The Random Thoughts of Louis Schmier

Well, that student who had done a telephone interview with me a few months ago, sent me what he says is the last of the transcripts of our conversation. I guess I said a lot more than I imagined. I thought I’d share some of the pertinent portions of this transcript with you. He began:

“…..What do you think, then, are the qualities of a teacher that guarantee success?”

“There are none.”

“None?”

“I don’t have any guarantees, or magic incantations, or sure-fire tricks. The problem is that too many people think there are, that there are some quick and easy things you can do to guarantee success. The only guarantee I have is that there are no guarantees. There are characteristics that give the teacher a better chance of being successful, but no guarantees. But first, before I give those characteristics to you, what do you mean by success? That is, when is a teacher successful?”

“Well, my professor says it’s the achievement of subject mastery by the student.”

“You know in graduate school we once spent two back-to-back semesters in seminars–two semesters–studying one year–one year–1789, in the French Revolution. And, we didn’t even scratch the surface. Subject mastery? With all due respect to your professor, he’s falling back on cliché. He chasing a rainbow without a pot of gold at the end. And, if you did come upon a pot of gold, it would be fool’s gold…..”

“Well, I mean, then, wouldn’t you say we could determine success in terms of GPA, honors, awards, and so on?”

“Well, you’re assuming that these are proper indicators of long-term learning as opposed to short term grade-getting or score-making as the bean-counters would have you believe. Getting a grade or GPA is far different from being instilled with a life-long love of learning. But, that’s for another interview. Let’s not get into that. I’ll say this. The successful teacher creates a seratonin rush around him or her. Do you know what I mean by that?”

“No.”

“The successful teacher has to diminish anxiety, apathy, fear, feelings of worthlessness, depression. The successful teacher gets others to curl lips, to show teeth, to brighten eyes, to light up faces. I include in my meaning of “success” a reaching out to a student, touching that student, and altering his or her life. In one sentence: successful teaching is helping someone to start transforming themselves, to help them help themselves become the person they are capable of becoming. Do that and you’ve changed the world and altered the future. Don’t do that and you’re wasting your time. So, in no particular order, here they are the qualities you asked for that I would list. Actually, they’re more criteria of what I’ll call “reflective hows” than characteristics:

1. how empathetic you are?
2. how much of your authority is based on influence rather than on
position?
3. how much of a deep sense of meaning and purpose is in your teaching?
4. how much you have reflected upon and articulated your philosophy of
education?
5. how much value are you to each student?
6. how much to help each student; how much love you can inspire?
7. how much do you continue to grow and develop?
8. how much you give to those who are in need the most?
9. how much do you teach outside and beyond yourself?
10. how much beauty you can see and appreciate in both yourself and each
student?
11. how much beauty you can help a student see and appreciate in both
him/herself and others?
12. how much you serve and give?
13. how much true and lasting value you create?
14. how much do you so deeply believe in what you’re doing that you accept
inherent risks of pushing the envelope?
15. how much do you follow after others and how much do you lead yourself?
16. how much you care about each student?
17. how much of a sense of otherness you possess and exercise?
18. how much you look at your potential and stretch yourself into everything
you can become?
19. how much you help each student look at his or her potential and stretch
him/herself into everything he or she can become?
20. how much a positive difference you make in each student’s life?
21. how much you’re sensitive to how what you say, feel and do effects each
student?”

“….That’s a hard ‘how much’ list of questions to think about…”

“Sure it is. That’s why it’s important. You learn from hard, not from easy. You may crave the unchallenging easy and the risk-free familiar and the comfortable routine, but you grow from the hard and unfamiliar and unique. Hard means you’re stretching and reaching beyond yourself. Hard means entering new and unknown worlds and thereby expanding your world. Hard means to admit to your weaknesses and give it all you’ve got to transform them into strengths. Hard means turning a weakness into a strength. Hard means looking as foolish and wobbling and falling down as when you first learn to ski, skate, or ride a bicycle. I’ve found that true success is not being better than someone else; it is being better than you used to be–in everyway.”

“…. but aren’t you just asking someone to change what he does?”

“No, it’s more than that. I’m more than suggesting you have to change who you are. I am saying that the most successful teachers are not the ones who know the most, or the ones who are most renown, or the ones who are the smartest….”

“….But, what if you’re not comfortable doing a lot of that or don’t have the time….”

“Everyone has the time, if they want to make the time. And, convenience and comfort, and even safety, are not in the mix. Teaching, like life itself, without risk is lifeless. Think about five things. First, your respect for a student depends on how much respect, trust, and love you have for yourself. Your respect for a student also depends on how much respect you have for teaching. Whenever you judge a student, you’re really judging and revealing yourself. Once you label a student as a ‘don’t belong,’ you’ve imposed limits on, if not negated, both that student and yourself. Judging a student doesn’t make him or her who he or she is, but it does reveal who you are. What does not live in you cannot thrive in your classes. Second, would your professor accept from you that statement, ‘It’s hard’ or ‘I’m not comfortable doing that’ or ‘I didn’t have the time’ as a reason not to do an assignment?”

“Probably not. No.”

“Then, what’s the grounds for the professor accepting it from himself? That is, on one hand how can the teacher ask a student to push and stretch and on the other hand accept not pushing and stretching himself? How can a teacher demand a student strive for his or her unique potential if the teacher doesn’t do it himself. A teacher cannot give or demand what the teacher doesn’t have to give or demand of himself. It would be a gross violation of a kind of golden rule: you’d be demanding of others what you won’t demand of yourself. Third, if you learn to enjoy a challenge, if you learn to enjoy adventure, what you do and where you are will be more enjoyable. I’m not sure you can improve what you’re doing if you really don’t enjoy doing it. Sure, you can find reasons to be miserable, but miserable isn’t the best material with which to build things. You’ll wind up with a miserable structure or put your energy into other things that you do enjoy doing like research and publication. Enjoying a challenge I have found puts you in a more positive position and a better frame of mind to do something positive and see the value you’re able to help create. Fourth, the more genuine you feel for each student, the more blessed your teaching will be, had then you’ll find real, lasting success and fulfillment and joy flowing into the classroom. If you think and act beyond yourself, the sky’s the limit for success. Fifth, it is a simple truth that every thing you do now that feels comfortable, every place where you are now that feels secure, was once unknown, uncomfortable, challenging, threatening, and intimidating to you. What was once took a lot of effort is now more effortless. What wa s once strange is now familiar. What once you could not do you’re competent at doing. What once you were unsure about you’re now confident about. What does that say? It says there are always more things you can do, higher levels you can reach, farther places you can go, more you can reach out for and touch. Push and stretch yourself and you’ll discover something truly empowering: your unimagined, unique potential and you’ll help each student do likewise. Now, that is success! Is this enough…..”

“……yes, thanks….”

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

Good morning. Stuck inside. It’s very cold outside. The weather is driving everyone and all the plants in my garden crazy. Last week we were spelling “January”: M-A-Y. This week we’re spelling it: “B-r-r-r-r-r-r–r.” My angelic Susan, steely-eyed DI that she is, won’t let me hit the streets, however I’m bundled up in my grubbies, for fear I’ll get a sniffle, and screw up the surgery scheduled next week. So, here I am, sipping a delicious cup of freshly brewed coffee, thinking-feeling about a message I just received from a student whom I’ll call Judy who is in one of this semester’s classes. Talk about my cancer being a gift for which I should be thankful. With tears soon running down my cheeks and my breathing getting slower and deeper, she talked of her stomach cancer. She wrote in her journal:

I was getting so discouraged that it was effecting my work and
the people around me. I was afraid to talk about my cancer,
even mention the word. I was angry. I was scared. The chemo
was working, but I was so afraid, paralyzed, that it soon wouldn’t.
I couldn’t think about anything else. I couldn’t talk with
anyone about my feelings. They don’t understand. Then, you pop
into class out of the blue and tell us in the first few minutes of
the first day of class, ‘I have cancer.’ And, you’re in class!
Caring about us! Worrying that we won’t be hurt during the month
you’re getting over your operation. It was like a candle suddenly
lit me up. I was letting my cancer control me. I couldn’t believe
that when we brought in an object symbolizing what we wanted the others
in the class to know about us, I stood up, showed the class a pill,
and said out loud “I have stomach cancer.” And, talked about it.
That was the first time I could say it. It was like your words had
given me permission to say my words. I stayed up all night reading
and reading and reading those essays I asked you to send me. I want
you to know that I woke up this morning smiling, smiling inside, for the
first time in a long time. My soul was smiling, not just my lips.
I felt free. It wasn’t that I couldn’t talk with anyone about the
cancer. I couldn’t talk with myself. I was so afraid of dying tomorrow
I wasn’t living today. At eighteen, I felt so sorry for myself. I
was pitying myself. I saw no purpose in doing anything. Now I
do. At least, I can help others face their stuff, like you’re
helping me face my cancer. Now, I have to go to class. I have to
do my work. I have to live. I have to enjoy life. I have to smile
and be happy. If I don’t, this cancer has won. Each time
I hear you and each time I read the words you wrote about your
cancer and your dealing with it, I feel hope rising in me when
I thought there was none. Everyone told me how smart you are, but
they didn’t say a word about your spirit. I want you to know
in the few days we’ve known each other, your spirit has touched
me and has already started to work its wonders on my life. Thanks.

Did you know that Susan Sontag died last month? Among other things, she had been an outspoken advocate of demolishing the artificial distinction and chasm-like separation between thought, feeling, and action. She argued that so many people were anti-intellectual because so many effete intellectuals are what I would call “anti-human.” That is, too many self-proclaimed intellectuals are self-avowed paragons of rationality and objectivity who cast their noses high at emotion and subjectivity. They are distant, detached, cold fish who snobbishly and arrogantly believe or act as if being emotional is a lower form existence. She argued that the head and heart are organically one, that thinking and feeling were inseparately one, that the qualitative and quantitative were hand-in-hand partners, that dreaming and analyzing are indistingushingly one, that thinking is a form of feeling; that feeling is a form of thinking; that you couldn’t have one without the other.

In the spirit of Susan Sontag, I’m standing up as if I am at an SA (Spiritualists Anonymous) meeting and admitting, “I am a spiritualholic.” It’s not what I deliberately set out to be or consciously try to be; it’s what I’ve become; it’s what I am. And, having cancer has accentuated and accelerated that process.

I know. Anything “aholic,” doesn’t have a good reputation. To most of us it means an enslaving compulsion, an uncontrollable habit, a loss of independence. It means having an addiction, being hooked, having something that has unbreakable hold. A “aholism” is an action in which someone feels he or she MUST engage. It comes in all sizes and shapes: shopoholic, powerholic, alcoholic, chocoholic, workaholic. I was once an incessant gnawing “nailaholic.” I was once a professorial “talkoholic.” I was once a consumed scholarly “researchoholic” and “publishoholic.” Now, I am an unabashed teaching and learning “spiritualholic.”

I also know, like Susan Sontag, that in the intellectual world of academia to talk of spirituality in the classroom is risky. It’s a button pushing subject. Far too many of us academics are totally into our intellectual heads and not sufficiently into our sensual souls. Far too many of us believe it’s so ridiculous to think that spirituality belongs in any intellectual discussion. Far too many of us encase ourselves in the thick armor of objectivity and intellectuality that we think is as impenetrable as depleted uranium armor on an M1A1 battle tank. There is, however, one deep, exposing, vulnerable crack in our dense plates. We are human. For better or worse, spirituality, or emotion or psychological factors, or whatever you want to call it, plays more of a role in our professional lives, and is more crucial in teaching and learning, than most of us are aware much less want to admit. And, as educators I think we ought to talk about it, admit to it, live it, and mesh it into our classes.

A recent study done at the Higher Education Research Institute reveals that 76% of students are searching for meaning and purpose in life; 73% say spirituality, theological and otherwise, a sense of something bigger than themselves, helped them develop their identity. About 68% say it helps them help others. Yet, while 78% discuss such matters with their friends, about 66% say professors ignore the subject, and their academic work and campus programs seem to be divorced from it. The report says, “Clearly, it’s far more important to them [students] than most people in higher education may assume, and there are indicators that institutions are simply not encouraging students to delve into these issues and not supporting their search in the sphere of values and beliefs.”

As far as we academics go, we hate admitting to being human on campus and that we’re not above the Law of Spirit. Truth be told, I don’t know, you don’t know, of one person, even that person who emotionally denies it, who isn’t governed by this law as much as he or she is bound by Newton’s Laws of Motion or Boyle’s Law of Gases. As a specie, we are as much “feeling man” as we are “thinking man.” There is more emotion and spirituality in the rational and intellectual world of academia than most academics realize or want to admit. In some way, we’re each spiritualholics; we each have a faith in, belief in, conviction of, passion about, feelings for, fear of, joy in, satisfaction with, and get emotional about something. When we say hesitantly or fearfully or defensively “I’m not” or “I’m not comfortable doing that” or “I don’t like” or “It’s not me,” more often than not we’re talking subjectively of our attitude, emotion, spirit, or whatever non-intellectual word you feel comfortable using. When we talk of having a sense of this or a feeling of that, when we’re cheery or leery, when we are up or down, when we’re elated with an acceptance of a proposal or deflated by a rejection, when we’re fearful of what others will say or think, we’re in our emotional and spiritual selves; we’re wearing our emotions on our sleeves. It is the ultimate myth to think that the Ivory Tower is a non-human bastion of detached objectivity and disengaged rationality and distant intellectuality. And, the greatest obstacles to seeing that myth for what it is, to examining the assumptions upon which it is built, to considering considerations, to stepping back and seeing yourself seeing, are close-minded dogma, peer pressure, professional ambition, and inner personal fear.

It is said that we teach who we are; that we perceive who we are; that we are the questions we ask; that we are in our talking. For me, “spiritualholism” is unique. The other -holics are into themselves. They are selfish and self-centered, often to the exclusion and detriment of others. They light their own candle, and a person who only is concerned about burning his or her own candle, sheds very little light. I see spirituality as more than emotion, more than mood. In a word, for me, spirituality is a sense of “otherness.” In a feeling, it is a sense of something greater than my own cocoon. It is a sense of connectedness. In an action, it is a serving in the service of others. It is concerned with igniting the candles of others with my own lit candle. And so, spirituality is made of the ingredients of respect, awareness, authenticity, wholeness, awakeness, kindness, generosity, service, hopefulness, faith, humility, empathy, fearlessness, growth, creativity, change.

You know, great teachers do not work their magic through their knowledge; they do not move people with their resumes; they do not ignite passion with their techniques; they do not push people with methods; they do not inspire with technology. No, great teachers work through their spirit to touch and stir the spirit of others.

And so, I see my role as a teacher as a spiritual calling that gives my life meaning. Teaching is living a prayer, a request, to make a difference and leave the world a better place. For me, teaching is not just a transmission of information however important that information is; it is not just a development of intellectual skills however crucial they are. It is making something happen. It a way of helping someone grow and transform. It is helping to guide the use of that information and those skills towards becoming a different and better person. To be a teacher you’ve got to be a spiritual guide, a “spiritualholic.” A teacher is not a dealer in information, but a dealer of hope, belief, faith, and love in both him/herself and others.

I’m not talking about theatrics or lip-service. I’m talking about honesty. The more authentically, the more sincerely, the more openly, the more skillfully a teacher shares his or her spirituality, the more students will feel that contagious spirit. Spirituality in academics is not the trivial matter so many academics would have us believe. It has real consequence for getting work done. So, I lead with spirituality. Every day is an expression of my spirituality. And if I do things well, I seek the wonders in each student.

This being the case, thinking of Judy’s letter and the comments from other students:

I will assert that in the classroom our first task is an emotional one, not an intellectual one. As a teacher, my fundamental task, hence all the methods and techniques I utilize, is to prime the pump of good feelings of self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-worth in each student from which would flow a positive–I will repeat that, “from which will flow a positive”– stream of faith, belief, and hope that nourishes, guides, and energizes the quest of each student for the unique potential in him or her.

I will assert that an education can only have purpose and meaning if it also serves in a spiritual way. I mean what good are retention programs if our college graduates are moral and ethical drop-outs?

I will assert that spiritualism in the classroom is a very practical form of teaching inside-out. After all, the student on the outside can never be more successful than the student on the inside permits. And, so it is with us academics. Once again, we teach who we are; we are the questions we ask; we are our perceptions. We each are limited by the limits we set on ourselves. So, we must cultivate the positive, unique potential lurking deep inside the student and ourselves if we want the student and ourselves to come to life on the outside.

I will assert that teaching and learning is a partnership of mutual respect and responsibility.

I will assert that if you want to help a student help him/herself develop skills, you have to help him or her with his or her spirit. And to do that, you have to be aware of your own spirit.

I will assert that everything else we attempt to do has a far less chance of working as well as it can if we ignore this often ignored spiritual role of teaching. It is the art of nurturing a supporting and encouraging relationship that is crucial for achievement.

I will assert that teachers achieve their goals through contagious emotion, their uplifting spirit, the aromatic climate of the classroom; that how a student feels largely determines how he or she will perform and what he or she will truly achieve.

I will assert that a teacher’s positive, supporting, and encouraging mood has a power to move, inspire, stir, arouse, ignite, motivate, and commit; it has the power to ignite passion, create excitement, eliminate doubt, cultivate trust, stir the imagination, invite innovation, generate optimism, and foster creativity. And conversely, a teacher’s toxic mood has a power to paralyze, douse, dispirit, sedate, discourage, and destroy.

I will assert that when someone talks of mission or vision or credo or mastery, he or she is really talking about a spirituality.

I will assert that the joy and happiness in teaching all comes from wanting students to be happy; and whenever we’re unhappy with teaching, it is because we only want ourselves to be happy.

I will assert that teachers are most successful when they are tuned into and value the human ingredients.

We will talk about working longer and harder, and we should. We will talk about knowing more, and we should. We seek out methods and techniques and technologies, and we should. We feel more comfortable talking about the “what” of our discipline and the “how” of techniques and methods. We seek to be “subject-wise,” “techno-wise,” and even “campus politics-wise.” And, they’re all important. But, that’s not all there is. There are first principles; there is a foundation. We need to talk more about being, our being, the students’ being, as well. We need to be “heart wise” or acquire and utilize, as Daniel Goleman calls it, “emotional intelligence.”

It is not really a matter of heart vs. mind or spirituality vs. rationality or subjectivity vs. objectivity. It is a matter of believing in or having a faith in or getting emotional about a “why.” It’s about a totality; it’s about a wholeness. It’s a matter of reaching deeper into yourself for an authenticity, to attune yourself to what you, after constant reflection and articulation, consider timeless principles and unassailable truths. I don’t think we do enough of that, hear enough of it, work constantly at it. We need to feel comfortable seeking out and talking about the purpose and meaning of our below the surface “why.” We feel comfortable talking about others; we feel comfortable talking about our subject; we don’t feel comfortable talking about ourselves. We feel comfortable being intellectual; we feel comfortable being rational; we feel comfortable being objective. We must feel comfortable feeling emotional and spiritual and subjective.

We have to embrace spirituality rather than keep it at arm’s length. We have to involve ourselves with it. We must be in it rather than stand back from it. We have to treat it as something concrete with concrete impacts on us and others and our institution rather than as an ethereal abstraction.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

Last week Susan and I went out to dinner in a local restaurant. As we walked to our table, we passed two young couples at a table. One of the men said to me, “Hello, Dr. Schmier.” He looked vaguely familiar, but I didn’t know his name. I returned his greeting, but didn’t stop to ask his name. A few minutes later, as Susan and I were playfully looking over the sinful menu, this young man from the other table approached us.

“I don’t want to interrupt you,” he said as he pulled over a chair from a nearby empty table and introduced himself by name. He was a student six or seven years ago. I remembered him for reasons I need not go into. Then, he hit me. “I don’t think you know, but you made a huge difference in my life. I wouldn’t be here or who I am if it wasn’t for you….I needed you…. You were a loud voice in my life about things that I later realized mattered….I’ve never forgotten you and how much you cared for me and every other student in that class, and how much there is for me to care about myself and others. That got me through a lot of rough times….I never told you that. I just wanted you to know now….Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”

I slightly nodded my head in acknowledgement and quietly answered, “You didn’t interrupt anything. You don’t really know what you’ve just done and how much I truly appreciate what you just said. Thank you.”

I told him that his words has special meaning and how much I need them as I faced surgery in two weeks. He left with a smile, “You’ll be hearing from me and I’ll be praying for you.”

As he left, I turned to Susan and told her once again, “Honey, did I tell you today that I do need you.” And, I leaned over the table to give her a quick but passionate peck on her lips.

I’m not telling you this story to trumpet that I made a difference in someone’s life. My point is how person has touched me, reached me, and has made a difference in my life. His words, “I needed you” have draped themselves around me these last few days like wisps of a morning mist rising from the surface of a lake. This cancer, like any obstacle or adversity or challenge is like pumice. Whether it grinds me down or polishes me up is not always totally dependent on myself. Whether we admit it or not, there’s no one who can truly go it alone. We all need a connectedness, that is, a feeling of something larger than ourselves as a source for comfort, support, belief, faith, love, and hope. We all need people in our lives who believe in us. We all need people in our lives who light up our world. We all need people in our lives from whom we can gather strength. We all experience powerful benefits when we are the givers or recipients of compassion, love, and kindness. Age, experience, education, position, renown have nothing to do with it. Being human does. To deny this truth, that “no man is an island,” is to deny our humanity. We all need people to dignify our lives. We all need people who are magical in our lives. Children need them; teens need them; adults need them; fathers and mothers need them; husbands and wives need them; sons and daughters need them; students and teachers need them; people with no or little education need them; people with college education need them; bosses and administrators need them; blue collar workers need them; white collar workers need them; academics need them; intellectuals need them; everyone need them. Throughout our lives we need people who provide encouragement, support, and unconditional love. The simplest gestures often have the most far-reaching results. I think one of the most beautiful legacies we can leave, that this ex-student left for me in the restaurant, is to make others feel a little more special and appreciated.

For us educators, the lesson is obvious. I’m not saying ignore or deny short comings, but at the same time if we lose sight of the strengths and virtues that reside within each student, we are inviting pessimism and hopelessness into our world rather than optimism and faith, and we limit our capacity to believe and hope and act on those beliefs and hopes. Don’t underestimate the importance and power of an open heart to enrich our own existence and the existence of others. I can attest without hesitation, when you open your heart to other people to listen and see and care about them, when you give, when you serve, when you’re empathetic, it changes the way you and they look at and act towards yourself, themselves, others, and the world–and both you and they are happier for it.

So, I am being reminded over and over again by your outpourings and by this erstwhile student and now professional, as Dickens wrote in OUR MUTUAL FRIEND: “No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for anyone else.”

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

Well, I just have returned from having a second opinion concerning my cancer. The doctor reaffirmed the initial diagnosis. I do have prostrate cancer. It is in its early stages. It is “treatable.” Most important my Susan is assured and relieved as assured and relieved as she can be in this kind of situation. I have opted to have surgery in a little more two weeks from now, on the 26th, and will take three to four weeks recuperative leave from the physical classroom while entering the virtual classroom by keeping in contact with the students via computer.

I’ve also returned to two weeks worth of e-mails, nearly five hundred messages waiting for me. Almost half of them have made me speechless and paralyzed my fingers. This is one of those rare times I really don’t know what to say. I am so touched, so sincerely touched. I have such deep gratitude for the outpouring of sharing, reassurance, support, and encouragement from a host of people, many are close friends, many of whom are e-friends I’ve never met face to face or heard the sound of their voices, many of whom I’ve heard from for the first time telling me I am in their prayers. I have received e-cards from people whom I do not know. It’s such an uplift.

Actually, I do know what to say. A quiet and deeply sincere “thank you for your true gift” is all that needs to be said, for it says it all.

I am deeply thankful because these messages once again have forcefully reminded me that I could treat this cancer like a grudge. I once lived my life with a tightly held grudge. But, I learned a little over a decade ago that I wouldn’t be healthier or happier if I held on to it or any other grudges, large or small, tightly or loosely. I have come to learn what Confucius meant when he said, “To be wronged is nothing unless we continue to remember it.” Any decision to hold on to a grievance over this cancer would be my decision to suffer. More than that, it would extend the suffering into all facets of my life. And in a peculiar way it would give the cancer a way to hurt me and others again and again. Think about it. Focusing on this cancer won’t somehow punish the cancer any more than holding on to a grudge would harm the wrongdoer. No, I would only hurt myself and others far more. I’d give it permission to become a candle-snuffing or cloud covering entity. I would allow it to dwell in my the dark recesses of my consciousness and not allow me to enjoy the light of day; I wouldn’t be able free myself of it and be able to live freely today.

Yes, the words of these sincere well-wishers, then, are true gifts. What’s a true gift? It’s the timeless one. It’s the one that never ends. It’s the one that lasts long after the words have been erased, the cards have been discarded, decorations have been taken down and stored, the tree has been placed at the curb, the menorah have been returned to the shelf, the songs have been sung, seasonal rituals and traditions have given way to the return of the routine “normality of life,” and, in this case, the cancer has been extracted. The true gift is the one that is ever-lasting and treasured. It’s like that something meaningful and purposeful in the classroom that does not end after the lectures have been given, the notes written, the tests taken, the grades given, and the term ends. It’s something that goes far beyond and dives much deeper and lasts a lot longer than the immediacy of the grade and the confines of the subject information.

So, because of all you well-wishers out there, one of my resolutions, as my surgery date approaches, is to more resolutely feel about, look at, think about, and talk about this cancer with a simple: “screw you!!”

Thank you once again.

The lesson for us in life and life in the classroom is simple. Don’t underestimate the impact we have when we take the time to share ourselves with others, to support and encourage someone, to make someone feel worthy, significant, sacred, valued, valuable, noticed, and above all loved. So, if you want to make a difference in the lives of others, be they friends or family or strangers or colleagues or superiors or students, remember that no warm greeting of acknowledgement, no act of loving kindness, no gentle smile of encouragement, no soft words of appreciation are ever wasteful or wasted.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–
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