A QUICKIE ON “I CARE ABOUT STUDENTS”

A couple of day ago, I was having a conversation about caring for students with Kim Tanner, the very caring director of VSU’s Access Office. I count her as a long time good friend and colleague of mine. She’s probably one of the most caring people on our campus. Our conversation, already reading some “heavy stuff” in student journals and responding to them as requested, reading each student’s face and body language inside and outside class, reading each of their single “How I feel” word on the whiteboard, and just plain shooting the breeze with them got me to thinking about how quick so many of us are to say “I care about the students” and how slow we are to understand what it requires to act caringly towards each of them

Why is that? The words sounds so noble, don’t they.  At a glance, it’s a statement of education based on service to others. With it we seem to call ourselves to account to have attitudes and engage in actions that can touch other lives. And, a lot of academic really mean it. But the mere utterance of “I care about” isn’t enough. It may be the right thing to say.  It may be the expected thing to say.  But, it doesn’t automatically dub us with educational knighthood.  It in itself is inadequate to the task of helping each student receive the education she or he needs. The danger of “I care about students,” then, is that once uttered, you can go about you business errantly believing “What a good teacher am I;”  that the words can so easily ring hollow; that such a personal and fulfilling claim can in fact be impersonal and empty; that such a noble stand can have ignoble consequences. It can be little more than mere abstract ethics or a theory of good, or something PC. But, it’s not the needed moral and ethical resource it should be. It’s almost an empty sentence unless we do more. No, whenever we utter that claim or hear it, we should ask, “To whom are you specifically referring?” After all, how can you care if you don’t identify whom you care about, know about whom you care, why you care, and how you can care.. Think about it. What does true and deep “care about” mean? What emotions, attitudes, and actions does sincere “care about” require? And, more important whom do we specifically “care about?” If we don’t have an answer to these questions, then we are little than the caricature of the person who claims to love humankind but cannot stand people. If we’re honest, we know a lot of academics who proclaim her or his care for students as a body while remaining oblivious to the plight of the individual student or whose “care about” is conditional and selective.

You see, saying you care about is easy; doing the caring is a whole different story. Caring takes a lot, a lot, of effort and energy. It is consuming, draining, inconvenient, uncomfortable, and at times painful.  Only then can you really experience being uplifted, fulfilled, meaningful, inspired, and satisfied. In any event, it requires that we embrace the humanity and individuality of each student. That is because caring is what I call “educational particularity.” Caring is personal. It is unconditional and non-selective. It is a human growth hormone. It deals with a face, a name, a particular person’s story, and her or his situation. Social and emotional distractions, burdens, and pressures outside the classroom are critical in understanding the actions of a student inside the classroom: job, parents, peers, sports, sorority, fraternity, family, finances among others. The inner emotions and attitudes are critical in understanding the outer actions of each student; hopeful beliefs and hopeful thinking and self-efficacy and increased self-expectations play critical roles. Caring means we must intervene to lessen the drag of negative feelings, heavy experiences, and disbeliefs that serve as significant obstacles to engaging in learning and academic achievement. After all, isn’t that’s what an education is all about: to enable and encourage and support transformation and the empowerment of each student.

When you care at a personal and individual level, you ask one question: How can I empower a student so that she or he isn’t paralyzed in fear, doesn’t feel defeated and isolated and lonely, isn’t weakened by powerlessness, isn’t dominated by pessimism and self-doubt, doesn’t feel passive and helpless, isn’t saddened by hopelessness, doesn’t feel unnoticed and devalued?

The most effective answer lies in the context of an on-going, warm, upbeat, respectful, responsive, empathetic, and trusting relationship with each student. Most of a student’s ills can be cured with large doses of engaged, close, and non-punitive caring. We have to act within specific situations with specific persons; we have to learn the specifics of those people and those situations; and we have to respond to the details of that person and her or his situation. Each student is a particular human being with different needs, different problems, and different stories. Because each story is different, caring may require something different for one from caring for another. So, part of caring is being attentive, for it is within the personal context that we must care and educate. We must first see and listen to each student if we are to help her or him to help herself or himself. In caring education, there is no substitute for seeing, listening, recognizing the needs of each student. That means attention, attention, attention must be paid to each student. Paying attention to each student, listening to each student’s story, letting have her or his voice, establishing her or his identity, maintaining her or his integrity, taking the human experience as seriously as we do transmitting information. In many instances, as in journaling, we have to practice a silent presence. We have to learn how to see, learn how to listen, how to be empathetic, and how to be patient. Otherwise, all these generalizations, these “I believe,” these “in my opinion” are simply our own stories, our own perceptions, our own descriptions of a student whom we do not know, have not heard, have not seen, and certainly have not positively touched–and probably rarely exists.

While we are proclaiming “I care about each student” with our lips, we must have caring for each student fully in our hearts and deeply in the back of our minds. It has to come naturally; it won’t happen if its forced or “strategized;” it won’t happen if we have to remember checking off 20 things on a list. Then, and only then, will our words express our true feeling and be our true guide for our actions. If we can do this, we can “care about” with a clear vision, with patience, with empathy, with belief, and with faith in each student; then, we can offer our two greatest gifts to each student: love and hope.

Make it a good day.

Louis

A QUICKIE ON “IF ONLY”

Well, it’s only been a week into the new semester and I’ve heard the bemoaning and seen the smileless “if only” pouring out from some of my colleagues’ mouths and warping their faces. That’s sad. In fact, if you watched PBS’ “Declining By Degrees,” you’d see that “if only” is probably the biggest problem we have on our campuses. Every one of us wants to be uplifted by being fulfilled and happy and yet so many of us allow “if only” to drag us down, and we take so many of the students with us.

Do you know how many of us academics live “if only”, wishful, starved for happiness, “ah, me” lives on campus: “if only I was in a tenure track position;” “if only I had tenure;” “if only I get that promotion;” “if only I was paid more;” “if only I get that article published;: “if only I had that grant;” “if only there were better students;” ” if only I could get a reduced load;” “if only I had more time;” “if only the students cared;” “if only I was at a better school;” “if only the students were prepared;” “if only we had more resources;” “if only the administration….;” “if only my colleagues….;” “if only the students….;” “if only the Board of Regents….;” “if only the public…..” If only, if only, if only. We think all we need is an answered prayer or a granted wish upon a star; we delude ourselves into believing if only these yearned for “if only” came true, our dissatisfaction would be swept away by a flood of positive, productive, nourishing, soaring, and optimistic “I would….” and “I could….”

Ah, wouldn’t that be wonderful. If we’re honest with ourselves, however, it doesn’t often happen that way, does it? So many of us are unhappy because we so focus on the things we don’t have that we get a myopia which makes it hard for us to see and enjoy the things we do have. We feel short-changed, unappreciated, taken-for-granted, unnoticed, used. Think about it. Do you feel peaceful and relaxed inside? Do you get up each morning with a purposeful and meaningful “yes” attitude towards the classroom? Are you filled with a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment at the end of the teaching day?

The problem with living a mournful, resigned, grumpy, unappreciative, dissatisfied “if only” life is that it’s always living a few steps behind happiness and fulfillment and meaning. That is, whatever and whenever an “if only” desire is fulfilled we always find more “if only” to wish for. Get a grant, you want another; get a salary increase, you need another; get what you call good students, you want better ones; publish an article, you feel you have to publish another. And, so on and on and on goes the demanding and depressing and distracting “rat race” so many of us have created for ourselves. We put ourselves in such a disappointing and frustrating and resigned position, that we make it painful, almost futile, to make the attempt to struggle against the current of seemingly overwhelming disappointment and negativity.

What makes this all sad, as Daniel Goleman discusses in his Social Intelligence, all this short-circuiting of happiness, all this discontentment, all this disconnection with ourselves and others, is contagious, especially since we’re in positions of classroom authority. All this woeful modeling and living out “if only” not only subtly or overtly sadden us, whether we know it or now, whether we want to know it or not, it sends out signals that have a negative effect on the lives of everyone around us and puts both the joy of teaching and the joy of learning on the list of endangered species.

Make it a good day.

 Louis

WE’RE IN THE PEOPLE BUSINESS

Well, with the last day of my summer hiatus from campus, this is the last of my beginning semester “rat-a-tat-tatting.” I feel myself temporarily running out of ammunition. Anyway, last night at dinner I was introduced to some people as a professor at the University. Invariably, they asked me “what do you teach.” My answer was a simple, “A student.” It is always my answer to that question. I

In reaction, their faces took on that look of annoyance I expect. They obviously had thought I would have responded by mentioning my discipline, which would be History. Their look said, “Smart-ass.” Then, I briefly explained that I was merely stating my philosophy of teaching: I am in the people business. I see the sacredness, nobility, beauty, and potential within each student. And, I see myself as that person who is there to help each student help her/himself become the person she or he is capable of becoming. The smirks on the faces of those people changed to smiles.

None of what I told those people is hyperbole. As the semester begins, to help get into the groove for tomorrow, I am reading and thinking about , rereading and reflecting on and rereading and pondering two of my favorite passages. One is from Mother Teresa who said she doesn’t care for the masses; she cares for a single person. The second is from Carl Jung who urged us to put aside our formal theories and intellectual constructs and axioms and statistics and charts when we reach out to touch that miracle called the individual human being. Yet, it is the discipline that so many of us academics grasp so tightly to our breasts while we hold the individual student at bay. Why do so many of us academics fail to realize we educators are in the people business. We fawn over generalizations, stereotypes, perceptions about education and teaching. But how do you separate education from the educator, or the mysterious, sacred, complicated, complex, and very unique individual human being from any human endeavor for that matter? Would there be the inventions without inventors? Would there be a morality without moralists and ethicists? Would there be history without the historian, biology without the biologist, psychology without the psychologist, business without the businessperson or consumer, accounting without the CPA? Would there be dance if there were no dancers, or art if there was no artist, or music if there were no musicians or composers, or science if there were no scientists, or literature if there were no poets and writers, or theater if there were no actors and playwrights? Would there be a police department without police, or a fire department with firemen, or an army without soldiers, or crime without criminals and lawmakers, or a government without politicians, or a religion without clerics and laics? Would there be a student body if there were no students or a faculty if there were no professors, or a staff is there were no secretaries, grounds keepers, cleaning personnel. No, human beings are behind it all and involved with them all every step and brush stroke and musical note and law and lyric and book and script and play and poem and experiment and machine and discovery and invention.

Yet, so many of us academics, wrapped up in the myth of being “objective,” so intellectualize and so dehumanize their teaching, don’t think or want to think that what happens outside the classroom to them or a student has an impact on what happens inside the classroom. We don’t think or want to think that what is happening inside us and each student has an impact on what we and they do on the outside.

I am in the people business, not just the information and skill business. As I say in my resume, since my epiphany in 1991, I have become as much concerned with a student’s learning as with my transmission of historical information, as much concerned with the students as human beings as with the subject matter. I no longer believe that the core of educating is the transmission, testing, and grading of information and skills. I believe the heart of education is to educate the heart of each student. A true education is not getting a grade or a diploma. It’s not found in a GPA or recognition. It’s found in each student.

When I read student journals day after day after day, when I small and at times deeply talk with students, I learn each is a person, an ordinary human being just like me, with issues, with misconceptions, with tenderness, with pain, with confusion, with joy, with sorrow, with fears, with distractions, with burdens, with afflictions, with tears of laughter, with tears of sadness, with personal loss, They each, like each of us, are what she or he dwell on. They each are the attitudes and thoughts that stand in the way of seeing clearly that which they each truly are and capable of becoming. So many students are overcome by fearful “that’s not me,” and halting “but” and paralyzing “can’t” and hesitant “I’m shy.” They’ve lost their self-empowerment. They’re cowered by the fear of the test and grade. They’ve lost the courage to take risks. They’ve lost the essential peace that is within each of them. That’s important to understand and focus on. And, it is all having an impact on each of them, on who they think they are, on where they think they are, on where they think they are going, on what they are doing, on what they believe they are capable of doing, on the faith they have in themselves, on the hope they have for themselves. While most talents are a gift, the character to develop and use those talents is not written in our DNA code. We have to help each of them unlearn what she or he has learned, help each of them to start losing and start finding her/himself at the same time, and helping her or him see a new way of looking at her/himself, at others, and at things.” We have to build it piece by piece by thought, choice, courage, determination, perseverance, commitment, belief, faith, confidence, hope, and love in each person we call a student.

So, in preparation for the beginning of the semester tomorrow I am intently remembering and reflecting upon my Mother Teresa and Carl Jung today: it’s always, always, always about that individual person we call a student.

Make it a good day.

Louis

A QUICKIE ON THE OATH OF MAIMONIDES

Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out into the torrid darkness. It was 5 am and the temperature was hovering at 81 degrees with a humidity of 88%! That turned my sharp rat-a-tat tatting into soupy slosh-slosh-slosh sloshing. As I squished down the dark streets of Valdosta, feeling that I was slowing turning into a pillar of exuded body salt, I was thinking of the “Oath of Maimonides.” It’s one of my daily reminders taped in the office that I read before I go to each class. For those who don’t know it, it goes like this:

The eternal providence has appointed me to watch over the life and health of Thy creatures. May the love for my art actuate me at all time; may neither avarice nor miserliness, nor thirst for glory or for a great reputation engage my mind; for the enemies of truth and philanthropy could easily deceive me and make me forgetful of my lofty aim of doing good to Thy children. May I never see in the patient anything but a fellow creature in pain.

Grant me the strength, time and opportunity always to correct what I have acquired, always to extend its domain; for knowledge is immense and the spirit of man can extend indefinitely to enrich itself daily with new requirements.

Today he can discover his errors of yesterday and tomorrow he can obtain a new light on what he thinks himself sure of today. Oh, God, Thou has appointed me to watch over the life and death of Thy creatures; here am I ready for my vocation and now I turn unto my calling.”

For my teaching, I translate that Oath into: “Let me turn my profession into my calling. Inspire me with love for each student. In each student let me see only the human being.”

What got me thinking of this Oath was both my good friend Steve, an adherent of that Oath, and an e-mail I received yesterday from a Canadian friend and e-colleague about a violator of that Oath.. This is part of what she wrote:

….a second year student raised her hand to ask the professor a question. The student received a tirade in which she was told that, as a second year student, she was too stupid to understand what the prof was saying and that she had no right to question him. He then drew the student a map to the registrar’s office so she could go and unregister herself from his class. My student also made the mistake of visiting this prof in his office to ask for clarification of his grading. The tirade she received was a carbon copy of the one given in class, leaving her in tears….

Whom do most us decide are the best teachers? Well, thinking some more of my friend Steve and some of the recent research I’ve been reading, that’s easy. They sure aren’t the ones who are consumed with academic avarice, scholarly greed, and/or professional selfishness; they aren’t the ones with a tunnel vision on getting tenure; they aren’t the ones driven to get that promotion; they aren’t the ones who give everything they’ve got to researching and publishing; they aren’t the “I don’t have time for…” and “I don’t want to be bothered with…” ones who ought to be selling shoes rather than selling learning. The professors who tend to focus on acquiring tenure or have their minds on publishing that next manuscript or are putting their hearts into getting that next grant, or centering on increasing their reputation, tend to become distance presenters, cold testers, disengaged grade-givers, insensitive and oblivious to the needs of most students in the classroom with them, controlling, exercisers of authoritarian power over the powerless, often trying to separate what might they might call the wheat from the chafe with near-abusive “scare the hell out of them out of the class” tactics, putting less effort into being a “charismatic” classroom teacher cast in the “you have to take this prof” role. Pull out a copy of PBS’ “Declining By Degrees,” and you’ll see and hear what I mean.

No! To be among the best teachers, like Steve, you have to follow Maimonides whether you know the Oath or not. You have to pass the academic SAT: Scholastic Altruism Test. You have to know that academia exists to serve the students. So, the best teachers see themselves as what I call “servant teachers.” The best teachers, then, are always judged by how much they give to and serve others. The best teachers, like Steve, are selfless, not selfish. When it comes to a student, like Steve, they see value, beauty, sacredness, uniqueness, potential, ability, talent, creativity, and imagination. When it comes to a student, like Steve, they bother; they make the effort; they take the time. They know that a vision not put into action, a word not converted into deed, is like an unlit candle. It sheds no light, spreads no warmth, never shows the way, doesn’t chase away the darkness and cold, doesn’t bring newness and faith and hope and love, and it certainly doesn’t light up the place. It is little wonder that for the likes of Steve the classroom is a very special, beautiful, magical, and meaningful place to “of doing good to thy children.”

So, as this new term begins, it would do us and each student well for us to intently read and accept the challenge of truly following Maimonides’ Oath.

Make it a good day.

Louis

A QUICKIE ON POWERLESSNESS AND POWER

I told you a bunch of quickies have been rat-a-tatting in my head and heart. Here’s another:

Over the decades, and recent studies, particularly those of Daniel Goleman and Teresa Amabile and Richard Boyatzis, have borne out my observations, I have noticed that students who feel powerless, unnoticed, unsupported, disconnected, unwanted, abandoned, unloved, isolated, inadequate, insecure, ignored, unwanted, who feel controlled, and who don’t feel an ownership for their activities, tend to play the academic safe, lifeless, quiet, shy, silent, submissive, in the shadows, not participating, fearful, unassuming, unimaginative, anxious, uncreative, performing seal, and bulimic “what do you want” game. They tend to act out the “they don’t belong here” and “they’re letting anyone in” roles they’re cast in. The mental and emotional and spiritual energy needed for learning is sapped by such feelings. It is difficult for students to learn when they are consumed by self-doubt and negative moods.

So what can we teachers do to help students flourish? What must we do to help them become eager learners? The answer is fairly simple yet challenging. We have to give a damn about each and every one of them. We have to stop neglecting matters of self-esteem, self-confidence, faith, hope, and loneliness, all of which have such a critical impact on learning. We must find a variety of ways to create each day as what I call a “Mother Teresa Day,” a day when we are what I call a “charismatic person”–who Richard Boyatzis would call a “resonant leader”–for each student, who are tuned in to each student’s needs and moods and capabilities and interests, who are emotionally close to each student, who are very seldom angry with students, who are very slow to threaten or punish students, who relinquish strict control and allow students a flexibility to follow rules on their own, who create an emphatic climate, who create an upbeat environment filled with pleasant conversation and lots of genuine smiles and laughter and excitement, who stimulate imagination and creativity, who have a warm and supportive regard toward each student, who demonstrate an unconditional loving faith in each student.

It only takes one supportive teacher to help a student successfully climb her or his mountain; it only takes one encouraging teacher to help start stemming the sapping flow of learned loneliness, fearfulness, helplessness, and hopelessness; it only takes one loving teacher from whom a student can gather confidence, self-esteem, self-belief, and power; it only takes one teacher to touch the heart and mind and spirit of a student; it only takes one teacher to make a difference, a lasting difference, to a student.

Make it a good day.

Louis

ANOTHER QUICKIE ON ATTITUDE

Good morning. You know, I never heard or saw Steve denigrate a student in word or deed. That got me thinking yesterday after receiving what I would call an unkind, bloopering message about a student. The teacher reveals her/himself by nothing so clearly as by two things. The first is by the “there’s-no-harm-in” jokes she/he tells about students. The second is by the jokes about students she/he finds distasteful and resents.

Make it a good day.

Louis

A QUICKIE ON ATTITUDE

Times are apassing, as they say. My good friend and colleague of many decades, Steve Childs, has retired. I will miss him and I could write an ode to him for being a good person and what I call a “charismatic teacher.” Maybe later. Meanwhile, semester classes are beginning next Monday although I’ll have to miss all this week’s meetings in order to stay close to home and care for Susan. Nevertheless, I’ve been too long away from the classroom; I’m feeling that itch to get back on campus; I’m getting in the groove. That and Steve’s retirement have sent a chorus line of “quickies” dancing across my mind. So, with your indulgence, I’ll share them like in “one-a-day-vitamin fashion. Here’s the first:

You can tell a lot about a teacher’s attitude by whether she/he just stands flat-footed with an empty gaze around students or, like Steve, is always on his toes with a twinkle in his eyes.

Make it a good day.

Louis

WHO IS THIS “TYPICAL STUDENT?”

We were in the emergency room at Jacksonville Beach last Friday night. Susan, while trying to scale the Everest of a Ford Expedition to get into the back seat, slipped on the running board, lost her grip, slammed into the door latch, banged up her back muscles, and probably cracked a rib or two. Anyway, when the doctor finally came into the examining room, the attending nurse told him in a matter-of-fact tone, “The patient probably has a typical hairline fracture of the rib.”

The doctor turned to her and nicely said in a teaching tone, “I see her name is Susan, not ‘patient.’ And, there isn’t anything typical in this ER. No two fractures are the same. Everyone is different and they should be treated like they are.” He turned towards the treatment bed and caringly said with a reassuring smile, “Now, Susan…..” As I watched, I noticed how he treated Susan–and me–as much as, and maybe more than, the injury. In the course of his examination and conversation, he learned that she had such an enormously low threshold of pain that I joke about how a splinter puts her into ICU. That “little” atypical fact, combined with Susan’s enormous fear of pain, determined which pain medication he would prescribe.

After I had put my doped-up Susan to bed, I went out on the patio, listened to the waves hitting the beach, and started thinking of what the doctor said. More importantly, I thought of how his words reflected his attitude toward Susan, how that attitude influenced his interaction with her, and how important what he learned during his interaction was on his treatment.

How many times have we talked of students or seen them and treated them merely as that averaged out, stereotypical, generalized, distorted, unreal “typical.” Have you ever really met a typical student? In all my years in this profession, I haven’t. But, whenever I lapsed and had treated a student as if he or she was that mythical person, I always seemed to have screw things up. So, I always feel uncomfortable when others speak about “typical” students. Like the doctor implied, “typical” is perception and assumption rather than a matter of fact; it tends to discount rather than take into account; and, so it tends to exclude far more often than include. Not only does it ignore the complexity and complication and variation of that which is an individual student, it sucks out all the critical living facets of a student that are influencing her or his behavior, both apparent and hidden, and flattens her or him into a dimensionless, faceless, and nameless cardboard placard.

At best, “typical student” is merely a benign term for convenient conversation. At worst, it becomes malignant when it becomes an arid truth left barren by a drought of caring, support, empathy, and nourishment. You know, the difference between classroom teaching and distance teaching isn’t always geography or technology. It’s often attitude. The more any one of us tends to lump what I call those “sacred ones” into one amorphous mass of “typicals,” the more distant and disengaged we tend to be. The more often we see no need to know what the heart and soul and mind of the person each is, the less we know about the heart and soul and mind each is capable of becoming. And, the less we know about the heart and soul and mind of each student, the less we put our heart and soul and mind into helping each of them develop and transform. That opaque attitude creates a tough situation for both student and teacher. It’s tough for both to learn and teach when everyone has difficulty seeing each other through the haze; it’s tough because breathing in such unhealthy smog doesn’t let you deeply inhale the fresh and invigorating humanity and individuality of each student. It denies each student her or his right to learn. It strips a student of her or his greatness. It erases her or his distinct story. It devalues her or his worth. In many ways it is dismissive and derisive. It saps the emotional and mental energy needed for learning. It saps the emotional and mental energy needed for teaching. It makes us convert beautiful flowers into weeds simply because we don’t want them in our ordered garden. Let me put it this way. Ever hear that no one wants your daughter or son because she or he is atypical? Ever hear that no one wants you because you’re atypical? I have. First hand. Trust me, you don’t want to. I still remember what it felt like as a far less than stellar student voted by the teachers as the college-bound high school graduate least likely to succeed. I felt it as a parent of an ADHD afflicted son who was treated by teachers as an unwanted fallen leaf marring their manicured lawn.

There is really no such person as a typical student. The true truth is that each and every student is atypical. Each is that proverbial exception to the rule and variation on a theme. The closer you look, like snowflakes, the more likely you are to see that no two students are the same and we shouldn’t think, feel, and act as if they are.

We should celebrate that diversity!  We do throughout our society; we proclaim it as a hallmark of the American experience.  Yet, in the classroom we so many of us so often reject it and impose uninimity.  That, however, doesn’t eliminate the enormous diversity in each classroom. Each student is a distinct individual human being. Each has both visible and hidden tendencies and abilities–and disabilities. Each is sacred. Each is beautiful. Each student has her or his own potential. Every student has within her or him the possibility of achievement. Each is a vital thread of the future. Each is too valuable to weed out. Each is too valuable to waste

In that classroom, we academics are not merely in the information transmission business or in the credentialing business. We are in the people business. We are involved in saving lives. As educators that is our mission. It is our responsibility. And, the only way we can save a life is to help a student succeed in learning. But, we won’t be inclined to fight to save a life if we don’t value that life. So, remember as a new term begins, we cannot help each student help her/himself become the person she or he is capable of becoming until we understand there are differences among students, acknowledge the individuality of each student, accept her or his uniqueness, embrace her or his humanity, appreciate her or his struggles, believe in her or him, love her or him, and nurture her or his own empowerment. If we each can do that, if we understand that a weed is our idea, not nature’s, then we will be that charismatic teacher whose positive impact will make a difference–and last a lifetime.

Make it a good day.

Louis

DEPARTING WORDS OF WISDOM

It was the time of the canonical hour of Lauds when night moves to day and darkness to light. It is truly for me, like the sun, a time to rise and shine, to dive deep into the miracle of that which is life today. The first gleam of light of this tranquil time is a valuable time for my morning contemplation and mediation before I plunge into trying to shorten what seems to be Susan’s unending honey-do-list.

You know we each must have a place and a certain time of a certain day where you don’t know what is in the newspapers and on the air waves.  My time and place are those forty minutes on the pre-dawn streets. It’s a time and place where I simply experience and call forth who I am and what I might be. That is my place. My sacred place, where I find myself again and again. This morning I was thinking about graduation and a “Wheeee” message I had received earlier this week from another graduate whom I first had met in one of the First Year Experience history classes. We had been in touch on and off over these past five years. Now, he was asking for some “departing pearls of wisdom” that could guide him as he left the world of VSU for the world at large. This is what I replied:

“Congratulations. So, now you have your diploma. Now you want me to be something like a North Star, to offer you some sort of guidance for walking in the right direction on the ‘Now what’ path that you’re coming up to. You really don’t need me except to tell you that you have yourself. Look inside. If you find a time and place to think silently about the hesitant person you were when you first stepped on campus five years ago, who you are at this moment, how you got here, and what you can become ‘out there,’ you’ll see that you’ve fashioned your own ‘true north’ compass. You really don’t need my tinkering around. All through these past years, family and friends and faculty have doubted you; at times, you faltered and doubted yourself; then you heroically–yes, heroically–picked yourself up with an ‘I’ll show them’ attitude. But, you never really had an ‘I’ll show me’ attitude. Yeah, you persevered and have your diploma. All that says is what you did. Look at what it says about who you are and can become. Now, you see you’re stuffed full of the information and skills, the grades and GPA, that you needed to get that sheepskin. Do you see, however, that you’ve stuffed yourself with the right stuff, with what it takes to use that stuff in the right way? If you don’t see that and use it, the diploma is worth diddly squat. Diploma and education are not necessarily synonymous terms. An education is more likely to help you avoid falling under the spell of temptation that is training. And, temptation is all around you. Someone is always going to tell you that you’re wrong, that it’s too hard, that you can’t do that, that it’s impossible. You’ll be tempted to believe that your critics are right. You’ll be pressured to compromise yourself. You’ll feel the demands imposed by others to become the person they want you to become. Conquer all that, as you learned to do these past five years, use what you learned about yourself, and you’ll find the courage to live. And, it does take courage to truly live a life of being alive. The world, academic and non-academic alike, is full of people who have stopped listening to themselves, who have been frightened off course, who have listened to others telling them what they ought to do, how they ought to behave, what they ought to think, what values they ought to possess, what they ought to say. Too many people have allowed themselves to become flatten, to lose their humanity, to relinquish their individuality, to sheepishly follow the crowd and bleat only that which is popular, to lose what someone called “the rapture of being alive.” You’ve seen it all around on campus and at your job. Now all you have to do is to use the stuff to stay the right course and not to be thrown off course by the obstacles, dangers, and pressures you’ll face. If you accept less than who you are capable of being, if you take a job just to have money to have a good livelihood, if you seek only position and renown, if you stop listening to yourself, if you have no sense of significance or meaning or purpose, if you allow your vision to fade or let others take away your vision, then I warn you that you’ll turn yourself into a slave and you’ll be a very unhappy camper. Remember, your happiness, your true and deep happiness, comes from being alive, that is, in being alert and aware and involved. It really does not dwell in earning a living; it is found in the value of your inner self, not in the value of your car, house, and bank account. Find a place where you’re happy, not just excited and satisfied and comfortable, and you’ll find the waters that will extinguish the anguish, anxiety, and pain. All that will take daily courage and strength. You’ll need to keep in shape, to develop workout programs for both your body and soul. That way you’ll remain physically and spiritually fit. Trust me, living a significant life each day filled with meaning, purpose, and vision in your life isn’t all that much of a newsworthy spectacle, but it is indeed a spectacular and powerful way to live a significant life.”

Maybe these should be arriving pearls of wisdom for incoming students–if they’d listen.

Make it a good day.