The Random Thoughts of Louis Schmier

A QUICKIE ON MOTIVATION

Louis Schmier — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:04:07 +0000

Tomorrow morning, literally before the proverbial crack of dawn, I’ll be hopping a “puddle hopper” on the first leg of my journey to the Lilly Conference on Teaching in Higher Education at Miami of Ohio. I’m already thinking and feeling. I can feel my inner fires getting stoked. I’m going into myself, putting on my game face, meditating, getting into the groove, getting my adrenaline flowing. I’m readying myself, motivating myself, for an all-day, pre-conference workshop I’ll be offering on creating a motivating classroom environment. And, today’s column by David Brooks in the New York Times in which he talked about the very things I will be presenting–core fire, optimism, and belief–as if he read my my soul, sent me both higher and deeper.

Now, all of the participants will probably think I’ll be focusing on the students. But, in reality, I’m going to put the spotlight on me and them. After all, the only people we can control, motivate if you will, is ourselves. And, as Jon Kabat-Zinn says, wherever you go, there you are. So, if we teach who we are, we have to look at the who of “we are,” not just at the how of “we teach.”

You see, it is we, the professors, who create the climate of the classroom. And, for that climate to be refreshing rather smoggy, we must have, as Brooks put it, a “molten core” of resolute faith in, hope for, and love of each student. Like the inner molten core that is the source of the earth’s dynamism, our inner core is what drives us. So, before we get to the applying “how” questions,” I’ll ask the meaningful and purposeful “who” and “why” questions: Do we enter the classroom unconditionally loving each student as a sacred and precious gem too valuable to cast aside? Do we enter the present classroom as futurists? Do we enter the classroom with an unshakeable confidence in the potential “becoming” of each student? Do we enter the classroom with a salivating faith in each of them? Do we enter the classroom clearly seeing each as a bright horizon? Do we enter the classroom with a willingness to endure and persevere today because of our confidence in each of their tomorrows?

There is nothing dreamy, touchy-feely, or ephemeral about these questions. For if our answers are a subtle or resounding “no,” what keeps our inner pack of big bad wolves of fear, lethargy, apathy, and resignation at bay? What keeps them from dousing our fires? What stops exasperation at the doorstep from dimming our inspiration? Where and what is the energizing source of our vision, our trust, our incentive, fearlessness, our caring, our awareness, our otherness, our service, and our enthusiasm? And, if we are not watering at the mouth, what would impel us to an unending and unwavering honest and true commitment to helping each student–each student–find her or his own way to achievement? From whence would come our driving inner “heart power,” what Vince Lombardi called the unstoppable “greatest strength in the world?”

Louis

EDUCATION’S ENEMY

Louis Schmier — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:15:59 +0000

This morning, on the chilly, damp, misty, pre-dawn streets, I started getting into the groove, to go inside myself, to put on my game face, as I begin to prepare for my workshop on creating a motivating classroom for the Lilly Conference on Collegiate Teaching next week at Miami University. That getting into the mood also took me back to the surgery that expunged my cancer. I’m not sure what took me back there. Maybe it’s the fact that the fifth anniversary, that magic five years of being cancer free, is approaching. Anyway, my hospital stay was in some respects a tale of two nurses: witches and angels. On one hand there were a couple of Nurse Ratcheds, the cold and indifferent witches. They were good with the equipment, but not good with people. These professional harpies kept me at a distance. They didn’t talk to me. They parked their brooms and entered my room as muted, expressionless, animated hypodermic needles. They treated me coldly as a “case” rather than warmly as a “person.” They whipped through their tasks with a kind of disconnection. At times, they were stern, almost gruff. If I had let them, they would have been depressing, demoralizing, and dehumanizing. I’m not sure I would use the words “kindness” and “dignity” to describe their treatment. They had been assigned to care for me, but they didn’t act in a caring way as if they cared. If their behavior wasn’t toxic, it wasn’t comforting; and, it certainly wasn’t therapeutic. Then, there were the angelic nurses. Ah, the angels. I could have sworn they had halos and wings. They understand that their mission was not simply to care for my post-surgical recovery; it as to care for my overall well-being. They understood that they were at their best when they treated the whole me, when they both helped me feel better and get better. Their treatment wasn’t confined to a silent, matter-of-fact, sullen change of IVs, or checking my catheter, or taking my temperature. The angels were good with the equipment, but they were also good with people. They uplifted my spirits with simple acts of human decency: a caring word, a smile, a kind word, a soft touch, a compassionate expression, an engaging conversation, an assuring tone. They not only cared, they acted caringly by conveying with their eyes, mouths, faces, and bodies that they truly cared.

In many respect, each is a product of what has been made into a heavy weight title bout in our educational system. In one corner, champion of the world, in purple trunks, are numbers, precision, information, technical know-how, and objectivity. In the other corner, the challenger, in white trunks, are empathy, compassion, kindness, and caring. And yet, it is a slug fest that need not be, that need not be. The competition between the two should be replaced by a cooperation because it’s not really a competitive boxing match between either/or. It’s not a matter of concern for one detracts from concern for the others. It’s a matter of a collaborative “and” of all these critical skills. Each in their own way is vital. I wonder how many academics outside of psychology and business have read, really read, much less applied the lessons of Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence, Social Intelligence, Primal Leadership (with Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee), as well as Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee, Resonant Leadership, Ed Deci’s Why We Do What We Do and Gregory Berns’ Iconoclast. Based on studies of the brain, they talk of our capacity and need to be empathic, to manage our emotions, and to connect with others as key ingredients of sustained purpose, meaning, achievement, sense of satisfaction, sense of accomplishment, and happiness in both our personal and professional lives. That includes the classroom as well.

Read about what’s going on at the Stanford School of Business, at MIT, at Harvard Medical School, and other institutions, and you’ll see that technical skills, critical thinking skills, and people and social skills are not antagonists. To the contrary, they’re comrades in arms. The real enemy of education is a one dimension focus of far too many academics. Education’s enemy is almost sole concentration on information transmission and on the development of technical skills and on what’s called “critical thinking” skills at the expense of grounding students in the actual practice of working with and relating to others. Higher education’s enemy are those credentialing boards, those pervading, high-stakes standardized exams for entering college or a profession that don’t approach measuring the social and emotional skills needed to separate the witches from the angels.

That being the case, it’s a matter of academics realizing that not only are they in the “people business,” but every profession, every job, for which they train students is a “people business.” It’s a matter of finding ways to intimately merge the training of both technical skills and thought skills with the development of both emotional and social skills. It’s a matter of inseparably meshing both the teaching and learning of what I called long ago: know, think, do, and feel. We need a partnership of intellectual strength with emotional and social strength; we need to nurture the “whole person;” we need to graduate the person who has the information and thought skills at her or his finger tips, who is mindful, aware, kind, caring, compassionate, empathic, willing to take risks, courageous to take initiative, capable of deciding without guarantees, resourceful, flexible, adaptable, fearless, sustainable, respectful, moral and ethical, trustworthy, trusting, able to relate to others, supportive and encouraging of others, be able to see and listen without judgment.

It can be done. It’s just not quick, easy, or neat, and takes lots of practice. No, education’s enemy is lack of concern for cultivating inter-personal and intra-personal savvy, of realizing that communication skills and people skills–feeling skills if you will—are just as important as information and thought skills, that educating the heart as well as the mind are critical for unlocking the love of learning, a fearlessness to change and grow, which are, in turn, so essential for meaningful and purposeful success and achievement in all professional, social, and personal walks of life in this rapidly ever-changing world..

Louis

“CARING LIVED”

Louis Schmier — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 12:42:09 +0000

Well, the semester is coming to a close. November is just beginning and it’s almost gone. The flow of my November is always disrupted by five “high” days at the Lilly conference on teaching at Miami University and the equally long Turkey Day break. Then, the students return in the daze induced by a caloric overdose with only a week before classes come to an end. So, up to now, by my count, I’ve read about 2400 daily journal entries over the past 12 weeks for each of my four classes. Among those almost 10,000 entries, aside from constant revelations of the humanity of each student, one thing jumps out. I’ll frame it in the form of a few questions. Why is it that almost all students are surprised that a professor cares about them as persons? Why are they stunned when a professor notices them? Why are they floored when a professor respects them? Why don’t so many of us fathom the almost immeasurable impact of caring? And, what does that say about far too many of us academics?

I know most of us do care about students. But, that’s not enough, for while we are all proclaiming “I care about students” with our lips, are we careful to be caring in our hearts? And if we are, why are far too many of us displaying a limited caring that waits for a few of them to come to us and isn’t reaching out to all of them? Why is the caring of so many of us selective or highly conditional? Why would we hear if we listened closely to both ourselves and others the culling out phrases “they have to deserve my…;” or, “they have to earn my…;” or, “they have to work for my…;” or, “they have to show me that….;” “if….”

As we are in our brain, so we are in our thoughts and attitudes; as we are in our hearts, so we are at our core; as we are in our souls, so we are in the soles of our feet. So, do we live those words of care? The true answer is not found in whether we care, but rests in whether the students feel cared about.

That matters. In the people business of education, what matters most is the attitude of the teacher. Trust me; there is nothing more magical than that. There is nothing more powerful than feeling you’re cared about, then feeling you’re noticed, then feeling you’re being valued, them feeling you’re wanting; then feeling lovingly embraced; then being made to feel that you’re important. There is no teaching method more influential than what I call “caring lived.” If I am right, the positive impact that acts of caring have on students should and must provoke us to reflect upon what is it that we can do to reinforce this impact in order to feel it, smell it, taste it, live it, and keep it alive and well each and every day. We have to acquire and live an intense awareness and a deep otherness that will not allow us to let opportunities, large and small, pass by in which we can help others feel welcomed, special, cared about, noticed, valued, and appreciated. Don’t underestimate the power of caring, for time and time again I see seemingly small gestures of caring leaving indelible memories and having lifelong impacts.

But, from my experience there is another side, a by-product, to “caring lived.” Our own self-worth, dignity, faith, hope, significance, meaning is cultivated as we live caring. The more we live caring, the more courageous we become to reach out; the greater our daring, the less we’re inclined to be discouraged by an overwhelming sense of hopelessness; and the less we’re inclined to be discouraged, the more resilient we are. “Caring lived” is a fuel for the fires of our inner strength that in itself drives our faith, commitment, determination, perseverance, endurance. At the end of the road, and it is a high road, “caring lived” nurtures emotional security that creates a greater chance of touching both yourself and someone, and both changing the world and altering the future. And, when you do touch someone, when you change the world and alter the future, I assure you, there is no greater “high,” no greater exhilaration, no greater joy, no greater feeling of accomplishment, no greater sense of significance, no greater addition of value and meaning to what you do.

Ah, wouldn’t it be lovely if unconditional “caring lived,” rather than merely “caring spoken,” was so commonplace, so integral to what we feel and think and do, that it would no longer be a surprise to any student.

Louis

ME AND CIRCUMSTANCES

Louis Schmier — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:28:24 +0000

69! Yesterday! Ugh. Double ugh! At least, I got to dive into Susan’s deliciously wicked birthday cheese cake it took her two days to bake. Yesterday shouldn’t have been. My three mile power walk this morning shouldn’t have been. By all odds, I should be dead from a massive cerebral hemorrahage not many survive. But, I’m not. Here I am, alive, as one of those very lucky ones. Of what and of whom is there to be afraid after surviving something like that? What today is there not to appreciate after that? For what today is there not to be grateful? And so, though I just turned 69, I don’t feel–I refuse to feel–in any way spiritually, emotionally, mentally, or physically decrepit. I pride myself that I am keeping my body and soul in peak shape. I feel, as I impishly label myself, that I am a spry “experienced teenager.” I’ve learned from experience, whether it was my epiphany in ‘91 or beating cancer in ‘04 or coming out from this hemorrahage as if nothing had happened, that the greater part of happiness or misery depends on my dispositions and not on my circumstances or on others. Oh, sure, we can and do blame students, administrators, colleagues, something called “the system,” something equally ethereal called “society,” and now the economy for a “the devil made me do it” attitude. It’s easier that way. The problem with blame is that you surrender your independence, your sense of control, your self-control, your inner peace, your inner harmony, your self-respect, and enslave yourself to the beckoned call of circumstances and others. You make yourself into the proverbial leaf helplessly thrown about by the wind. But, in the end, attitudes and feelings and actions are all us. Situations and other people do not create feelings. Nothing or no one can make us mad, for example, we do that to ourselves. We each have to take the responsibility for whom we are; that we create whatever feeling we wish to feel, whatever attitudes we wish to have, whatever actions we wish to take, in each particular situation with each particular person. Why are some people happy and other people sad, determined or resign, in the same circumstance? It’s because that is how each has chosen to be.

The problem or the solution, then, is that when we respond the same way often enough, it becomes an unthinking habit. Feelings seem to come automatically, even though they never have to be. We can unlearn, break old habits, learn, and acquire new habits. The way we feel about what we do, about the purpose and meaning of what we do, about students and colleagues and administrators was and is and will be a choice, conscious or otherwise. When we do take that responsibility, we acquire control over ourselves and, more importantly, find an inner calm. And, then, we can choose to change, to let go of, to create, and/or build upon what we feel.

I once said that growing pains aren’t only for children. Ph.D. isn’t Latin for “Complete.” We each should walk around with a sign hanging around our necks reading, “Under Construction.” Why? Because who we are is not determined and defined by what we have accomplished and already know; who we are is determined and defined by what we’re willing to learn, reflect about, and change toward. Surviving my hemorrahage has taught me that my feelings profoundly influence the life I experience and I am responsible for the selection that gives real power to the purpose and meaning and significance that lives within me and what I wish to do. I define me by what I love to do, by my curiosity and imagination and creativity, by my personal vision, by my sense of purpose, by my sense of meaning, by my sense of significance, by the difference I strive to be, by whom I have become, by whom I strive to become, not by what others think of me or want me to do.

I define myself by reaching out to touch a student, and thereby change the world and alter the future. To do that I’ve said over and over and over again that I want to be that person who is there to help a student help herself or himself become the person she or he is capable of becoming. It’s a feeling that stirred when I had my epiphany in 1991. It is even stronger now that I’ve survived unscathed that cerebral hemorrahage. When you’ve done it, when you’ve smelled it, when you’ve felt it, when you’ve tasted it, it feels so significant, so satisfying and so fulfilling, that you want to do it again and again and again. What drives me is an unquenchable thirst for adding value to the lives of others. It is that sense of significance, that sense of mission, that purpose, that sense of meaning. I’m as much if not more passionate; it drives me to work harder, to find new ways, to do more, to give more, to be more dedicated and focused, to be more aware, to be more alive, to be more empathetic, to be more compassionate, to have a greater sensitivity to those around me, to have a deeper sense of otherness. I consciously work every day to be sure that I am proud of what I do and of who I am, and that I hit the sack at night with a satisfied “yeah.” I’m always adapting, adopting, reshuffling, reloading, retooling, especially this semester when I unexpected got blind-sided by a change in copyright laws that nearly gutted all my classes. It’s not easy; it’s not quick; it’s not automatic. There’s no rabbit to be pulled out from the hat. There’s no magic wand. It’s challenging; it’s not neat; it’s not even pretty; it’s a never-ending story; it’s demanding of time, energy, and attention. How long will this elation and dedication last? I don’t know. But, I do know three things. First, I learned that fulfillment is in the creating, doing, and giving. It comes from having–no, making–an opportunity to make a difference, and doing it generously and with abandon. Second, curiosity and imagination and creativity are more than looking at stuff, dreaming about stuff, making stuff up, and making stuff. They are about expressing, in all sorts of limitless ways, what it means to be immersed in a limitless set of challenges, opportunities, and possibilities, and putting your own special stamp on them. . And finally, I learned from my cerebral hemorrahage to concentrate only on today. So, as long as I am in physical, mental, and spiritual shape, I’ll keep enjoying the dickens out of whatever and whoever are today.

Think about it. This morning after the birthday before, I got out of bed, jumped out of bed, as I do every morning and will in mornings to come, ready to dance with Susan and then skip to class, with an invigorating, meaningful, purposeful, and significant “yes!” Today, I get to do what I love doing and doing what I love with people whom I love.

And, this pre-dawn morning, after a cleansing three mile power walk, I had the added pleasure of downing a huge smile-inducing, artery-clogging, caloric overdosing slice of Susan’s scrumptiously sinful birthday cheese cake.

Louis

WHOLENESS EDUCATION

Louis Schmier — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:57:01 +0000

Boy, I just got cussed out yesterday off list from a professor at a western university for being a “Glenn Beck type” because my last short Random Thought was “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” Her message was not what you would call collegial. I mean it was smoking. Knowing she sure doesn’t know me, I just replied, hoping my calm came through, telling her that I am confused. I asked her to enlighten me about what is so “destructive of academe” about advocating beyond mere window dressing and lip service that classroom teaching is as important as research and publication? That is so “dangerous” when I take the stand to testify why an education should be more than mere professional credentialing? Where is my “conservative wing” politics in saying that an education should be more than white collar vocational training? How am I among the “narrow minded” when I assert that an education should be more than merely a job engine, that helping someone learn how to live is as important as helping her or him learn how to make a living? How am I “pushing an ideology” when I firmly believe that part of an education should help develop a therapeutic civility that would act as a vaccine against toxic incivility? Where is the “religious right” in my educational philosophy that part of an education must also help promote a genuine, sincere, and habitual inner dignity and moral strength that displays itself in kindness, respect, trustworthiness, honesty, caring, and just plain decency?

Am I objective? No. But, then, who honestly is?

Do I have an agenda? Yes. But, then, who honestly doesn’t?

I am not a one-dimensional, either-or guy. I call myself– I pride myself in being–a helping, multi-dimensional “wholeness teacher.” I am concerned with touching a student’s heart as well as her or his mind, of inspiring her or his spirit as well as sharpening her or his intellect, of helping her or him acquire people skills as well as the information and skills in her or his discipline, of helping her or him acquire critical feeling skills as well as critical thinking skills, of helping her or him see how noble, sacred, valuable, worthy, and important she or he and all others are, of helping her or him become an honorable person rather than merely a test-taking, grade-getting, accumulating high GPA honors student.

I am an ardent advocate of conscious, purposeful, and pervasive character education. I don’t think when it comes to the classroom we can be what I call “character atheists.” And, when we interact with students, there is no such thing as practicing what I call “value neutrality.” It’s pretty simple. There isn’t a so-called “objective” bone in anyone’s body. No one is an untouched island. Everything we do or say, everything we feel and think, sends out messages that reveal those beliefs and values that underpin, shape, color, and drive our attitudes, emotions, thoughts, and actions. At the same time, those beliefs and values act as a filter on what we see, hear, taste, touch, and feel. One way or another, by hook or by crook, we shape our values, we have impact on others, and so we shape lives no less than others influenced and continue to influence the course and shape of our lives. What we don’t advocate, we inadvertently–or overtly–dismiss and put down. When we don’t’ promote positive values beyond merely a paragraph on plagiarism in our syllabi because we take an “it’s not my job” or “I’m not comfortable doing that” or “what will they think” or “I’m not a priest or parent or counselor” stand, when we don’t consciously feel we have a responsibility to actively help influence ethical perspectives and shape the behavior that stems from them, we are in danger of graduating–as we have recently seen all around us–destructive moral dropouts. If that be Glenn Beck-ish, so be it.

Louis

SHELF LIFE

Louis Schmier — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 14:00:35 +0000

I’ve been toying with the idea of replacing my computer. But, it’s proving to be formidable and unnerving. Everywhere I go and everything I read and everyone to whom I talk indicate that all the files I’ve got backed up using Windows XP will not be read on Windows 7 or Mac, and all the programs I’m running on XP will not run on 7 or Mac even with some convoluted tweaking, that the new won’t speak or easily speak to the old. They just aren’t all that compatible. It almost sounds like I’d be trying to listen to my old LPs on a DVD player. Whether my fears are well founded or not, on this soggy morning that, some stuff that happened–or did not happen–in class yesterday, and some journals entries I’ve read this past week all have gotten me to thinking and wondering.

What, then, is the shelf life of all this information we transmit, verse in, train for, test, and grade? What’s the shelf life of such attitudes and habits and values as trustworthiness, curiosity, commitment, perseverance, endurance, imagination, compassion, service, self-discipline, creativity, dedication, humility, respect, empathy, kindness, courage, authenticity, honesty, responsibility, fairness, and caring that we should be advocating, promoting, instilling, and modeling?

Which will prove to be timely and which timeless in the shaping of lives: information or character?

Louis

OUR STORIES ABOUT STUDENTS

Louis Schmier — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:04:03 +0000

I was just reading a message from a professor at a mid-western university who was belittling students by making fun of their “silly bloopers.” And I thought: the stories we tell about students reveal who we are, who we believe they are, and the nature of our relationships with them.

Louis

CARDIO-CENTRIC

Louis Schmier — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 11:24:04 +0000

I just came in from a meditative walk thinking about a bunch of journal entries I’ve been reading since I came back from the Lilly-North conference. Aside from the ravages of H1N1, aside from Homecoming Week, aside from the coming of that silly Fall Break next week, and aside from all the “abnormal” slings and arrows of “normal” student life, lots of highly personal and deeply distracting, debilitating, paralyzing, heart breaking “stuff” is going on inside students and outside the classroom at the moment that’s darkening the climate of the classroom: an unwanted pregnancy, a frightening lump and prospective biopsy, an accidental death of a father, a brother fighting in Afghanistan, a sister overdosing, a sudden divorce proceeding of parents, an unexpected hospitalization of a grandfather, a close aunt diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, a brother in a serious car crash, a saddening funeral of a close friend, a tearful placement of an Alzheimer afflicted grandmother in a nursing home, a broken engagement, a mother discovering she has breast cancer, a chronic auto-immune disease, and on and on it goes. It’s sapping their strength. It’s grinding down their spirit. It’s obviously having an impact of their ability to focus. It’s undermining their performances. How do I know? I’m reading their daily journal entries in which they choose to talk to me about what’s preying on their minds, hearts, and souls.

If we are interested in student accomplishment, how can we not struggle to be empathetic, how can we not care, how can we ignore all this “outside/inside stuff” that effects the student, how can we say that none of this is of our concern, how can we not get involved, how can we not deal with it? Most of us are not that uncaring, cold, and distant. Yet, in the intellectual climate of ivied academia, too many academics believe that a classroom education is solely about transmitting information and developing analytical skills, and that the other “stuff” too many of them denigrate as “touchy feely” either has no place in academia’s hallowed halls or should be left to others.

Eighteen years ago, as part of my epiphany, I slowly began to realize that we academics have to be cardio-centric, for at the heart of an education is the education of the heart. Think about it. Thoughts are useful; information is important; analytical skills powerful; but, they’re not the whole of either education or life. And, their power is nothing compared to feelings. Feel about it. Whether we go ahead and take action depends on whether we feel like it or not. It is how we feel that pulls us and pulls on us, creates our reasons, generates our attitudes, and powers our action. It’s not what we know. Whatever we avoid, whatever we engage, we avoid or engage because we don’t want to or want to experience the feelings that we assume it will bring. Have a desire to feel frustrated, annoyed, upset, discouraged and angry? Then you will find plenty of excuses for feeling joyless and blaming others for having dealt you a bad hand. Want to feel alive, empowered, enthusiastic, passionate and joyful? Then you will find plenty of reasons coming at you from every direction. What I mean is that if you want to reach out and touch a student, if you want to make a difference in a student’s life, if want to help a student perform, if you want a student to transform, you must realize information and reason does not appeal to or move either us or a student. Emotion does all that. It’s the engine. It’s the pusher. It’s the resonator. It’s the adrenalin getter-upper. Emotion stirs people; emotion drives attitudes; emotion spurs moods; emotion guides actions; emotion powers movement. We are primarily feeling people who think and act. It’s that “appeal to a person’s emotions” thing.

I once heard John Madden say that a lot of people think the game of football is played on the field. They’re wrong, he said, it’s not just about ability, talent, and technique. There’s more to it than the X’s and O’s of a play. Most of the game, he asserted, is played in the hearts of the players. And, when a player isn’t playing with his heart, he’s not into the game. So, too, in the classroom, at the end of the day the heart is where most of the academic game is played.

Louis

THE POWER OF A SMILE

Louis Schmier — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 10:22:38 +0000

As I struggled to catch up with student journals, A statement made by Lou Foltz at the Lilly conference kept ringing in my head: we are feeling people who think, not thinking people who feel. Then, I read Madeline’s journal entry last night and his words resounded as loudly as if I was next to the bells of Big Ben. She had written this entry while I was in Traverse City at the Lilly-North conference, “I miss your constant smile. I look forward to it. It brightens me up. It warms me up and melts the chill of my low self-esteem and weak self-confidence. Your smile tells ugly me that I’m attractive. Every time I’m in class with you when you smile at me, I feel noticed and valuable, and I believe that inside what a lot of people say is this worm you’re helping me to see the beautiful cocooned butterfly that you see. It’s so hard, but every time you offer me one of your ‘I care’ smiles I get a shot of ‘I can do this stuff’ that’s a temporary vaccination against my fears and insecurities and disbeliefs….”

As I read her words over and over and over again, I started thinking about a sequence of feelings and attitudes: impact a student’s heart, and you alter her or his story; change her or his story, and you affected her or his perceptions; affect his or her perceptions, and you’ve touched that student; touch that student, and you’ve altered the future and changed the world.

Madeline reminded me again of the smallest, most useful, most powerful tool each of us have at our disposal in the classroom to make a difference. It has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with us. It has nothing to do with giant leaps or dramatic U-turns. It’s proof that every little thing you feel and do leaves a consequence in its wake, that supposed little things can make huge differences, and that those small things quickly add up to big differences. I want you to think about this: every stirring in our heart stirs and matters. So many of us think we only speak with our mouths. But, I tell you, researchers tell us, we speak so loud with our bodies, with our hands, with our faces, and with our eyes that our words are drowned out. So, both inside and outside the classroom, both inside and outside us, something so simple as a sincere smile not only turns on the lights of the likes of a Madeline, but it magically turns walls into doors. Sneers blind; faith opens eyes; scowls deafen; hope perks up the ears; frowns chill; love warms up; grimaces numb; empathy sensitizes; sneers paralyze; compassion moves. A simple, genuine smile improves all of us. When we sincerely smile, we are more confident, enthusiastic, upbeat, and convincing. We even look better when we smile. A simple, genuine smile from our heart is an aura of our own positive outlook on life that we extend to envelope others. When we sincerely smile, we immediately add value to our encounters with others. When we sincerely smile we see, listen to, and empathize with others who are otherwise not there when we are dour and scowled. And, that makes that simple, small, useful, powerful act of just sincerely smiling, anything but small and meaningless. It’s actually so powerful that it can lift the heaviest of hearts.

Louis

MY THIRTY SECOND SUMMARY

Louis Schmier — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:51:42 +0000

Very early Sunday morning. Sleepless leaving Traverse City. Thoughts and feelings are racing through my mind and heart. In the plane somewhere over the East coast heading for Jacksonville, rushing home before Kol Nidre. Feeling heady after three whirlwind days of the Lilly-North conference on collegiate teaching. I really don’t need this flying metal cigar to feel high. Susan, sitting next to me, her suitcase crammed full with new delights, is delighted she raised the economy of Traverse City by at least two points. I had three days of non-stop, uplifting, and often intense, schmoozing and education with new and old friends: Todd, Deb, Sarah, Jim, Laurie, Gregg, Cal, Tamara, Ann, Gail, Barbara, Corrine, Sherry, Lou, Chris, Crina, Nancy, Dan, Bettina, Joe. And the list goes on and on and on. I owe them. They replenished, renewed, revitalized, and rewarded me. The neat people at the Lilly conferences do that to me. I’ll probably still be up there long after the plane has landed.

How do I sum up such a satisfying, fulfilling, and certainly educating experience in thirty seconds? This way: the more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the students, the more we can cut through oblique and dehumanizing perceptions and generalities and stereotypes of students, the more we can herald each student as a sacred and noble and unique human being, the more we can focus on a faith and hope and love for each student, the more we can cast a bright spotlight on their “becoming,” the more we can learn and accept and apply what is being learned about learning, the less taste we’ll have for negative and destructive weeding out.

Louis