WHO ARE THEY?

She had struggled, but in the end it was to no avail. Was she disinterested?  No, although her lethargy said otherwise.  Did she have any potential?  Of course, although you couldn’t have guessed by the way she acted in class..  Did she make an effort?  Yes, herulcean, but not in the way you would ordinarily think.  Was she enthused.  Yes, but came across as apathetic.  Was she incapable?  Well, no, but no one could have guessed she was really incapacitated.  Was she unable?  Yes, in many ways, but not in any of the ways most would have concluded.  Only I knew of her inner struggles that were creating obstacles to her performance.  I saw it in her eyes; I read it in her body language.  I heard it in her voice.  More importantly, I was reading her daily journal entries in which she poured out her heart.  She wouldn’t talk with her friends outside class.  Members of her community in class did not know what was going on.  She wouldn’t communicate with them or work with them; she wasn’t focused.  I told them, all I could tell them, was that she had “stuff” tearing at her heart.  They did not know why she always had a distant glaze in her eyes.  One community wrote me that she seemed to always have a tear ready to form in her eye.  I told him that I had his back and temporarily to pick up her slack.  I gave her slack.  I engaged her.  I supported and encouraged her.  I told her she could contact me at any time if she needed to talk.  You see, her father had died of brain cancer a couple of weeks before Christmas and her “ex step-mother” has disowned her immediately after the funeral.  At eighteen, she did not know how to cope;  she needed someone with whom to talk; she could only talk with me through her daily journal;  I replied; I tried to help her cope; I shared myself with her.  She wouldn’t let me break confidence to ask for help in helping her to cope; she wouldn’t seek help on her own to cope; she rejected my offers to help her seek help; in the end, she couldn’t cope.  She didn’t cry; she was sad, angry, numb, hurt, lost.   She felt she was dishonoring her father by trying to get on with her life; she felt she was displaying a disrespect of her father by coming back to school.  Others  assumed, she was one in the category of “don’t belongs.”  In reality, she hadn’t given herself enough time to grieve, no one had.  After a few weeks, she abruptly picked up, stopped coming to class, and wouldn’t answer my e-mails or texts or phone calls.  I hear she left school.  Others thought, “good riddance.”  I knew otherwise.

This brings me to two articles I was reading in the Harvard Business Review by John Kotter and Teresa Amabile.  They found that in business, efforts to change people or to help them change themselves, despite all the talk, efforts, and money spent, are more often than not doomed to failure.  I submit that is just as true in academia when it comes to both faculty and students.  The reason for the high failure rate to implement change is that leaders don’t know what they’re doing because not only are they’re trying to do something to someone who really has to do for her/himself, they really don’t know to whom they’re trying to do anything.  So, unknowingly, they fall back on stereotypes; they grope and fire shots aimlessly in the dark.

Does that makes sense?  Let me put it this way.  Do we professors really know–really know–who each student is?  Or, are we guessing, assuming, presuming, stereotyping, generalizing, “attributing,” and blindly firing away?  Are we trapped by perceptions, stereotypes, generalizations, and assumptions trapped inside our heads and hearts?  Amabile’s would answer these three questions with:  no, yes, yes.  That means, if we accept that at the core of education learning is change, our teaching is not going to be lastingly effective.  And, because we can’t adapt to the individual needs of individual students whose needs we don’t know, we can’t make modifications and adjustments; and, because we can’t really adapt, our attempts more often than not will wither, fail, and die.  And, of course, we throw up our hands in frustration and resignation with a “these students today….; and, we lay all the blame on the student.  The truth is that in the classroom, as everywhere else, we pay so much attention to visible activity, and we pay so little, if any, attention to that one critical, not looked for and thus not as easily seen element in performance, that driving force of performance:  inner emotion.  Any workplace, including the classroom, is emotion-driven; emotions, and subsequent attitudes, have enormous impact on what the jargon calls “outcomes.”  That is true for learning; it is true for teaching.  Emotion-activity is a cycle during which influences in any place and in any manner and at any time can have a positive or negative influence on feeling activity, thought activity, social activity, and physical activity.

Combining Kotter’s and Amabile’s studies, I ask: if we’re so concerned with the state, nature, and level of student performance and achievement, if we are so concerned with retention, are we, should we be, as concerned with the attitude and emotion that are the driving and directing energies of student performance?  If we’re so concerned with teaching outcomes, are we, should we be, as concerned with the attitude and emotion that are the driving and directing energies of professorial performance?  Most of us, regrettable, would say that is not our job.  I say it must be.  Our personal, family, professional, and social history is not in the past; it is present all around and inside us.  People feel and think differently because they have different stories.  How do we break out from our ensnaring, stereotyping, attributing habits of mind and heart?  How do we read each student’s history?  How do we acquire an empathy for each student?  One answer is to understand that we are in the “people business” as well as in the “information and skill business.”  Another answer is that we have to voraciously gather new information about and insight into each student and use it in ways most of us don’t or don’t want to bother imagining.

I assert that most of us, when we enter a classroom we may, at best, look at and are influenced by the outer trappings of students, if we look at all.  But, even if we look, we don’t see their inner workings.   And, agreeing with Teresa Amabile, from my experience, we’re ignoring a crucial factor in a student’s performance:  what’s going on inside that student.  Students are human as are we.  They don’t check their hearts and minds at the door any more than do we.  They don’t close the book on their histories.  Like us, they are a mass of emotions, perceptions, experiences, assumptions, conclusions, purposes, suspicions, fears, likes and dislikes, can and can’t, wants and don’t wants, do and don’ts, memories, pains, beliefs about themselves and others to which they react and which makes sense of what’s going on.  This inner nexus creates a dynamic that impacts on performance and achievement.   They, like we, are experiencing the push and pull of thoughts and emotions of satisfaction or irritation, suredness and confusion, answer and question, direction and drift, love or hate, accomplishment or frustration, joy or sadness, focus or distraction, energy and fatigue, and a host of other influences.  All these intertwine to affect their motivation, perceptions from moment to moment, relationships, and performance.  There’s the inner play of family, friends, lovers intertwining to affect their motivation from moment to moment—with consequences for your performance that day.

We need a level of access beyond that of an outside and distant observer. But, how?  Like Amabile’s methods, I rely on the classic form of the personal journal. Every day, each student sends me a journal entry, for my eyes only.  Each day, I read upwards of revealing 150 to 180 entries.  This way I see how they feel and think, and get an inkling into why they act or don’t act as they do.  I see them struggling to juggle the family, academic, financial, and social pressures and demands acting on them.  Very often the detail, richness, and intensity of their entries, revealing the inner working of their lives, gives away the extent to which the people and events of the day are influencing their thoughts and emotions and actions.

One last word, especially to those who say none of this is part of their academic job description or they don’t have the time.  We can talk of cognitive intelligence and emotional intelligences and social intelligence.  We can talk of Howard Gardners multiple intelligences.  But, people do not exist in separated emotional, intellectual, and physical compartments.  There is nothing simple about people or any one component of a person.  “State of mind,” “state of ‘heart,'” “state of connection” all interact in complex ways to have an impact on the “state of doing.”  No one, you, me, or a student, has a chance of being understood unless we pay close attention to all components, especially emotion, and their interactions.

Louis

A QUICKIE ON WHAT IS A LIFE WORTH

Couldn’t sleep.  Went out early, real early, about 4:30.  As I walked the dark, pre-dawn streets this morning, I realized that stillness and quiet are important to me.  Quiet and stillness, for me, don’t mean no sound.  A bird’s distant chirp or the running water in the koi pond, even the rhythmic thuds of my walkers, add to the silence; they don’t shatter it.  Rather, they help me go to an inner refreshing place rarely found in the helter-skelter of daily life.  Walking for me, then, is something of both a physical and spiritual exercise, a near-hour of mobile Zen type of meditation.  This morning, in that quiet and stillness, I was thinking of traumatic personal and family troubles students had written about in their journals, how this was  impacting on their performances, their need to be heard, and their search for someone to help them deal with it all.  Because of these entries, I was feeling the complexity of humanity in education.  Being human is not easy.  Treating each student as a sacred, noble, individual, complex human being is not easy.  As I passed our new two 350 seat classroom lecture hall addition to our Education Building that was built as a “strategic option” in terms of “immediate needs,” I thought of cost-benefit analysis.  This jutting wing is hailed as a transformation.  It is a transformation I really don’t like, although we’ve been heading in this direction for a few years with smaller “super classes.”   Having had lunch with two wonderful young people on Friday discussing possibilities and options for their future, this edifice for me is contrary to everything I hold dear, a structured violation of my Teacher’s Oath.  I wondered, in these demanding economic times, what a human life, the life of a student, is worth?  What is the financial value we assign to a human life?  It seems to me that life is less valuable the more we intellectualize and stereotype and the less we truly humanize.  So, how do we enumerate the cost of a life stripped of its uniqueness and individuality thrown into cold, uncaring anonymity of a faceless crowd.  What is the full and true cost on the future because immediate remedies would be too costly.  I know, I’m indulging myself in ideals.  I know, it’s the tensioned balancing act between the demands of society as a whole and the rights and needs of the individual, especially here in the States where our culture sanctifies the individual.  I know, as Spock said in The Wrath of Khan, “logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few…or the one.”   The problem is that logic also clearly shows that the “many” is composed of a bunch of “ones.”  I know, it’s the struggle between “I can’t pay the rent” and “You must pay the rent.”   I just wondered, as I’ve said before, if we took the too easy, low educational road.  I wondered if we really realize how much we’ve paid the piper?  I wondered if we’re sending signals that what goes on in those “super-duper” classes that too often are deemed to be “non-professional” doesn’t truly matter.  I wondered if believing we are in the mere factory-ized information transmission business rather than in the human-nurturing and value-adding business influenced decisions.  Remembering a question I heard asked by a father of a University ambassador about faculty-student ration in classes–and was told it was 22 to 1–I wondered what if it was MY son or daughter, grandson or granddaughter, who was one of those outweighed “few,” and why are we so ready to sell someone else’s “one” so short and lower our valuations of his or her life in such a trade-off?  I sighed, and walked on, glad that I didn’t have to make those hard, life-affecting uneducational financial and administrative decisions, knowing it will be a cold day in hades before anyone gets me at the front of one of those uneducational corrals.

Louis

BRAIN RESEARCH ON HOLY

Do you know which day is a good day?  Having survived cancer and a massive brain hemorrhage, my answer is simple:  every day.  Anyone of us can make sure it is; we do have the feeling and noticing power to do that; and, it is such a waste if we don’t make it matter.  For me, in the most life-giving, richest, deepest, highest sense, every day is a holy ‘the only day we have” day.  By that I mean every day is a celebrating “here” day, and “here” is “now,”  and “now” is “new,” and “new” is “beginning,” and “beginning” is “replenishment.” Every day is an adventurous “I’ve never done it” time; every day is a curious “let’s see what happens” day.  Every day is so special,so extraordinary, we should gratefully proclaim, TGIT:  Thank Goodness Its Today!  Seeing each day as a “holy” day, puts the breaks on living each day as a bland, almost unseen “just another.”   It prevents us from drifting off course into boring ordinariness, mindless routine, and dreary “normality.”  It protects us from what Studs Terkel called “‘the daily humiliation’ of work.”  It sharpens our senses and keeps our eyes on the prize.

And, what is the prize on which we should keep our eyes?  Well, that has to do with stripping away the whole process of pretending we live in an unemotional,  cold, objective, impersonal, intellectual, and professional world.  It has to do with bringing to the surface the often shunted frail, fallible, emotional, and social human side of things so much of which, like an iceberg, lies below the surface.  It has to do with our real identity as individual human beings.  It has to do with seeing that we’re feeling and connecting people, and not just thinking people.    So, for me, “holy” is an attitude and feeling that uncover the chinks in the armor; it can very often unmask, reveal, confront, threaten, frighten, and maybe even hurt.   “Holy” requires initial and courageous steps of releasing and leaving behind.  I say courageous because the road ahead is unknown.  Standing on the threshold is both frightening and thrilling, hesitating and beckoning.   If, however, you can heed the call to be the hero of your own journey, the journey can also release you from a prison and take you on a pilgrimage to a “feel good” place.  Trust me, I know.  I’ve been there and I am still on the way.  And, what a way it is!  It’s a way that stirs awe and wonder; it’s a path that transforms; it a journey that arouses compassion;  it’s a call to action; it weaves connection; it arouses meaning and purpose; it intensifies faith, hope, and love.  To come to see each day as a “holy” day, is a “moving journey.”  It is like a pilgrimage from our surface living into our depths on which we have to be constantly on the go as we struggle to go from a chronicle of “doing-ness” and an inventory of “having-ness” to an understanding of “being-ness.”  “Holy” asks for honest answers from us to four simple yet profoundly enriching questions:  Why am I here?  How should I live?  How can I make this time rich for me and others?  How can I make this a better place?  Exploring these four questions can lead to an intense mindfulness, aliveness, alertness, attentiveness, awareness, and otherness.  They can give us the strength to lift our real selves out of our apparent selves.  They can allow us to soar to a deep level of generosity, purpose, gratitude, service, respect, dignity, satisfaction, significance, fulfillment–and true happiness.   As we can do that, we become real persons; and, when we are real people, we can only see real people around us in all their richness.   But, that has potential only to the extent we can learn to balance the “primitive” brain with the “new” brain.  That high wire act has to do with consciously and explicitly forging the intimate and inseparable and interdependent and interacting processes and skills of thinking, feeling, and connecting–what goes by the names of Cognitive Intelligence, Emotional Intelligence, and Social Intelligence–into an alloy of wholesome oneness.  It has to do with the art of “every day” living for all our days.

It’s another way of the golden rule: to treat others as we would treat ourselves and have them treat us, to help others, and share what we have. It is a matter of enjoying life, being creative and vital, and being good news for others.  The underlying idea is that we are all hot-wired to connect and that another person’s happiness is therefore also our happiness.  Now, this is not what some dismissively and destructively ridicule as “new age fuzzies,” “psycho-babble,” “self-help dribble,” “touchy-feely nonsense.”  It does makes sense.  Even more than that, this is the result of the latest brain-based research.  In a nutshell, it’s what the web of Cognitive, Emotional  Social Intelligence is all about:  the intertwined processes and skills of knowing yourself, thinking for yourself, being yourself, and giving yourself away to others.  It is learning how to ask another set of questions and living the answers:  “Who am I to me?”  “Who am I to you?”  “Who am I to us?”   It has to do with realizing that we express and convey our feelings and attitudes not just with our lips, but with our vocal tones, eyes, face, and body as well.  So many of us love to discuss cognitive skills, but get so nervous and often defensive when it comes to emotional and social skills.  Yet, we’re all about an integrated intellectual, emotional, and social journey that goes inward, upward, and outward.  Ask Daniel Goleman of Rutgers, Richard Boyartiz of Case Western Reserve, James Fowler of UC San Diego, Nicolas Christakis and Michael Norton of Harvard, Stephen Brown of Michigan, Dale Miller of Stanford,  Ed Deci and Richard Ryan of Rochester, Jonathan Haidt of Virginia, Gregory Berns of Emory, and a host of other researchers.  They tell us that as we learn about and consciously practice and coordinate all three intelligences with each other, we will find that nothing lights us up more, nothing lights up our brain more, nothing makes us more satisfied, nothing makes us more fulfilled; nothing makes us feel more significant, nothing makes us happier, nothing makes us more productive, than closing the gap between us and others and helping others help themselves.  I guess being selfless is very selfish,  But, it’s a good selfish.  It’s a process of “self-forgetfulness.” It is a sacred pilgrimage that requires constant inner and outer workouts.  But, to reach that destination there’s no express bullet train to hop on.  In an age of high speed internet and fast moving busy-ness patience, quietitude, reflection, steadfastness, endurance, perseverance, rest and relaxation, and meditation are the way stations on that journey.   But, because the journey is unending, you never can stop working on yourself unless you want to stop.  So, dedication, steadfastness, endurance, perseverance, and commitment are essential as well.   These travels prime our brains to be unconditionally nonjudgmental, respectful, nurturing, and supportive; to be encouraging rather than punitive and threatening, to afford others a sense of purpose and passion, and to allow others to have their voice heard.   It puts us high in the clouds and close to the ground.  It makes for living a richer, deeper, more authentic, more energized, more alive, and fuller r journey endering of your own life rather someone else’s; it makes for a gentler, less anxious, more hopeful, more generous, more loving, more meaningful way of being and living.

Now, what does this have to do with teaching and learning?  Think about it; think about it long and hard and deep—today and everyday.  And, as you do, as you struggle to learn how to spin a web of cognitive, emotional, and social intelligence, you’ll find that you’re weaving a pattern of authenticity, respectfulness, significance, and fulfillment.  And, then, you will begin creating your own “holy” day each day.

Louis

THREE BRAIN-BASED PEDAGOGIES

Cramped somewhere over North or South Carolina in a metal cigar tube they call a regional jet.  Coming back from an “interesting” Lilly-South conference.  I say “interesting” because I had arrived in Greensboro, NC, last Thursday feeling out of sync.  I’m not sure I know why.  Maybe it was all the stuff I had to do for the students while at the conference before they could work on their Dr. Seuss project over the weekend.  Or, maybe it was guilt about leaving Susan and not being there to help ease the unending pain of her degenerative discs.   I was in that funk when I presented my session on my “Teacher’s Oath.”  I thought I was terrible.  Certainly, I wasn’t on top of my game.  I just felt I wasn’t in the game.  Apparently the people in the audience didn’t think so, but I did.  Then, miracles, and I don’t use that word loosely, slowly began to happen as I slowly intersected with people.   First, there was the conference staff.  Neat people who threw me a challenge.  It has become a tradition that whenever I attend a Lilly conference, I color my name tag with an original artsy design.  This time they wanted me to come up with a different design for each day.  That seemingly a “no big deal” test turned out to be a big deal.  It turned on my creative and imaginative juices.  Then, there were the comforting, encouraging, and uplifting words, smiles, and gestures of all my friends.  And finally, I deliberately went to a Saturday morning session on dreaming big dreams by my friend, Bill Johnson, that I knew would help me lift myself up before my next session with Tamara Rosier on Social Intelligence, what I call “brain-based heart and soul pedagogy.”  It did, and the return of what Scott Simkins called my “mojo,” had unforeseen consequences

It was breakfast on Sunday.  The conference crowd had thinned.  I sat at a table with a professor, in his late forties or early fifties.  We introduced ourselves.  He found out I was an “old timer;” I discovered he was a “newbie.”  We talked.  It wasn’t long before he told me why he had come to this conference. Our conversation went something like this.

“I came over from industry and I’ve teaching for two years, but I don’t really know anything about it.  I know my nutrition, but not how to really teach it and make students learn it.  So, I came to make my teaching easier and simpler, and to find out how to cover more material.  Why do you come here year after year?  I would think by now you have it down pat.”

“Not really.  I’m like kudzu.  I never stop growing,” I careful answered after reading his face and tone of voice.  “Like you, I come so I can learn how to make my teaching be more significant and how I can make a greater positive difference in someone’s life.”

“I don’t want to make a difference,” he surprisingly snapped.

“But, we do whether we know it or not, or want to or not.  We always come into contact with someone, and there are consequences to those contact points,” I consciously answered softly, carefully choosing my words and tone.

More snappishness.  “I just want to teach nutrition.  I’m not interested in changing the world.”

“Neither am I.  I’m just interested in changing my world.  To do that, I’ve come to believe we’re all in a people business that happens to deal with information transmission and thinking skill development, and to help students learn how and to what end to use that information and those skills in their personal, social, and professional lives.  If I’m right, we all are life changers for others–and ourselves–whether we want to be or not.  The  question is what kind of influence do we want to have and will have on that change.  After all, you’re here to change how you do things.

“Don’t tell me what to do!” he suddenly barked.

I quickly backed off.  “I’m not. I can’t. I won’t. I’m just sort of talking to myself, reminding ‘me’ about what I do and sharing it.”

“Well, what are you trying to do?” he asked in a much more calmer voice.

“Touch that one student.  Help her or him help her- or himself become the person she or he is capable of becoming.”

“Do you really think that matters?  One student.  It sounds all so small and inefficient.”

“It matters to that one student, and there’s nothing small about her or him.  That one student is someone’s daughter or son sent to be in my care.  She or he is a part of the future.  I don’t believe for one moment that one moment, one thing, one event, and especially one person in one class is little.  So, I struggle not to live a life that is small and teach a class in a small way?  No class is just another class to me.  To do that, I come here to learn how to better do that.”

“I never thought about it in that way.  How do you do that?” he quietly asked.  His tone had changed; his facial expressions had changed; his body language had changed.  It was as if he wanted to care about the students, but because he didn’t know how, he defensively had fallen back on what he did know:  talking about nutrition.  I subtly glanced at my watch in a way he wouldn’t notice.  A session I wanted to attend was about to start, but I had a gut feeling that I was being told to let who I deeply am carefully break through, sensitively show myself, and tenderly make myself felt.  Deciding to follow the nudging of my soul, I stayed seated.  “Here, read this,” I said with an caring tone he cold not miss, as I pulled out a copy of my “Teacher’s Oath” out from my conference bag.   After a few silent minutes, I asked, “In one sentence, what do you think it all says?”

“It says I should do no harm.  It also seems to say teaching is a call to service. It says each student is important.  It says that teaching and learning is more than pedagogy.  And, it says that if I focus on my teaching, on myself, their learning will take care of itself.”  There was a surprise, almost an excitement, certainly a discovery in his voice and gestures.

“Well, that’s five sentences, but I’ll accept them,” I joked.  “Now, you almost hit it.  Teaching  and learning is about pedagogy.  I mean you’ve got to know the stuff of your discipline, and teaching that stuff, having students learn that stuff, is about acquiring and using instructional strategies, what we call ‘pedagogies.’  But, it’s really about the organic intertwining and interdependence of three distinct yet inseparable pedagogies dealing with the mind, heart, and soul.”  His eyes grew intent; he leaned over slightly.  “We talk about needing and teaching thinking skills.  Let’s call it ‘cognitive intelligence.’  But, there’s also feeling skills.  Let’s call it ’emotional intelligence.’  And finally, there’s connecting people and communications skills.   Let’s call that ‘social intelligence.’  Feeling plus connecting plus thinking equals learning as well as teaching.  When we talk about brain based research and pedagogy, too many of us focus solely on the last of the three skills, on the thinking skills.  But, the driving energy of that skill, to get the most from using that skill, require we know about and use the other two as well, for both teaching and learning:  self-confidence, self-esteem, self-respect, creativity, imagination, courage to take risks, not fearing mistakes, learning from mistakes, not feeling alone, and so on.  Each has its own pedagogy; some of it we’ve known for a long time; and, each is verified by the latest brain-based research.  And, the research says that as we use these intelligences in coordination with each other our achievement levels increase.  It’s like Craig Nelson said Friday, we’ve got to read the literature.”

“It all sounds so ‘fuzzy.'”

“It’s the latest science,” I firmly countered.  If someone wants to talk about or have a conference theme about ‘evidence based’ teaching or ‘brain based teaching,’ they have to talk not just about brain anatomy and cognitive intelligence and consequent strategies, but about emotional intelligence and social intelligence with their strategies as well.”

“It all sounds so hard and complicated.”

“That’s because its about people, and we people are so darn inconsiderate;  we’re so complicated and complex, and individual, nothing comes easy or simply.”

“By the way, I’ve got a challenge for you,” he said suddenly.  “You reduce this page long Oath into one sentence.”

“Damn,” I thought to myself.  “Give me a sec.”  I thought for a minute or so.  Then, I said, “You and I matter, and what we do matters.”

We talked and talked and talked.  I offered him my “angel strategy” with which to experiment social and emotional intelligence, and I gave him a quick list of a few sources to look at:  Deci, Burns, Doyle, Boyatzis, Goleman, Dweck, Freire, Gardner, Senge, Amabile, Csikszentmihalyi, Pink.  I even threw in some Jack Kornfield and Jon Kabat-Zinn.  I had lost track of time.  Well, I really hadn’t.  I just had a gut feeling that this was one of those “call to service” moments.  Finally, when I felt the time was right, I told him that I had to be rude and run to catch the last half of a session.  As I got up, he asked quietly, “Can I keep this copy of your Oath to look over?”

“Sure, and buzz me any time you want if you want to talk some more,” I said with a smile as I gave him my cell number and e-mail address, feeling that this may just be one of those It’s a Wonderful Life intersections.

So, here I am heading for an inevitable wait at Atlanta’s airport before I’m in Susan’s arms thinking and feeling all this, to which was added the impact of a great conversation with Scott Simkins in his car at the Greensboro airport as we parked by the departure curb.  When talking about learning, lots of people are jumping on the brain research band wagon as well they should, and I’m one of them.  But, to be or not to be is not just a matter of to think or not to think.  The rub, as Hamlet would say, is that it’s also to feel or not to feel and to connect or not to connect.  The rub is that we, our brains, are hard-wired to think, feel, and connect.  To ignore the spirit and the heart, is not getting at the heart of an education and sucking the spirit out of it. Why do we love to utter but so often ignore that educational adage, “Students don’t care what you know; they want to know that you care?”  What do we think that means?  It’s okay to be unemotional, to be detached and disconnected, to be cold and distant?  It’s okay to be a negative pathological agent rather than a positive therapeutic one?  It’s okay to be an infecting toxin rather than a curing serum?  It’s okay to be an frightening weeder rather than a caring nurturer?  No, to learn how to make that connection with people whom we don’t know on a emotional and social level, as well as on an intellectual one, offers untold possibilities to help people and to change lives in amazing ways.  The conference staff, my friends, that exchange with that professor, as well as the conversation with Scott, once again taught me that whether we like it or not, we have to have an intense awareness and otherness, realizing that every moment of everyday puts us in a It’s a Wonderful Life situation.  We have to be always on the alert, for we never know when these “calls to service” appear.  But, we do have to be ready to do, give, listen, see, say, touch, react, interact.  You have to have the skills not just to think, but to feel and connect as well.  Only then, can we help others help themselves learn, change, and grow.  Only then can we learn, change, and grow.  Fleeting moments and slight gestures they may be, but lasting impact they have; they can appear as mere ripples and have influences of tsunami proportions.

Think about it.  Someday, somewhere, someone is a link in a vital chain because one person was there and because another was as well.  That’s what my “Teacher’s Oath” is all about.  It’s really a contract for living.  A sacred contract.  It’s the standard by which I evaluate myself.  It guides the way I should feel about, think about, and act toward people.  It guides me to smile, to see, to listen, to give, to help, to engage, to reach out, to respect, to support, to encourage, to uplift, to empathize, to love, to have hope for, to have faith in.  It is unconditional.  It is non-judgmental.  It gives me a deep trust that there are great reasons in every small encounter, and because there are great reasons, no small encounter is small.   And, if I didn’t live the Oath, I may, probably will, miss a crossroad, a contact, a connection, that could have changed someone’s life, maybe even mine.  That’s a heartbreaking thought.  It’s sad to think that when I was needed, was wanted, I failed to be around and that I didn’t show up. It would be tragic if I missed an opportunity to change someone’s life.  I, you, we cannot let that happen.  It leaves a hole in the fabric of the future.

In an academic culture that is too often egocentric, there is a huge threshold to cross when we enter that classroom.  It is not about me, it’s about them, maybe us.  As teachers we are a candle for each of them. Wasn’t it the Bard who said small candles cast light far and wide?  That’s what teaching is all about:  chances for our candles to shine.  As we collectively light our thinking, feeling, and connecting candles, the darkness recedes, revealing wondrous things.  Everything else is commentary.  I think many of us, like this professor, ignore these prompts to act or are afraid of them or reject them or don’t know how to respond to them.  There are a lot of reasons for how each of us reacts to these subtle prompts.  My experience is that if I’m ready for them, my anxiety and fear level decreases immeasurably.  I am at peace.  I don’t worry; I don’t complain; I don’t push; I don’t rush; I don’t impose; I don’t control; I don’t stress out; I don’t fear. I am willing.  I don’t sweat it.  It’s like pulling in your oars and quietly letting the current carry you along.  Anyway, don’t tell me that miracles don’t happen.  I came to Lilly on a low and am leaving on a soaring high. Lilly has worked it’s magic once again.

Louis

SPIRITUAL BOTOX

Yesterday, I was in a curious mood, starting to dive deep into me, as I slowly sipped a latte at the University Union yesterday. A colleague sat down with me.

“You look like you’re way off somewhere,” she observed and kind of jogged me.

“Just getting on my spiritual ‘game face,” I soberly replied.

She had a curious look on her face.  I think the word, “spiritual” raised her eyebrows.  “‘Game face?'” she asked.

I told her I was getting in the mood, into my groove, as I always do, to present a couple of sessions with a friend of mine at the Lilly conference on teaching around the whats, hows, and whys of my “Teacher’s Oath.”   Then, I told her how I was also “feeling” more than “thinking” about how some of the reactions of students in the Holocaust class who were obviously were really touched by the presentation of a child of a survivor.

“But, will those feelings last and have a lasting impact on the students?” she asked.  It was obvious she had something on her mind.

“Don’t know,” I slowly said.  I paused.  Then, I said, “You want me not to try?  You know, from nothing comes nothing.  Anyway, if we don’t reach out to effect lives, what the heck are we here for?  Just to coldly transmit information in those new 350 seat corrals we call ‘lecture halls’ where we treat students blandly like a herd of nameless cattle?  Not much ‘fun,’ or meaning, in that.”

Then, out of the blue, she said, “You always talk of it being enough to just touch one student, but I can’t believe it does much.”

“It does a heck of a lot to that one student,” I softly answered, thinking about the story of the man and the stranded starfish on the beach.

“Still, I can’t believe it’s really worth all that time and effort without knowing.  The odds are so against you.”

I felt like saying, “As Yoda might say, ‘And that is why you don’t.’  But, I held off.  Instead, I told her, “Look, odds don’t determine anything, especially when I rig my game.”

“What you mean, ‘rig my game?”

“My, your thoughts, actions, words, focus, commitment and persistence are what create the results we get.  When things are not working out, double down with being positive. I don’t base anything I do on how things have been, or even how they presently are.  I base everything on how I would like things to be.  I also roll my dice weighted by a little joy and a lot of significiance. After all, we’re much more effective when we’re enjoying the moment we’re in and believing how crucial it is.  Negative thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and assumptions create negative experiences, positive ones create positive experiences.  What you see depends on what you’re looking for.  Assumptions guide your perceptions, and your perceptions determine the way you feel and think, how you feel and think determine how you respond to each situation and person. You just have to have an intense awareness to make sure those assumptions are not working against you and others.  Get a new set of assumptions like I started doing after my epiphany in ’91 and the same old situation looks completely different. I suddenly saw and still see a whole new world of opportunities and possibilities.  It was like starting a series of spiritual botox treatments that began to take out all the wrinkles in my soul.  I found myself changing how I feel about teaching, how I think about students, and the things I do in class.  I stopped “doing to” students and started “doing with” and “doing for” them.  I started to learn who each was.  And, as I let go of my old assumption and perceptions, I felt more purposeful, meaningful, and empowered as I chose new ones.  I impishly say, I evolved from a pontificating professor to a loving teacher.”

“But what about all of my colleagues who tell me that I’m wasting my time and ridicule you behind your back for wasting your time?  They say that a lot of things you talk about aren’t our job?”

“I think it is my job.  I don’t let them set rules for me that satisfies them.  They have an agenda, and it’s their agenda!  I don’t let them impose it on me and make it mine.  That’s why I’ll never walk into one of those super pr super-duper classrooms.  They’re so uneducational, so archaic, and so contrary to all we’re learning about how we learn.  I just think that people who say you’re not doing much should get out of the way of what you’re struggling to accomplish or even accomplishing.  Safety isn’t the name of the game.  Security isn’t the name of the game.  Meaningfulness means taking risks.  And, it’s worth it.  Significance and making a positive difference are the names of the game.”

“That sounds so inefficient.”

“Ah, you sound like a factory manager.  This University is not a factory.  We’re not mass producing tin cans. Well, we are, but we shouldn’t.  It’s effectiveness, not efficiency, that counts.  I know, it’s not cost effective.  But, we’re not a factory.”

“Come on.  Do you really think you’ve changed and altered all that much?  It seems so senseless and useless, so meaningless, and so futile.  I mean how much do you really think you do?”

“Starts a ripple, if nothing else.  You want only earthquakes?  Go to Indonesia.  You know, the ground does not have to quiver to do something that’s earthshaking.  You want guaranteed guarantees?  Buy a refrigerator.  The Talmud says that if you save a life it is as saving the world.  So, I say:  touch one–just one–and you ultimately touch all; change one thing and you eventually change everything.  It’s chaos theory’s butterfly effect.  It may not be immediate, dramatic, obvious, remembered, or even visible and known; but, we each touch and shape so many lives of so many around us in so many hidden, unexpected, and ways.  Don’t get frustrated with what might be slowness or smallness; be frustrated if you don’t have an impact on anyone.  But, of course you do, whether for better or worse.  That’s my gripe with all these teaching evaluations.  We’re futurists!  We’re in the ‘really don’t know’ business.  The reality is that if I plant an acorn today, knowingly or not, someone will get the shade from the mighty oak long after I’m dead.  What we do is a continuation of chain reactions of feelings, attitudes, values, actions that started long ago.  You know, I am today the direct result of all those paths, often countless and hidden words and gestures and actions, I crossed during my 70 years of yesterdays.  Senseless?  Useless?  Meaningless?  Futile?  Not on your life!  I load my dice with positive words “purposeful,” “meaningful,” “marvelous,” “significant.”  I rig my actions with believing, caring, hopeful, faithful, loving.  Touch one student and you’re one of those paths impacting on someone’s tomorrows.  Touch one student near you and you will touch others far beyond you in time and space.  Touch one student, just one, and you’ve changed the world and altered the future.  Now, that is earthshaking.  That’s shattering.  ‘Spiritual botox!’  I like that term.  I think I’ll use it at Lilly this weekend.”

Go whomever Sunday!

Louis