THE NEED FOR COMMUNITY

I went out early this morning. The sun had not yet come up. It was humid and toasty. You could hear the approaching South Georgia dogs of August howling in the distance. Anyway, about half way through my walk, I found a phrase popping into my head. “Not your job, not your job, not your job,” it repeated over and over in cadence with my steps.

As I was about to make my last turn, I saw a man crossing the street. He was carrying a ladder. Even in the dawn you could tell he was not a happy camper.

I greeted him with a “Good morning.”

“What’s so good about it,” he replied. I stopped. He went on. “It’s Sunday. It’s still dark. I should be in bed next to the wife instead of doing this stupid thing with the traffic light. It was my luck to be on call.”

“Good luck, I say. Nothing stupid about it. If you didn’t fix the lights, someone would have a better chance of getting hurt or killed. It’s important stuff you’re doing, especially since it’s Sunday. And I thank you for it.”

“He smiled. Puffed up a bit. Held the ladder a bit tighter. “Guess you’re right. And a good morning to you. Thanks back to you.”

And off we both went. That happenstance conversation sharpened what had stirred that phrase in my head. It came during a conversation I had had last week during one of my very rare summer appearance on campus. I bumped into a colleague. We stopped and talked about what we had done this summer and the upcoming semester. In the course of our conversation, I told him I was itching to get back into the classroom and that I even had volunteered to help students move into the dorms in a couple of weeks as a sort of jump start. He looked at me as if I was nuts.

“That’s not our job,” he said with more than a bit of disdain. “We’re professors! Don’t you think that’s below you? I wouldn’t do it. I’ve got better things to do with my time. Why don’t you let whoever takes care of those things do it? That’s what they get paid for. They always want us to do a lot of things around here that we don’t get paid for.”

That little bit of our conversation, especially the “that’s not your job,” suddenly took me back to an experience I had a few months ago. It was at the beginning of last May, just before I was off to China. I was doing an end-of-spring-semester cleaning of the classroom closets. I had to get rid of poster size books the students made for the “Dr Seuss Project,” paintings from the “Salvador Dali Project,” and a similar number of odd shaped sculptures of the “Rodin Project” made by the sixty communities in four classes. I was stuffing all this stuff into fairly large plastic garbage bags and hauling them out into the hallway for pickup. As I was lugging one fairly heavy bag out from the classroom, positioning myself to heave it on top of a pile of six or seven bags, a young professor whom I knew only by face passed by. He asked what I was doing. I told him that I was making it as easy as I can for the cleaning people to carry way this mass of project mess.

“Why are you bothering?” He asked with a smirk on his face as if I was a patsy. “They’re only cleaning people. That’s not your job. It’s theirs. That’s what they get paid for. Why don’t you let them do it?”

I looked at him. That haughty diminishing word “only” got to me. “I’ll tell you what,” I simply replied, with a calm voice and smile on my face, “why don’t we tell those ‘only cleaning people’ not to clean our offices and the bathrooms or not empty our trash baskets for a semester and see just how ‘only’ they really are?”

I think when he turned and walked off without saying another word he was in something of a huff.

You know he and my colleague just had revealed what the real tragedy in academia is. We so focus on those proverbial “critical thinking” skills that we often neglect the people skills. We don’t pay as much attention as we should to those “human moments.” That is, a sense of otherness, an awareness of and sensitivity toward other people, and a respect for what others do is weak or totally lacking. The real tragedy in academia is the balkanization on our campuses. It’s the absence of respect. It’s the virtual non-existence of community. It’s the fracture and fissure among people. We just don’t display much of that “social intelligence” Daniel Goleman has recently written about. It’s as if so many of us are interpersonally challenged. We are so often so self-absorbed. So many of us seem just not to get it right with others in other segments on our campuses. We so often come across as cold, distant, abrasive, arrogant, self-inflating, disdainful, self-centered, self-conscious, self-denigrating, and even dismissive. We categorize and stereotype and disconnect and isolate people as if they were distinct and separate species into the stereotyped lumps of administrators, professors, staff, and students. We even do that among schools and colleges, as well as among departments within schools and colleges.

All these people know so little about all these other people; they know so little of the critical role each plays to keep the campus viable; they don’t realize that without each the campus would be little more than a bunch of ghostly, empty buildings; they know so little of the inter-play between and inter-dependence they have on each other; they see little commonality among each other; and so, they all become at best cellophane people to each other. We have no rapport with them; we have no rapport with them because we have no empathy, we don’t sense their feeling; we have no empathy because we don’t know them.

But, I tell you, we are all part of each other’s resources. The grounds keepers are important; the carpenters are important; the garbage collectors are important; the electricians are important; the information technology people are important; the plumbers are important; the security police are important; the secretaries are important; the clerks are important; the cleaning crews are important; the maintenance crews are important; the advisers are important; the faculty are important; the cooks are important; the administrators are important, the students are important. Even if some universities are grading importance of some degrees by charging students extra tuition, the Arts are important; English is important; Business Administration is important; sciences are important; humanities are important. And, on it goes. As Goleman would say, just think, the more strongly connected we are with someone emotionally, the more we know them, the more we appreciate them, the more we care about them, the more we respect them, the greater the mutual force. That’s the power of campus community. It’s not rocket science. It’s common sense. United we stand stronger, divided we stoop weaker. After all, we all with do among people we know and trust what we won’t among strangers. The most powerful relationships occur with those people whom we know, with whom we spend a lot of time together, and, most important, with people we care about the most.

You know what I’ve noticed? It’s how we each bubble inside in reaction to a smile and stew at an angry face; we feel uplifted when someone makes eye contact with us and feel ignored and down when someone gazes past us. When students drive by in their cars, honk the horns, lean out, wave at me, and give me a “Hi, Dr. Schmier,” it makes me feel good. That’s all it takes. It doesn’t take much take notice other people, to look at them, to offer a simple “hi” or “hello,” to stop for a casual and quick chat, to smile. I also know it makes me feel happy when I act in ways that are beneficial to others, when I make them feel happier, when I acknowledge them. When we are in community with others, when we have a sense of sociability, everyone feels happier and more energized; they’re more inclined to whistle while they work; and, more inclined to do their work well. It’s a ballet which we dance with other as partners. Community, when we have a warmth and positive regard for ourselves and others, when we have an inclination to be understanding and compassionate, when we respect, when we have those human moments, acts like invigorating vitamins. We get a nurturing buzz. And, it becomes an antidote to the poison of separation, isolation, and disrespect.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

What Call I Wish Graduates Would Hear

           The thermometer had reached nearly 100 degrees.  The mosquitoes and gnats were smarter than I.  They were buzzing only in the shade ready to ambush any sane person who got out of the searing sun.  But there I was, like some mad dog or Englishman, working on my front flower garden during the near superheated noonday sun.  I was on my knees, pulling the choking quack grass that had grown to hay-like proportions during my jaunt in China.  The sweat was watering the coreopsis.  A car pulled up.  The horn gave an abbreviated beep to catch my attention.  I looked up.  A young woman leaned out the drivers’ window.  “Hey, Dr. Schmier, I just saw you.  Its been a long while.  I want you to know I made it!  I graduate this week!  It’s taken a while, but now it’s time for a ‘yeah for me,’ don’t you think

           I smiled and waved.  I hadn’t seen her in years.  Let’s call her Karen.   Honestly, at first I didn’t remember her name, but I remembered her.  She had been constant struggle:  married at sixteen, single parent, middle twenties, three children, full-time job, little sleep, no relaxation, constant legal fights with her wayward ex, meager financial resources, but lots of critical family support and encouragement.  I rose from my knees, walked to the car, and had a congratulatory chat for a while with her.  Just before she drove off, she said, “You know, I haven’t seen you in a few years, but I still look at all those ‘Words For The Day’ you had put on the whiteboard each day that we talked about for a few minutes at the start of class.  I don’t know why, but for they lasted long after class ended.  I think about them a lot.  They’ve really got me.  You wouldn’t believe how much and how often they’ve helped me all these years.  I used them when I got real low and needed a shot to get on a ‘motivation high.’  My all-time favorite taped to my bathroom mirror  is, ‘attitude is everything; so pick a good one–and live it.’  Now that I think about it, I was just wondering if you would find the time in the next few days to send me a few simple  ‘words for life’ as a graduation present.”  She wrote her e-mail address on my damp palm.  Then, with a sudden “Well, gotta go and study for my final finals.  Let me hear from you.  Love ya.,” she pulled away from the curb.

            I stood there as her car turned the corner.  Not being on campus this summer, I didn’t realize until just then that graduation is upon us once again.  I looked at her e-mail address and started wondering about with what besides her diploma is she going out into their future.  We say we have prepared the students for this moment of celebration.  That may be true, but we also call graduation is a commencement.  Have we truly prepared them for what is to commence in the unknown moments to follow?

       Our educational system has proclaimed it has a mission.  That avowed mission glowingly worded in every campus mission statement is to prepare students for life.  “For life,” what does that really mean?  For me it means the dual mission of training for skills and educating for character.  Unfortunately, all too often “for life” has taken on a meaning in the classroom that focuses on just one band of the spectrum.  It’s as if our educational system has birthed little more than a series of white collar vo-tech schools.  It’s as if we care more about how much will be on the student’s tax returns and in their IRAs and checking accounts than whether the student will be around as a contributing member of society tomorrow, next week or month or year.  We lecture to their minds, but so often fail to talk to their hearts.  And, I have said over and over and over for the last fifteen years, at the heart of an education is an education of the heart.  To “prepare students for life” should include all the colors of the broad spectrum of learning.

          “For life,” then, must mean more if no other reason than there’s more to life than merely content transmission, passing a test, getting a grade, and acquiring the proverbial “critical thinking skilled” necessary to skillfully deal with the content of discipline.  We academics have to treat students less as simple sponges and future diplomas and more as complex and complicated people.  We should engage in a conscious and continuous search for the heart of each student, not merely for the mind.  We have to be concerned with the social and emotional learning as well as the intellectual and technical.  I have found it’s a no brainer.  Caring about each student as an invaluable person and loving each student as a sacred human being is far more important than any information we give the students.   Students cannot become the gifts to themselves and others if they don’t learn to connect with their hearts.

       Each semester, in my syllabi for the nearly two hundred first year students, I explicitly talk with the student about two curricula.  The first deals with the content of the material as well as those “critical thinking skills.”  The other deals with social and emotional skills, with helping students learn to manage themselves, to care about themselves and others, to cooperate with others, to encourage and support others, to persist, to motivate and inspire themselves, to tap their untapped potential, to focus, to resist temptations and pressures, to listen to others, to respect others and other points of view, to cooperate with others, and to get alone with others.   Subject courses end, but the course of life goes on far beyond the limits of the term, classroom and campus.  We have seen time and time and time again, that becoming a good person, acquiring a caring heart, having the wisdom to know right from wrong, being disciplines to do right even when it’s costly, inconvenient, or difficult is far more important than knowing a formula, an equation, a date, or not to split an infinitive.  It was Thomas Edison who said while it is the mind that creates, it is the heart and soul that control, guide, and give meaning.  All too often we academics only ask “What can the teacher do to affect the future livelihoods of the students?” We should also ask, “Who can the teacher be, not only to her/his students but to her/himself as well.  That is, are the students our neighbors?”  

       A caveat.  What I am talking about is not a one-shot, one-time lesson, one-area, one-person deal.  You just don’t put your thumb into a one-time academic course and then pull it out saying “what a good educator am I.”  None of them is enough to bring about permanent and deep learning.  We each have to keep it alive, fresh, iterated and reiterated; we have to make it an expectation; we have to constantly remind and never forget.  We have to weave it into our conversations and actions; we have to integrate it intimately into each of our courses.  We have to model it each moment.  We have to make it an integral element in faculty development and peer mentoring.

           So, what call do I wish she, as well as each and every graduate, would hear and heed as they walk across that stage to receive their diplomas?  What’s their purpose?  Why are they here?  What really fulfills them?  What really, sincerely, makes them happy?  The answer to all these questions is not found in what they do.  The answers are in who they are and  why they do what they do.  What they value, what and whom they love are the true answers and the true determinators of what they do.  The fuel that drives them and their ability to steer their ship, however essential they may be, isn’t as important as the rudder that sets their courses. 

      She wanted a few simple words.  I’ll give her what she wants.  But, she knows, from her favorite “Words For The Day,” words are easy to come by; they are easy to read, easy to hear, and easy to roll off our tongues; but, there is nothing simple or easy in the spiritual discipline needed to listen to them, heed them, and live them.  So, here is my graduation gift to her, my own simple “Words for Life” that taped on my bathroom mirror:  
                                “Micah 6:8–every day.”
Make it a good day     –Louis–

Why Am I A Teacher

 A couple of weeks ago, Susan and I were having breakfast in the dining room of the Boone Tavern in Berea, Kentucky. We were on the first leg of our 3,000 mile drive through the mid-west. The server was a student from Berea College. In the course of our chit-chat, I found out she was preparing for a career in education and she learned I was a teacher. She asked me why I am a teacher. Until 1991, being then a prolific scholarly researcher and publisher caught up in the proverbial publish or perish rat race and feeling somewhat stuck in the dead end of the distracting classroom, I would have feigned a trite but high-sounding answer. But, not now. I quickly thought of a reply I had sent to an e-mail I had received a day earlier in Valdosta, just before Susan and I had hopped in the car. In fact, not to let that message languish unanswered in my mailbox for two weeks, I delayed our departure with a series of wait-a-minutes. As my increasingly annoyed Susan tapped her fingers on the table, I my fingers were feverishly typing out a response on the keyboard.

 The message was from a student who had been in class with me a smidge over ten years ago. She opened with the heart stopping sentence, “Hey, Dr. Schmier, I just think it’s time after all these years to say ‘thank you for changing my life.'” She went on to explain, in case I didn’t remember her as I didn’t, that she had been a disheartened first generation college student. Only in her second term, without any family financial or emotional support, terrified, despondent, with little self-confidence and self-esteem, she quickly had become discouraged about ever graduating college and tearfully had been seriously thinking of quitting. She said I had “pulled out her out from the ‘back-of-the-room shadows’ and had spoken with her often, before class began, standing in front of West Hall, lounging on a bench, sitting on the stairs, or just walking along. “The words you said that are branded into my soul were ‘Get use to it. I’m in your face young lady. I’m not going to quit on you and I won’t let you do it either.’ I got use to it. I’ve been in my face ever since.” She told me that she had stuck it out, tapped her potential, graduated, and is now herself a teacher “because of you. I felt so dislocated, but you helped me learn that every achievement is first an achievement of daring, of daring to imagination. And, if I dared to imagine my limitless possibilities, embrace new experiences by to unknown places physically and emotionally and intellectually and spiritually, my life would surely follow. Despite some desperate times and rough moments, it has. I was so trapped in myself, but you helped me break out and away, feel confident and independent, and set myself free by showing me who I am and who I truly could be.”

 Her e-letter was generous. I was moved. I was uplifted. It was a gift I deeply appreciated. But, as I told her in my response, she was right, I did not remember her. She replied in a message I just read, “That’s okay. You do with a lot of other students what you did for me. What’s important is that I always remember you, how you were there, how I mattered to you, how you helped me change my perception of myself, and how you help me matter to myself–and I still hear your words and feel your empathy and compassion all these years as I try to be a teacher like you believing I can make a difference in someone’s life as you did for me. Let’s keep in touch.”

 Now, for me, she is a monument far more lasting than any carved mountain face or named building. Nevertheless, here she was, a woman expressing deep gratitude for something I could not recall. Now, I didn’t flay myself with too many lashes for this lapse of memory. As she said, as a student-oriented self-described “wholeness teacher” and “character teacher,” I do often get involved with a lot of students–a lot of students–and the conversations she described aren’t extraordinary for me. That’s what teachers are supposed to do, isn’t it? Not just to help others become better skilled, but to help them live better lives by helping them become better persons as well, to empathize, to be positive, to offer encouragement and support, to create a clean and motivating and inspiring air for them to breath, to have faith in, to believe in, to hope for, and to love.

 Those crucial teachable moments often arise unannounced. Often they threaten to pass unnoticed. So beware. We teachers don’t always know when that occasional word, smile, gesture will have a lasting impact. We just have to be people of faith. We have to have faith that some of the things we say and do will really matter. And since we can’t always know what those things are, we have to presume that everything we say will matter.

 Back to that student server in Berea. Why am I a teacher? With almost no buildings on our campuses named for anyone other than founders, donors, and administrators, it isn’t for fame. My check stub tells me it sure isn’t for fortune. Yet, as I told her, I think the answer is simple. I quoted June Carter Cash: “I’m just trying to matter.” I am just struggling to live the good life, do significant and purposeful and meaningful work, make a difference, and perhaps change a life here and there. I am a teacher for the sake of another person we call a student. I must be, for if I don’t take pride in what I do, how can I take pride in who I am? If I don’t want to do something meaningful, how can what I do have meaning. If I don’t have a vision, how can I have a purpose in everything I am and do? And, if I don’t want the world to be at least a little bit different for having passed through it, how can I live a life that matters?

Make it a good day.

      –Louis–