As I was walking this very brisk morning, I bumped into another early morning bird looking for worms, a man in his mid- forties. As we went along for a short way, it was obvious that we weren’t birds of the same feather. There I was in my ratty, drab, frayed, gray sweats that I had gotten at a discount store, my head covered by my Carolina-blue UNC knitted hat, and my hands protected by stained brown gloves. Eclectic to be sure. He was decked out in the latest, wondrously colorful running haute couture obviously selected by Elsa Clinch, CNN’s fashion reporter. Everything was color matched: running tights, jacket, hat, gloves, and shoes. I looked like a wrung out rat pigeon waddling next to a strutting peacock in full feathery display. And when that rare car approached, he looked like a moving Jean Miro in its headlights while I resembled something like a lump of cement. He told me that he had started jogging a few weeks ago.

“You’re pretty serious about this, aren’t you,” I said.

“You bet. If I wasn’t serious you don’t think I would have spent all this money on these clothes do you?” Then, he jokingly pronounced, “Hey, you’re out of style in your clothes; no real jogger would be caught dead in your outfit.”

“I like being out of step, you might say,” I matter-of-factly replied.

After a few long blocks our routes parted. But, after he went his way I started thinking about two dirty words. They are words which none of you in education will like, but they’ve been creeping into my psyche and troubling me. They are such popular, unprofessional words. These words lack an air of intellectualism; they are words of whim and superficiality; they best belong among the giggly teenagers, macho beach surfers and social snobs than among stable, thoughtful educators. But, I think these words might be apt descriptions of what is regrettably taking place too often in our educational system as we rush and stumble to meet the growing demands by the public for educational accountability. Fad and fashion!!! Those are the words: fad and fashion.

That’s how we so often talk about teaching and learning. It seems that educational ideas and concepts appear more often than not in the trendy, sporadic, short life expectant way of fad and fashion: come and go; now it’s here, now it’s gone; it’s the in thing this year, it’s out the next; its today’s rage, it’s yesterday’s craze. They go by different cuts and styles like hems and necklines traveling up and down in blurring speed. Everything is heralded as revolutionary. Everything is promoted as brand new. Everything has its own unique twist, its own name, its own initials, its own jargon, its own public relations campaign, its own publications, its own guru. Sometimes the progression of leaps and bounds smacks of a never-ending line of medicine men hawking their patent educational cures from the back of their peddling wagons.

The problem with fads is that they so often have us all running about without any concerted direction, except maybe in circles. They create a bandwagon on which too many of us unthinkingly jump, a craze that lacks a sustaining concept, theory, technique or approach. Proponents of each “fad” claim that theirs is different from everything else, a whole new and separate way of looking at education. Each theory, concept, technique, approach is promoted as the instant cure from which we expect much too much. Too little time is given to settling in, adjustment, adaptation; so much time given to technique; so little time given to explanation and training; so little time given to the complex human factors of affected teachers, students, parents, administrators, and public officials. I sometimes get the feeling that supporters of these miraculous formulae don’t trust anyone to understand the complexities and don’t take the time to explain, to answer questions, to dispel confusions. I think the “common folk” are smarter than many of us “experts” think. They could understand and might even support new approaches to education if their concerns were addressed, if they were spoken with rather than down to, if we used plain language. But, sometimes I get the feeling that the attitude of the proponents of a given idea is all too often: “Don’t ask questions. Trust us. We’re the ‘experts.'” And when expectations aren’t met, we hear advocates proclaim in their own defense: “The concept would work if it wasn’t for people.” And after the public invests its time, monies and confidence and the fad fails to produce almost immediately, we get despondent, abandon it, run for cover, in an apparent display of a lack of commitment, and cry out in disappointment, “back to the basic 3 Rs”–until another apparent craze, another wholesale solution comes upon us.

This ceaseless activity makes us look important, serious, prominent, professional when we see our reflections in the mirror or converse with each other or read conference papers to each other. To the public, however, it’s too often foul-tasting, ineffective, and maybe dangerous snake oil that has to be spat out before it kills. That helter-skelter progression may be one of the main sources of the public’s distrust of us experts. It certainly erodes our credibility; it makes us suspect of being pompous, arrogant, cold, isolated, unrealistic, and groping amateurs disguised in caring professional’s clothing.

I am not sure I know why every new idea has to have a label and a jargon of its own–why we feel we need to make these self- proclaimed quantum leaps, these wholesale renovations. Why are we too often inclined to use the blare of imposed proclamation rather than the more substantial, subtle approaches of explanation, discussion, persuasion, acceptance. Why isn’t it sufficient to say quietly and humbly that our experiences and research are incremental, adding in step by step fashion to our body of knowledge about teaching and learning, nudging us to look differently at students and teachers, suggesting we think a bit differently about teaching and learning, understanding that the human equation is far more complex than a simple theory or technique would suggest. Nothing dramatic; nothing monumental; nothing cosmic; no giant leap for mankind. Just small steps here and there by a person or two.

Maybe it’s ego. Maybe it’s a need to attract attention, to secure academic position, to secure grant support, to get an idea implemented. Maybe it’s something in our culture that requires instant gratification, that our pronouncement be complete, perfect and professional. I don’t know. I do know that we do ourselves and society a disservice. These fads distract from the serious concerns many of us have about the state of education, from the serious acquisition of new insights or ways of thinking and talking about teaching and learning, from the serious experimentation with thinking styles, learning styles, teaching styles, testing styles, personality styles. Maybe we should just step back, take a deep breath, relax and use our common sense before we trumpet the coming of the next supposed educational savior.

“Tedium ergo sum: I’m bored, therefore I am.” How’s that for a variation of the Cartesian first principle? For the last several days, I have been pouring over my student evaluations and reading student journals. I do that as I prepare to make needed changes in the coming quarter’s classes. I noticed that one of the prominent themes that ran through almost all the students’ descriptions of my performance and the nature of the course was what they described as the uniqueness of the enthusiasm, the excitement, the stimulation, the inspiration, the animation, and the spiritedness that permeated the class. “It was so wonderfully a different learning experience,” wrote one student, “from all my other dull teach-test classes that are so routine and boring where I only have to memorize a lot and forget it later just like in high school.”

But, I wasn’t only thinking about the students’ evaluations this morning. During the first part of my walk I was also thinking of how this morning I felt particularly invigorated and excited as far as power walks go. Anyway, I felt different. The briskness was not due to the chill in the air or to anything I was thinking about. It was simply the fact that everywhere around me there was relative newness. I was consciously experiencing the thrill of a series of mini discoveries. I was more turned on, more alert. I had changed the route of my walk. I do this periodically because after a while a particular route begins to lose its challenge. It starts to become old hat, a drag, that same ole thing. It loses its zip and has a wearying effect on my body and mind. I had memorized the walking course and could run it in my sleep. I think sometimes I do. It was now fraught with an uninteresting, bland sameness: same houses, same trees and bushes, same streets, same signs, same turns, same, same, same, same. I knew every crack in the streets. I knew when I was going to breathe hard and feel it in my legs on the incline, and when I was going to feel a resting relief on the decline. And, in self-fulfilling prophecy, I did. I was losing the joy of the walk, and was increasingly finding that I not only had to force myself to go out there, but I couldn’t wait until the damn thing was over. I was getting bored. I had grown “accustomed to its face.” It was time for a change of scenery and experience.

Putting together the nature of the student comments and the atmosphere of my walk is what caused me to abuse Descartes. I began wondering whether my revised Cartesian theorem might regrettably be a first principle applicable to campus academic life. I started thinking about why the students felt so much of the excitement and the inspiration of learning apparently has been squeezed out of their education. Why, I asked, is it that when at the beginning of each quarter I ask the students to describe a meaningful classroom experience or a meaningful association with a teacher that they have had, they seldom can.

It wasn’t long before I found myself thinking the unthinkable, something many of us have danced around and have been afraid of touching, afraid of seeing, afraid of mentioning. I wondered about how many colleagues I know who walk through their lives and academic professions, walk onto campus, walk through the halls, walk into our classrooms, and walk through their presentation on their same old stagnating, unchallenging, spiritless route. Probably far more than most of us want to admit publicly. I know, professors are supposedly intellectual Jasons, captivated by the pursuit of the golden fleece of wisdom, in perpetual cerebral motion, drawing sustenance from knowledge, drawn by the unknown, obsessed with curiosity, compelled to grow and explore. Nah, professors are never bored or boring, never lackadaisical, never languid, never accepting of anything less than excellence. Students are; professors are not. Most professors bounce into class with great animation, oozing adrenalin through their sweat glands, putting students on the edge of their seats, setting a mood of great expectation. “Ah, the game’s afoot,” their demeanor shouts out. “I’m here! Let’s go at it! I’m ready! This is good stuff! Let’s dance!”

If that’s the case, I wonder, then, what all those jokes and comments about “yellowing lecture notes” were about. I wonder why students constantly, though not openly, complain that so many of their college classes are, as one student said, “as exciting as listening to myself breathe.” The students feel that they come to campus and too often find that it’s really the “yawning of a new age” for them and the challenge for them is far more of a “yawning experience” than a daunting one.

Now, I’m not naive enough to think that when many students describe a class as boring, it’s often a transparent diversion from the fact they go to class unprepared or don’t do the assignments or don’t study. I think, however, there may be another side. The fact that so many students are turned off by their “classes” can also reflect that what is really going on inside the classroom is too often dull. “Dull classes” translates into dull and disinterested professors.

Wander the corridors of the university or college as I often do. Wander through your memories into the classes you took as a student, what do you see. I’ll bet you will see and recall more often than not the traditional indifferent, impersonal, cellular, structured, stylized, institutionalized “box and one” class: robot-like students, passive and disconnected observers, sitting separated and isolated from each other, moving their heads up and down in monotonous unison as they play the cadence of their note-taking role; a cold, unemotional, zombie-like glaze covering their faces, minds shut down, forcing interest.

Many of us say that if students are apathetic it is totally their fault. If they doze, if they daydream, if they doodle, if they kibitz, while we at the podium are waxing brilliantly in our oration, we condemn the students for being rude, arrogant, and disrespectful, as well as unappreciative of the opportunities presented to them. It could be, however, that they’re just bored and have every right to be bored. I have heard so many colleagues say, “It’s no fun anymore,” and leave it at that. They make little attempt to make their classes fun for themselves and fun for the students.

We teachers have to bear a large measure of responsibility for the boredom in the classroom because all too often we’re bored and are boring. We are the role models; we create the spirit and atmosphere of the classroom; we set the pace. Yet, with too few exceptions, we perpetually continue to administer intellectual and emotional anesthesia drop by drop into the students’ minds and hearts through the classroom catheter: drip, lecture-memorize-test; drip, lecture-memorize-test; drip, lecture-memorize-test; drip, lecture-memorize-test; drip, drip, drip. Class after class, term after term, year after year into the students’ spirit flow these academic barbiturates.

So many professors are just as robotic as their students, just as unexcited, just as apathetic. With their back to the students, they talk to the blackboard on which they’re madly scribbling, thinking that their voice will ricochet off the walls, seemingly oblivious to those behind them. So many professors, with an obvious lack of enthusiasm, recite from their notes from the textbook or read words on a screen from overhead projectors. We complain about students’ apathy to each other, but do we listen to the students? If we did, this is what we might hear; this is what I hear:

“Do you know what it’s like to sit quietly, do nothing for a full hour, and look and sound interested. Now that’s hard. Not worth much, but hard.”

“What am I going to do. Dr. ———— in my English 101 class (freshman), his lectures are one 45 minute long sentence. He’s just about convinced all of us that English is a dead language!”

“She’s so dull. She talks her lectures as if as if her whole entire vocal range is one note! It’s like she’s reading us a bedtime nursery story to put us to sleep. And it works! The only work we do in class is to work to stay awake.”

“We don’t know what he looks like. His face, I think he has a face, is always down in his notes. He talks to them, not us. He knows them better than he does us! I don’t think he’d notice if we weren’t there. I’m not sure he’d care.”

“He’s a walking metronome in class. Now that’s exciting!”

“I’ve been in the military. It’s like a snail’s pace marching drill: lecture ……1…….2……..3; lecture ……..1……..2………..3; lecture …….1……..2……3. If he was my drill sergeant, we’d never get far from the barracks.”

“He just reads the textbook. He won’t take any questions because he says he has to finish the material. Who needs him.”

We’ve all heard them all because we have said them all when we were students. What perplexes me is that so many of us experience amnesia, turn around, and do the same thing. We have forgotten those legions of stories detailing how it usually, except for that one teacher or professor, was like for us and how we were treated when we sat on the other side of the podium. It’s almost like too many teachers are saying, “If I went through it, so do you. If I made it through, so can you. It’s a test of endurance and commitment.”

Maybe one aspect of being an effective teacher is to remember what it was like being treated as a student. Instead, the academic “good ole boys and girls club” keeps such things quiet and perpetuates the proper image. “We’re all good, conscientious, caring teachers in the classroom,” is the official line. Never show feet of clay; never show humanity; never do anything to show a chink in the academic armor; never admit to the existence of the problem; never say anything openly, however constructively, about or to a colleague; never talk about changing and improving. Yet, the fact remains that in and around the classroom there are so few needed smiles, so little laughter, so little enjoyment, so little curiosity, so little joy, and so little excitement of learning. It’s as if so many professors think that any display of gaiety and love in academia is so unprofessional. “You’ve got to be serious,” I remember a colleague arguing with me. “Learning is no laughing matter.” If that is so, we’ve squeezed life’s juices out of learning.

“Hey, I’m told that I don’t have to like college, just do it,” a student explained in an evaluation. “So, why should I care if I am bored in a class. Most of my professors don’t care. They just want me to do it their way. So, I just want to know what the professors want me to know to pass a test. It’s a tedious lecture- memorize-test routine. But, hey.” If that’s so, we in academia have succumbed to the greatest of life’s dangers: we take ourselves too seriously.

I will go out on a limb to say this: nothing is more revealing about a teacher than how that teacher teaches. Classroom behavior of far too many professors, however, is far more a reflection of their disinterest in teaching and in students than it is a sign of a weakness of teaching techniques. In some cases professors have gotten into a rut. They have taught the same course the same way term after term, year after year. Their classes have become so routine that they can teach them in their sleep, and often do. Like me on my old walking route, the professors have lost the sense of adventure, the thrill of the hunt, the anticipation, and have little to get their juices flowing. But, they have done little to change the situation and tragically they continue to inoculate those sleep inducing attitudes into the students. They go into class with a faked excitement that is transparently so unauthentic. Sometimes they don’t ever bother to feign intellectual orgasm. They exude all the excitement of a Gregorian chant. There’s no zip in their steps, no energy in their movements, no alertness in their mannerisms. It’s, as one colleague in the English department bemoaned of the coming quarter, “the same old hum-drum course with the same poor students; another day and another dollar. Just a few years to retirement, and boy I am counting. Oh, well, I guess I can hang on.”

Many professors use the students as their own red herrings. “They have to excite themselves,” so many of my colleagues righteously proclaim, as if the love of learning is built into the human genetic code. I admit that students have to assume some responsibility for their learning, but that’s only a half truth. Teachers use these excuses to distract themselves and others from the real issues, to throw themselves and others off the track. Putting all the onus on the students for being disinterested and placing all the responsibility on their shoulders to become excited is a way for professors to escape from a connectedness with themselves and the students.

It is far less threatening, less uncomfortable, less painful, and certainly less honest, than saying “I don’t really care”; or “I’m tired”; or “I don’t really understand”; or “I won’t change my ways”; or “I only teach because I have to, not because I want to”; or “It’s my job to lecture and its their job to learn.” Professors will say the students are indifferent when they really mean they themselves are indifferent; professors will say the students are bored when they themselves are bored; professors will say the students have surrendered to mediocrity when they themselves seldom struggle to improve themselves; professors say the students don’t think the courses are important when they themselves often feel teaching freshmen or even undergraduates is unworthy of their talents. “After all,” an acquaintance at another university proclaimed, “neurosurgeons didn’t kill themselves to get where they are just to take out splinters. Ph.D.s shouldn’t have to teach surveys.”

Some professors are going through a check list to achieve promotion, tenure, and professional recognition in which teaching has no significant role to play. They don’t have time for devotion to such distracting, time-consuming, unacknowledged, inconsequential nonsense as teaching students. Others, having achieved the safety of tenure, and maybe professional recognition, don’t know what’s left to do but to continue to go through the motions of teaching as they always have done. They settle down into a smothering routine, a safe and distant routine. Only the other day as I, with great animation, was trying to convince a colleague to adapt a character-based approach to her teaching and use the triad structure in her classes, she remarked with a tone of disbelief, “Louis, stop killing yourself. Why are you doing all this? I can’t believe you’re still at it. You’ve got tenure. You’re an old horse with only three years to go to retirement. You ought to be relaxing and counting your days. I know I would!”

Sad. If we want students to think about why they’re bored, we have to think why we’re boring. Going back to my walking route, it wasn’t so much that the route had become dull. There was always something new to see if I really made the effort. It was that I had made it routine. So, the disinterest is not totally outside ourselves. It is an attitude, our attitude, over which we have some control. We created it; we can address it; we can change it.

The simple truth is that if we go into a class expecting the students to be bored, we will not be disappointed. But, if we go into a class believing the students are interested, we will see them as a gift of excitement, bombarding us with a challenging array of variation and diversity. But, that takes a lot of work, a lot of effort, a lot of involvement, a lot of interest, and, above all, a lot of commitment. Moreover, I think we have to remember that teaching the same particular course is not the same as teaching it the same way. There’s so much truth in the saying, variety is the spice of life. I told this to a colleague last week as I preached my methods, and he walked right into my trap.

“You must have taught this course a hundred times. How many different ways can you lecture that the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4th and that it says so and so,” he asked.

“I don’t lecture. But, I will handle it, at any given time, as many ways as there are students in my classes,” I answered. He looked at me. “I’m not interested in when the Declaration was signed or what it says. The students can get that stuff out of the book or find out every July 4th,” I continued. I am interested in letting them explore why it says what it says and what it means to them. Then, I have sixty possible routes to take in each class in each quarter.”

“But you’ll never know what discussion will pop up at any given time until it happens,” he replied. “That’s scary. Instead of one lecture, there is a possibility of any of sixty discussions generated by God knows how many relationships, experiences and personalities of the students. My God, How do you handle that?”

“I stay alert, on my toes. But, you’re right. I can walk into class never knowing what’s going to happen. I just let it happen and go with the flow. Sometimes, it does flow. Take the Declaration and Jefferson. One time an African-American female student became Abigail Adams by the raising issue of ‘all men are’ as opposed to ‘all men and women’ and got us into a knock-down-drag- out discussion about women’s rights. At another time, some white students wanted know how Jefferson could seriously use the word ‘equal’ during a time of slavery without being a hypocrite. ‘Where were the Indians during all this?’ a student once shouted out, and off we were into a discussion of cultural collisions. Once a student wanted to know what do we do when two unalienable rights clash with each other. Better believe that prayer in school and abortion popped up. That one lasted two days. I’ve had discussions about what the Founding Fathers meant by ‘life’ and ‘liberty’ and ‘happiness’ and ‘self-evident truth.’ We’ve gotten into discussions, arguments, debates over matters about welfare, government, individual rights. Heck, once a student raised the question that if the Founding Fathers disagreed on these things, how would we know just what they intended to happen?. There’s no end to the possibilities. I’ll let them talk about anything, no matter how controversial or confrontational. That keeps the blood flowing in class. I just don’t let anything get personal.”

“You do that every day? That’s too unmanageable for me. I’d rather avoid any controversy in my classes,” my colleague replied in disbelief.

Not me. For me, teaching, then, is like my walking. I still walk; I still walk the same distance; I still walk the same distance at the same pace. I just always am prepared to change the way I do it. And as I do, I have a never-ending sense of revitalization. There were different sights, sounds, and experiences; the walk is awash with newness and unexpectedness and alertness and challenge and discovery. I have to be more alert now that I have to be tuned in to my walk while I am tuned into myself. I can’t take anything for granted. I have to keep on my toes, so to speak, for the unknown cracks, bumps and potholes in the street, consciously think about the traffic patterns of those occasional cars and trucks and which side of which street to walk, beware of what new turns to make, plan new pacing strategies. It’s now a bit of an adventure. And when I feel that sense waning, I will again change the route.

It was kind of nice walking this crisp morning. The air had just enough nibble. It made me feel alive. It sharpened the images that were dancing in my mind like sugar plum fairies. After almost a week I can still feel the excitement. I am still thinking in wonderment about my students during the last week in the Quarter. That last week started off as if we all had anchors around our minds and feet. There were just five days left. We had just come back from a week-long Thanksgiving break, and I think they were still concentrating on all that food in their tummies rather than the forthcoming food for thought. It was hard to get back in the rhythm for the remaining week. Many triads were about to make “final exam presentations.” I was anxious. I didn’t know what any of them were going to do. A four triad group in my morning class had been scheduled to present, but eight of the students weren’t in class. I waited a few minutes. No students. My palms were just a tad sweaty. I was thinking, “What if this idea of mine falls flat on its face? What the heck am I going to do then?” I had told them in the syllabus that they could use any format for their final exam: written essays, music, painted pictures, performed plays, sculptured figures, written diaries or letters, or whatever. The only requirement was that whatever they did had to capture and communicate the essence of their understanding of the historical issue. “Anything goes,” I constantly told them in response to their nervous question, “What do you think about….?” I always threw it back to them. “What do you think? If you think it’s a good idea, run with it. You don’t need my approval. Trust yourselves.” Of the forty triads in both freshmen classes, to my surprise, thirty-five scheduled to do presentations at the end of the quarter. This was to be the first. I kept telling myself, “Calm down. They won’t let themselves down. You know what they can do.” Then, I nervously second-guessed myself, “But do they?” I guess I wasn’t as sure of myself or trusting of them as I should have been. I need not have worried.

Just as I was about to say something apologetic, Holly jumped up and yelled, “It’s time to play ‘Schmierpardy’!” To the theme song of Jeopardy, into the classroom trotted four students carrying a home-fashioned large 6’x 6′ jeopardy-like board with categories, “people,” “religion,” “slavery,” land,” “government.” More students poured in, pushed me aside, divided the class into three groups, and for the next thirty minutes proceeded to involve the class in a full game of “Schmierpardy,” double “Schmierpardy” with a new set of categories, and, of course, final “Schmierpardy.” There was an “Alex Trabek (sp),” the Jeopardy jingle with new lyrics, commercial breaks for sponsors such as the Erie Canal Company promoting westward expansion on “clean, safe and speedy water travel,” and for such public service announcements as those presented by William Lloyd Garrison calling on people to “rouse themselves from their moral slumber” in support of the abolitionist Anti-Slavery Society. The place was joyous bedlam as the three groups vied to be the first to answer the questions. Each member of the winning group received a tootsie pop and the “right to return to Dr. Schmier’s class next quarter.” I got a courtesy pop. After all, I am the professor and I am entitled to a perk or two!

That was just the beginning! Next, a triad went to the front of the room while the place was still abuzz. The class quieted down as Debi began reading an entry from her journal: “As I sit here only one day away from Thanksgiving, I find my mind wandering to History class. I’m thinking about some of the discussions we had in class. The topic was a very sensitive one–prejudice. One thing that I think would help this country is to ask ourselves one question. Could we walk a mile in the person’s shoes that we condemn?” So, the members of the triad, in answering the question dealing with the issue of unity and division in American history wrote an original song entitled “Could you Walk a Mile,” with six verses and a chorus. Each verse dealt with a different issue of division and unity: religion, abortion, slavery, women, and sex. The last verse, about Vietnam, was dedicated to Don, one of their non-traditional classmates. It went like this: “He’d known the Ten Commandments from the time that he was five. But in the jungles of Vietnam, there was no wrong or right. He was a decorated hero when he stepped down off the train. But some folks in his hometown, only made him feel ashamed.” Don, a Vietnam vet, had tears in his eyes. When they finished, you could hear a pin drop. We quietly left class anticipating the next day.

The next day proved to be no less exciting, nor did the rest of the week. As each triad or group of triads presented, these freshmen, whom a colleague just before the holiday break described in frustration as “airheads,” cooked up a smorgasbord of creative, imaginative, entertaining, innovative and substantive learning dishes. Everyone, myself included, rushed to class each day with great anticipation to see what was the next surprise, the next treat, the next accomplishment. I wish there were time and space to describe all the recipes they concocted, all the delicacies we tasted. I wish I had command of the language to convey the supportive sense of family that bound those students together. There was no sense of cut-throat-back-stabbing competition. No losers; no winners; no embarrassment. It was astonishing. There was respectful laughter when one triad sang an original song off- key, a “negro, black, African-American folk spiritual” entitled “Slave Folk Can Survive;” there was clapping and dancing to the rap, “Let’s Talk About History;” and there was reflective silence as the class listened to original poems, “And They Call Me Racist” and “A Woman’s Lot.” There was a 50 word down/across crossword puzzle worthy of any Sunday supplement dealing with the impact of science and technology on American culture that we all had fun struggling to solve; more original songs and lyrics; poems about the American Revolution, the Civil War, industrialization, women issues and racial strife. One poem, “The Good Ole Days,” was submitted and accepted for publication. Julie, who was scared to say a word in class all quarter, stood up and told the class, “This poem grew out of this class. The way I see it, if it’s good enough to win a contest, it’s good enough for a final. Besides, Dr. Schmier said time and time again that it’s our class. So, I figure why not turn a poem into my answer to one of the final exam questions. This poem says to me what a five-page essay would say. I hope you all agree. But, this is our choice.” It took guts for her to say that in front of me, and she had prodded the other members of the triad each to write an original poem of their own. >From other triads came an oil painting of a slave mother holding her child in the middle of a cotton field entitled, “No future;” another oil, a two-color oil, on slavery entitled, “A Study in Black and White Anger; a pen and ink drawing of a faceless slave called, “Ain’t I a Man?”, a talk show called, “Makers of American Society,” in which Andrew Carnegie, Sojourner Truth and Dorothea Dix were interviewed and fielded questions from the class; a magnificent eight-page, desk-top-published newsletter bannered “American Culture,” complete with a multitude of short articles on a variety of subjects, a crossword puzzle, political cartoons, a comic strip, a colonial Irma Bombeck column, a victorian Dear Abbey column; a puppet play in three short acts entitled, “Let’s Outrace Race.” There were collages dealing with religious diversity, racial prejudice, industrialization, and one entitled, “United States, a Country of unending revolution.” One triad put together a 40 minute musical anthology drawing together religious tunes, revolutionary songs, country folk tunes, negro spirituals, tunes from West Side Story and Hair, depression songs and so on. Another triad created a 30 minute video tape on the role of women in American history. A third did a video tape on the issue of individual rights. And a fourth, merely gave me a large envelope as its presentation. It was entitled, “America, the magnificent jigsaw puzzle.” Inside was a note. It read: “You made us work our tails off. Now if you want to give us a grade, you have to work yours off.” Inside was a collage cut into a 200 piece jigsaw puzzle. It took me two hours to put it together!! It’s a good thing I’m a nice guy. And, as if a grand finale was planned, the last group of triads on the last day, had the class playing on a life-size game board called the “Magic of History” modelled after the game “Sorry.” There we were, rolling over-sized dice, moving each other, answering very good question cards, discussing wrong answers. Winners got tootsie pops, me included.

After watching the awesome raw intellectual and artistic talent that surfaced, after reading these students’ final self- evaluations and some of their journals, which I wish you could read, I have come to believe that self-worth, creativity and learning are in some way very close to each other. I’m not sure how, but during the last week of classes and on into exam week I saw evidence of that relationship. I saw students putting aside their self-deprecating, “I can’t,” “I’m scared,” “I’m a listener,” and “I’m not” part of them that they so often let get in their way. I saw them take the chance on themselves and, to their surprise, be creative, imaginative, exciting, entertaining, different, risky, substantive. I saw them find a way of expressing their uniqueness, of listening to the part of themselves that knows what’s the truth about them and that speak in a simple, real, common, and yet powerful way. I saw them move closer inside themselves, to see a part of themselves that they can know is true about them.

You know, I am amazed by students. We teachers should look at them, and they should look at each other in wonderment. We should give ourselves half a chance to believe in them, to give them half the chance to believe in themselves. Students do not come to school to fail. Getting an “F” is not high on their priority list. They do not expect to fail. With few exceptions they continue to try. They struggle to stay awake. Yet, as we all know, too many quickly start to fall into a defensive sleep. And though it doesn’t make teaching fun for us, we let too many of them remain in the blissful arms of Morpheus. A “Silent Majority” still unfortunately exists in all too many of our classes. Maybe one reason is that most teachers and parents motivate students to perform out of fear. They admonish, scream, advise, warn: “You’re going to fail if you don’t….”; or “You’ll be on probation if you don’t….”; or “You won’t be good enough to….”; or “You won’t get into graduate school if you don’t….”; or “You won’t get that job if you don’t…..”; or “You’ll be a ‘loser’ all your life if you don’t…..”

I’ve heard them all. In past years, I’ve even used them. But, they are terrible images. Fear has an adverse effect on the students’ performance. I know that. I don’t think education is a reward and punishment system. It’s not about getting people to change out of fear of being ignorant or jobless or left out as if they were lab rats in a psychology experiment being prodded by an electrified grid. It is about showing people how they can increase the quality of their lives, and if they can get a good job as they probably will, that’s great, too. It’s a matter of educating students, of showing them how they have potential. It’s about getting them to believe in themselves. It’s about creating new hopes, new dreams, and new opportunities they probably didn’t think or know about. Our students are a heterogenous mix. Different students bring different perspectives, different preparedness, different talents, different gifts, different this, and different that. Why is it so terrible to play to those differences? Different means only assorted, diverse, unique, distinct, separate or varied. It does not mean better or worse, right or wrong, good or bad, smart or dumb, intellectual or “high schoolish.” That’s why I always say, education is not a thinning out or sorting game, separating the supposed bright from the supposed average or dumb, based on an arbitrary one-dimensional measurable scale. The trick is to have each of them develop his/her own voice and acquire the confidence to sing solo. It’s about teaching people to learn that there is so much to learn out there and inside them that they didn’t know was worth learning. It’s about lighting up lives, not dimming them. And, these students have been lit up. My, oh, have they been lit up. So have I. And as I retain the memories of these classes and I am constantly reminded of them by their creations which I have on exhibit in my office, I remain lit up. I’m already looking forward to next quarter, anxiously and expectantly asking myself “what unexpected wonders will come into the classroom.”

My walk this morning seemed like it was over before it had begun. After turning the corner that began my uphill stretch, I don’t remember seeing anything. I don’t remember hearing anything. I don’t remember feeling anything. I was deep inside myself, really deep, enveloped by what you might call a profound and serene curtain of purpose. I’m not embarrassed to say that I have been very emotional since yesterday when one my freshmen history classes met for the last time. Several triads had just completed their final exam presentations and we were about to scamper out of class when Melinda excitedly stood up. With a broad, confidant smile sweeping across her face and a brightness shining in her eyes, she said, “Before we leave I want to read my class evaluation. I know Dr. Schmier said he would treat them confidentially if we wanted, but I don’t want to.” As Hope, an African-American young lady who was a member of Melinda’s triad, sat to her right with a quiet, supportive smile on her face, Melinda continued. “I want you all to hear how important this class was for me and Hope.”

“On day one…” she hesitated, got teary-eyed, and choked up. As she struggled to regain her composure, an image flashed across my mind. This was Melinda, a member of what I labelled by the second week into the quarter, “my hateful triad” of Melinda, Hope and Eric. Three separated students with stern and unapproving looks on their faces, sitting stiffly apart, circling their chairs reluctantly only after my daily “urging,” staring ahead with blank faces and looking passed each other, refusing to converse at the beginning of class, surrounded by a heavy cloud of cold, silent animosity.

As Melinda struggled, Hope quietly leaned over, softly and caringly put her hand on Melinda’s arm. And Melinda read:

On day one, I was excited and terrified at the same time.
You seemed funny and humorous and interesting, but rumor
had you as ‘evil.’ Then came your syllabus. It was a
book. I had to set my mind for a challenge. I was
thinking that ten weeks of you and I would be drained.
But, the opposite happened. I was “filled.” I learned
more history than I could have imagined, but you took
history and made it a part of my world. When I came to
this class I had my box and my boundaries. I was
prejudiced towards blacks and could care less to carry on
any kind of conversation much less have an in-depth
relationship with one. How have my views changed. I was
skeptical at first to open up to Hope and work with her
in class. But mysterious things took place in the triad
that I can’t describe. Maybe it was the honest class
discussions about race, or your conversations with each
of us, or simply that you gave us no choice but to work
together. But my hatred and Hope’s and Eric’s began to
disappear. The barriers began to break down. Now Hope
knows some of my deepest secrets and I know that I can
confide in her. And I always had trouble talking to my
sister about who she dated (an African-American) and
especially about the baby on the way. Well, now that
little boy is 5 1/2 weeks old. He is to me family, and
I love him dearly. His skin may be dark, but I am now
proud to openly call him my nephew. Three months ago I
barely even acknowledged that he was soon to be. I
wouldn’t trade him or my sister now for anything. I just
wish that I could have opened my eyes and heart a little
sooner.
As I looked around the class, I could see through my glassy eyes that there literally wasn’t a dry eye in the class. Tears were rolling down Hope’s cheeks. Eric’s head was bowed. Melinda read on.

Now a little about the triad. I love it. At first I
hated the idea. I prejudged those in my group and pre-
decided that I would hate it. But not only did we learn
to study together, we learned to laugh together. We’ve
cried; we’ve hurt; we’ve become friends.
As she glanced at both Hope and Eric, she continued:

We call each other family. Thank you for the
opportunity. Without this class I would not know these
two wonderful individuals and I also would not have
realized a lot of stuff about myself. You opened the
doors and allowed us to take the steps that we needed to
take.

Now you–they say that often there’s that one course,
that one professor, who enters your life and changes it.
You’re that person for me and I know for a lot of others
in this class. And are we lucky. I didn’t always agree
with your values, but that’s ok, and you never held it
against me or anyone else. As a prof and as a
friend–yes, a friend–and as a person you truly are
great. I learned a lot of history; I enjoyed doing
it–most of the time. You make history a work of art;
you bring it alive for all of us and bring it into our
lives. Yes, a lot of it hurts, but we’re better for it.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
That, to me, is what teaching is all about. The quarter had come to an end; the class is over. But, as Melinda reminds us, we teachers leave a lot of ourselves behind in each student. In that sense, the class is never over. To the extent that too many educators do not reach for the future beyond the classroom, do not reach for the stuff of life beyond the subject, are not aware of the students, are not touched, react rather than respond, do not see and hear others, students see no reason to reach for themselves beyond the grade or major. And so, the students too often come away from their college experience with the narrow sense that the purpose of life is merely to be a doctor, lawyer, an artist, or just a specialist of this or of that rather than to grow in wisdom and to learn to love better and be a truer person.