The Random Thoughts of Louis Schmier

 I came in from my walk a few hours ago. The air was warm and inviting. While I was being gold plated by the pollen along my now two mile power walk, I was thinking about a brief conversation I had with Kathy (her real name) about teaching.  I was sitting on the stone bench [...]

As I struggled to find my way through the “yellow out” out of this morning’s pollen storm and fearful of being afflicted with yellow lung, I was thinking of Tom (not his real name) and how he finally came through on the “Hollywood Film Festival” project. The day of his community’s presentation, he wrote in [...]

You say you care about each student. Do you know each student? Do you know the cares and concerns of each student? Make it a good day. –Louis–

The real challenge of the classroom is not the student, but that we are truly happy to be there and want to be nowhere else doing nothing else. Make it a good day. –Louis–

 It was a balmy this first pre-dawn morning of Spring Break. Those silent streets under the awesome, star-studded sky are a special place, a studying place, and an enlightened place where in the pre-dawn darkness lots of things dawn on me. As I my wound my way along the starlit streets, I was reveling in [...]

Hanging over my computer, among other things, is something I wrote twelve years ago in a Random Thought I called “The Heart of Teaching.” I read it every morning. It’s one of my spiritual caffeine kicks that kick off each day: How often and easy it is to leave the human reality of education unrecognized, [...]