“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”  Was the Bard right?  Maybe.  Then, again, maybe not.  What we see depends on what we’re looking for.  If you’re looking for proof of “don’t belongs,” you’ll find plenty of evidence that they are.  Objective reality is impossible because of how our past experiences play on our memories, and that has as much to do with what we feel and think we are experiencing in the present. Our perspective and our attitude have a powerful and unavoidable influence on all aspects of our professional and personal lives.  It is my beliefs that beliefs, which are at the root of perceptions and expectations, are no small matter.  They’re just about the only thing that does matter.  They mean the difference between despair and joyous enthusiasm.  They mean the difference between stress and calmness.  And, to paraphrase Epictetus, events don’t cause stress or calmness. What causes stress or calmness are the views we have of events and people.  So, with the help of Harvard’s Ellen Langer, I think on this one, I’ll take the Bard on.

In a name, she say, rests how we interpret and respond to our environment, and how we interpret both our own behavior and that of others.  The difference of how we name a classroom is the difference of how we experience it.   How we see the classroom is formed by whether we attach “awe-full” or “awful” to those in it.  That difference in naming means the difference between creating a healthy and therapeutic climate on one hand and a toxic and pathological environment on the other.  It means the difference between delight and drudgery, enlivening and leadening, labor and laborious, meaningfulness or meaningless; it means the difference whether we care or could care less; it means the difference between patience and frustration; it means the difference between being invigorated with a “wow” and being drained by a “ah me” and “ho-hum;” it means the difference between empathy and indifference; it means the difference between being energetic and lethargic; it means the difference between encouragement and discouragement; it means the difference between confidence and doubt; it means the difference between whether we notice or ignore; it means the difference between connecting and distancing; it means the difference between being alert and ignoring; it means the difference between being attentive and being inattentive; it means the difference between being spry and being sluggish; it means the difference between being energetic and being apathetic; it means the difference between being attentive and inattentive; it means the difference between being aware and unaware; it means the difference between being mindful and mindless;  it means the difference between accepting or rejecting both students’ and our own imperfections; it means the difference between embracing and shunning; it means the difference between inner smiling and sneering; it means the difference between dancing and trudging into the classroom; it means the difference between possibility and impossibility; it means the difference between seeing a challenge as an opportunity and seeing a challenge as a halting barrier;  it means the difference between uncovering each student as a sacred and noble and unique person on one hand and hiding that flesh and blood person under the flattening, cardboard label, “don’t belong,” on the other.

So, what’s in a name?  A helluva lot!  Again, as Ellen Langer says, change the language and you get vastly different physical, intellectual, and emotional effects.  Just think about this.  Think about how so many of us react to “awful” and “honors.”  Whatever the labeling name—professor, student, administrator—it tends to render that other person as indistinctive.  But, to be human is to be unique and to feel unique.  Our degrees and titles and resumes notwithstanding, we each are human. That means we each want to be treated as sacred, noble, and unique person.    Just like everyone else.  Should we, then, treat other humans any differently?    So, what if we recognized and treated everybody else as sacred, noble, unique human beings?  What if  we stripped away those dehumanizing, flat stereotypes, generalities, and labels, with all their impersonalizing presumptions, and talked only of individual human beings?  We could.  It’s always our choice.  Every thought we think and every feeling we feel and every act we take is a choice we make.  The way we think and feel moment to moment determines how we live.  We could change our language from “awful” to “awe-full,” but we’d have to accept that, as Wharton School’s Sigal Barsade and George Mason’s Olivia O’Neill say, love, with faith and hope.