From An “Awful” To An “Awe-full” Class, I

It’s dawn.  The sky is greying with the coming day’s light.  I just came in from slowly sipping a cup of freshly brewed coffee by the koi pond.  As I gazed at the barely visible graceful sweeping moves of the koi and listened to the music of the waterfalls, I thought of the urgent beckoning by the pond.  “In the morning, – solitude,” Emerson said, “nature may speak to the imagination, as she does never in company.”  To lose that silence, to lose that ability to keep quiet company with yourself, to fail to be a guest in your own heart, to fail to be more that a passing tourist in life, is such a tragic loss of the opportunity to develop the ability to think and feel honestly.  Without a time and place carved out for personal reflection, our authenticity is challenged; we can so easily get swept up and away by the crowd; we can so quickly lose our uniqueness and individuality; we can so completely surrender to numbing “what everyone does and believes” uniformity and conformity; we can so fail to find the calmness among people and circumstance that we find in being alone.

These last four months or so, when I was uncharacteristically off the grid, have taught me that life is constant improvisation, for, as Robert Burns rightly wrote,  “the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men/Gang aft a-gley.”  I was dramatically reminded  that each day is a time filled with the unexpected, that the only certainty in life is its uncertainties.  I was taught there isn’t a moment that is not an exploration into the unknown with uncertain outcomes.  Nevertheless, as Rumi says, “Wherever you are, be fully present there.”   He means that we can’t be that passing tourist in life in general or anywhere we are or in whatever we’re doing.  Instead, we dauntlessly have to show up and keep showing up.  We have to be intensely mindful; we have to be fiercely aware, alert, attentive, and alive; we have to have a profound sense of otherness and of nurturing others.  We have to constantly tap into that inner authenticity through thick and thin.  There’s no way around it.  To do that, however, is a high order of skill that takes constant practice to reach, a lot of constant and conscious practice.  That’s why, whether I’m standing by the pond or walking the streets, I love this graying time as a time of deep listening.   It’s so important, for it offers the opportunity to transform inattentive thoughtlessness into conscious thoughtfulness; for me, it readies me, emotionally and mentally, for every moment to engage fully and joyfully with every step and breath into whatever this day may bring.  It brings a daily understanding that, as Thich Nhat Hanh said, the real miracle is not walking on the surface of the water; it is walking the earth and relishing in the mirales that are everything and everyone.

These past four months I been thinking a lot of how this is all so easy to do during the “up” times of life, when things are bountiful, when they are good, when they go your way.   But, the real challenge is to hold your own when things turn “down.”  These last four months have been a test to see how committed I am to living Rumi’s words.  I’ll just say that I and Susie have been distracted, redirected and challenged by a roller coaster of family celebration and near family tragedy:  the joyous week-long Bar Mitzvah celebration of my California grandmunchkin, Nina;  the happy days of wine sipping in Carmel Valley with Susie and my sister;  staying for another week of California grandmunchkin spoiling; returning to Valdosta only to be almost immediately greeted with the blood curdling news of the near-fatal bicycle accident of Nina’s older teenage sister, Natalie, that almost took her from us; the two weeks—the toughest two weeks of our lives—of fear, crying, anger, cursing, emotional exhaustion as Natalie lay in Stanford’s pediatric ICU with severe brain trauma, broken wrist and back, and severe internal injuries; the waiting for news during several life-saving surgeries;  the exhilaration and wonderment of her slow but miraculous near-total recovery; two weeks of returning to California to support Natalie, to help to take the load off her exhausted parents, and to help them back into the normality of their lives; the joy of playing tourist for the 13th coming-of-age birthday celebration of my Nashville grandmunchkin, Jackie;  dealing with the constant agony of Susie’s torn achilles tendon, and facing the prospect of  surgery and a long recovery period; enduring painful physical therapy to avoid surgery on my rotator cuff that was torn during a stupid fall in Monterey; and the joyous preparation for celebrating the 51st anniversary of my love fest with Susie in a couple of weeks.  Yeah, the last four months or so have been filled with lots of what Dickens would call the best of times and worst of times.   And, let me tell you what pulled and still pulls me up in those worst of times and lifts me higher in those best of times, what has given me the strength to withstand for better or worse.  Richness!  Inner richness!  The inner richness of a loving wfie, a loving family, loving friends, and having a sense of meaning and purpose to my life—no matter what.  What steadied me in those worst of time, when I was sorely tested and wavered, was gratitude, that constant revelation of how blessed I felt my life was.

Does, this have anything to do with the classroom?  Sure it does, for  life in the classroom is but a microcosm of life’s macrocosm.  The ultimate “upper” or “downer” in the classroom is mood.  It’s not what too many of us solely concentrate on:  information, method or technique, and technology.  No, it’s feeling, emotion, attitude, mood.  I recently read an article by Paul Piff and Dacher Keltner, social psychologists at UC-Berkley.  A while back, they published the unexpected results of a study that demonstrated the pernicious psychological effects of wealth and income disparity, that there was an apparent link between wealth and unseemly behavior; that wealth comes with a set of values that are something less than communal; that the wealthy feel entitled with a deservedness for having “made it;”  that the wealth creates a new privileged aristocracy or meritocracy.  I went back to Piff’s sobering TED talk from four years ago and read some of his writings.

They got me to wondering.  I recalled all the bemoaning and frustrations I’ve heard and read over the years of my colleagues, cynicism about all but the “good” students:  “They’re letting anyone in.”  “They don’t belong.”  “I’m here to ‘profess,’ not teach!” “We’re diluting the value of an education.”  “It’s just plain dumbing down.” “I don’t have the time for them.”  “I’ve got more important things to do.”  “I’ve got to meet a deadline.”  “I don’t have tenure.”  I wondered if all those silent and expressed nasty barbs, sarcastic comments, negatives, lack of appreciation,  the eye rolling sighs, complaints, criticism, finger-pointing, put-downs, demeanings elevate our mood in the classroom?  Once again, that question has gotten me to wonder if Piff’s and Keltner’s findings could be extrapolated to an equally corrosive academia, to the proverbial “wealth of knowledge,” to an attitude of having academically “made it” shown by degree, title, position, tenure, grants, research, and publication.  Would this negative mood towards teaching in general and to the “average” students in particular whittle away a professor’s energy little by little?  Would a habit of naysaying, adding up one small negative behavior, one snide comment, one demeaning thought, one denigrating feeling at a time until they become weighty chains on our attitude and hence our performance?  I mean, honestly, ask yourself:  “How much do I really know about each student?”  “How unconditionally supporting and encouraging am I for each student?”  “How much do I notice each student?”  “How much do I listen to each student?” “How empathetic am I?”  “What is it like to talk with me?”  “How easy is it to meet with me?”  “How easy is it to ask for help from me?”  “Does my attitude hold me back or give me a shove?”  “Do I constantly complain?”

Now, in one of the last responses to my Random Thoughts,  I had been accused of being an “academic wrecking ball,” that talk of faith, hope, and love in the classroom  ”and this constant harping on teaching is silly, dangerous, and beyond stupid.”  No they’re not. They set the chain-breaking, positive mood for both you and each student.  They neutralize naysaying with an unconditional enveloping lovingkindness.  They’re attitudes and actions that I have found is what transforms in our eyes, and the eyes of each student, an “awful student” into an “awe-full” person, and an “awful” classroom situation into an “awe-full” one.  I will assert without reservation or hesitation or equivocation that being a classroom teacher in higher education does not—I repeat, does not—damn a person’s academic soul! Focusing on classroom teaching instead of research and publication doesn’t place you in academic moral danger.  It doesn’t corrupt; it doesn’t harm your character; it doesn’t warp your behavior.

So, I ask, in the spirit of Piff’s and Keltner’s findings, and if we’re honest, I’d ask us to ponder this:  are the more academically renown more or less empathetic and compassionate towards each and every student?  Are they more likely to be engaged with or disengaged from each student?  Are they better or worse at reading each student’s emotions?  Does all that drive to secure grants, to research, to publish, to secure tenure make someone numb to students?  Do we value ourselves and colleagues proportional to the length of our academic resume or extent of our and their academic renown?  Are accomplished professors really so different from students?

My point is that grant securing,  tenure pursuing, researching, and publishing aren’t inherently poisonous, but they are so dangerous that they should be looked at with suspicion and caution.  It’s our choice to allow or disallow them to have a negative impact on our way of feeling, thinking, and acting.   Maybe consciously building connections with all students, being engaged with them, thinking of them as equals, “desegregating” ourselves, breaking down barriers, building chasm-spanning bridges,  bringing about a sense of community can trigger basic empathetic processes.  And, maybe faith, hope, and love are the essential building materials we need to make our lives in the classroom exponentially better.   Caring, without deeds, is meaningless.  Too many find it easy to profess “I care” and then carelessly fail at it.  At least, I have found that to be so.  Faith, hope, and love are the currents that allow me to drift away from impersonal and dehumanizing stereotype, generalization, and label.  They allow me to deal, with an empathy and a compassion and a smile, with the ups and downs in the classroom.   They give me the insight to see that Thich Nhat Hanh is right:  everyone who steps into that classroom is an “awe-full” miracle.

Enough for now.

Louis

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About Louis Schmier

LOUIS SCHMIER “Every student should have a person who wants to help him or her help himself or herself become the person he or she is capable of becoming, and I’ll be damned if I am ever going to let one human being fall through the cracks in my classes without a fight.” How about a snapshot of myself. But, what shall I tell you about me? Something personal? Something philosophical? Something pedagogical? Something scholarly? Nah, I'll dispense with that resume stuff. Since I believe everything we do starts from who we are inside, what we believe, what we perceive, and what we do is an extension of ourselves, how about if I first say some things about myself. Then, maybe, I can ease into other things. My name is Louis Schmier. The first name rhymes with phooey, the last with beer. I am a 76 year old - in body, but not in mind or spirit - born and bred New Yorker who came south in 1963. I met by angelic bride, Susie, on a reluctant blind date at Chapel Hill. We've been married now going on 51 years. We have two marvelous sons. One is a VP at Samsung in San Francisco. The other is an artist with food and is an executive chef at a restaurant in Nashville, Tn. And, they have given us three grandmunchkins upon whom we dote a bit. I power walk 7 miles every other early morning. That’s my essential meditative “Just to …” time. On the other days, I exercise with weights to keep my upper body in shape. I am an avid gardener. I love to cook on my wok. Loving to work with my hands as well as with my heart and mind, I built a three room master complex addition to the house. And, I am a “fixer-upper” who allows very few repairmen to step across the threshold. Oh, by the way, I received my A.B. from then Adelphi College, my M.A. from St. John's University, and my Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I have been teaching at Valdosta State University in Georgia since 1967. Having retired reluctantly in December, 2012, I currently hold the rank of Professor of History, Emeritus. I prefer the title, “Teacher”. Twenty-five years ago, I had what I consider an “epiphany”. It changed my understanding of myself. I stopped professoring and gave up scholarly research and publication to devote all my time and energy to student. My teaching has taken on the character of a mission. It is a journey that has taken me from seeing only myself to a commitment to vision larger than myself and my self-interest. I now believe that being an educator means I am in the “people business”. I now believe that the most essential element in education is caring about people. Education without caring, without a real human connection, is as viable as a person with a brain but without a heart. So, when I am asked what I teach, I answer unhesitatingly, “I teach students”. I am now more concerned with the students’ learning than my teaching, more concerned with the students as human beings than with the subject. I am more concerned with reaching for students than reaching the height of professional reputation. I believe the heart of education is to educate the heart. The purpose of teaching is to instill in all students genuine, loving, lifelong eagerness to learn and foster a life of continual growth and development. It should encourage and assist students in developing the basic values needed for learning and living: self-discipline, self-confidence, self-worth, integrity, honesty, commitment, perseverance, responsibility, pursuit of excellence, emotional courage, creativity, imagination, humility, and compassion for others. In April, 1993, I began to share ME on the internet: my personal and professional rites of passage, my beliefs about the nature and purpose of an education, a commemoration of student learning and achievement, my successful and not so successful experiences, a proclamation of faith in students, and a celebration of teaching. These electronic sharings are called “Random Thoughts”. There are now over 1000 of them floating out there in cyberspace. The first 185, which chronicles the beginnings of my journey, have been published as collections in three volumes, RANDOM THOUGHTS: THE HUMANITY OF TEACHING, RANDOM THOUGHTS, II: TEACHING FROM THE HEART, RANDOM THOUGHTS, III: TEACHING WITH LOVE, and RANDOM THOUGHTS, IV: THE PASSION OF TEACHING. The chronicle of my continued journey is available in an Ebook on Amazon's Kindle in a volume I call FAITH, HOPE, LOVE: THE SPIRIT OF TEACHING. There a few more untitled volumes in the works..

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