“CAREFRONTATION”

Well, I’m home from the Lilly conference on college teaching.   I had left Valdosta for Lilly on warm Wednesday, chilled by a gnawing feeling I was being enveloped by an dulling sense of staleness.  After all, I haven’t been in the classroom for almost a year.  But, I returned to Valdosta from Lilly cold and snowy yesterday warmed by a refreshing reinvigoration.  And, that transformation had nothing to do with the conference program itself.  It was the people–Jim, Alicia, Gregg, Alan, Scott, Ron, Milt, Craig, Todd, Neil, Mike, Deb, Steve, Judy, Al, and a host of others who make this conference into a soulful retreat that forges a loving, caring, believing, supporting, uplifting, and encouraging community.

For four days, I was constantly confronted with “carefrontation” by a loving “otherness” with friends and colleagues who circled around me like defending Musk oxen.

“Carefrontation!”  I like that word.  That’s what teaching and learning should be all about.  It’s the embodiment of encounter.  It banishes aloneness, strangerness, and loneliness.  It’s at the core of support and encouragement.  It’s a wrecking ball that demolishes isolating barriers.  It’s the steel that builds connecting bridges.  It energizes empathy and compassion. It’s the hearth that forges community.  It nourishes togetherness.

“Carefrontation!” It’s at the heart of my “Teacher’s Oath.”  It is the heart of my “Teacher’s Oath.”

“Carefrontation!” It has an enormous power to cut through the separating wall of impersonal and dehumanizing stereotype and generality.  It demands we look at each student–unconditionally–with constantly refreshed eyes and see not a human being, but a “human becoming.”

“Carefrontation!” It is a soothing compound made from the ingredients of what I call “four little big words”:  faith, belief, hope, and, above all, love.  If nothing else, it doesn’t let you leave everything as it is.  A warm carefrontational spirit doesn’t let you leave any student out in the cold.  Without fear of sounding trite, in the game of life–which is not a game–nothing like a carefronting heart sends a person’s ego to the sidelines and brings service to others into the play.  Good teachers get emotional.  They love!  They give a damn!!  They’re people persons.  They’re addicted to people, not to technology, methodology, or information.  They know that if they truly want to encounter each student, if they want to connect with each student, if they want to let people in, they have to let their emotions be out.

The problem is that in academia, so many–most–academics walk around in disguised in costumes, wearing masks, putting on airs.  So much of what comes out of professors’ mouths in academia these days is sugar-coated, couched, and polished. The messages are manufactured, looks are feigned, the words are insincere, and they all come across as the phonies they are.   But, genuine emotion?  It’s a real person sharing a real feeling for another real person. When we hear it, when we see it, we know it; we’re riveted.  And, that magnetic impact doesn’t only occur because it’s rare; it happens also because it’s real.

“Carefrontation!”  A daily dose of it is like a spiritual baby aspirin.   It’s critical to strengthening the heart.  It keeps the blood flowing.

So, keep on unconditionally ‘carefronting’ each and every student and helping each of them to ‘carefront’ her/himself.

“Carefrontation.”  Now, that’s a word for my “Dictionary of Teaching” that I’m beginning to put together.

And finally, let me and Susie take this opportunity to wish all my American friends a joyous Turkey Day.  May you recover from your caloric coma induced by your inevitable ODing on tryptophan.  And, be careful if you’re traveling.

Louis

THREE ONE-LINERS

Yeah, I know.  I’m writing a lot these last few days.  It helps me get into my groove.  I thank you for your indulgence.  Anyway, I wasn’t going to write anymore until yesterday.  In the waiting room at the dentist’s office, I ran into a young lady who had been in class about fifteen years ago.  I politely chit-chatted with her for a few minutes.  Then, she blew me out of the water:  “I want to thank you for your loving heart.  It let you to see me when others didn’t and wouldn’t, and that included me.  I’ve always remembered that ‘Remember the Chair’ and still look at those ‘Words for the Day’ you wrote on the board each day.   I still read almost every day your oath to us in the syllabus.  It’s become my oath to everyone around me.  I use the values you taught me every day, those ‘how I feel’ word, the ‘words for the day,’ the uplifting word cards, the list of good things at the end of the day, everything.  I use them at work and at home…When we were in class together, when you helped me change my how I looked at myself, I bet you didn’t know you were also teaching my children to be.  I didn’t then.  I do now….Only God knows why you didn’t weed me out.  I believed I deserved to be as I always was; you were the first who didn’t, and I never let anyone do it after that.  I thank you; my customers thank you; my friends thank you; my family thanks you; everyone I know thanks you.  I’d never be where and who I am.”  With a tear in my eye, all I could say was a soft “thank you.”  We hugged.  In the car, I felt a starting gun had gone off, and I furiously wrote down a horde of “one liners” that raced through my heart and mind.  I had gone to the dentist to get my teeth cleaned and walked out with a refreshed soul.  Here are three of the one-liners I scribbled on some scrap paper:

• As we think about nurturing or weeding out a student, we should never forget that we’re also nurturing or weeding out her or his future sons and daughters.

• A teacher with an unconditional loving heart has no blinders, and is able–and willing–to see and hear some things and some ones where others cannot–and will not.

• Pronouncements that “I care about students” is the lofty ideal.  Unconditional “caring” for each student in that classroom each day is the down-to-earth real thing.  Don’t confuse the two.

I’m ready for Lilly.

Louis

LOVE IN THE CLASSROOM

Here’s a one-liner that’s helping me get on my Lilly game face:  Why is it so objectionable to so many academics to say I unconditionally love each student and find each of them to be a sacred, noble, beautiful, and amazing human being.  For me, it is as if the Divine comes into class with ear buds, crazy colored hair, pants desperately hanging onto butts, baggy pajamas, body piercings, or tattoos.   Well, I lied.  This a “two liner.”

“I’m Too Busy”

How about just writing a “quickie one liner or one paragraph,” a mid-western e-colleague suggested.  “I’m too busy and don’t have the time to read more than that.”

“It’s not always smart to surrender to the telegram mentality of the smart phone, tablet, or computer screen,” I replied.  “But, I understand–more than you know.  Besides, I have more than a few ‘one-liners’ up my sleeve.  Yeah, I can occasionally send out a few of those.”

So, here’s my first quickie “one paragraph”:  too busy; don’t have the time?  “No time to say, ‘hello,’ goodbye?”  “I’m too busy,” or “I don’t have the time,” however, isn’t enough of an excuse, explanation, or rationale for an inability–or refusal–to see, hear, much less care about, someone, or to care to do something.  Termites are always busy.  Ants are always busy.  Bees are always busy.  Busy is not the issue.  The real issues are:  what are your priorities; for what or whom don’t you have the time; for what do you have all the time; at whose expense, are you too busy; about what and whom are you never too busy and always have the time to be enthusiastic; where do you want to put your time and effort where “too busy” and “don’t have the time” are banished; for what and for whom are you never too busy to whip your rump with a speeding up “giddyap,” but not for a pulling back on the reins with a slowing down whoa?”  Students?  Research?  Teaching?  Promotion?  Tenure?  Classroom?  Lab?  Archive?    I think we have to be careful that by being “too busy,” we’re busy not living.  Just asking.

Louis

COMFORTING DISCOMFORT

I just came in from my “brrrrrrrr” 7 mile, 13 min/mile (admittedly shameless bragging) walk this brisk 28 degree morning.         My left knee is aching.  I’m afraid it’s starting to act up again after a two month hiatus.  It suddenly had started hurting beyond its usual annoying chronic ache last February.  “Killing me” is a better term, but I had lived with it and had kept on slowly building up my walking distance and pace.  Loved that ibuprofen I was secretly taking so my in-house boss wouldn’t know.  Then, one day in August, in San Mateo, I started giving out what I thought were silent groans when it got to the point I couldn’t painlessly bend my left knee when I tried to get dressed or sit down, even though I could walk almost pain free.   My ever vigilant Susie saw my winces, put her foot down, and pulled my feet off the streets.  Immediately, after getting home two weeks later, kicking and screaming, to get her off my back, I agreed to go into the orthopedic surgeon who had worked on her rotator cuff.  He looked at the x-rays.

“Ever play lacrosse or soccer in high school or college?” he asked.

After I nodded my head.  “You’re left-footed,” he added.

Another affirming nod.

He showed me the x-ray, pointing, describing, explaining, “You have an ‘athletic knee.’  It’s taken a lot of trauma.”

“Now?” I asked myself.  “Just from running, kicking, stop-going, twisting, and turning when I played soccer in college over a half century ago?” I thought to myself.  Then, I remembered the neurosurgeon explaining that my massive cerebral hemorrhage, that hit me in six years ago, may have been caused by a cracked skull and severe concussion in a soccer game forty-seven years earlier.  With sincere disbelief, I told the orthopedist that my knee had never bothered me before beyond an ache.  He replied with a sarcastic smile, “It does now.”  Thankfully, he isn’t one of those surgeons who greets you with a scalpel when you come into his office.  So, he shot the knee up with cortisone and put me on Celebrex.  It worked.  I kept walking. Only for a while.

Now, I like where my exercise level is:  walking every other day, working out with dumbbells on the non-walking days.  I’ve worked hard over the last six months to get to the 7 mile, 13 minute/mile level that I’m at.  But, I over the past six weeks, under the scrutiny of my live-in drill sergeant, with a reluctant, but submissive, “yes ma’am,” have reduced my walking schedule from every day to two days on and one day off, and last week to every other day.  I convinced myself that at my age, I didn’t need to push myself to such level.  Who was I trying to kid?  That wasn’t the real reason.  My knee had started bothering me again, now and then.  Increasingly more now than then.  I made the mistake of telling Susie that maybe the effects of the cortisone were wearing off and the Celebrex wasn’t picking up the slack.  She immediately got me to pick up the phone and had me get in to see orthopedist this afternoon.  I’ve got a hunch an MRI is on the horizon, maybe an arthroscopic procedure.  I doubt he’ll shoot it up again.  I’m not a happy camper.  It’ll take me off the dawning streets for a while.  But Susie is right and I am wrong.

Right now, I’m in a state of comfortable discomfort.  Sounds like a contradiction in terms, doesn’t it.  Well, there’s a lesson here for all of us.  Sometimes to avoid risk we bed down with pain and make it annoying or achy or gnawing, don’t we.  Sometimes to play it safe we make fear so friendly that it doesn’t feel like fear, don’t we.  Sometimes to avoid difficulty we walk hand-in-hand with discomfort so that it doesn’t seem to be all that uncomfortable, don’t we.  Sometimes to avoid picking up a gauntlet of challenge, we accept unacceptable pain, don’t we.  Sometimes when we don’t want to make any change fear becomes a friendly shield, doesn’t it.   Sometimes when we don’t want to bother or be bothered we hold hands with the bothersome, don’t we.  That’s what it’s really a lot it is about when we and students anxiously say, argue, explain, rationalize, resist with “It’s not me,” “It’s hard,” “It’s not my teaching (learning) style,” “I’m not good at,” “I don’t like?”

You know, it’s okay to be antsy, nervous, anxious, afraid.  It’s not a weakness to get sweaty palms or weakened legs.  As I have told students, it’s okay to have fear, but learn not to let the fear have you.   Courage is not the absence of fear.  It’s learning from, adapting to, and dealing with.  It is acting in the face of fear, to learn from fear, to be energized by fear, and use all that to move through fear.  So, I guess I’ll just have to courageously face this afternoon whatever the orthopedist says both fearfully and fearlessly with a “let’s see what happens”  as I have done with any new technique and technology that I have experimented with in the classroom.

Louis

“TELL ME ABOUT” INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

Well, here at VSU we’re beginning a hunt for a Provost/VPAA.  I’m sure the headhunters and VSU search committee will vet all the applicants.  I’m sure the finalists will have outstanding resumes.  But, resumes go only so far as I discovered when VSU was hunting for a new President way back 2012 and the finalists for the position had meetings with a group of interested faculty.  What I learned was that if you want to get a good sense of how people feel and think, if you want to get insights into who they are, ask them to tell you stories, personal stories.  Why?  Well, stories put flesh on the bones of fact.  They live in the most intense and sacred places and moments.  They’re the primary text upon which everything else is commentary.  They’re containers for meaning.  They’re canvases on which is painted inner landscapes.  They offer insights to the way a person sees the world.  They reveal a person’s social, personal, and professional identity.  They are poetic truth of personality that go beyond Joe Friday’s bland, “Just the facts, ma’am.”  These are some of the “tell me about” stories I would ask of any applicant for any position to recite:

  • Tell me about which of all the positions you’ve held was your favorite.  Why?
  • Tell me about which of all that you’ve done in your life you feel is the most important.  Why?
  • Tell me about what do you enjoy the most.  Why?
  • Tell me about what do you enjoy the least.  Why?
  • Tell me about what do you do for fun, what feeds your soul.  Why?
  • Tell me about something you’ve done that was creative.
  • Tell me about a problem with a student (colleague, faculty member, etc) that you needed to solve.  How did you solve it?  Why did you solve it that particular way?
  • Tell me about a situation where you didn’t have anyone telling you what to do, but you had to go do it.  What did you do?  Why did you do it that particular way?
  • Tell me about something complicated and complex, something you know a lot about, in plain and simple language, without jargon, using only clear and crisp and complete terms,  so I understand it.
  • Tell me about who you are.  Forget and make no reference to all your personal roles such as father, friend, husband (wife), son (daughter), forget and make no reference to all your professional roles, your past and present titles, forget and make no reference to your degrees and all your positions, forget and make no reference to what you have, forget and make no reference to all that you have done.  Just tell me about who you are.
  • Tell me about the one sentence you want others to say about you at your eulogy.

There are a bunch of other “tell me about” stories I could ask.  And, coming to think about it, we ought to use these “tell me about” stories, and more, to interview ourselves.

Louis

SPOTLIGHTS AND HOUSELIGHTS

I’m in a strange place today with a lot of thoughts swirling inside me about capturing what I call the “soul of education.”  So, I want to talk about spotlights and houselights.  Weird, huh?  I’m here because I been thinking about something a couple of things I came across on the internet.  One was Derek Walcott’s poem, “Love After Love”:  “the time will come when with elation you’ll greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the other’s welcome and say, Sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was yourself. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to yourself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you have ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes. Peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.”

For a long time, we’ve all had discussions around a bunch of cliched centering, a supposed inclusive centering that really has an air of exclusive centering.  In the last decades, as everyone has examined educational goals, objectives, and strategies, the proverbial spotlight has swung from one extreme of illuminating the podium to the other extreme of beaming on the classroom seat, throwing the professor into an anxious shadowy state.  By that I mean, in “learning centered” what happens to “teaching centered?”  In “student centered” what happens to “teacher centered.”  In focusing on the intellect or cognitive, what happens to emotion or affective?”  In focusing on emotion or affective center what happens to the intellect or cognitive?”  So, often there seems to be more than an implied and applied either/or.  It’s as if when one is the center of the classroom universe, nothing or no one else is.  It is as if we’re closing ourselves off to both our life and that of others.  There should be no spotlight; it should be turned off and the house lights turned up so the entire classroom is revealed.  After all, we’re all participants in education.  No spotlights.  Just house lights.

This centering creates a contentious struggle that weakens or strips away meaning, commitment, and sense of service; it numbs, wounds, and diminishes us; it strengthens cynicism and fatigue in us; it shifts priorities for us to look outside the classroom for excitement and purpose.  So, the classroom so often doesn’t seem to be worth it.  It is  like we–teacher, student, administrator, Joe citizen–see another human being in the room or on campus with us and have this need to label her or him, and in so doing label ourselves.  At the same time, we’re labeling what it is we’re doing or supposed to be doing?  At the instant we do that, we’re not seeing another human being, we’re in our thoughts about him or her, and ourselves; we’re in our thoughts about what is we are doing.  And whatever it is, we’re getting away from the heart of the matter.  Judgments creep in that balkanize our views; that isolate, separate, diminish, elevate, inflate, deflate, devalue, value, and so on.  We accommodate; we stop listening generously; we stop reflecting; we stop looking and seeing; we stop hearing and listening; we stop being surprised at the sight of another human being; we stop treating another human being as a work of art; we become content sitting in our office or carrel in the library or at the lab table.   We become content with playing with numbers, pie charts, and graph lines.  We dig a chasm without mutual admiration and inspiration rather than weaving a web of respect by which we are aware of all we have in common:  we all are human beings; we all have brains; we all have hearts; we all have an individuality; we all have unique potentials; we’re all frail, imperfect, and fraught with foibles; we all have hopes, dreams, fears; we all have stories, experiences, and memories that act as backbeats to what we believe, feel, and do.  No spotlights.  Just house lights.

But, if you want learning to be the center of the classroom, good, so is teaching.  If you want the student to be the center of the classroom, all well and good, so is the teacher.  If information is the core business of academia, so are people.  If transmitting information and developing skills is your central purpose, that’s fine, so is preparing people to use that information and those skills to do good, as well as to live the good life.  If our job is to deal with the issues in the classroom, I’m fine with that, so it is our job to help students stand up to the yet unseen stresses and challenges after graduation. If the cognitive is the center of academics, okay, so is the affective.  Whatever or whoever is the center, so is everything else and everyone else.  So is everything else and everyone else!  So is everything else and everyone else!!  So, that means in a sense there is no center.  There is no center and there is no periphery; there is no field of play and there are no sidelines.  There is no center stage and there are no wings.  There’s no either; there’s no or; there isn’t even a both; there’s only an organic all.  And, that generates what Rabbi Abraham Herschel called a “radical amazement,” a banishment of indifference to some that makes a difference for all.  No spotlights.  Just house lights.

I think one of the great tragedies is that we love to carve things up and separate in all walks of personal and professional life, and, thereby, lose the organic nature of things.  We’re creating distance.  We’re losing a mindful connection.  We’re losing meaning.  We’re losing a sense of service.  Maybe it’s an occupational hazard of labeling, role playing, stereotyping, and generalizing:  student, professor, administrator, teaching, learning, intellect, emotion.  Each comes with limits, perspectives, expectations.  The whole of academia is outside and something or someone is at the center.  Maybe we should stop with all this “centering” and familiarize ourselves with the full perspective, the full interfacing, the full dimensionality of what education really means and what it takes to educate and become educated.  We cannot have academic institutions based on just sound economics or expertise; we also need an academic institution resting on the integrity of our commitment to fight for a sense of meaning in human relationships.

It was Proust who said, “The voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new vistas, but in having new eyes.” Maybe in our thoughts, feelings, actions, and emotions we need an audacious interfacing, and ought to break down barriers we have created, build bridges, forge communities, and nourish togetherness.  No spotlights.  Just house lights.

Louis