A respite from my “Why Love Is Important” series.  Well, maybe not.   Anyway, yesterday morning, I was walking home from the Student Union on campus, my canvas bag filled with bags of Starbucks coffee grinds to feed my flowers.  In front of me I saw Mary approaching.  She saw me and waved, ran, and hugged me.

“Dr. Schmier,” she quietly screamed.  “You’re my hero!”

“What heroic thing did I do to deserve that?” I quizzically asked.

“You got in my face and stayed there and you taught me that I had to get in my own face,” she gleefully squealed.  “You wouldn’t let me just get by and now I don’t.  I always thought I was nothing more than a C student at best.  You didn’t.  You always said that I was disrespecting myself by thinking that way, and made me see I was better than I thought.  Boy, I think I took up all the tough love you had to get me to love myself and believe in myself.  You kicked my butt so much it was so sore I couldn’t sit down after Fall semester.  Now, I do it to myself.   I see how much I can do when I give it all that I have to give, however much that is.  I got such good grades spring and this semester.  No, I learned a lot and got good grades.  I owe you a thanks and another hug.”

After she gave me a big hug, I said with a gratifying smile, “Then, you’re your own hero, not me.”

We talked a bit more, hugged, and went our ways.  I had taken a few steps when I heard from behind me, “Oh, I’m going to keep on being that butterfly coming out of the cocoon.”  I hesitated on the next step.  A tear formed in my eyes.  Without looking back, I took a deep breath, tightened my lips,  shot my arm high in the air,  and gave a firm thumbs up acknowledgement.  On the walk home, the 25 pounds of fertilizing coffee grinds didn’t seem as heavy as before.  I thought about Mary and the tooth and nail fight she had put up.  Love doesn’t do any good if you keep it trapped inside you, does it.  It feels good only when you live it, only when you let it flow from your heart into every fiber of your being and every moment of your life, only when you use it to make a positive difference in someone’s life.  But, I’m getting ahead of my story.

It is last fall semester, the last semester of my 46 year career in the classroom at VSU.  Mary is a first year student.  She just wants what she is accustomed to:  to be lectured to, to be told what’s important, to know what’s going to be on the test, and cram and memorize for it the night before for a short answer test.  In journal entry after entry I read of her resistance and dismay with the testless, gradeless, “community work,” non-traditional class.  Finally, she comes up to me towards the end of the semester in class with her usual moans and groans.  The students are finishing and getting ready to present their final history project.  This past semester, to learn and use and teach the material they’ve read and watched and written about, they’ve written a Dr. Seuss book, composed and performed a song, sculpted, drew an abstract painting, and now they’ve gone to Hollywood and are making an eight minute film.  Our conversation goes something like this:

“Dr. Schmier, I’ve been wanting to say this all semester.  I hate these projects.  This one is worse than the others.  It’s so hard!  I don’t want to be creative.  Why don’t you lecture and test us?”  Mary grimaced.

“I know that from your journals.  But, do really you want things to be easy?” I softly replied with a smile in an understanding tone.

“You actually read my journals,” catching her off guard.  “But, yes, I want things to be easy,” she exclaimed.

“You want to just get by, then.”

“Yes!” she quickly came back. “I just want a good grade.”

Ignoring that last part of her reply, I said, “I won’t let you.  You want a lot for little.  You were a cheerleader in high school and don’t you want to be one here?”

“How do you know?  Yes.”

“Going to tell the coach that you want practice to be easy?  Did you say that in  high school?”

“God, no!”

“Then, don’t tell me that!”

“But, that’s different.”

“No, it’s not,” I quietly, but firmly, replied.  “That’s why ‘it’s so hard’ is so important in anything–anything–you do anywhere, any time.  Pointing to the white board, I said, “Read out loud the ‘Words of the Day.’

She looked and read, ”It’s easy is not a sign you’ll find on any road to achieving something.”

I quickly followed up, “You don’t win or learn with ‘it’s easy.’  You might get a good grade, but you won’t learn anything.  You have to sweat and ache in here, and put in the time and effort in here, just like you do in the field house.”

Then, backtracking, she sheepishly admitted, “Well, to be honest, making this film is really fun.  So were the other projects.  I felt like I was in the Governor’s Honors Program.  I didn’t feel I belonged in this class.  But, I really am learning a lot of the history by using the information and doing them, a lot more than just cramming the night before to take a test.”

I replied, “That’s the point.  That’s the method to my madness and the madness to my method.  Let me tell you a story. There once was a person who discovered a butterfly struggling as hard as it could to escape its cocoon through a tiny opening at the top of the cocoon. She got worried when it stopped and seemed to give up after making no progress. She was sure the butterfly wouldn’t make it out without help.  So, she enlarged the hole.  On its next try, the butterfly wriggled out easily. But the young woman’s joy turned to horror when she saw its wings were shriveled and useless. Her well-intentioned intervention had interrupted a natural process. Forcing the butterfly to squeeze though a small opening is Nature’s way of assuring that blood from the butterfly’s body is pushed into the wings. By making it easier, she deprived the butterfly of strong wings.  You’re a butterfly working to get out of your cocoon.  I’m not going to enlarge the hole for you.  If I did, it wouldn’t be helping you.  ‘Hard’ is important if you want to spread your wings and be able to fly; ‘easy’ won’t cut it.”

Louis

I accidentally came across a YouTube site called “What’s Love Got To Do With It.”  This a short interview of John Mackey, co-founder of Whole Foods.  In it he says that “You can’t create a culture of trust unless love and trust is part of that culture…people you trust the most are people who love you….You need a higher love organization.  You can’t create a culture of trust unless you create a culture of love.”  He is what Judi Neal at Arkansas would call an “edgewalker,” a person who walks between the corporate world and the world of  spirituality in the workplace; it’s about corporate cultures such as Whole Foods, Ikea, Google, New Balance, Southwest, what Columbia’s Rajendra Sisodia calls “firms of endearment.”  But, he could have, maybe should have, been talking about the academic culture as well.   It’s about being on what David Brooks might call getting on the right side of transition.  It’s about what Yale’s Anthony Kronman in his EDUCATION’S END calls to restore to higher education the higher question, what’s it all about.   For me, it’s about redefining and expanding the academic search for meaning, reshaping the academic ethos, impacting the very soul of academia, and adding a sharing of the heart with a sharing of expertise and knowhow, that goes beyond credentialing.  It about becoming “people-manic” as an addition to the content, method, and technology mania.  So, hold on to your seats, I’m about to go Leo Buscaglia-istic.  I want to bring love out from the closet and release it.

There are three elements that are crucial for effective teaching that require a great investment in people:  attitude, attitude, attitude.  And, the greatest of attitudes, agreeing with Barbara Fredrickson, is love.   For me, love is the cornerstone of Martin Seligman’s “learned optimism” and “flourish,” Sonya Lyubomirsky’s “how of happiness,” and Barbara Fredrickson’s “positivity.”   So, I root for people and that cheering influences how and why I use methodology, technology, and information.  From my experience, from reading 180 student daily journals each week for the last 18 years, from various things I’ve done to engage and connect with students, from breaking barriers and building bridges and creating classroom community, almost all students want to trust, want to believe, want to be noticed, want to be respected, want to have hope, want to be validated, want to be heard, want to feel special, want to feel worthy, want to be joyous.

Love is the secret missing ingredient in academia.  It overcomes disconnection and numbness, both of which are a barrier to giving and receiving empathy and compassion   It’s a covenant of transformation for those who experience and accept it.  To love, primarily in the sense of the ancient Greek “philia,” and “storge” sense is empowering.  Love reminds everyone how good it can be to be alive. Love gentles your spirit.  It gives joy.  It opens your arms to embrace.  To love others is to hate the waste of another human being; it is to banish disdain from our hearts; it forbids indifference; it rejects the idea that people are disposable; it is to accept the sacredness and nobility of each person; it is to see pass the outer elements of profiling; it is discover and uncover and nurture each’s uniqueness; it is to understand she or he is someone’s daughter or son; it is to be accepting and patient; it is to raise your “hospitality intelligence;”  it is to nurture; it is to appreciate that each student is a vital thread in the fabric of the future; it is to see all the wondrous potential, opportunities, and possibilities that too often lie hidden and dormant in each; it is to respect; it is to be empathetic; it is to believe in and have hope for; it is to be supportive and encouraging.  Rooted in love are the “three As” of mindfulness:  awareness, altertness, aliveness.       From love comes the “three big Cs” of soulfulness:  connection, community, compassion.  Love endows a sense of “otherness,” a full and serving heart, a generosity, a kindness, a helpfulness, a sincere respect of yourself and others, a genuine concern for the well being of yourself and others, an understanding of yourself and others, and a willingness to act on that understanding.

It all comes down to this:  the consciousness that has come to rule the intellectual world of academia is the classical idea that in the affairs of people’s Homo Sapien Sapien reason is superior to and must banish Neanderthal emotion.  This has led to the myth that true academics have shed their perverting subjectivity, have embraced a higher order of unemotional, disengaged “objectivity,” both which too often have reduced students to impersonal and lifeless presumptions, assumptions, generalities, and stereotype.  The truth, however, is that education is about human relationships which get past the labels, and that all human relations are personal and are infused with emotion.

More often than not, to bring unconditional love into the classroom is about teaching differently.  But, as Einstein famously supposedly said,  “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”  There is an old English word:  concinnity.  It means a skillful blending of parts to achieve an elegant harmony.  It is used to describe finely crafted thoughts.  Academia can achieve this state as well by replacing an “either/or” with “both/and;” of merging and balancing the intellectual with the emotional, of being informative and transformative, of welding together the purposes of helping student learn both how to make a good living and how to live the good life.  The real struggle in our daily lives is not to apply just the information and skills that you’ve learned to use.  It’s how you use what you know and to what purpose that is just as, if not more, important.  It’s the struggle to be a good person as you make your choices each day, to have the wisdom to know what is right and to have the strength to do the right things in the face of pressures and temptations those demons are whispering in your ears to do otherwise.   It will all radiate out from you and reflect back to envelop you.

To paraphrase Paul from 1 Corinthians 8:1, Grades, degrees, honors, positions, titles puff up; but, love builds up. If you want to live in a beautiful world, be beautiful and create that world for yourself and others.  So, in the spirit of Einstein, I guess I am calling for the consideration of an arduous and courageous change of consciousness in academia to reach concinnity and become Richard Boyatzis’ “resonant teacher.”.

I guess I got waylaid by the Youtube clip and still haven’t told you how I do it, how I get to Fredrickson’s “love 2.0,” how I acquire Cuddy’s “warmth-competence” and Fredrickson’s “positive resonance,”  how I create that centrality of connection and community, and how I both keep it and keep it up.  That’s for later.  I promise.  No distractions.

Louis

I went out this pre-dawn morning to catch a glimpse at some endangered species:  peace and silence, an absence of noise, that is, as someone said, the think tank of the soul. The stars are important; quiet is important.  I am a “pre-dawn activist.”  As I was  picking up the mantra of the dawn,  I was thinking about a discussion in which I was engaged on Linkedin called “The Teaching Professor” during I professed that love in the classroom was so important, and got nailed to the wall.  But, I stood my ground.  Love is important because love, or what Amy Cuddy and her colleagues in their CONNECT FIRST, THEN LEAD calls  “warmth,” is the first thing people look for.  That is, how loveable you are.  They want to know who you are long before what you know.  They pick up on love long before competence because love answers two crucial questions:  “What is the professor’s intentions towards me?” and “Is she or he capable of acting on those intentions?”  This reinforces the research that students come on our campuses wanting first connection, friends, and community, not information.  This strengthens the findings of other research that when students go into a class top of their list of questions is  who this gal or guy with the degree is, not what she or he knows.  Echoing Barbara Fredrickson in her LOVE 2.0, Cuddy and her associates assert nothing is as influential as love, or warmth, especially when combined with competence.

It’s curious, but when we look at ourselves, we see our academic credentials; we speak of our know-how in our field; we show that we’re up to the job; we demonstrate our intellectual skills.  But, when we think of others, when we reflect on those who helped us along the way, we speak of their “peopleness,” their trustworthiness, respect, generosity, empathy.

Why is love important?  Well, the research shows that if you want to lead, to influence, begin with love.  It’s the pipeline to trust and respect.  It signals that you welcome people in your presence, that you’re there for them, that you notice them, that you’re attentive to their concerns, that you see them, listen to them, empathize with them, and that you can be trusted.  There’s nothing like love to give you the opportunity to change attitudes, beliefs, and actions about themselves and others as competence cannot.  There’s nothing like love to get what you want to get across across.  It’s what Cuddy calls the “sweet spot” when it comes to influence and leadership.  For the classroom, love helps students be more open, feel less threatened, feel more confidence, feel less stressed, more receptive, and be more productive. Love trumps competence every time says both Fredrickson and Cuddy.  To that, I say, “amen!”

Cuddy is right on!  In my experience, I’ve found that my unconditional belief in, faith in, hope for, and love of each student makes me sharply focus; it makes me listen intently; it does not allow me to be fooled by mistakes the students have made into believing they are lesser than they are; I am not fooled by the dark images they have of themselves;  I am not duped by their quirkiness.  I see their beauty when they feel ugly; I know they can be whole when they are broken; I know they are innocent when they feel guilty; I see their purpose when they are confused; I know they can when they have deceived themselves in a dark hole of “can’t.”  I’ve found that when I love each student, even if I don’t love what they’re doing or not doing, I’m emotionally relaxed.

When you love each student, where’s the limit to your faith, hope, perseverance, and endurance?  If you love something or someone, you don’t give it up.  If you’re a loving leader, you lead the way not just for the “good ones,” you take the tough ones as well.  Ain’t no mountain high enough.  You see every day as a glory day.  My gift to any student, then, is a gift of attitude, a mindset, a heart set, a soul set.

Now, how do you do it?  How do you keep it up?  How do you get what Cuddy calls “warmth-competence,” what I call “love,” right?  Later, at least, how I’ve learned to do it.

Louis

Happy July 4th.  Susie and I aren’t going to pop any firecrackers today. It’s going to be a quiet just the two of us today.  Just to see her free of agonizing sciatic pain, see smiles replacing grimace, and be there to care for her as she recovers from her successful operation is celebration enough for me.  We’ll just relax, cook some fish on the grill, and have our daily “together” glass of wine–if she doesn’t have to take any pain meds.  But, today, as turmoil reigns in Egypt, I was thinking about what today is really about, what is it we really celebrate, and, of course, is there a classroom lesson for us in the classroom.

Today we celebrate, as John Adams wrote to Abigail, “the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America.”  But, what made and still makes it memorable?   When makes it the envy of most of the world’s population whether they truly understand it or not?  I think it was the courageous conjoining by our Founding Fathers of what I call “Two Vs”:  Vision and Venture.  And therein may lie the true lesson of this day.  You see, vision is not enough; it must be combined with venture.  It is not enough to dream; you have to work at making that dream come true.  It is not enough to stare up at mountain top; you have to be willing to take the time and make the effort to learn how to climb it and make the challenging climb up to the summit.  You know, when the mountain is off in the distance, it seems so insurmountable.  It’s difficult to imagine how you could climb it. Once you’re up close, once you’ve trained, once you’ve learned, once you’ve decided to give it a whirl, it is easier to see to how to climb it.  When you get out of the rut, you will walk on new ground in new lands and enter new worlds that are beyond your wildest imagination.

I wonder if confidence is something we need or something we must somehow acquire before we do anything. When some of us explain, excuse and rationalize not doing, I wonder if all that has to do with confidence and self-esteem.  Where would we be in this country if our Founding Fathers, didn’t believe in themselves, if they didn’t believe, if they fearfully hesitated or vacillated or froze by succumbing to rationalization and excuse so many of us use in the face of challenge:  “It’s not convenient,” “I’m not comfortable with that,” “Alas, what can I do,” “It’s not me,” “I don’t have the time,” “It might not work,” “It’s too much work,” “I’ve been in the classroom for….,”  “I can’t,” “I don’t like to fail,” “It’s too hard,” “It’s not my responsibility,” “What will others think,” “It’s not me,” “I don’t like to rock the boat,” “But.”

Maybe confidence has to do with what I call our “choice of expectations.”  I used to tell self-denigrating students, “What you see is what you’re in the habit of looking for and you’ve largely decided to look for; and, you’ll find plenty of reasons and evidence to support your assumptions and perceptions; you’ll experience each day what you expect the day to bring.  If you believe you can’t, you’re right.  But, if you believe you can, you’re also right.  Which right do you want to be?  Whichever you want to do it, it can be done; and if it can be done, do whatever it takes to do it.”

Confidence is something we do, something we express, and then something we go after and do.  Maybe real confidence comes from the courageous act of investing yourself in it, comes with action, not in advance of action.  It’s sort of a “let’s see” process, for if we wait around for confidence to somehow magically come, it never will.  But, when you do it, you just have to see more than you’ve done it.  You have to see whatever you’ve done says about your inside you, your capacity, your potential.  When you see that, you’ll live the experience.  You might find things about you that will surprise.  If you do, you’ve added a powerful positive dimension to you and all you think, feel, and do.  It like Aristotle said, character is developed by acting as if the traits are already there. “We become courageous by acting courageously.”

To paraphrase Louis Brandeis, if you only could recognize that teaching is hard it would be so much easier for you.  “It’s easy,” “It’s quick,” “It’s guaranteed” were not the Burma Shave signs our Founding Father found on the road to liberty on that fateful day in Philadelphia.  And, they knew it.  Nor are those signs the ones you’ll find on the road to accomplishment in the classroom.  There are no shortcuts to change and growth.  There are no wondrous panaceas.  There are enough problems in teaching; we shouldn’t add to them by believing in tricks and magic.   There’s just the “two Vs.”

Louis