to become more including and to bring to full realization. Read those rhythmic, unhesitating nad penetrating words of the Declaration of Independence. I realized that they don’t excitedly talk about patriotism or love of country; they don’t tell us to overeat hot dogs, hamburgers, and potato salad; they don’t give up the day off and tell us to go on holiday. What does our great flag stand for; to what are we really pledging our allegiance; about what are we singing? What did John Adams think when he predicted that the day of that great signing will be celebrated forever more. Read those words. They quietly but firmly talk about first principles–laws of nature: individual inalienable rights, self-evident truths, equality, governments formed of men, equal justice for all. Taken together, they talk of a sober, simple, profound, compelling word: respect. They talk of unreserved and unqualified respect for each and every individual, a respect rooted in the unequivicable dignity, nobility, and sacredness of each and every individual.

I live many decades without respect. And I can tell you that without respect–accorded by others or my yourself, a person feels isolated or demeaned or dominated or assaulted or abused or ignored or neglected. If respect is not at the center of a person’s life, if is not the focus of all his or her relationships, if respect is not the highest of our values, we abandon life. It is respect that makes us human; it is respect that is at the core of our identity. It is respect that is the foundation of our personhood, dignity, sacredness. It is central to committed and trusting human relationships. It is the essence of caring and love. It is hope.

Now you might ask, “What does all this have to do with teaching?” Well, I think everything. Respect should be a stranger to our educational systems; it should not barred from our campuses by high walls or razor barbed wire. There should be no stop signs for it posted on the doors of our classroom. This word-respect-is planted in our collective and individual souls. It should resound wherever we are; it should resonate in whatever we do; it should peal with whomever we associate. It should permeate, therefore, the classroom and govern our relationships with each and every student–and colleague–for we are creating the future to make the dream of Jefferson and those who followed come true.

I can hear a loud cheer going up. “Yes! This country is declining because there is not enough respect for authority.” Maybe. Or maybe we don’t accord enough respect to each other. You see, I am not using obedience or submission as synonyms for respect. Understand that the respect I am talking about is not a cement to build or reinforce a hierarchu or caste. I am not associating respect with a submissive bow or a courtesy in action or thought. I am not thinking of an approval from, acquiesence to, domination by, being lesser to someone just because that someone is more knowledgeable, better educated, more skillful, more renown, more erudite, more authoritative, more powerful, more influential, richer, and/or more whatever.

The respect I am talking about would cast off caste and tear at the rungs of the hierarchial ladder. Even if there are differences in knowledge and status and power and resources and skills, the respect I am thinking about is a great equalizer. It is the ways in which we can be on a common plane with one another, and it comes again through this sense of connection in relationships where we treat and think of others only in ways we others to treat and perceive us.

What does this have to do with education. Too often we teachers/professor are among those “someone” on the higher level of the hierarchy demanding to be treated with total deference; too often we assault students with dismissing, demeaning, disrespectful comments and behavior; too often too many of us act as if we are acolytes of the gods before whom all must humbly prostrate themselves; too often we act as if we are doing kowtowing students a favor by allowing them to grace our presence and sip a drop or two from our well. Far too often respect, in the educational structure, is a one way street. It is the teacher/professor who is the one demanding and receiving respect from the student served. But, respect must be a two-way street if the relationship between teacher/professor is to be a truly committed and trusting one.

For me, core of respect is not offering skills, resources, knowledge. And this may surprise you, but for me the central dimension of being respectful to a student–or to any person including myself for that matter–is wonder. And if I hadn’t completed the task given to my by Kenny, I would offer him WONDER as another word for my dictionary of good teaching.

I wonder how many of us have ever really wondered about genuine and authentic wonder. I have, and it’s one of my favorites. I have discovered during the past decade that wonder picks at you; it’s like a vacuum that sucks you in; it’s a magnet that pulls at you; it makes you look about, peek in, glimpse curiously around the corner. It it wonder that every day makes the bumpy, rattling, dusty, choking road under construction into an alluring, scenic road. Wonder truly creates an appreciation of every moment, every living thing on the trip, sincerely seeing and interacting with every person and every force of nature. Wonder is the seedbed of faith, belief, and hope. Wonder is born in the unknown, in mystery, in curiosity, in the question. Wonder is a can opener that allows new insights to spill out. Wonder is rooted in beauty, in conviction, support, engagement. Wonder is filled with awe. Wonder oozes with the miraculous. Wonder nourishes creativity and imagination; it suppressing scorn and ridicule; it breeds optimism and suffocates skepticism. Wonder places each student in the company of the beautiful waterfall, that wondrous star sprinkled night sky, that breathtaking mountain scene, the majesty of a snow capped mountain, those awe-inspiring ocean waves crashing on the beach. Wonder is rooted in beauty and sacredness; it promotes conviction, support, encouragment. To wonder about people, then, is to be sincerely curious about who each of them is, what each is about, what each of them dreams, what each of them fears. Relationships are at the center of my teaching, and for me students are a awesome wondrous greeting card to wonderment. So much of my teaching takes place away from the text book and classroom, and in proportion very little of it in the classroom. Wanting to know who each student is in his/her life, wanting to know what each feels and how each think is really a very, very important dimension of good teaching. And, to get to know each student, you have to talk less and listen more, be seen less and see more, be heard less and hear more.

This brings me to my next point. People say that the root word of “education” is ” the Greek “educare:” to draw out. I also believe education means being willing to listen. We teachers work a lot with people, young and non-traditional, who are often the least listened-to group in our society. Students who are told over and over and over again in word and deed, “Wrong!!” “Be quiet!” “what do you know,”feel as if in general academics don’t listen, but have agendas for them which they too often impose and too often dictate lives for them to live . To respect a student, to wonder about him or her, to ask the question, “what will his path be, where will he go,” you have to be silent. I have discovered time and time again, each and every student has a voice. Not many have the courage to let that voice be heard; not everyone has the courage to say “this is me” or “this is what I feel” or “this is what I think.” Many have been disrespected socially or personally or both so many times in so many ways in so many places that they have taken in a sense of worthlessness, disrespect, insignificance, and have become fearful and their voices goes silent. And it is this silence that leads too many of to believe that the only way students can be educated is if teachers actively draw and students passively are drawn. I understand that. Until ten years ago, I lived in that depreciated place where so many students presently reside and, like them, so camouflaged it with an “that’s me,” or “I’ve always been like that” I didn’t recognize that it was a terrible place to live. I don’t want that to continually happen to any student; I don’t want to do that to any student; I don’t want any student to do it to him/herself, and I struggle to figure out a way really of developing a very different sort of relationship with each students and other people that offers up respect. So, part of wonder is to help everyone find his or her own voice, and to help them to use it. And I have discovered, as I have said many time, good, respectful, wondering, curious teaching means “shhhhhh.” It means to be silent four more time than I talk, listen four more times as much as I speak. I have discovered that when I am silent at the right moment, the moment explodes; when I don’t use my voice at the right moment, a student’s voice thunders. It is wonderful thing to see when the good teacher is truly interested, quiet, attentive, open to what a student is saying rather than throwing his or her own agenda over who they think that student should be like the proverbial blinding and stricting wet blanket, which is what too many of us do as teachers.

But respect, I have learned the hard way over the last decade of my inner journey, with its components, also comes back to the point that you cannot give what you don’t have to give, that you’ve got to be secure in your own core, that you have to work on that before you can give in the way you need to give, that you have to respect yourself, that you have to wonder about yourself, that you have to love yourself, that you have to be curious about yourself, and that you have to listen to your true self, that you have to find your voice, and that you have to use your voice. Self-respect, not just respects of others, is really a central dimension of the kind of respect for the individual about which I am talking.

True teachers are those who truly respect and love themselves, who truly love what they do, who are then giving respect and love to each student regardless of race, age, birth, place of origin, physical ability, gender, religion, ethnicity, skill, knowledge, etc. They have a dream of building communities of equality for a future in which no one is allowed to fall by the wayside. And it is that continued dedication to bringing that dream to realization as others before have done is the true meaning of July 4th celebrations.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–