Got an e-mail this morning. All it said was “Clean.” That’s all it had to say. I’ve been getting an identical message each day for the past week.

It began last Monday morning. The word I had selected for the day happened to be “edify.” I am at the checkout desk in the library. Behind me comes Debby (not her real name) with a “hi Schmier.” I turn.. She hugs me. I return her hug. We chat. Then, I consciously and intentionally ask her, “Clean?”

That word casts a sudden shadow over her face as if a cloud had suddenly blocked out the sunlight. Her smile suddenly disappears. Her head drops like a millstone had been suddenly draped around her neck. Her eyes go to the floor. Her voice lowers to a whisper. She sadly answers, “No.”

“Well, what are you going to do about it?” I ask softly but firmly. “You’re better than that.”

“I know.”

“Don’t give yourself that excusing get-out-of-my-face ‘I know’ stuff. What are you going to do about it? Honestly.

“Start again?”

“Is that a question or a promise?”

“Are you disappointed in me?”

“Are you disappointed in you?”

She nodded her head, “Yes.”

“Well, that’s the person you have to stop letting down. Look in the mirror and talk to her about starting again. Is your ‘Start again’ a question or a promise.”

“A promise.”

“To whom?”

“Me.”

“I know you can do it. You’ve done it. Now you just have to know it again.”

We hugged. I noticed her hug was a tad tighter than a few minute earlier. A “Maybe” silently flashed inside of me. That night, I unexpectedly received an e-mail from her. I’ll just say, it told me the power of a one, sincere, caring word. It was from Debby:

I was so happy I finally saw you! It has been so long. You kind of took me off guard when you asked me if I was clean, but I’m glad you did ask….I know I can’t get someone to like me by doing something that I really don’t like doing and I don’t like myself for doing. It’s already effecting my studies. I don’t know why I do it. No, that’s a lie. I do know. I just don’t trust that anyone would like me for who I am. You’re the only one so far who believes in me….Well, damn, and it’s a good damn, if you won’t stop caring I guess I have to start caring for me all over again. This is Day One of me caring about myself again and being clean. I won’t try. I’ll do it. If it’s okay with you, you’ll hear from me everyday.

Isn’t it amazing how one word of caring almost instantly shored up a student’s flagging confidence and inspired her to renew her struggle the climb to her summit and regain the heights from which she had tumbled. As I read Debby’s words, I felt a rush of being intensely alive. Some get that feeling from climbing mountains or racing cars or bungee jumping or sky diving or doing other daredevil things. I get it from that feeling of satisfaction and fulfillment of having made a difference by treating someone as a human being and noticing it while it’s happening.

I just told someone that the highest reward for caring for a student as a human being is what you become by it. It’s never a waste a time, whatever the result, caring makes you a more caring, happier, and better person yourself. Each morning, I hear a voice asking me, “Will you live a life of meaning today?” To answer that question, I pick a “renewal and resilience” word for the day and consciously start out with the intention of treating someone as a human being, of making someone feel noticed, cared about, special, and appreciated. Doing that doesn’t really change people and things for me, but it does change me for things and people. At the end of the day, as I’m walking home to have that quiet glass of wine with Susan during our daily “special time,” I take inventory of myself. I always ask myself as I often ask others in workshops and conference presentations, “Hey, Schmier, did you lead your life today in a way that helped others feel special and appreciated? Have you allowed a moment to go by in which you could have said something to a student or colleague or staff person that would have meant so much to them? What is one thing you said or did today that made another person felt more special and appreciated?” Last Monday I delivered as I didn’t expect.

And, what a difference that makes!

Louis

 So, I get a message from a professor. It began this way:

I am a Professor of English, not a father confessor. I know my subject. I have published extensively and I know how to convey the facts of my discipline to my students. Why should I have to spend time thinking about the  student’semotional or social life, It’s not my job. I care about their learning if they care about their studies. Nevertheless, I can’t be involved in the lives of the students. I don’t have time or inclination to do so. It will distract me from teaching English and other scholarly things I have to do. I have been reading your hopelessly romantic and irrelevant musings for a long time. Why do you tell such stories about ordinary, average, and at times distasteful students?  It’s enough that I have to deal with them in my classes. Isn’t it better to focus on the better students who are here to learn?……”

Here was my “quickie” answer:

“As I read your note, I thought of Kim Tanner and the teachers in our First Year Program for another and what each would say about our job of caring for each and every student without concern for their SAT scores, class standings, GPA, and any other means academia uses to sort students. You, as far too many do, seem to use those terms “ordinary” and “average” with such disdain, almost a bitterness. So, I ask, ‘why should the struggling less than stellar student disappear, barricaded behind our fixation with GPAs, shunned aside by our fascination with awards and recognitions, tolerated only because they pay the bills, spat out as “distasteful” sour milk, thrust into the shadows as we spotlight honor students, be out-of-focus as we focus on producing mini-scholars, separated as chafe, quarantined as infectious carriers, and hunted down as interlopers?’ It assumes that they do not have potential, that they are not worth our time and effort, and that they do not have it within them to burst into novae. Then, again, the hiding of the less than stellar students is systematic in our academic culture. None of us are the Southwestern Airlines of academia. Love institutions we’re not. We don’t put these students, who admittedly often test our mettle and are demanding of our time and effort and love, first. Instead we so handicap them with loveless disdain at worst and faithless indifference at best that we almost insure they run far behind the pack. So many of us just don’t see teaching them as labors of love so much as laborious work.”

“So many of us have two selves. When talk is of these students, who make up the majority, you can hear so many of us pronouncing a plethora of lofty platitudes about how we care about students or how we emphasize teaching or how we are concerned about their retention. But, are those academics expressing their real feelings and beliefs? Are they presenting a façade of a false self? Are they merely trying to appear a certain way to others? Are they publicly assuming a foreign identity? Are they publicly hiding who they really are? In so many private conversations about these “ordinary” and “average” students the grandeur is absent. Coming from these same academics are mournful unwelcoming sighs; we can hear tones of discouragement, annoyance, moaning, disavowal, disdain, resignation, displeasure, and even anger. They place these students among the dismissed “don’t belong” and “they’re letting everyone in” and “I don’t have the time” and “it’s not my job” and “they get in the way.” These academics use the external and superficial criteria of tests and grading as the basis for judging a student’s worth. These supposedly irrelevant students don’t stay long in their thoughts and are quickly swept out of the spotlight into the darkened background. They much prefer a discussion of their “dedication to their discipline,” of their research and publication, and of the “good” students and especially of the “honor” students. That’s when their blank eyes get a sparkle, their blank faces turn bright, and their sneering lips curl up in smiles; that’s when stoops are transformed into erect posture and vocal tones of despair are replaced by tones of pride.”

“But, if you really want to be a good teacher, if you want to be the salt that makes students, all students, thirsty for learning, you gladly–gladly–begin, without conditions, with the students you have. That minority of “above average” students will always be with us, but it is infinitely more important to tell the story of the student in the shadows in the hope of shaking our conscience and altering our academic culture. I’ve said this over and over and over again. And, I’ll say it still again. After watching PBS’ DECLINING BY DEGREES, I know that it’s not that average student who should feel ashamed of not making the grade, it should be us. We are a perniciously corrupting force when we fail to esteem all–all–students and accept their frailities rather than depreciating them, when we display contingent faith and hope and love based on test scores and grades. If we are to be judged, let us be judged by the commitment we have, by the dedication we have, by the faith we exhibit, by the hope we offer, by the love we have, by the support and encouragement we give those who are most needy of us. If that be sappy, whistling in the dark, or foolishly romantic, so be it. But, you know, the dear Lord made so many of those “ordinary” and “average” students, he must love them. So, should we.”

“On this Labor Day, I’ll leave you with these words from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet that my good friend Bri Johnson just sent me: ‘Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy. For if you break bread with indifference, you bake bitter bread that feeds but half a man’s hunger. And if you grudge the crushing of grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine. And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.'”

Make it a good day.

Louis