TENDENCY AND CONFUSION IN HIGHER EDUCATION

This reflection may get me into trouble.  But, here goes.

A few days ago, I was sitting at the Union struggling with a hard, wrinkled, overcooked, sorry-I-ordered hotdog for lunch as I waited in my “office” to talk with a student.  I always talk with students on their turf rather than in my department office.  Anyway, I have to admit that I was in a funk.  The semester was coming to an end which is always bittersweet for me.  But, I was really thinking about Susie, about all the pain she has been suffering in her shoulder, about her impending surgery next week, about the painful rehab she’ll have to endure for months to come, and about how in the coming weeks I was going to willingly pull all-nighters in order to be her caring slave while pulling together final grades.

I glanced up to see if Trissia had arrived.  She hadn’t, but my eye caught a young man, dressed in a spiffy coat and tie.  I didn’t take much notice.   I did when he suddenly stopped, turned, and approached me.  I quickly learned that he was a member of the faculty whom I did not know.  Heck, I had never seen him before.  Anyway, he stood there and without introducing himself, looked down on me as it turned out both literally and figuratively, and said, ‘You’re Schmier, aren’t you.”  I looked up and nodded.

“You have those ‘cutesy’ classes with music and donuts.  I’ve seen your students walk around wearing gold stars.  You give them out for good behavior?  I hear that you don’t lecture or give tests, and that you have the students sing, draw, act, sculpt, interview you, and do all sorts of silly things in your classes.  And, you call that teaching?”

He made each “you” sound so accusing.  After taking a deep breath, a long and deep breath, I slowly replied,  “No, I call it learning, deep and lasting learning, learning history and learning what they are capable of being.”

“It’s a wonder you don’t have them dance,” he smirked.

“Dance?” I softly asked.  “That’s a neat idea.  You know, lately I’ve been thinking seriously about having them do an interpretive dance as a project to learn the material, really deeply learn it.  I might give it a try in Fall semester.  Good idea.  I’ll have to give that one a lot of thought over the summer.  Then, your spies can tell you how it went.”

“You may think this is a joke and treat this school as a kindergarten,” he continued, “but let me tell you it is not, and you make it harder for us who feel this is a serious place.  Your classroom is a travesty. ”

Whoa!  Now that was getting too close to the line.  Talk about hurling a tomato!  He sure caught me at the wrong time.  Well, actually he caught me at the right time.  Twenty or more years ago, in that other time and other world before my epiphany, I wouldn’t have taken this sitting down.  And, I have to admit, I came so close to reacting with an explosive “who the hell do you think you are” or a “who the hell do you think you’re talking to?”  But, I didn’t.  Wouldn’t have done any good anyway.  So, I ducked his verbal missiles.

Though I was not in the mood to deal with this sudden, unexpected, and unwarranted chastisement, especially from some young self-inflated whelp whom I didn’t know, who didn’t have the curtesy of introducing himself, and who didn’t know me beyond ‘I hear,’ I kept my cool.  Hiding my annoyance, I took another “why me” and “I don’t need this now” deep breath and smiled.  Calmly and quietly, I kept my seat, looked up–literally, but not figuratively–and I replied very slowly and deliberately with something like, ‘First, I’m Louis.  Now, I don’t do ‘cutesy’ or ‘silly.’  With my wife and kids and grandkids, yes.  But, not with students, in class.  There’s nothing kindergartenish about asking students in the Holocaust class to wear a yellow star with ‘Jew’ written on it wherever they go and with whomever they’re with, seven days a week, and reflect in writing each day on how they were treated and felt, in order to de-intellectualize the subject and to help them personalize the emotion of being the objects of curiosity, ridicule, question, separation, and exclusion before they’re shipped off in overcrowded boxcars to be exterminated at Treblinka or Auschwitz.  Gutsy, maybe, but nowhere near cute or silly.  As far as the other stuff in the first year classes, I and the students do all that you say and more, and I take what we do very seriously.  We just have fun learning, ‘serious fun.’  But, of course, you know that the opposite of fun is boredom, not work.  And, boredom is one of the worse corrosives on learning.  Anyway, everything I do has a reflected purpose that I share with the students.  And you know that being asked to do something that seemingly has no purpose is another corrosive of learning.  Everything you listed has what I call ‘my “why.”‘   The ‘cutesy’ and ‘silly,’ as you call them, are all based on the way I experiment with and apply the findings of recent scientific research on learning.  It’s no different than engineering students at Georgia Tech being asked to figure out how to drop an egg off a ten story building without breaking it.  You should read some the literature; it’s fascinating stuff–and challenging to what we traditionally do.  You know, that lecturing and testing and grading stuff.  I’m waiting for a student, but she won’t be here for a while.   So, if you have time, why don’t you sit down and we’ll talk about it.  You owe me a few minutes to allow me to ‘defend’ myself even if I don’t need defending.”

“I have to go to my class,” he shot back with a slight sneer on his face and something of a snide tone of voice, “to do some serious (his emphasis) teaching.”

I continued to give him a kindly smile, “Some other time, then.  Give me a buzz and we’ll have lunch or whatever together.  Or, give me your e-mail address and I’ll send you a bibliography of the literature on learning.  Make it a good day.”  He turned.  And, he was off without ever having given me his name or department or e-mail address.  I almost felt I was at the end of a Lone Ranger episode asking, “Who was that masked man?”  I looked at the half-eaten, now cold hotdog.  I pushed it away.  It had left as bad a taste as my unknown colleague’s arrogance and self-righteousness.

While I waited for Trissia, I grabbed a napkin, pulled out a pen, and jotted down somethings that was similar to a comment I later sent to the NY Times in response to a David Brooks editorial:  “How many of us–faculty, students, administrators–in higher education tend to confuse credentialing with educating?  How many of us tend to confuse “a wasted course” with “a course in my major.”  How many of us tend to confuse stagnation with tradition?  How many of us tend to think that just because we know our discipline that we know how to teach it?  How many of us confuse training for the lab or archive with training for the classroom?  How many of us confuse publishing that article or getting that grant with touching a student.  How many of us tend to confuse trappings and structure with essence?  How many of us tend to think that she or he who has gotten the highest grade has learned the most?  How many of us confuse ‘easy’ with valuable, ‘hard’ with ‘impossible,’ ‘important’ with ‘significant,’ ‘challenge’ with ‘barrier,’ ‘valuable’ with ‘values,’ ‘fun’ with ‘frivolity,’ and ‘serious’ with ‘pain?’  How many of us tend to confuse ‘can’t,’ ‘don’t’, and ‘won’t?’  How many of us tend to confuse ‘work,’  ‘boredom,’ ‘serious,’ and ‘fun?’  How many of us tend to confuse test with true assessment? How many of us confuse technology with panacea? How many of us confuse transmitting information and developing skills with ‘modeling’ vision, purpose, and meaning?  How many of us tend to confuse honor student with ‘honor person?’  How many of us tend to confuse ‘getting a good job’ or getting into a graduate or professional school with the ‘job of living the good life?’ How many of us tend to think that the best student has the brightest future?  Our system is so grade-ridden, it doesn’t make the grade; it is so dependent on the test that is doesn’t pass the test.  How many of us make the student experiences as closed as the classroom door? And, then, how many of us wonder why students close their books and why they don’t see learning as an unending, exciting, open-ended experience. The grade, test, GPA, recognitions, awards, the degree–and the quest for tenure–all have become ‘serious’ debilitating surrogates for ‘the joyful life-long love of learning.'”

Am I being too harsh?  Maybe?  But, think about it.  Think about my unknown arrogant, self-righteous, disrespectful colleague, an extreme example as he may be.  Think about it long and hard–and honestly.   I have, still am, and always will.

Louis

ON CHOICE, IX: CHANCE OR CHOICE

I just put down Terese Amabile’s THE PROGRESS PRINCIPLE.  In it she says that higher purpose leads to better performance, and better performance results in greater achievement.   That is, reflected upon work, purposeful work, meaningful work, is the single most factor in achievement; that loving what you do and doing what you love, that having a “why” for what you do, that caring about what you do, has an enormous impact on the proverbial “bottom line.”  One passage I underlined said, “People are more creative, productive, committed, and collegial in their jobs when they have positive inner work lives. But it’s not just any sort of progress in work that matters. The first, and fundamental, requirement is that the work be meaningful to the people doing it.”  That’s true for students when they ask, “Why do I have to take….;” it certainly is true for us when we ask, “Why do we have to….”

Chance or choice, that is the question:  Are we to be an actor merely reading the lines handed to us or are we to be a playwright penning our own lines?  I learned that what happens to me doesn’t mean much; what I do with it does.  Do I obsess over how tough the challenge is and make it an obstacle or do I find the strength, courage, imagination, and creativity to work through it and make it an opportunity?  That is the question.  Our happiness or misery, our sense of meaningfulness or meaninglessness depends on our disposition.  Unless we want to be blown about haplessly by the winds of chance, we must live by choice, not chance.  We can make all the excuses we want, complain all we will, retreat into all the resignations all we wish, level all the blame we can muster, but as I finally admitted two decades ago they don’t offer much; pride, belief, vision, meaning, significance, confidence, hope, and commitment offer a heck of a lot more.  We have control.  The question is whether we choose to use that control or not, whether we choose to be, as I help students to learn to be, our own voice rather than an echo of someone else’s.  Sure, it’s hard to stand up and resist that pressure.  Sure, it’s easy to be safe and secure, to avoid conflict or confrontation.  Sure, it’s easy to go along in order to get along.  Sure, it’s easy to see it as a matter of personal and professional survival.  Sure, it’s easy to do what others want in the quest to secure tenure, what a colleague called “the guarantee for a life-long job.”  Sure, it’s easy to rationalize that “once I get…” But, take heed.  As the easy, safe, comfortable, convenient short run lengthens and runs into the long run, as habits of “giving in” deepen and take hold; life becomes increasingly transformed from a “wow” to an unexcited “ho-hum” and/or to an anguished “arrrgh,” and gets more and more tragically smileless, old, lifeless, tough, depressing, and unrewarding.

Choosing, then, is not about taking the path towards quick or easy or safe or comfortable or convenient or guarantee.  Academia too often changes at a glacial pace, a tweak here, a hone there, and an adjustment somewhere.  It’s what Clayton Christensen, in his INNOVATOR’S DILEMMA, would call “sustaining change.”  Academia has become a culture that is averse to inconvenience, discomfort, challenge, risk, mistake, and anything that is perceived as a threat to the granting of tenure or promotion.   Satisfaction, fulfillment, significance, however, comes from, as Aristotle said, how you choose to deal with that mixture of the good and bad times, with the successes and failures, with the safe and dangerous, with the easy and challenging.

Experiences stretch you when you let them have an impact.  If we choose to live, we have to choose to make mistakes, to walk the challenging road; we have to choose to develop a vast capacity for failure and pain rather than seeking guarantees to avoid them; we have to choose to be emotional and subjective; we have to choose to dream, imagine.  Subjectivity versus objectivity, emotion versus reason, spirituality versus rationality are all false dichotomies.  If you choose to live justly and respect each and every student, if you live lovingly and have compassion for each student, if you live humbling and focus on the students rather than on yourself, and help each student to learn to live the same way, to remake themselves into the noble and sacred being they are, you’re engaged in them all.  Chances are, however, if you’re not engaged in them all, you’re not really engaged in any.

So, two decades ago, at the ripe old age of 50, I started discovering that the best adventures occur when we  choose to venture into new, unmarked terrain.  I surprised myself and for reasons I’m not sure I understand to this very day, I suddenly–literally, suddenly–began choosing own my own life and not worrying about those others; I choose to walk a road, my own road, to becoming young.  In the autumn of 1991, as I unexpectedly felt fierce, hot tears streaming down my cheeks like lava flowing from an erupting caldera, I chose to make it the springtime for the rest of my life; at that moment, I chose, consciously chose, that as I got older, I would not become old.  That Fall, I chose and still choose to rise and not to let anything become old hat, routine, and stale.  That September of 1991, I chose, and still choose, to heed Dylan Thomas; I began to rage against my dim light, and chose no longer to go gentle into that good night.  Instead, I chose to learn to let my age burn and rave, to sing the sun, to blaze like meteors and be joyous, to replace curses with blessings.  I chose and still choose for my words to fork lightning, for no deed to be frail, to embrace the newness and richness of each moment.  No, I chose and still choose not to pass mildly by.  There will be no dying light, no grieving of what could have been, no surrender of my life inside this breast of Louis Schmier.

Louis

 

ON CHOICE, VIII: BEING TOXIC OR THERAPEUTIC

I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Rik Smits on left-handedness.  Boy, he sure hit the proverbial nail on the head.  I am living proof of that.  I knew exactly what he was talking about since my life spans the times when being left-handed was condemned and is now supposedly celebrated.  Or, at least, tolerated.  You see, I am a southpaw; I am as “southern” a southpaw there is.  I’m so left-handed I joking say that if I must have a stroke, I hope it occurs in my “left brain” so it only effects my right side.  I won’t miss it.  Then, last year when the orthepedic surgeon said I had a small tear in my left shoulder’s rotator cuff  (don’t swing on the jungle gym at 70 with your grandmunchkin), I gladly offered up my right shoulder for surgery as a surrogate.

Seriously, when I was in first grade at New York’s P.S. 160 in 1946, I was deemed a menace, possessed by Satan himself (my Susie says I do have a little devil in me).  Literally!!!  It seems hard to believe, but Mrs. Satchel, a diminutive, not very nice person who always had a scowl on her face and in her heart (if she had a heart), who looked like she had just stepped out from an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus, took it upon herself to take the lead in the fight against the dark force that was controlling me.   With the passion of a not-to-be-deterred fanatic on a mission, for her there was no such thing as going too far.  She saw only weakness and danger in my strong side.  For her, nothing good was associated with the left side.  To put the proverbial fear of God in both me and the other students, especially during penmanship, she would point her bony finger at me, with fire in her eyes and threat in her voice, angrily saying to the other students, “Do you want to be evil like Schmier?”  She used that word, “evil,” over and over and over again against me.  I was only seven years old!  It was unmerciful persecution.

I vividly still remember the times she would rap my knuckles or the palm of my left hand with the heavy whacks of a wooden ruler in her struggle, in her words, “to drive out the demons.”  When I wouldn’t compromise and write with my left hand as if it was contorted by a twisting muscular constriction that feigned being right-handed, she got angrier, more determined, and hit me harder.  Many was the time I would come home hiding my swollen, bloodied left hand in my pant or coat pocket, run to the bathroom to pour cold water over it and wash the blood from my knuckles or palm, and then keep it from view, hoping my  mother or especially my father wouldn’t notice.  It was sheer brutality.

One day, my older brother saw my bloodied knuckles and asked if I had been in a fight.  I made the mistake of telling him about Mrs. Satchel. He and I weren’t close.  He ratted me out, telling my father that I had told him that I had gotten into a street brawl.  Showing dad my bloodied knuckles, in my defense, and since he was astute enough to notice I didn’t have any other cuts or welts on either my right hand or face, I had to tell him about Mrs. Satchel.  Now, my father was a stern, demanding man.  He was controlling and authoritarian, but in his way he was extraordinarily loving.  He never laid a finger on me or my siblings, and scorned any type of corporal punishment.  His eyes, stentorian voice, and force of personality were enough to cower anyone.  The next day, against my silent wishes, dad went to school with me.  He and Mrs Satchel had a talk.  I watched and listened.  It must have made a heck of an impression on my young mind and soul because I vividly remember that meeting almost word-for-word as if it happened only a few minutes ago.

To sum it up, Mrs. Satchel wouldn’t back down. To this very day, I can see her now telling my father why she walloped me so hard that she had drawn blood–on more than one occasion.  I saw my father’s eyes when he heard that this one incident wasn’t an anomaly.  She didn’t notice his lips tightening and went on.  She explained that I had a disease that demanded curing; I was possessed by a demon who required an exorcism; I was a backward child; I was plagued with mental, physical, and psychological abnormalities; I needed special treatment.  She told my father that I didn’t belong in a regular class; I was rebelliousness; I was stubborn; I was a non-conformist; I was clumsy; I was goofy; I was messy; I was malicious; I was unorthodox; I was a deviant; I was sinister; I was a challenge to authority.  And, I had to be forced into line.  About the only thing she left out was the cliche that hurting me hurt her more.  No apologies.  No second thoughts.  It was medieval.

Now, Mrs. Satchel, who had made me into the embodiment of all those negatives associated with being left handed, was herself the embodiment of all the biases against left handers.  I am sure that if she were alive today, she’d say she had cared.  I would say that she was selfishly careless with her uncaring type of caring, loveless with her type of loving, disrespectful with her type of respect, that she had a passion that lacked both empathy and compassion, and that she was arrogant and self-righteous.  She could not understand my father’s firm disagreement and order not to touch me again.  After all, she was being merciful; she was being responsible; she was being a healer; she was being helpful; she was ridding me of my sinister ways; she was fighting to change my “negative character.”  God, to this day, some 65 years later, I remember the exact words she used in her defense:  “We all should pray for him and fight for his soul by driving out his evil.”  To which my father firmly replied, “He’s not the evil one in this room.”   I think it finally sunk in that dad was a force with which to be reckoned.

After that conversation, the ruler never came down on my left hand again, but it had left its scaring mark,  Nevertheless, the verbal assaults or what she called “godly discipline” continued.   I won’t tell you about the number of times Mrs. Satchel accused me of cheating on classroom assignments and tests.  I must admit that it did seem that I was looking at other students’ work because I had to turn my body awkwardly and uncomfortably, and even painfully, to write on those damnable right-handed desks.  She would yell at me for all to hear to “give in,” to “stop trying to be different,” “be normal,” and to write with the “‘right'” “godly” hand like “every other person.”   I was the odd kid out.  Because of her, I was mercilessly taunted on the playground and in the lunchroom.  She even did it, but, as Paul Harvey would have said, that’s the rest of the story.  I do remember that often, if wasn’t for my father, sometimes I wished she would hit me with the ruler rather than assault me with those words.   It was barbarism.

Then, two decades later, came the social, cultural, and political revolutions of the ’60s that fought for women, homosexuals, African-American, and student rights.  A little known off-shoot of those battles was the quasi-successful fight for lefty rights.  I was free–kinda. Today, I am seen in a bit more kinder light, but I am still a battle ground.  You should read some of the supposed “scientific left-handed facts” about me.  Google them.  Compared to right handers, I am angrier, a better leader, more embarrassed, more prone to illness, more prone to commit a crime, more of a boozer, more artistic,  more fearful, better at sports, will have a shorter lifespan, more fearful,  more imaginative, sloppier (Susie would vigorously agree with this one), shyer, and more creative.  And, it goes on.

The subtle prejudices are still there.  It’s still an adventure to find left-handed tools; it’s still tough to use a right-handed scissors or cutting knife; a left-handed classroom desk still is a rarity; and, I still have to contort my body to sign a fixed, right-facing credit card swipe terminal at a check-out counter.

When I heard at a parent-teacher evening, my left-handed son’s second grade teacher tell me that we should “convince” him of the “wrongness” in using his left hand and get him to use his “‘right’ hand,” that moment in the mid-1970s took me back to those days in the dark ages of the mid-1940s.  True, she didn’t invoke Divine sanction of her attitude.  But, as I firmly told her to leave him alone and to deal with his left-handedness, and don’t either pressure him or punish him, I sighed silently to myself, “At least they’re no longer using a ruler.”

What’s the point of this story?  I have never forgotten Mrs. Satchel.  She is my warning memory of the consequences of being toxic rather therapeutic, and as Abraham Mazlow might say, she was as toxic as they come.   She is my constant reminder that, as Haim Ginott wrote:

I am the decisive element in the classroom.
It is my personal approach that creates the climate.
It is my daily mood that makes the weather.
As a teacher I possess tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous.
I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration.
I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.

So, I am always on high alert to what I say and do, to how I feel; to my attitude; to my body language and vocal tones; to my facial expression; to keeping sharp my senses of mindfulness, otherness, awareness, and alertness; to seeing more than mere looking and to listening more than merely hearing; to practicing my RO6; to unconditionally loving, believing in, and having hope for in each and every student; and, to being the guy who is there–unconditionally–to help each student help her/himself become the person each is capable of becoming.

Louis

 

I WANNA BE ME

It was black this morning as I went out onto the silent pre-dawn streets and into me.  For me, no spiritual, meditative, philosophical, or even cognitive exercise is as powerful as silence, as experiencing the “joy of stillness,” as quiet exploration of your inner self, as just being a sacred, noble, unique “me.”  In that hour of silence I feel more grounded.  No static.  No noise.  No distraction.  No demands.  Only presence.  In that darkness emerges immeasurable light that carries me on my vision of dedicated service to each student.

As I returned from my two miles of mobile mediation, the dawn had broken.  In the growing light, I walked through my flower garden filled with early blooms.  That’s what happens when there is no winter.  I thought of how our fantastic ability to create pulls us out of the dark and into a world of vibrant color, and to imagine the future. Every gardener knows this, and of course you do not necessarily need beds, seeds, or bulbs to be a nurturing gardener.  We can be gardeners on our campuses and in our classrooms.

Knowing that we each have that intriguing adventure within reach, I started thinking of an exchange I’ve been having with a self-denigrating student.  I’ve been encouraging her to seek professional help in finding ways to stop listening to the voices of darkness that she’s allowed to weigh her down and to replace them with believing voices of light that will uplift her.  My thoughts turned to a poem I had written a long time ago in dedication to a dear, now departed, friend.  I had titled it “You Tell Me; You Don’t Say.”  Avoiding the resurgent and voracious mosquitoes that would surely carry me off if I sat by the Koi pond (another sign of our absent winter), I came into the house, got myself a cup of freshly brewed coffee, sat in front of the computer, pulled the poem up, read it several times, and sent it to her.  It began and ended with:

You tell me what you know….

      You don’t say who you are

You tell me what you do….

      You don’t say who you are

You tell me what you have….

        You don’t say who you are

How often students define themselves and we define them by assignments, scores, grades, courses, GPAs, sports, sororities and fraternities, selected majors, honors, awards, and recognitions.  How often do we define students and ourselves by religion, skin color, ethnic background, political persuasion, social status, nationality, gender, sexual preference, and even being southpaws?  How often do we define ourselves by our titles, positions, degrees, grants, publications, and expertise?  How often do we define ourselves by whether or not we are tenured?  How often do we define ourselves by our award, honors, and recognitions?  How often do we define ourselves by our roles as husband or wife, son or daughter, father or mother, boyfriend or girlfriend or just plain friend?   How many times do we define ourselves by our cars, houses, clothing, jewelry, charitable acts, investments, income?  How many times do we define ourselves by our vocations, advocations, hobbies, or anything we do?  Why do we have to supply that information for people to know us?  Why do we have to have that information to know ourselves?  Maybe “judge” is a better word than “know.”

What if we didn’t have this information or these descriptions or these labels?  Would we realize, then, that this information is often an opaque curtain between us and ourselves, not to mention between us and others, between actuality and appearance?  Would we reflect more often on who we are when we’re not in these roles, when we’re without our resumes, when we’re without our status, when we’re without our relationships, when we are not doing these things, when the facades are taken down, when the curtain is parted, when the mask is off?  Would we be more attentive to who we are when we shed these identities?  That is the question the Bard asked when he had Polonius advise Laertes in one breath with the insightful warnings that “the apparel oft proclaims the man,” and “to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”  Why, then, can’t we just be true to ourselves and just be a “me,” a sacred, noble, unique human being?

For me, to be a “Louis,” and that rhymes with “phooey,” to be a “just me,” is to have a radical trust in life.  No strings attached.  No bravado.  No status.  No conditions.  No “what’s in it for me.”  I’ve found that students will tend to trust me more if I trust myself because they will see me, warts and all, see my authenticity, and come to know me. And that’s crucial for a viable classroom.

You know what a classroom is?  It’s not a history of this or biology of that.  It’s a bunch of people, human beings, bumping into other human beings, most of whom are awkward, off balance, inexperienced, and fearful.  From reading journals, students would love to seen for who they each are.  We can give them that.  It’s tough, but it’s the best chance for me and each of them to connect and have a meaningful experience.  We have to be gardeners, planting, cultivating, nurturing, growing into, and living three virtues:  belief or faith, hope, and love.  These virtues are too often hidden in plain view.  We can see them if we make way for them through our own loving-kindness.  These virtues give to everyone a meaning to be blessed and to bless.  They, like gravity, hold you down while soaring to great heights.  They’re the most liberating teaching force in the classroom.  They’re forces of renewal and resilience.  They place you not only at the head of the class,. but in the heart of the class.  They let you revel in playfulness, meaningfulness, joyfulness, purposefulness, light-heartedness, fulfillment, achievement, and significance.  They endow you with  the power of a question mark: to search, to be aware, to be attentive, to see, to listen, to have an otherness.  It is up to us to live them each hour in order to keep alive the vision for what lies behind these virtues.  These three virtues are verbs; they are our greatest tools to help us fully live our hours.  They always have the power to force us to remember and draw us back to what is true and beautiful at those times we forget and drift off.

You might ask, “Why me?  Where were all the adults for these students to keep their innate wonder alive?”  You might say, “It’s not my job.”  I say, “No matter, for we are now here.”  We have to weary of our whining about this void.  Instead, we have to step up to the proverbial plate and be that person who is there to help each student help her/himself strive to become the person she or he is capable of becoming, who will be in a student’s company to help her or him rediscover the joy and mystery of both her/himself and the world around her or him.  Do that and you will help generate miracles in life; do that and in the muddled mess of the classroom somehow and sometime you will spot a glory to celebrate.

I just told that student that there are plenty of obstacles that can stand in her way. She shouldn’t be one of them.  Her own thoughts, feelings, attitudes, assumptions and fears can hold her back just as surely as a solid prison wall. And yet, just as she created those self-imposed obstacles, she can bust through them.  That is, she is her greatest problem, and she is her best solution.  The same is true for us.  Instead of fighting against ourselves with weapons of resignation, frustration, negativity, anger, disinterest, distraction, and even fear, we can marshall the amazing power of our thoughts and feeling to more fully enable ourselves.  To paraphrase the Sufi, if you put the classroom between you and these three virtues, the classroom becomes an obstructive obstacle; if you use the classroom to live these virtues, the classroom becomes your friend, filled with potentials and possibilities, and you’ll make joyful efforts.   Do that, and exclamation marks will replace dour periods.  And, then, what you do in the classroom will have a better chance of having more meaning than merely getting a grade on an exam, going far beyond the physical confines of the classroom, and lasting long after the term is over.

One final word, before you sweep this away with a contemptuous wave off,  just know that this isn’t just philosophical “clap trap,” or New Age fuzziness, or Zen “touchy-feely.”  This is also the hard, neuro-science and cognitive psychology of giving a care.

Louis