WE ARE OUR OWN WORST ENEMY

      I’m still in a “Susan Boyle-ish” mood; I’m getting into the groove as I get myself psyched up for a two day workshop on collegiate teaching at Lethbridge University; as a cancer survivor, I’m still feeling the warmth and humanity of all those smiling and cheering students on the front lawn of my campus last night who gave up their precious study time for upcoming final papers and exams to give their love and time for the Cancer Society’s Relay For Life; and, so, I’m about to get myself into trouble. But, I’ve been hearing and reading, as I always do at this end-of-term time, many a sighing getting-ready-for-the-end-of-the-semester-paper-reading-exam-giving-final grade-compilation-crunch comments from my head-shaking colleagues here on campus and across the internet world. So, having gotten into my protective suit of Kevlar, here goes.

 

     So many of us academics just love to pretend that they’re so clinically objective, that the physical and academic appearance of students don’t matter and don’t influence their thoughts, feelings, actions, or judgments. Well, the truth is that they do. We’re all human, and there isn’t an objective bone in our body. When it comes to academics far too many of us are crotchety, intellectual, and academic snobs. We turn our backs and let so many students drown in an ocean of “they’re not worth it,” “what’s the use,” “they let me down,” “they can’t,” “they don’t know how,” “they don’t want to,” “they’re disappointing,” “in my day,” “when I was a student,” etc, etc, etc. It’s always something, and I’m not sure most of it is either nonsense about appearance or a reflection of our disinclination to devote the demanding time and effort to the needs of students away from the demands of our precious research, publication, and quest for tenure or promotion. So, the academic culture is the height of ambivalence between proclaimed objectivity and lived subjectivity, from the rare adoring surprise when one minute a “don’t belong” demonstrates she or he does and turning away with disdain just as easily the next minute when so many seemingly prove that they don’t. For so many of us, struggle, overcoming, improvement, growth, progress, process, and change in a student aren’t enough; raising an F or a D to a C or low B isn’t enough; being a consistently “C student” isn’t enough.

      So many of us want academic novae; so many of us want students and their transcripts to look the intellectual part. We adore and reward the academically drop-dead-easy-to-teach-wow 10s; we ignore and shun the down-and-dirty-got-to-work-hard-at-ugh 2s, 3s, and 4s, and tell them to drop dead. Most us want students to have an academic “sizzle” that we can brag about in our annual evaluations and institutional reports. Achievement is in GPAs, titles, scholarships, and recognitions. It is not in a student’s struggle to find a way or to find her or his way. After all, isn’t that why so many of us are impressed with those students who have the adjective, “honors,” or this and that “scholar” describing them? That stuff is easy to “market” in both academic and non-academic circles. So many of us just don’t go for the challenging or resisting intellectual and academic ugly ducklings, and don’t believe there is a swan lucking inside them. So many of us aren’t inclined to nurse the fallen sparrows.

      Don’t so many of us so often make that first impression, snap judgment correlation between appearance and talent, transcript and potential, grades and learning as so many of us once did–and regrettably sometimes still do–with skin color, religion, ethnicity, and gender? Don’t so many of us find it easier and less demanding to hone accomplishment in the already accomplished than to prospect for, dig for, haul out, sweat over, cut, and polish the raw stone into a gleaming jewel? And when students don’t live up to the mythology of our correlation, when they have frumpy transcripts or shabby appearances or drab performances, we more often than not “dis-” them; we engage in ways so that they are disheartened and disillusioned; we act in ways so that they are disrespected, dismissed, disenfranchised, disregarded, disengaged, and dis-just-about-everything-else; they’re treated as academically and intellectually unworthy, unkempt, unnoticed, unwanted, unclean, unglamorous, unfashionable, unattractive, uncouth, unfortunate, unknown and un-just-about-everything-else.

     But, in all of this, who is unattractive? That struggling student? Or us? Who should be ashamed? That beseeching student? Or us? Who is breaking the promise? That promising student? Or us? Why can’t each of these students dream? Why don’t we allow them to dream? Why don’t we help them follow their dreams? Why don’t we help them achieve their dreams? Instead, too many of us engage in the academic version of abuse, derision, demeaning, laughter, smirking, mocking, weeding out, grinding into the dust; we direct energy away from our heart and soul, and too often sap theirs. Pogo was right. We are our own enemy.

      We need the courage to split the sea of smug; we need the courage to treat each and every student as a sacred some body; we need the courage to have goose bumps when we engage with each student; we need the courage to sustain our wonder of each and every student; we need the courage to maintain our euphoria for each and every student; we need the courage to draw out stirring creativity and imagination in those “don’t belongs;” we need the courage to find talent and ability in those “they’re letting anyone ins;” we need the courage to develop the raw and unique potential in the unlikeliest of people.

     It would help if each day we all read and lived John 7:24 and, my favorite biblical passage, Micah 6:8.

 

Louis

OUTSIDE/INSIDE

      I admit without any embarrassment, when I saw that YouTube clip of Susan Boyle my heart pounded, my breath leadened, my stomach tightened, and my eyes poured out tears. What a lesson! The lesson is simple: Susan Boyle was not redeemed on that show; but, she could be redeeming to so many of us if we can only muster the courage to admit we have to learn it.

      Think about it. How many of us look adoringly with adulation at those who have the riches and fame and beauty and success and importance of a winner’s everything whose graceless transgressions into arrogance, self-righteousness, irresponsibility, sex, drugs, crime, and alcohol reveal they have an inner nothing, and we say, “Wasted!” We put them in the spotlight only to find out that out of light, comes darkness. How many of us look scornfully–if we notice them at all–at those who have the loser’s outward nothing and uselessness of failure and poverty and dumpiness and klutziness, and lack of education, and plainness, and, then, discover they have a graceful, inner everything, and we say, “Wow!” We put them in a dark, unnoticed corner only to discover that out of darkness, comes light.

       We academics, with all of our degrees, are not above, to paraphrase the Bard, allowing the clothes to make the person. How many of us, like so many outside academia, merely look and hear, but don’t see and listen? How many of us look at the outside and don’t see the inside? How many of us look at gender, skin color, tattoo, body piercing, color streaked hair, dress, and believe the student has nothing? How many of us merely see transcripts and decide who shall go to the academic left and who to the right? How many of us submit to and conform to a multiple of prejudicial stereotypes that replace the unique human-ism of each student with entrenched, snap judging honors-isms, scholarship-isms, GPA-isms, manner-isms, and appearance-isms? How many of us do a closing down, head nodding, and eye rolling assumption that so many students are a nobody “don’t belong” and one of the wasteful “they’re letting anyone in,” and so few students are a somebody worth the time and effort to compete with the needs of research and publication and the acquisition of tenure.

     I am an avid gardener. I know that very, very little grows in cold and darkness, and most everything grows in warmth and light. I know that when I see a rose as more than a beautiful flower, when I see it with awe and love, that rose enters my heart and stirs other forces in my soul. That is true with my beloved Susan, with our two sons and their wives, with our three grandmunchkins, and with each student.

     If we see past the outside, if see inside, we will see unheralded beauty and dignity. So, I say, “Be damned with those -isms.” We have to confound those depersonalizing and dehumanizing perceptions. We have to see each person we label “student;” we have to see the worth of each student; we have to see and admire and exalt and trumpet the uniqueness in each student. What we should see and listen to, and only see and listen to, the human being inside: the nobility, the sacredness, the uniqueness, the essence, the spirit, the soul, the potential. We should be captivated by each student and not be distracted or mesmerized by appearance, demeanor, or performance. We should always believe; we should always have faith; we should always hope; and, above all, we should always love. We always should see that each student is an extraordinary sparkling diamond in the rough, not an undistinguished lump of coal. Then, and only then, will we reach out to help each dream the dream, to touch, to make a difference, to change the world, and to alter the future.

Louis

 

FOUR “YESES”

     The light of a new day was grappling with the darkness of an old one. You know, I love both the darkness of the night and light of day. In the former, I see, am awed, and am humbled by the majestic stars and the expanse of the universe; in the latter I see the path. As the gray sky turned blue, I thought of our saying at Chapel Hill that God is a Tarheel who made the sky Carolina Blue. Well, Monday, I had proof God is a Tarheel. Our cable, which had been out for five days because of the flooding, miraculously came back on ten minutes–ten minutes!!!–before the NCAA Championship game to let me watch my beloved Tarheels wallop the Spartans. Back to less serious stuff.

      Education should be awed by the stars and follow the path. It should deal with knowledge, critical thinking, and behavior, creating a web of who we are and what we know and what we feel and what we think with the purpose of what we do. They are what I call the “four ‘yeses.'” Yes, we should offer them the essential knowledge in their field of endeavor; yes, we should certainly help students acquire what we call “critical thinking skills;” yes, we help student learn to apply the knowledge and thinking skills in resourceful ways; and, yes, we also should help students express themselves, be in touch with their emotions, deeply reflect on their values, articulate a vision, acquire an authenticity, develop self-discipline and self-control, nurture responsibility, promote empathy, build cooperation, speak honestly to themselves and to others, maintain personal integrity, respect others, stick by principles in all they do, and to smile during the heaviest of weather.

      You see, contrary to what some have accused me of advocating, I’m not an “either/or” guy; I’m an “and” guy. My courses are overflowing with what most academics would call “information and skill content,” that is, the “know” and “think” of the classroom. My courses are replete with “inventive content,” that is, student ownership, autonomy, creativity, and imagination. My courses are also overflowing with what I call “character content,” the “who” and “who can become” of each student, as well as the “why” and “what should be done rightly done with” that professional, intellectual stuff of knowledge and skill. I would be the last to say that teaching students the skills and offering the information associated with their proposed profession should take a back seat. The intellectual, emotional, personal, and social aspects of an education all belong crowded in the old styled bench front seat like a bunch of Saturday night cruising teenagers. I have come to believe it is vital to help students use the knowledge and skill they acquire in a right way, for the enduring impact of what we educators do should be who the students become as persons as well as what they will know and what they will earn as professionals.

      We should help them understand that living by pretense is not living, uttering and passing on values are nowhere near as important as living values, merely surviving is not living, living a life without principles is not fulfilled living, seeking to only fit in is not standing out, sitting down is not standing up, trying only to get by won’t get much, measuring life by net worth is not a gauge of worthiness, and trying to be perfect is a futile and frustrating venture for any imperfect human being. Above all, we should help them feel and let explode into every nook and cranny in their personal and professional lives the white-hot energy, the special beauty, and the uniqueness that is each of theirs, that the best-paying job any of them can ever have is the job of just being an excellent example of being human and living a life overflowing with self-respect and respect for others. We should help them understand that their education should both benefit them and others as a whole, that virtue is a philosophy of living life all the time and everywhere rather than merely a strategy or tactic for getting ahead, that if they act with genuine love and authentic purpose in whatever it is they do, no obstacle will have the power to stop them; that if they are truly thankful for the smallest of things, they will experience the most magnificent of blessings; that if they walk through this world giving the care and attention each precious moment deserves, they will have untold riches in their lives; and, if they do what is right for both them and others, they will be a living expression of the sacredness they are.

      This way we have a shot at helping them acquire the greatest amount of knowledge and skill, the deepest sense of their own unique value and beauty, and apply all of who they are and what they know according to the highest morality and fullest of life. We should want our students at the time of graduation to want to paint their self-portraits with the rich, deep oils of honesty, enjoyment, fulfillment, authenticity, respect, purpose, and peace of mind rather than with the pale, pastel watercolors of isolating selfishness, restrictive anxiety, racing for material success, and being satisfied with temporary temporal pleasures; we should want them to be far better persons than they are professionals. If they are, they will become superb professionals who each day will be driven by the purpose and passion of the empowering perspective of making a positive difference, who will crush all excuses and rationales under the weight of their purpose and meet a challenge as an opportunity to improve their way through it rather than as a barrier to stop them in their tracks.

     After all, there is always another creative horizon only when there is an open mind, joyful heart, accepting soul, and a helping hand.

Louis

THE FIVE “Ps” OF TEACHING

      I remember from my childhood summer days of the late 1940s, when I was learning to fly fish in New York’s Beaver Kill near Livingston Manor and Roscoe. “Ole Tim,” as everyone called him, kept chiding me, “Do you want to be a fish catcher or a fisherman?” He kept telling me over and over and over again that fly fishing takes more than rods and flies and casting. I remember him saying something like, “Be here, in the stream. You can’t be in a hurry. You got to pay attention to the details of nature. You got to see the stream and listen to it, and open your eyes and heart to it.” He also told me over and over and over again that if I didn’t have passion, practice, persistence, patience, and, above all, peace of mind, all the rods and flies will be useless. He was talking about something deeper, higher, and greater than merely holding up a fish for a trophy picture. I didn’t understand him. I was only eight or nine. I just wanted to catch a fish. Now, I haven’t had a casting rod in my hands for nearly sixty years. Yet, I remember Ole Tim’s words. I don’t know why, but I do. And, now, as I seek to be an educational fisherman, I know what he meant. I know because what he said about fly fishing, what I now call “my five ‘Ps,'” I now see are essential for my teaching, maybe for everything in my life: passion, practice, persistence, patience, and, above all, peace of mind.

      Too many of us think there is only one “P” in teaching: pedagogy. But, now always hearing Old Tim’s rebuke in my heart and soul, saying, “Do you want to be a fish catcher or a fisherman,” I say, “Have all the pedagogical techniques and technologies you want, but if you don’t have those five ‘Ps’–passion, practice, persistence, patience, peace of mind–you’ll not touch the essence of teaching and learning, and make a difference.” Those “Ps,” not the techniques or technologies, work on us and are omens of our teaching. We’ve got to be there, focused intently and intensely on the “now” of each day, in the classroom. We’ve got to pay attention to the details of each student, see each of them, listen to each of them, understand each of them, and open our eyes and hearts to each of them. As I just told some colleagues, if spirituality is something that enriches the soul, teaches someone something about themselves and how they fit into the world around them, as well as hopefully making them a better person, then teaching and learning are forms of spirituality no less than Ole Tim was saying about fly fishing. These “Ps” are not chameleons; they’re not conditional; they don’t blow-in-the-wind or change-with-the-weather or change their color according to their surroundings. They steady us in the classroom no less than they do in the stream. They make the difference because what we take the time to understand makes a difference, because what we understand makes the difference in what we feel, what we think, what we say, and what we do. The more we tell ourselves to exercise those five “Ps” and commit to them, the more we move beyond our complaints and attempts to garner sympathy from others toward our vision, the more our labors become less laborious, the more we will smile, the more we reach out to embrace and touch each student, and, then, the nobler our future is likely to be. On the other hand, if we don’t tell ourselves “love it,” “be patient,” “it’s worth it,” “it takes practice,” “keep going,” “cool it,” “smile,” we give our ideals permission to corrode and erode into ordeals; and, as we do, out of resignation and/or frustration–maybe even anger–we’ll believe we need or deserve new deals. Then, we will become little more than educational fish catchers rather than accomplished and fulfilled fishermen.

Louis