ON THE INDIVIDUAL STUDENT

Well, the condom came off the class. No safe teaching in one class Friday. But, it was a “wow” class. I’ll just say that I had to put aside the planned beginning of a project presentation and let spontaneity kick in when a student asked a question at the beginning of the class about what was to her a critical “personal” situation in another class. All hell broke loose before I could open my mouth. Hands shot up, people called out, cliques of whispering side conversations began. I did more sitting back at watching and listening than participating and guiding. It was a cacophony of total and partial agreement and disagreement: African-Americans agreeing and disagreeing with each other; African-American ladies agreeing and disagreeing with non-African-American ladies; ladies agreeing and disagreeing with guys; African-American guys disagreeing with the non-African-American ladies; self-proclaimed liberals agreeing and disagreeing with self-proclaimed conservatives. I won’t belabor the point. No bloc voting or lock-stepping unanimity anywhere at anytime among anyone on any part of the issue. Everyone seemed to be that proverbial variation on a theme and exception to the rule. All weekend I thought about that discussion and the cacophony of responses in journals to it that cut across any lines anyone could draw: liked, disliked, excited, bored, asserting, questioning, interested, insightful, stunned, “no big deal,” “what a class,” “could care less,” “that was an important class,” “see no point.” I was particularly sensitive to what had occurred because of a brief discussion of “traditional” versus “real” diversity that I and my good friend, Todd Zakrajsek have been having on and off since Lilly South.. This is what I came up with about that spur-of-the moment fifty minutes as I hit the streets this pre-dawn morning.

First it was the philosophers; now it’s the scientists. They tell us that human beings are social animals, that we’re hotwired to connect. We have a natural desire for attachment. We instinctively feel and are affected, and sometimes mimic, even to a small extent, the mood, manners, and actions of the people around us. The result is that most people are pretty nice when they go eyeball-to-eyeball, one-on-one with each other, when they know each other’s names, when their faces are clearly seen, when they rip out labels, when they step out from being boxed in and separated by stereotypes to relate personally person to person, when they experience the joy of being in each other’s presence.

But, what is so often ignored on our campuses is that none of this applies when the natural individual heterogeneity is replace by an artificial homogeneity, when people become impersonal, when they relate to herded into corrals of generalities, when labels are slapped over and hide their names and faces, when the are converted into numbers, when they are bureaucratically identified as “units,” when their uniqueness is torn from their souls, when their spirit is amputated, when their blood is suck out from them, when they are de-boned into stick figures. It’s as if the operation of an entirely different part of the brain kicks in and triggers a different set of values. People become different people to each other. Warmth, love, awareness, caring, support, encouragement, joy, empathy, respect, sensitivity, closeness, and nurturing–those things that make life in the classroom worth living–are replaced by weeding out, coldness, insensitivity, distance, unawareness, indifference, and, as I teach in the Holocaust course, worse.

The result is that so many of us profs get student behavior so wrong; they step away from and don’t reflect on or think about or don’t get involved with the world of emotion, social relationships, personal lives, motives, morality, expectations, imagination, faith, and love; they surrender humanity and reality to statistics, charts, diagrams, as well as to distorting assumption and presumption; they drop their guard–if they ever had it up–against treating students as a consistent, constant homogenous group or collage of groups. Consequently, they commit a host of “attribution errors.” That’s why when it comes to “students” and what I call “traditional diversities” we have to find ways to replace mathematics with humanity, break down fences, destroy boxes, cast aside stereotype and generalities, and get beyond labels. After all, to be realistic, teaching is about the unique individual, whom I call “the real diversity.” That in itself makes teaching an art fraught with impromptu, messiness, inconvenience, discomfort, and uncertainty rather than a science directed by neat, structured, and guaranteed predictability.

To all my Jewish friends, Susie and I wish you a very happy Passover. And, to all our Christian friends, we wish you a happy Easter.

 Louis

A QUICKIE ON BOXES IN AND LABELS

      There is a Zen saying that in the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true. How true. It’s not much different on our campuses, is it. We love to herd students into boxes and slap labels on them out of our own minds, believe them to be true, and then act as if they are true. That makes us prone to committing a whole bunch of I’ll call “attribution errors.”

     Someone asked me at Lilly South what makes for a good and lasting marriage. I always jokingly reply to such a question, “Two words, ‘yes, ma’am.'” But, the more I think about it, the truth is that Susan and I have been married, without wandering eye or heart, for nearly 44 years because we’ve worked hard to get beyond the often misleading idea of each other to the real each other. So, too, we have to go beyond the idea of a student to the real student. And, we can only do that if we teach outside the box and go beyond the labels.

Louis

ON SEEING STUDENTS

       The students had been working on and presenting “The Song” project. You should have seen them! You should have read their original lyrics!! These are students who had surprised themselves because they had accepted, as they moaned and groaned, that they couldn’t write, that they couldn’t stand up in front of others and present, that they’re not creative, and that “it’s not in me.” Yet, when I took them out from their existing world, fraught with memories about their negative experiences and brought them into a new world of writing and presenting opportunities, wow! What imagination, what creativity, what talent, what potential, what courage, what risk-taking they displayed. A young lady, a first year student, whom I call Naomi, summed it up for a lot of her fellow students in a journal entry this week:

I’m learning a lot about myself and really appreciating everything in my life at this point. I owe a great deal of that to you, your class and your teaching style. Being in your class has kicked me out of my box that I had closed me in, has helped me really look at things I used to deem “impossible” as possible and realizing that I’ m not held down by anything or anyone.  I never thought I could be this way and do so well and overcome a lot of my fears and lack of self confidence.  Gosh, I’m learning to love and appreciate and believe in myself and what I can do more and more every day.  I see myself more as a pretty butterfly slowly coming out of my cocoon instead of being an ugly worm stuck inside that cocoon! It’s such an awesome new feeling!!  Bring on the scavenger hunt!  I am ready to take on any new challenges and expirences (sic) you throw at me.

      Some encouragement to keep on trucking, isn’t it. So, living my Teacher’s Oath, that I’ve tweaked as the suggestion of my dear friend, Dee Fink, I set Naomi and each students in all the class up for such achievement. I just told her and them that by the end of the semester, and I don’t care what their transcripts say, they will be honor students. All they have to do is to put in sweat equity, do what is important rather than what is convenient and comfortable, believe, and take the risk to do whatever has to be done. Now you might ask why did I tell them that. Well, it’s simple. I have what I call my circular “‘Can do’ pride campaign” that Naomi is apparently buying into.

       Belief in being capable is a matter of self-identity; from that particular identity comes seeing challenge as opportunity; from opportunity comes doing; from doing comes confidence; from that confidence comes belief; from that belief comes more doing; from…….

Having been reading Naomi’s daily journal entries, I know that she had started out at the beginning of the semester in a dreadful disbelieving and resisting cocoon made of the threads “you got to be kidding” and “I cannot do this” and “I’m thinking of dropping this course with this nutcase.” She is slowly breaking those thread. She is evolving slowly, very slowly, toward a feeling of confident and proud “I can do that.” Like Naomi, I want each student to have the opportunity to see that she or he can grow. Small step, by small step, by small step, project by project, issue paper by issue paper, journal entry by journal entry, reply to journal by reply to journal, I am growing students. I am engineering faith, belief, hope, belief, and love. I am making success visible and immediate. Small, especially eyeball-to-eyeball small talks, is anything but small. It’s extremely powerful in getting students to see that growth, development, improvement and achievement is within each of their grasp and under their control. I am guiding them away from a dark “that’s the way I am” stagnate view of themselves towards the sunrise of a growth “I can do that” way of seeing themselves.

       Because of my tactical purpose to achieve my strategic vision, I’m starting something new when they return from that silly Spring Break. I will no longer give an “F” when they don’t do something or give a clinical “R” when they have to redo something. Instead, I give them an “I have confidence in you” “NY” (not yet), be it a project, a conversation with a photograph, or an issue paper, or anything else. You see, to be a grower of people, I have to help them help themselves tear down old habits in order to help them help themselves build new habits. After all, learning is largely a process of unlearning. So, I am assisting them to feel “big” and to feel more determined. I am giving them “seeding” projects, “stretch” projects, “taking root” projects. I am cultivating an identity within each of them, a self-image, that triggers a break with their resignation or acceptance of mediocrity. When you build each of them up this way, they are more likely–no guarantees–to develop the strength to act, the will to act, to believe in themselves, to feel more determined, more ready, more self-motivated. I am helping them meet challenges as opportunities rather than as barriers, and to figure out that they can find ways to go over or get around or to go under or to push aside any obstruction. I want them to understand that abilities are like muscles: they can be built up with practice, that everything is hard before it’s easy, that they shouldn’t surrender just because they didn’t do it the first time, that there will always be that proverbial three steps forward and one step backward, that working at something makes you stronger, smarter, and more independent, and that it’s all under their control. And, I make sure they know it and feel it–every day.

      For me, it isn’t easy; isn’t guaranteed; isn’t convenient; isn’t at times comfortable. It takes a lot of my time and effort. It demands a lot of my determination, commitment, and perseverance. But, it’s not impossible! I can’t use the “it’s hard” or “it’s not me” excuse; I’ve got to stretch; I’ve got to take risks; I have to prevent me from boxing myself into a cocoon of routine; I’ve got to invest my sweat equity no less than I am asking to them do it. Sometimes it takes; sometimes it doesn’t. There are the Naomis and there aren’t. Nevertheless, I just won’t have that defeatist, culling out attitude that some students can and some cannot. I don’t breed a culture of failure. Imagine where Naomi would be if I did. No, I cultivate feelings that are rooted in self-confidence and self-esteem. But, to do that you have to know from whence each student is coming. We cannot see each student unless we look; we cannot look if we’re focused on ourselves, our own problems, and our own concerns. If we develop a sense of service, if we sharpen our sense of otherness, if we exercise our awareness, if we go beyond our narrow concerns, if we accept for a moment that it’s not all about us, if we realize that it’s all about them, if we understand that the route to reach our own unique potential is when it resonates with the unique potential of each student, we will have the potential to see more Naomis than we thought existed; we will see more amazing possibilities and greater potentials in each student we otherwise could not have dreamed of.

       Now, they’re about to go off on their Scavenger Hunt Project. More moans and groans. But, they’re not quite as loud as before.

Louis