ABUNDANCE AND SCARCITY

Abundance.  I was thinking about abundance what with Thanksgiving being but a few days away.  I was also thinking of the “bah, humbug” Scrooge-like impoverishment of that professor’s attitude about whom I wrote last Thursday.  I always say that in the classroom, supported by such research as that of Chicago’s Anthony Byrk and Barbara Schneider that I just came across, there should be laid the foundations for three goals of attitude before anyone gets near the material to be learned:  break barriers, build bridges, forge community. All three are designed to begin to create what researchers call:  “relational trust,” that is, reliance on others and being open with others.   It’s an impersonal term for something that is very personal,  I prefer to call it “community.”  I know, “community” and “trust” arent’ words that sits well with most in academia.    Nevetheless, those words in action support and encourage; they create communication and connection; they take the grimness and fear out of learning; and, they feast on the too often hidden abundance in the classroom, in both each student and ourselves.  I’ve found it is so crucial to learning that, in the spirit of Abraham Mazlow, Ed Deci, Carol Dweck, Barbara Fredrickson, Teresa Amabile, Howard Gardner and others, I always took the first ten days to two weeks of class to engage students in “getting to know ya”  exercises to start the demolition of separateness and aloneness and strangerness, and to begin the construction of supporting and encouraging togetherness.  And, then, organizing the class in such a way that constantly and explicitly I made supporting and encouraging communication a major “how it works” theme throughout the class’s term.  As, I’ve said in the syllabus for the past 20 years:   “On the first day of class or so you and two others will create what  I call “Communities of Mutual Support and Encouragement.  You will create your own communities according to three rules:  (1)  Each person must be a stranger to each other; (20  Each community will be gender mixed unless the class makeup does not allow; (3)  Each community will be racially mixed unless the class makeup does not allow..You and the other two members of your Community will sit together in a little cluster facing each other.  In this class you’ll NEVER see the back of the head of the person in front of you simply because there is no front or back in this class. The governing principle of the Communities will be “one for all and all for one.” That is, you and the others in your Community will mutually support and encourage each other and work together as if you were one person.  I hope you will become friends, or like family, and learn to love each other.  You are not in competition with anyone else in the class.  This class is a cooperative “family” effort.  You will learn to respect, trust, support, and encourage other people.  You will learn to work with other people. You will learn to communicate with other people.  Remember ONE OF THE INVIOLABLE CLASS OPERATIONAL RULES:   YOU WILL SIT IN CLASS ALWAYS LOOKING AT EACH OTHER.  NO ONE WILL LOOK AT THE BACK OF THE NECK OF ANOTHER MEMBER OF THE COMMUNITY.”

You see, the real scarcity in the classroom is not ability or potential; it is attitude.  It is an impoverishment of perception and assumption, a scarcity of notice, a short supply of attention, a dearth of faith, belief, hope, and love.  That scarcity weakens stamina and breeds the deadly diseases and infirmities of fear, anxiety, joylessness, disbelief, resignation, blindness, deafness, apathy, and a host of other killers of spirit.  That impoverishment is uneducating of all those in the classroom.  The idea of the power of the inner dynamics of emotions on performance is squashed with assault of being soft, squishy, irrational,sentimental tosh, and touchy-feely.  They’re accused of being alien in a place whose drivers are information, tests, grades, GPAs, scores, and credentials.  It is this myopia that leads to self-fulfilling prophecy because we don’t ask the right questions to deal with this drought.  We always ask the debilitating questions:  Is what were doing going to succeed?  What if it doesn’t work?  Where’s the time?  How are we going to grade it?  How will we be assessed?  What will others think?

We should be asking ourselves two questions:  What is the right thing to do?  What is required of us if we want to make a positive difference, a transforming difference, in someone’s life?  I’ve found that the answers to these questions brook no compromise, for lives are at stake.  They opened my eyes to the abundance within each of us, how to break free of the drought; and that to reeducate in the classroom you cast out the harbingers of blame and become a prophet of responsibility.  You belief.  You have faith.  You have hope.  You love.  You care.  You respect.  You trust.  You are respectful.  You are trustworthy.  You take the time and banish that thief of connection:  “busyness.”  You travel the galaxy of nurturing.     You do whatever it takes so that a student survives her or his greatest fear, her or his more defenseless and vulnerable moment,  her or his most unloved feeling.  You nurture unceasingly.  You show up for each of them time and time and time again.  You’re there time and time and time again.  You are loving beyond any assessment instrument.  You have an endurance for care.  You draw from a deep well of selfless serving.  You create a serum that kills all pernicious killers of spirit, self-esteem, and self-confidence.

What I am more than suggesting is challenging, painful, scary, time consuming, and difficult.  It means taking risks, become vulnerable.  It pushes to the brink of change.  It means doing a whole of things we’d rather not do.  It means we have stop blaming.  It means we have to close the distance.  It means becoming involved in the responsibility for others.It demands an investment of the heart.  Sure, it’s a lot easier to get a grant or bring to campus the latest dog and pony show from pedagogical or technological experts.
But, there is research demonstrating the emotional component in any classroom is both real and strong, and influential.  That is to say, if you’re truly interested in improving educational outcomes, read the research on “relational trust” or “community.”  The researchers found that if a classroom is full of strangers, they won’t trust each other.  You can throw a lot of state-of-the-art technology and pedagogy on them, but not much will change.  On the other hand, as has been my experience for two decades, if a classroom is full of people who respect and trust each other, who invest themselves in that which is communal, they will come into supporting and encouraging community; they will love each other, and you’re going to get great results.
Louis

YOU CAN’T GET TO THEM ALL

4:50 am.  Can’t sleep.  It’s quiet.  Aroma of a freshly brewed cup of coffee.  Chopin softly playing on my Sonos sound system.  No walking.  It’s a Novembrrrrrrrrrr 18 degrees wind chill factor out there. Plants snuggly wrapped in protective visqueen.  It’s so cold, the cockroaches are wearing antennae muffs.  Talking of the cold, I got a chilly a message from a professor in response to my my story of that unexpected meeting with the student from the Holocaust class last Thursday morning during my walk.  “That’s only one student,” she said with a nip in her air.  “Surely you couldn’t get to them all like that….at best you can only get to some or a few….Doesn’t seem worth the time and effort…I question your effectiveness….doesn’t sound like a very efficient use of your time…”

Reasonable enough by her standards.  But, not by mine.  I told her that I knew I couldn’t get to them all anymore than could she.  No one can, and it’s unrealistic to judge someone by that factory-type production line measure.  So, I said, I don’t play the “100% game.”  But, at the same time I don’t ease off.  I just don’t know how many “some” or “a few” are.  In any event, I don’t have to get to them all.  There is in the Talmud an obligatory statement by a first century rabbi, Rabbi Tarfon, “You are not required to complete the task, but neither are you free to avoid it.”  I’ll put it in another way:  just because getting to them all is impossible doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it.  The “some” or “few” students are reminders that give meaning to our lives, a someone and something that give us hope.  Still another way is if I accept and embrace the reality of my limitations, I won’t be uptight about them, and I’ll be free to fully experience them.  And, yet another way, all I have to do is to get to “one” to change the world and alter the future.  Think of that student in the Holocaust class.  Think of how many “ones” she will “get to” in her lifetime, and how many ones those “gotten to’s” will get to.  Ripple effect they call it.

So, that just may be a failing in our system of assessments. While it’s important to be as “efficient” and “effective” as we possibly can, when efficiency and effectiveness are our only criteria, when we play a numbers game, the powerful, self-serving lesser angel within us will try to cook the books one way or another to insure that we game the system to up our numbers by watering down our tasks, taking on smaller and smaller doable tasks, doing only that which is safe and familiar and convenient and comfortable and acceptable, and with which we can demonstrate “effective” and “efficient.”  But, maybe we too highly value immediate efficiency and effectiveness; maybe its more important to be a futurist, to be faithful of our vision–to experiment, to adjust, to adopt, to be respectful, to be trusting and trustworthy, to be fearless, to stretch, to risk, to challenge, to go into the unfamiliar and unknown, to persevere, to endure–the way it can make a difference in the lives of others.  Let’s do some math.  Suppose I “get to” only five students in each class of 50.  A mere 10%:  lousy assessment numbers.  Certainly, inefficient and ineffective you say?  But, add up four classes a semester (five in the old quarter days), two semesters a year (three quarters in the old days), not taking into account summer classes, for 46 years.  Over a lifetime, that adds up to an army of “got to’s” who will get to others, and they to others.  It’s a powerful story that goes on and on and on, made possible by the one line I contributed.

No, as Rabbi Tarfon also said, revealing the secret hidden in plain sight, “The day is short, the labor vast.”  So, I accept and embrace and am inspired by what I know is real, and it will set me free to gratefully, fully, and wholly experience it.  I will let the years of “ineffective” and “inefficient” speak for me.  I will not let a “you can’t get to them all” be an excuse for ignoring, evading, not wanting to know, and not doing anything.  I’m not a short hauler.  I was, am, and will be in it for the long haul. Persevering, committed, enduring faithfulness to my vision, trusting my deeper and inner knowing, not allowing the power of my inner human core be weakened, are the only ways I know how to hang in there.  Sure, as Rabbi Tarfon inferred, I will die with my vision unachieved and without being able to declare a victorious “I’ve done it,”  but I’ll go with the satisfaction of knowing that I was all in, that I put it all on the field, that I gave myself to my vision and used my gifts to strive to achieve that vision with everything I had, and that I did make a difference.

Louis

A CHANCE MEETING

It was a good walk this morning.   In the fifth mile of my six mile roundtrip, I didn’t realize what was about to happen.  This is what I best remember.

I was moving along at my usual fast pace, abreast of the Phys Ed building, when I heard voice shout out behind me, “Dr. Schmier!”  I stopped.  I turned.  I recognized the face.  I didn’t remember the name.  Before I could get a word out, she blurted with a feigned frown, “Dr. Schmier, I hate you.” Then a beaming smile appeared to lighten up her face, “And, I love you.”  She leapt forward and gave me a tight hug.

Excited, she stepped slightly back, and in an almost out-of-breath, hurried, rat-a-tat fashion saying, “I just have to tell you.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.  After all these years, I still just can’t get that Holocaust class out of my mind.  That yellow star is still branded into my heart.  I see that yellow star every time I pull out my underwear drawer.  I deliberately put it there so I knew I’d see it every day.  The ‘Jew’ on it just screams at me every day, and I think about what good I’m going to that day.   I even read the first page of the syllabus once a week.  You just don’t know what’s happened to me since that class.  I’m not shy anymore and I don’t do things by what I think other people will think or say, or by who they want me to be.  I’m not afraid anymore.  Me! I’m becoming more and more brave.   I’m so conscious of struggling not to be prejudice, I watch every word I say and everything I do and I’m so aware of other people and being respectful to them.  I now refuse to be the onlooker and bystander I once was.  I refuse to be one of those silent good people.  Me!  Can you believe it?  I call down my friends, boyfriend, my parents, especially my mother, my sisters, people in my church back home, anyone, once did it to my preacher, and talk with them.  And it all began with you and that class.  You’re not just my favorite teacher; you’re my best professor; you transformed me into a much, much better person than I ever thought I could be, all in one class.  They called it a ‘Perspective Class.’  Boy was that the truth!  It sure effected mine.”
Dumbstruck, eyes watery, I couldn’t find any words.  Before I could utter at least a “thank you,”  She gave me another hug and said abruptly, “I’m late for class.  Got to go.  I saw you and just wanted you to know that you’ve made a big difference in my life and maybe in other lives I’ve touched.  Bye.”
 And off she hurriedly ran into the Phsy Ed building.  I just stood there, frozen, numb, deeply humble, a tear or two falling from my eyes.  There was such joy in her voice, and I still don’t know who she was, but she sure knows.  I turned and walked faster than normal, thinking “this is what education should be,transforming,” and struggling to remember her words.
I’ve got to get to work on the book I want to write about that Holocaust class with its “Star Project,” and break through the organizational barrier that’s been stopping me these past two years.

Louis

LIFE SAVVY

Without getting into the out-of-control imbalance and hypocrisy of college sports, higher education makes its appeal to students in an unbalanced and distorting way.  It advertises itself in economic language, not in social or cultural or moral language.  It sells itself as a producer of professionals, but not as parents, friends, neighbors, and citizens; it touts job, with its title, position, and paycheck, and very seldom does it sell character development.  It images itself as an employment agency.  Too many professors are high on being information transmitters and stuffers, and teach to credential; too many present themselves as head hunters for a good paying job; too few talk of personal transformation.  Higher education has put itself in restricting balkanized containers:  departments, colleges, schools, courses, classroom, campus, major, program, degree, tests, grades, GPAs, pedagogy, assessment, technology.
By putting on center stage the vocational “business” and banishing to the wings the human “beingness,” the idea that education’s goal is to help a person learn how to live the good life has gone into eclipse, overshadowed by the idea that education’s sole role is vocational or credential, that is, to help a person earn a good living.  Students are asked in word and action, especially at revealing career days and job fairs and Career Services Office,  “what do you want to do,” and seldom, if ever, “who do you want to become.” And so, higher education has generally surrendered a significant part of both its educational and “higher” character.
Whatever makes higher education both education and higher, often ignored “beingness” intensifies it; it focuses; it concentrates.  It’s the moral core; it’s the ethical center; it’s the source of integrity and authenticity which goes by the name “character;” it’s the name of the game.  It’s intensely personal; it’s very social; it’s a resource for questioning, change, development. It is “beingness,” not “business” that puts you on a questing life of pilgrimage that takes you out of your world into other worlds and thereby expands your world.
As a guide to myself, almost exactly twenty years ago, in a piece I called “What It Is We Get Paid To Do, I wrote that higher education “is the development of a thoughtful citizen and a compassionate human being who is also a skilled worker. It is a mission that is concerned with the whole person rather than merely the partial wage-earner. It is the mission that seeks to insure that our students will graduate as individuals of character more competent in their ability to contribute to society, more civil in how they think, more respectful in how they talk, more sympathetic in how they act, more sensitive to the needs of the community of which they are a part….”
I believed and lived that then; it believe and live it even more today.  But, you know something, you don’t get invited if you think this “fluffy,” “touchy-feely,” “tosh,” “junk” way because most academics find it real hard to admit it, grasp it, talk about it, much less believe and live it.
Louis