Proverbs 17:22 says “A happy heart doeth good like medicine. A broken spirit drieth the bones.” And I believe that, after I had received this message the other day.  “I don’t know if you remember me, but I was in your class last spring semester.  My name is Connie Turkson, and I just want to say, thanks for everything! You taught me how to believe in myself. I ended up transferring to Mount Holyoke College, and I love it! I have been successful! Thanks ….”  Connie, I’ll just say who would have thought.  Jenny, an also who would have thought.  I know, I had hoped.

I’m not practiced enough to squeeze my feelings about Connie’s words, or even Jenny’s, into one tweet.  But, the theme in her short but crucial message is so fundamental.  It is at the  core of my relationships, methods, experiences, vision, philosophy, outlook.  It is the foundations of everything I feel, think, and do.  It is the findings of hard science research by the likes of Boyatzis, Goleman, Seligman, Fredrickson, Csikzenmihalyi, Lyubomirsky, Gilbert, Rose, Brooks, Kanter, Amabile, etc, etc, etc. It takes issue with the worship of a trinity of “thingology” of pedagogy, content, and technology while not explicitly factoring in people.  Let me pull up a couple of other “big guns.”  I read two articles in the Harvard Business Review.  In the first, Harvard’s John Kotter says that in business efforts to change people, despite all the talk, efforts, and money spent, are more often than not doomed to failure.  That’s no less true in academia when it comes to both faculty and students.  The second article in the HBR is a study by Harvard’s Teresa Amabile which gives insights into why the ineffective or failure rate for change is high.   The answer is that we so often address the outer stuff of things, the “how” and “what” of technique, method, content, and technology. We seldom address, she said, the “who” of the inner person.

As the likes of Jenny and Connie show, the way people feel and think about themselves is what really matters in what they decide to do and what they actually do.   Every professor, every student is just a woman or man, which is to say, a fallible human, playing out strengths and frailties. That’s crucial and we can’t escape it.  The way each choses to express herself or himself is the way she or he is usually perceived and judged.  To act caringly is to be seen as caring; to display a gentle heart is to be accepted as being gentle; and, to speak kindly is to be perceived as kind; and, to act respectfully is to be seen as respecting.  To act otherwise, is to be seen as otherwise, and too many of us too often seem intent on being down on most students while exerting little effort to help them bring themselves up.

In their journals, in class, outside of class, in conversations, and in their work, I watched a slow happiness makeover.  I watched both Connie and Jenny slowly and at times agonizingly begin a transforming process, coming out from their dark into an ever-increasing brightness.  Once they saw it was safe, they slowly and cautiously began to break their shackles of self-disbelief, self-denigration, self-demeaning–one link at a time.  I saw  shakiness slowly evolve into firmness, anxiety into confidence, hesitation into steadiness.  I saw them begin to feel better about themselves. I saw smiles beginning to form and a spring appearing in their step.  I saw the “how I feel word” on the whiteboard change from tired and fearful to joy and fun.  I saw them redefine challenge from barrier to opportunity.  I saw a boost of energy, an increase in productivity, an improvement in how they got along with others, and greater achievement.  In an academic culture that is fixated on the “thingology” method, content, and technology, consciously focusing on helping people to flourish, to empower them to be positive about themselves, to acquire self-confidence and self-esteem, to have hope, to have faith in themselves, may be far more important in revving up energy.  So, prompted by Connie, as well as by Jenny and a host of others, here is my five-in-one pseudo-tweet in the spirit of John Tesh’s “Play Music In the Key of Love”:

Part I:       Love!  Love1 Love!  Love and its host of kindly positives hallows while cynicism and disinterest and its minons of pernicious negatives defile.

Part II:     Love is your most powerful classroom tool.

Part III:    Love is not a magic wand however much it works magic.  However sincere, love cannot be created with ease, comfort, and quiet; it has to be worked at; nor can it be exercised for a selective moment or so.

Part IV:   Love must be sustained as a way of life; you can’t merely be a person who loves; you can’t merely be a person in love.  You have to be love.  And, love in the face of challenge is both an expression of character and a character builder.

Part V:    And, as Jenny and Connie demonstrate, invest in love and it will pay untold dividends; fill your inner treasure chest with love, and you’ll finds ways to enrich your life and theirs with untold joy, satisfaction, fulfillment, and meaning—and accomplishment.

Louis

First tweet:  Open yourself.  You look when your eyes are open; you see when your mind is open; you understand when your heart is open.  Never be closed to any student, only be close by and close.

Second tweet:  If I believe and act at 72 what I believed and acted at 50, or at 60, or at 70, or even yesterday, I haven’t and am not living.  Nothing in life, including the classroom, stands still, or is a still place, however far too many believe or wish.

Louis

I’m still thinking about Jenny.  If I tweeted, I would first tweet this:  When it comes the classroom, if you pay attention, you just might learn that the classroom is a very complicated place filled with very complex individuals.

And, then, I’d send a second tweet:  To paraphrase Fat Albert, if you pay attention to each student, you just might learn something essential about each of them.  What you learn is that Ella Wheeler Wilcox was right:  a weed is only an unloved and unwanted flower.

A final tweet would be:  Learn, then, to focus first on humanity, not on method or technology or information.  It’s loving attention that changes the odds for all the tomorrows.

Louis

The other day I was walking across the campus when I heard a joyful scream coming from behind me.  “Dr. Schmier!”

I turned.  It was Jenny (not her real name).  She ran up to me exclaiming.  “I making good grades in all my classes.  You were right.  All those conversations you had with me.  Everyone said I couldn’t do college.  I believed them even though I was here only because it was expected in me.  But, I do have it in me!  I’m going to try to make Dean’s List this semester!”

Acting as a telepath, I looked at her with a quizzical smile, hoping that she heard me say that she had used the wrong verb.  She must have either heard me or read my face.  She corrected herself.  “No, I know.  ‘Do or do not; there is no try.’  And, if I want it to be done, it can be done; and, if it can be dome, I will do whatever it takes to do it.  I hear you.  I will ‘do.’  I will make Dean’s List.  And, it’s because of you!”

“It’s because,” I countered, “you believe.  Let me know and we’ll celebrate together.”

I gave her an approving smile and said, “Remember, ‘impossible’ is only in your mind; it’s not in your soul.”

She jumped at me, gave me another hug, and whispered in my ear, “I feel so alive.  I’ll never stop believing in me.  And if I ever hesitate again or listen to someone dissing me, I’ll hear you saying ‘believe,’ and I will.  Thank you.”

While those words, that hug, and the sunny, confident smile on her face blurred my vision, they made the bright morning a bit brighter and the day a bit more worth living.  When I got to my garden.  I noticed a dandelion among the amaryllis, saw Jenny’s smile, and said to myself something A.A.Milne wrote, “Weeds are flowers, once you get to know them.”

Louis

I’ve just read four studies on employee motivation to which I was directed by an article in HBR.  Interesting and pertinent stuff.  There’s the 2111 study by Yoon Jik Cho and James Perry called “Intrinsic Motivation and Employee Attitudes: Role of Managerial Trustworthiness, Goal Directedness, and Extrinsic Reward Expectancy,” the 2010 study by Timothy Judge, et al called “The Relationship Between Pay and Job Satisfaction,” the 2002 “Five Factor Model of Personality and Job Satisfaction” by Timothy Judge, Daniel Heller, and Michael Mount, and finally, the 2001 study by Judy Cameron, Katherine Blanko, and W. David Pierce called “Pervasive Negative Effects Of Rewards On Intrinsic Motivation: The Myth Continues.”  If I understand them correctly, the first concluded that employees who are intrinsically motivated are turned on and tuned in three times more than employees who are extrinsically motivated, and consequently are happier, feel better, and get more done.  The second study found that you can’t buy motivation and involvement with salary and position; and if you can, not much beyond the need to provide the material basics.  The third study found that the happier, more self-confident, more kindly and caring, more attentive and more aware,  more attentive people are, the more they tend to see the glass as half full and to like their jobs; that employees’ personalites, their attitudes and emotions, are much better predictors of happiness on the job, hence productivity, than are their salaries.  But–and this is a big “but”–the personality of the managers, not the employees’, was the most important determinant of the extent the workers enthusiastically work at their work.   And, in fact, the fourth study supporting, Deci’s WHY WE DO WHAT WE DO, issued the warning that a primary focus on and use of extrinsic rewards may be a demotivating force.

The first point is that all these studies remind me of the 1999 classic study by Ed Deci, Richard Ryan, and Richard Koester, “A Meta-Analytic Review Of Experiments Examining The Effects Of Extrinsic Rewards On Intrinsic Motivation ” that  found negative effect of external incentives on intrinsic motivation, and positive effect of internal motivators such as autonomy, ownership, and connection.

The second point is that intrinsic motivation is a stronger predictor of job performance than extrinsic motivation.

The third point is that people who focus too much on what I’ll call “things” are more often than not are evaluating themselves by their paycheck and position, playing the comparison game, and preventing themselves from enjoying their jobs.

And finally, none of these mega studies are talking about the elements of “thingology:”  technology, content or product, and production method.  They’re all about people; they’re about attitudes of service, meaningfulness, purposefulness, and relevance; they’re about the driving or halting force of emotions, both positive and negative.

So, I wonder if we should extrapolate all this from business job to academic job, from business managers to academic administrators and faculty, from workers to students, from the business workplace to the academic campus and classroom, from business pay and position to academic salary, tenure, promotion, grades.  After all, the one thing both places have in common is people.  So, maybe we should add people to the mix of technology, content, and pedagogy if we want to increase teaching and learning motivation and achievement across the academic board.

Louis

I had just finished having a deep conversation with a colleague of mine, Danielle.  On the way home, as I was thinking what we talked about, I bumped–almost literally–into a non-traditional student who was in my last class.  We stopped to chat.

“How’s retirement going?  You weren’t too happy on that last day.”

“Fine,” I quickly and jovially answered.  With a deliberate pause, I then said with an enticing seriousness, “Now.”

“I was wondering.  Now that you’re out of the classroom, what do you think is the most important thing you can do now that you’re retired?” she asked.

“Up falling!” I shot back slyly as verbal chumming bait.

She looked at me with the puzzled look that I expected,  “What’s that?”

Hooked her.  “It’s a performing jazz term.  It means before you go on stage you get the adrenalin flowing, get into the groove.”

“By keeping busy?”

“By being the right kind of busy.”

“What’s that?”

“‘Fun busy’ and ‘meaningful busy.'” But, first by ‘busy listening!'”

“Listening?  To who?”

“To life!”

“To life?”

Recalling my earlier conversation a few minutes ago with Danielle, I admitted to her that when I reluctantly decided to retire, to retire against my wishes, it was an emotional challenge that kicked me out of place where I loved to be and kept me from doing what I loved.  I was angry, sad, and certainly not glad.  I thought I’d lose community, a sense of purpose and accomplishment, and an important line of demarcation between work-at-loving to do days and weekends; I thought I’d lose a feeling of personal identity that would be difficult to replace late in life.   I thought I’d be lost; I thought I would lose that ‘itch;’ I thought it was over.  I had weakened my ‘how of happiness.’  I wasn’t feeling good; I wasn’t all that calm; I was languishing; I lived less my ‘word for the day;’ I changed the scope of my mind; I reshaped my life and the world around me.  All that bled into my feelings, thoughts, and actions.  Blissful I wasn’t!  A bear I was.  I didn’t listen to Susie. I didn’t listen to my dear friends. I didn’t listen to some insightful students.  I didn’t listen to myself.  And, I didn’t listen to life itself.  You might say that I was allowing myself to get swamped by rampant dysfunction.

Then, it happened, I told her as I had just told Danielle.  A moment of “divine timing.”  It was a pre-dawn walk on chilly December 1st, Saturday morning, the first morning of my retirement after the Friday that was my last class of my last semester of my last year in the classroom.  I was feeling as black as the darkness around me when I heard a piercing, chastising voice.  It was life.  “Your recent choices of how you see me stinks!  Have you forgotten what I’ve been teaching you?  Where’s the resiliency, purpose, adventure, courage, and flourishing I helped you acquire?  For the last 22 years, I’ve told you that while circumstances are powerful, people are far more powerful.  How many times have I shown that you that while you don’t have control over me, you have control over you and how to respond to me.  How many times have I shown your doors?  How many times have I thrown chance in your way to show that you that my real name is ‘change,’ that the only thing about me that doesn’t change is that I am always changing?  You had an epiphany in 1991 and I showed you how well you had hidden your self from yourself and revealed to you the treasure chest of sacredness, nobility, uniqueness, and potential buried deep within you chest  yet to be dug up, filled with the riches of love, belief, hope, and faith..  You had cancer and I showed you I am only about grateful ‘is,’ not regretful ‘was’ or fearful ‘will be.’   Your head nearly exploded from that cerebral hemorrhage and I showed you that you that I am not some convenient and safe planned out  script of a rehearsed play.  Now, you’re unexpectedly retiring and I’m showing you again that there are new doors you didn’t know existed that will open onto new paths you didn’t know about and which could take you into new worlds beyond your imagination just as the doors you came upon over the past twenty-two years.  Turn the key, twist the knob, open the door, step through the doorway, and walk whatever new path to who knows where as you have done with other doors.  Stop being anti-serenity!  Stop being at war with yourself.  I’m warning you; you’re going to be finished if you think there isn’t unfinished business out there.  Stop thinking and feeling from a place of fear and get back to your indefatigable fearlessness.  Express yourself, take chances, don’t be held back or held down.  Be restless!  Break the rules!  Defy expectations!  Do you hear me? Do you hear what I am saying?”

I stopped walking.  Looked at the stars above, took a deep breath, and nodded.  So, now I am now awash with happiness; at peace; optimistic, having a growth mindset; feeling the exuberance of exploration and creativity; having fun; driven by a sense of purpose; filled with appreciation, joy, gratitude, and love; bringing out the “better” in me each day;  I can follow my bliss by feeling blessed where I am, when I am, and who I am, intensely blessed, ‘up fall blessed.’   I don’t care what anyone says.  I know that cure for meaninglessness is meaning, for purposelessness is purpose, for sadness is happiness, for anger is joy, for being adrift is direction, for idleness is activity, for apathy is passion.

I am self-medicating myself with a prescription of the heart medicine of listening:  listening to life; listening with my heart; listening to understand; listening to live; listening to live now.  And, listening to Susie.  None of this is malarkey, platitudinous, cliché, new-age cheeriness, soft, fluff.  It’s a continuation of years of often brutally honest self-reflection, sometimes painful thinking, at times fearful feeling, reading, discussing, studying, learning, transforming, and adventurous applying in both the life of the classroom and life outside the classroom and now life after the classroom.  It’s a blend of experience and the hard, sound scientific findings of Ed Deci’s intrinsiic motivation, Mihaly Csikzenmihalyi’s intense “flow,” Barbara Fredrickson’s deep, heartfelt “positivity” and “love,” Martin Seligman’s “optimism” and “flourish,” Robert Brooks’ “resilence,” Sonja Lyubomirsky’s and Daniel Gilbert’s “happiness,” Teresa Amabile’s “creativity,” Richard Boyatzis’ “resonance,” Carol Sweck’s “mindset” and “self theories,” and a host of others.

The point is wherever and whenever, if the body sticks around while the brain wanders off, a longer lifetime becomes a burden on self and society.  Extending the life of the body gains most meaning when we preserve the life of the mind. You have to keep your synapses snapping.  Your brain needs exercise or it will atrophy.  You’re through when you’re through changing, learning, transforming, being engaged.  So, nothing will work out if you don’t work at it. If you want to be easy on yourself, get out of the easy chair.  You won’t rock in a rocking chair.  You won’t pop eating popcorn on a couch.  Right now, I’m at an emotional spa and getting back in shape.  After all, being emotionally fit is as important, if not more important, as being physically fit.

As I said in an earlier Random Thought, I’m exploding with things to do; I’m taking giant baby steps in developing a new life.

Boy, could I have a heck of great conversation with Barbara Fredrickson or Sonya Lyubomirsky,  and even with Martin Seligman.

Louis

I just returned after a month in Boston to help care for Susie’s brother, having braved inhuman cold and deep snow, having to shovel the white stuff for the first time in over 50 years, to read a message that began ” Well, it’s been almost fifteen years and I think I it’s time to thank you for helping me become the person I am.”  That message got me thinking.  We all taut “I’ve been teaching for….”  numbers, as proof of our expertise, as evidence of our unassailable experience, as proof of the high quality of our teaching, and as impenetrable armor against accusation or to deflect demands for change.  But, now having been retired four months and four days–numbers again–I wonder if such enumeration is self-condescending.  Sure, I recently retired at the young age of 72 after 46 years in a college classroom, 50 years is you count my times as a part-time instructor at UNC.  I’ve shared nearly 1,000 Random Thoughts during the last 22 years.  I have a sixteen page, single spaced resume of publication, grants, conference presentations, campus workshop spanning 33 years.  Impressive numbers?  Not really.  Actually, I think those numbers are really irrelevant.  What’s that old saying about it’s now the years in your life that count;  It’s the life in those years?  No, the real number, the only meaningful number is the longevity of the influence–assessed or not, intended or not, or otherwise, known or unknown–we have had on others.

Louis