It is a chilly, damp, wet, placid Saturday morning during which I was struggling, really struggling, to think about a message early yesterday morning. In it was a request from an education major at a mid-western American university. She had been given an assignment (I won’t quote her descriptives of the professor)to contact some teachers over the Thanksgiving break–as if they had nothing to do or nowhere to go during this family holiday and were just sitting around waiting for a such message–and ask them what they thought was the core quality of a good teacher.

With a desperate “please be there,” she asked for a reply as soon as possible since she had to hand in the results of her survey by Monday. She asked for a lot! It was not a good time to ask me to think. I am here, but I am not here. My body was–and still is–being ravaged by vast amounts of seratonin-producing tryptophan induced by a Thanksgiving caloric overdose. Luckily, when I received her message all I had was the lingerings of cozy turkey hangover. My digestive system still was softly stuffed with stuffing. My brain still was in a sleepy daze. My muscles were warmly sluggish. Still feeling the loitering effects of a near food coma, my walk this morning through both the autumnal fog and my own drowsy inner fog can best be described as an unsteady “hobble gobble wobble.”

Anyway, I suppose there were many things I quickly could have rattled off to this student that sounded good. To handle her question in an insincere, matter-of-fact manner wouldn’t have been fair to her. After seriously struggling to think about the question and to come up with a timely answer at such an untimely time, I came upon a clearing in my cerebral fog. The conversation I recently had with Rita popped into my head and I remembered what I had learned from her. I decided to answer the student’s request with this: most teachers only feel that students have so much to learn from them. A core quality that sets the good teachers apart from others is that they are students who learn so much from students.

Susan and I would like to wish you all a belated, but no less sincere Thanksgiving. We all have far more reasons than we know to offer a humble, “thank you.” And to my Muslim friends celebrating Ramadan, Susan and I also would like to ask that Allah bring peace and blessing into your house. Eid Mubarak.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

This is unique. It is the dark of evening and not of dawn.

You know on the plane flying home from the Lilly Conference on College Teaching at Miami University last night, I was thinking. I should have been sleeping. My body was so stiff I could have sworn it was in the throes of early rigormortise. I guess my spirit and brain weren’t as fried as much as I thought. So, eye-lids that felt like cement blocks and muscles that were stiff as proverbial planks not withstanding, a few remaining drops of adrenalin stired my soul. I found myself thinking what is it about the Lilly Conference that left me both exhausted and refreshed?

This was my ninth Lilly conference. It was as alive and crisp as the first, second, third….. There was no routine to it; no sense of “old.” Nothing was stale, not even the danish. Nothing was stagnant. It was all movement. Like always it had a sweet smell of freshness and newness to it. There was that ever touch of the serendipity to it. You never really know what surprise is going to be pulled at a plenary, keynote, or session. A dog act last year; music this year. Everything there is so unstuffy, so “unego.” Is it the spirit of the creator and driving force of the conference, Milton Cox of Miami University? Yes, but that is only a part of the answer. Is it the dedication and commitment and warm “embraceableness” of an every-smiling–and very patient–host of the detail people? Yes, but that is only a part of the answer. It is the conference’s “smoozeability,” as a new-found friend commented? Is it those hugs and kisses of friends who meet this one time a year like lost family members and the hugs and kisses of strangers who have become friends in a few short days? Yes, but that is only a part of the answer.

I mean, if you were a proverbial fly on the wall you would have seen and heard noted educators such as Lisa Newman and Wendy Larcher belting out Motown songs with would make Diana Ross jealous, Linc Fish cooking up his god-awful oyster/green olive/cheese on cracker concoction that would make no one jealous, jovial Craig Nelson hobbling with his cane but not with his mind and heart, Tony Grasha presenting a magnificent conference-ending plenary, Folly the Dog with a name tag draped around his neck walking among us, Nana Morrows dancing their glorious Ashanti conference convocation, Lynne Anderson acting like a sprouting fungi (which I learned is pronounced “fun-gee”), Alex Fancy engaging us with his edu-tropes, Barbara Mossbert linking intricately and intimately the arts and the sciences, name tags individually and colorfully decorated, students play acting, faculty play acting, participants drawing and computing and discussing and singing and sculpting and dancing, and …….

All of these diverse sessions, the constant movement of people; the din of clustered conversations in the halls and over eating tables and on outside benches and on the jogging trails, and even in the bathrooms; the diverse participants from every conceivable discipline from proverbial “all over.” What is it about Lilly? Lots of smiles, lots of laughter, lots of fun, and none of it frivilous. At a glance, I;ve heard a very, very few over the years who don’t bother to understand, have called it so “non-professional,” maybe even unprofessional. But, I have yet to find finer, abler, more dedicated, more receptive, more embracing professionals than those at the Lilly conference. They’re just smart enough to do it with a smile here, some laughter there, a dance step here, and spirited humanity everywhere.

We all attend this conference, present our stuff, participate in the stuff of others, write notes until our fingers are numb, move around, go periodically brain numb, pull muscles carry handouts that collect by the cartoons, get drained of every ounce of energy, are on an adraline kick going for two to four days and then crash, get bleary eyed smoozing ’til all hours of the night in all sorts of places with friends, make new friends out from strangers. Eat. Drink. Dance. Sing. Getting stuffed with delightful food for thought, delicious food for the tummy, and delicate food for the spirit is only part of the answer I was seeking.

I pondered that on the plane home. The majority of the over five hundred participants come as strangers and a majority leave as members of a supporting and encouraging community. I couldn’t put it all together and find that grand unifying theory. Then, over somewhere between Cinncinati and Atlanta, between fading in and out of consciousness, it hit me. Or, at least I think I got it. Einstein get ready to move over.

I shared my discovery with Barbara Mossberg, President Emeritus of Goddard College. Now, I’ll “go public.”

On the surface, Lilly looks like anarchy. It all seems so chaotic. A lot may even look frivilous. And yet, it is so orderly. It is so guided. And so professional. Underneath all the apparent surface chacaphony of sound and hubbub of movement, there is a deep unifying rhythm of life. I’ll call it my Lilly Chaos Theory.

The Theory says that the apparent anarchy is order and the order is anarcy. It says that the apparent confusion, commotion, discord of sound and movement, in the nooks and crannies in and around Miami University’s Marcum Center is all about changing habits, about struggling to get into the habit of breaking habits of thinking, feeling, and doing, struggling to get rid of old negative habits, and struggling to acquire positive new ones.

My Lilly Chaos Theory makes sense if you understand that we come to Lilly so we can learn to program ourselves to be reprogrammable, to learn to teach ourselves to be teachable, to learn to renew ourselves in order to be a renewable resource.

Should it be otherwise? Life is by its definition reprogramming and renewing, and teaching is part of life; life by its definition an on-going, never ending story of change, and so should teaching. The “same ole, same ole” shouldn’t exist stagnantly in teaching any more than it does in life. Habit is nothing more than a disguised choice to which we have assigned power and control over us. Habit is only another name for doing something we really want to do. Habit is something we do over and over again so often it becomes easy. A conference such as Lilly helps us to see that what lies within us is far more important and potent that what lies around us. It echoes what Pirsig said in ZEN AND MOTORCYLCE MAINTENANCE about things being so hard when contemplated in advance and so easy when you do it. So the enveloping spirit of Lilly helps us acquire or start acquiring empowering habits to overpower disempowering ones; to acquire or start acquiring habits that nourish our spirits and souls, to explore who we are, to expand who we are, to learn about how we feel. And we leave Lilly beginning to see or seeing clearer that teaching is not an act; it’s a habit; it’s filled with character.

And, it is those habits which determine the quality of teaching. I believe that whether we are conscious of it or not, we go to Lilly to find a community of mutual support and encouragement–and the way–to build character because character is not inherited. It is built when we constantly strive to change and grow and improve, day by day, feeling by feeling, attitude by attitude, thought by thought, act by act. According to my theory, we are guided by the forces of Chaos and go to a conference on teaching like Lilly because we want to acquire habits that keep us in motion, to explore and expand, to work better not just harder, to awaken a boldness, to tap an imagination and creativity, to take us to a higher level of awareness, to offer us a sharper sense of sight, to give up a stronger commitment to the question than the answer, to give us a more acute sense of smell, and we leave Lilly tired and numb, but so invigoratingly alive we feel everything.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

Negatives and positives. Obstacles and possibilities. Problems and opportunities. I was thinking about these couplets as I waltzed through the dark this crisp morning.

Late Monday afternoon, as the fates would have it, a bunch of stuff came together like tributaries at a confluence: the moaning and groaning of a lot of faculty about students, getting ready for the Lilly Conference where the participant do anything but complain, my return from an exciting meeting about finally being allowed to get involved in the all too little known but exciting learning community on campus, and most of all getting tackled in the hall by a student, by what some would have called a “problem student,’ who had taken a class with me a year or two ago.

Our conversation went something like this:

“Hey, Dr. Schmier,” Rita (not her real name) greeted me, “glad I bumped into you. I’ve got an assignment for one of my classes. Can you help me?”

“Sure. What is it?”

“I want to find out what teachers think their biggest problem with teaching is.”

“Okay. I was just talking with another professor about that.”

“Do you have teaching problems?”

“Of course. I teach. You’re asking me the wrong question.”

“I am?”

“Sure. It’s not having problems that you really want to know about.”

“It isn’t?”

“Nope. It’s whether I see the problems as obstacles or opportunities.”

She hesitated for a second. Then she asked, “Well, then, what is your biggest problem?”

Without missing a heartbeat, I quietly smiled and replied, “Me!”

“You? Isn’t it the students? That’s what everyone has told me.”

“You asked me and I answered you. I guess I’m not everyone. Nope. The biggest problem I have to face in the classroom is not any student. It’s Louis Schmier. I struggle to be negative or positive. It’s up to me whether I see a ‘problem student’ as either as an ‘obstacle student’ or a ‘possibility student.'”

“Huh?”

“It’s a matter of whether I see a hidden devil inside a student who I let give me hell or I see a hidden angel who I let bless me.”

“What are you talking about?” she smiled.

“You. Go a few minutes?”

“For you? Yeah.”

“So do I. Come here and let’s sit down.”

We sat down and talked about how in the context of the classroom a problem student becomes an obstacle to me only when I am so attached to a way of thinking or a way of doing something that I am inflexible, have no room to maneuver, and am not prepared for surprises. “A problem student–like you were–is an obstacle when things don’t go the way I want or a student doesn’t do what I want, and I demand that they do. Then, I put myself through hell and believe I am in hell.”

“So what do you think a problem is,” I asked Rita.

“What you think is it? How you decide to look at the situation?

“But aren’t problems, especially problem students bad?”

I asked why she thinks she works problems in her math class or science classes.

“It’s supposed to be a way to learn how to apply what we know in all sorts of different ways and different situations.”

“Neat! They’re ‘a way to learn.’ An opportunity. What if I do the same thing with people? What if I see a ‘problem student’–or a ‘problem situation’–as ‘a way to learn?” What if I see those situations and students as positive challenges and not as negative barriers? What if I see a ‘problem student’ as an opportunity and not as an obstacle?”

She looked at me.

“Remember all those talks we had, all your problems, the stuff you got into?”

“Don’t I ever. I was that ‘problem student.'”

“You were that ‘problem person.’ Remember what I did?”

“Sure do. You were in my face and on my ass so that I could start getting in my own face and kicking me in my own butt. But, you never were negative. You were kindly. You so believed in me that you wouldn’t let me not believe in myself and fail the class. You let me take the class again without anyone knowing it. You said I just needed more time to see that real face in the mirror.”

“That was the first time I ever did it. You were a ‘problem student’ which I chose to interpret to mean an ‘opportunity student,’ not an ‘obstacle’ student. I was flexible; I gave myself room to experience new challenges, to figure out new approaches, to learn from these experiences, and to grow from what I learned from these situations.”

We talked some more. At some point I remember saying, “You want to be a teacher? Don’t just talk in your classes about developing skills in problem solving, maybe even problem perceiving when it comes to your subject. Practice what you preach when it comes to people. Don’t forget all those problem-solving and problem-perceiving techniques when a student problem pops up.”

“So that’s why you say you are your biggest problem with teaching,” she said as if the light had come one. “and why you are also your greatest opportunity. It’s your choice on how you look at things. You make it happen or not happen. You decide if things stand in your way and if they show you the way.”

I paused. Slightly stunned. “Damn!! That’s beautiful. Wish I had thought to say it that way. I’ve got remember that…..”

As she left, I sat there thinking about her last words. Such poetry. Sightful. We notice things the way we are, that we think about, and that reflect who we are. Every situation we create is first a thought within us, starts with us, and emanates from us: I imagine, which leads me to create my words, which leads me to generate my emotion, which leads me to energize and direct my action. It’s that “simple.” We choose to have nightmares or dreams–and live them, have fear or have faith–and live it, be distant and inactive or engaged and active, be anxious or calm, mistrust or trust, negative or positive, see obstacles or see opportunities, see situations and people standing in our way or showing the way.

If I have learned anything in my decade long journey, it is that nothing is perfect. Life is messy. Life in the classroom is messy. I have to deal with it, get over it, roll with it, use it, guide it, get on with it. Nothing really works out the way I want. I can’t really control anything beyond me. That’s the nature of life; that’s the nature of life in the classroom. I always am tested–every minute, every student, every class. And, my test scores can be negatives or positives, barriers or opportunities.

I also have become positive about the limits imposed by negatives. We just can’t build with can’ts. When we send out negative energy, all we will get an echoing negative energy bouncing off the classroom walls, the students, and our spirits. And, we will eat at ourselves. If we choose to be negative, to be naysayers, to be academic Henny Pennys proclaiming that the academic sky is falling, then we will meet students with emotional clenched fists, attitudes of folded arms, and spiritual stern faces and sneers. And, all we can do in our hearts is tear them down–and tear our hearts out. And, all we will see are unwanted, discomforting problems–and we won’t want to be there among them. We’ll be blind to the opportunities and eaf to possibilities. Negatives impose a dormancy and unfulfilled existence, a foundering in the everyday stuff of the classroom, failing backward. They prevent us from stretching forward and out to be the teacher each of us is capable of being. We can’t be negative, pessimistic and critical and expect to be happy, positive, and excited; we can’t expect students to be happy, positive, and excited. Seeing the worse in people will not evoke their best. Being judgemental and criticizing will not lead to understanding and support and encouragement. You don’t have belief that way; you don’t have faith and hope that way; you don’t love that way.

I’ll repeat what Rita said with such poetry. We choose what we let stand in our way and we choose what we let show us the way.

So I say to myself and you, with unapologetic passion: make it happen. We let students be a series of obstructing problems or we see each of them as an opportunity. We have the power to change the face of faces. We have the power to enliven lives and enhearten hearts. We have the power to awaken in the minds and spirits of students the same beliefs we have in them. We are the designers of our today and tomorrows. We get what we choose to expect. We choose to see the handwriting on the wall is a forgery or not. What shall it be: negatives or positives. Tomorrow is pure possibility. The only limits that exist for our tomorrows are the doubts and negatives we have today. And, I am positive that we have the power to create a positive tomorrow. If we expect the positive, if we speak it, if we act it out, we will be a force for and set the state for a promising possibility.

Make it happen.

Make being positive and acting positive a habit of your spirit. Making see possibilities and opportunities a habit of your heart. Forgive students’ weaknesses; seek out and build on their strengths; commit to serve rather than be served; greet each student in your hearts and minds with open hands, broadened smiles, extended arms. Do that, and you will work to bring them up and help them reach for their potential. Then, you will seize the tremendous opportunities before you. So, if it is positive, excited, engaging students you want, focus on the positive, excited, and engaging

Make it happen.

No, the students are never the real obstacle. We are. It’s our relationship to and attitude towards and interpretation of them as either obstacle or opportunity. We choose what we let stand in our way and we choose what we let show us the way

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

So much moaning and groaning. So much complaining. So much condemnation. So much accusation. So much self-pitying. So much tearing of clothes. So many ashes covering mortarboards. So much exchange of academic robes for sackcloth. So many going around in barefeet. Have you heard them? Have you seen them? It’s so rampant and deafening that you’d think the four horsemen of the apocalypse are stampeding through our campuses, that our classrooms are battlegrounds wherein clash the biblical forces of good and evil, that intellectual armageddon is upon the academy, and that academic world is coming to an end.

I hear and read so often hear these accusations and condemnations from bear-footed faculty in sackcloth, holding up placards and hurling warnings that education is going to hell and damning hellish students for putting poor ole us innocent and struggling academics through hell: “it isn’t what it used to be,” “students aren’t what they used to be,” “they aren’t as serious as they used to be,” “they don’t want to work hard,” “all they are interested in is getting a job,” “they’re so materialistic,” “all they want is to get a higher salary,” “they always have excuses,” “they don’t care about intellectual growth,” “they’re so apathetic,” “they don’t want to study,” “they’re so irresponsible,” “they don’t the right priorities,” “they’re so disrespectful,” “they’re so…..”

Let’s put everything in a perspective. I have a simple set of questions. Where and when was this golden age when students were paragons of intellectual and moral virtue? When was this golden age when getting job credentials wasn’t what it was all about, when getting a grade wasn’t what it was all about, when getting a good recommendation wasn’t what it was all about? When was this golden age students never asked, “Is he easy” or never looked for the “crib course?” When was golden age when students never plagiarized or never cut a corner or two or never went to a fraternity file or never just downright cheated? When was this golden age when students were always prompt and never skipped class? When was this golden age when students constantly put their nose to the grindstone and put grease on their elbows and burnt the midnight oil? When was this golden age when students never had outside distracting personal problems? When was this golden age when students were always self-disciplined and responsible? When was this golden age when students always handed in their assignments on time? When was this golden age when students never offered excuses, explanations, or rationalizations. When was this golden age when grandparents did die on Fridays by the hoard? When was this golden age when getting an education wasn’t about getting professional position and social status? When was this golden age when students never really cared if it was going to be on the test, but learned for the pure sake of learning. When was this golden age when WE faculty didn’t emphasize the vocational or professional character of degrees? When was this golden age when no one in the academy cared about making a living. When was this golden age when students had the writing ability of a Hemmingway, the reasoning powers of an Aristotle, the oratorical talents of Pericles, and a saintliness of a Thoreau? When was this golden age when students didn’t cram for a test just to pass the test and get a grade? When was this golden age when students were never disrespectful, disinterested, distracted, disenchanted, disgusted, and disengaged? When was this golden age when students had a fearless curiosity? When was this golden age when students didn’t suck up to the professor, offer favors to the professor, didn’t engage in cut-throat competition with each other? When was this golden age when students preferred cracking a book to cracking a keg. When was this golden age when students never had financial burdens, when they never took out loans, and never worked their way through school. When was this golden age when students left “their baggage” at the edge of the campus? When was this golden age when students didn’t goof around swallowing goldfish or wearing raccoon coats or cramming into telephone booths and volkswagons or going on panty raids or having priorities other than scholarly pursuits? When was this golden age when students didn’t have eating clubs, drinking clubs, fraternities, and other social communities; when there was no hazing and no riotous parties and no drunken orgies? When was this golden age when sports were not an integral–and often distracting–part of college life? When was this golden age when students went to college out a deep love of learning and were looking only to live the noble life; when was this golden age inhabited only by paragons of intellectual virtue who saw higher education as an exercise in pure, free intellectualization; when was this golden age when students’ most cherished memories, deepest friendships, life-altering experiences emanated from classroom academics? When was this golden age, where was this academic heaven on earth, when students were divinely perfect?

When was this golden age when professors were divinely perfect, when they were paragons of intellectual and moral virtue, above the quest for position and prestige and renown and …..?

Tell me, where and when was this golden age?

It must have been long, long, long time ago, before my sixty-one years on earth, because it wasn’t on my watch either as a k-12 schoolboy, as an undergraduate, as a graduate, or as a faculty member.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–