To Touch Is To Learn

As I glided through the brisk 45 degree morning, expecting to meet Jack Frost at any moment–first day of walking sweats–I thinking about what a strange two weeks I have had with the classes and individual students. Successes and failures, satisfactions and disappointments, achievements and defeats, fulfillments and emptiness, pleasures and pain had come in such rapid fire succession I could have sworn I had been riding a physically draining emotional roller coaster. If I graphed out the rapid seismic sequence of those highs and lows, it would seem as if I was charting an 8 point earthquake on the Richter Scale: up one day and down the next, up one day and down the next, up and down, up and down. By the end of the week, however, three days of twenty-seven five-minute skits put on by the students in two first year history classes dealing with two chapters in the text that covered the American Revolution, the framing of the Constitution, the struggle to ratify it, and the emerging conflict between the federalists and anti-federalists sent the needle off the scales and left me soaring on one John Denver’s Rocky Mountain highs.

And what a high those skits were. The triads had a week to prepare their skits. Their instructions were simply to select from the material what they decided was a pertinent issue, topic, person, incident, etc. and “run with it.” The more and more I use skits as a learning aid and tool, in the belief that to touch is to learn, the less and less nervous I get that the students will come through. And come through they did! For three days we watched and listened to history being played out in front of the class. It was like a classroom hands-on museum, Sesame street and Mr. Rogers, and off-broadway theater wrapped into one. We saw Forrest Gump sitting on a bench describing how “I was walking on a road and saw this man who had fallen off his horse. He told me to tell everyone the redcoats were coming. I ran yelling, ‘the redcoats are coming. The redcoats are coming.’ I guess there was a big sale on redcoats in Boston and he wanted everyone to know about it. Thought it was kinda early to do….” We hummed the theme song from the Mickey Mouse Club with new lyrics: “C-O-N….S-T-I…T-U-T-I-O-N. CONSTITUTION. CONSTITUTION. STATES FOREVER JOINED AS ONE. NOW’S THE TIME FOR ALL GOOD MEN TO UNITE IN LIBERTY. C-O-N….S-T-I- …T-U-T-I-O-N. C-O-N: “‘N’ IS FOR A NEW GOVERNMENT! S-T-I. ‘I’ AM THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON IN THIS COUNTRY! T-U-T-I-O-N. ‘C’ is for centralization…..’O’ is for opportunity…..’U’ is for the all United States…..’S’ is sanctity of the individual…..’T’ is…. We listened to a swing ensemble at Club 1776 singing a medley of original lyrics about the struggled birth of the United States. We witnessed a fight on the floor of the House between a federalist and Jeffersonian Republican; we were privy to the discussions of Lord Townsend deciding on what the British response should be to the Boston Tea Party. Where was Molly Pitcher, ramming a cannon after her husband had fallen. We tuned into Crossfire as a rebel and tory grappled with the legitimacy of opposing the king. We heard Oprah interview John Hancock as the show was interrupted by a news flash about a clash at the Boston Commons. There was a play-by-play of a federal/anti-federalist football game replete with announcers and color commentators describing how the federalists, quarterbacked by Hamilton punched through the anti-federalists line using their favorite “FP” (Federalist Papers) series of plays and how the anti-federalists with Jefferson and Thomas Paine at linebacker though defeated called upon their defensive “BOF left 10 (Bill of Rights)” play for a last-ditch goal line stand. There was an original rap session called “Constitution and Revolution”; there was an original blues song lamenting the failure to end slavery entitled, “Oh, Tom.” We were relieved to see an appropriately costumed “Super Constitution” save the fledgling country from the evil, bald “Lex Confederation.” We were informed by a newscast from WSCH with anchorwoman and on the spot reporting. There was a boxing match between Jefferson and Hamilton for the soul of the country and we could hear each in his corner discussing with their respective managers their strategy. “Give him a jab with state sovereignty”; counterpunch with “state rights; right cross with “we just fought a big government”; “give him an uppercut with the Bill of Rights”; go to the ribs with the Report on Credit.” A Lehrer/McNeil show discussed the Great Compromise of the Constituion. We watched “Jack Daniels and Jim Beam” lead the Whiskey Rebellion. We spied on the British with Mrs. D. And we chuckled as Mrs. Adams, finger wagging, castigated a subdued John Adams for ignoring the rights of women.

For three days, props and costumes were everywhere: feathers, bow and arrows, wigs, brooms for guns, waterguns, boxes filled with tea, microphones, backdrop scenery, signs, huge Walmart bags cut into Indian clothes, borrowed period costumes.

For three days, the classroom was so alive with the sounds of fun and learning that Julie Andrews might well have pranced in and sung about them. The walls and windows were set vibrating by the rocking of laughter, rolling of shouting, clapping, whistling, and cheers as the students encouraged each other on.

For three days, I saw students, smiling faces and sparkling eyes betraying their sense of self-satisfaction and achievement, teach themselves and each other. I saw them reach into the imagination of each other to create a cooperative effort. Their storytelling and acting out created a learning medium that brought together a broad and broadening range of intellectual, emotional and social abilities and activities that allow them to hear and speak and see the material in a new context, at times with deeper meanings, that can only enlarge their portfolio of experiences, understanding, and responses. Rather than me dictate what they can read, hear, see, discuss and should know, in each of the skits, the students themselves alloyed information, abstract ideas, understanding, creativity and imagination, risk-taking, self-worth all together in shining, glorious ingots. Whenever a student came to me with the age-old submissive questions, “what do you want” or “what do you think about this” or “can we do this” I merely answered, “It’s YOUR skit.” At first reluctant, hesitant, annoyed, frustrated, and even at times angry, left to themselves, I watched themslowly gain momentum and confidence. I watched them slowly discover for themselves that it’s all there inside them: a garden, waiting to burst into bloom, merely in need of the proper intellectual, emotional and social fertilizer and watering. I watched them intently during the class time they took to prepare. Everyone was visible. Everyone was valuable. They read the material, thought about it, discussed it, fought over it, explored through it, went beyond it to other material, struggled to understand it, sifted through it, weighed it, and selected from it. They expressed, considered, debated, evaluated, interpreted, decided upon, wrote scripts or songs, staged, costumed, and finally performed.

They brailled the subject, climbed over and through it, touched it, felt it, smelled it, hugged it, chewed it, tasted it, listened to it, EXPERIENCED IT, and got excited about it. There was no stagnation, no dull routine, no copying, no memorization. They were no longer bored observers. Now, they were excited participators. They were no longer sitting on the sidelines, Now, they were in the game. There were no passive, glazy eyes of receivers and followers. I saw only active and energized looks of thinkers and doers. In each skit, the students proclaimed, “I can do this” or “I can be this” or “I understand what’s happening” or “This is how I interpret the material” or “this is what I’ve decided is important.”

As they would file out of class or talk among themselves between skits, my ears tuned in, I’d eavesdrop. I could hear them say to each other, “I like this”, “learned a hell of lot”, “didn’t think we had it in us”, “we pulled it off by working together”, “education is good”, “it makes the hard stuff seem so easy,” “this kind of class is fun,” “learning this way is excitin”, “I’ll never forget this stuff.”

And, that’s what gives education its lasting meaning, marvel, and magic.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

You Are A Person

I was at Miami of Ohio this weekend attending the marvelously exciting Lilly Conference on excellence of teaching in higher education getting sutffed with both food for my tummy and food for thought. I was walking the very cold pre-dawn campus Saturday already electrified by the exciting sessions I had attended, renewal of old friendships, forging of new ones, and the incessant informal conversations with participants in the hallways, on couches, at the tables, on steps, on the floor, and a host of other nooks and crannies.

As I walked the darkened paths, I was struggling with the problem of about how to bring about closure to a workshop I was presenting that afternoon entitled, “It Starts With ‘Self'”, in which–as I wrote in the program description–I wanted those attending to get insight to the fact that teaching comes from who the teacher is, not what the teacher does; that the barrier to improving teaching is something inside us, rather than those somethings, “out there”; that each of us has to realize that we must start taking a difficult and honest inward look and face our weaknesses and strengths by asking those painful, fundamental questions: “who am I?” “What am I capable of?” “What’s holding me back?” “How do I get where I want to go?” And, that each of us must struggle to find the releasing, honest answers to necessary for real change and growth.

Throughout those dark, cold forty minutes I remained unwarmed and unenlightened. I kept drawing blanks. Disappointed, I ended my walk and stopped trying to think. As I was climbing the steps to the Conference Center, had my hand on the entrance door when Shylock’s soliloquy in the Merchant of Venice hit me square between the eyes. I don’t know why, but I didn’t ask any questions. I rushed quickly up to my room and wrote a letter to myself which I read at the end of my workshop. I’d like to share it with you:

——————————————————————————–
Dear Louis–and to whomever it may concern:
You are not a teacher. You certainly are not a Ph.D. You are not even a professor. When you–to paraphrase Matt Dillon–stand naked, you are a person. If you are pricked, do you not bleed? If you are hurt, do you not bruise and feel pain? If you itch, do you not scratch? If you are tickled, do you not giggle? If you catch a cold, do you not sniffle, do not your eyes and nose run, do you not cough and sneeze, do you not feel miserable, are you not a grump? If you suffer loss, does not your heart ache? If you feel threatened, do you not fear? Do you not crack lousy puns? When you sing, do not the multitudes scatter? When you are sad, do you not cry? When you are happy, do you not laugh? Do you not need the approval of others? Do you not fear ridicule and embarassment? When you hunger, does not your stomach rumble? Do you not have physical passions and drives? Do you not ingest, digest, and make waste? Do you not sometimes pollute and not always recycle?

Louis, look inward beyond the fascade of your titles. You are a person. No one will say of you, “Look! Up in the air! It’s a bird! It’s plane! It’s….” And, do not say that of yourself. You will be deluded, frustrated, and angered from false expectations. You are not exempt from life’s needs and vissitudes. You need employment to bring home the bacon. You have to buy groceries; you have to pay the mortage on the house or pay the rent or make the payments on the car or fix the kids’ teeth. It would be folly if you did not think of your future. You have to be concerned about the security and welfare of both yourself and the members of your family. Face up to it. There are times, you use them as excuses and rationalizations to silence the voice of your conscience and counterbalance your sense of integrity. At times, you use them to legitimatize ignoring or sacrificing others in your interest. You are a person.

Louis, look inward beyond your positions of authority. You are a person. Like any other mortal, you area confusing of feelings, frailities and strengths, likes and dislikes, dreams and nightmares, ups and downs, convictions and hesitations, confidences and reservations, knowledge and ignorance, prejudices and tolerances. You have all the vulnerabilities to which humanity is heir. You can ask for nothing and demand everything. You can be compassionate and heartless. You can cut to the quick and refuse the right of criticism to others. You can scrutinize and reject scrutiny. Be honest, you can be complacent and demanding, resistant to change and an agent of change, involved and aloof, personal and impersonal. Admit it, there are times you rise to the occasion and times you sculk away, times you serve and times you want to be served, times you are selfless and times you are selfish, times when you want to play it safe, times when you want to take the risk and didn’t, and times you wanted to set sail amid the perilous shoals and did.

Louis, you don’t live within an idyllic ivory tower free of all the pressures that continually flood across life. You are always, like every other person, juggling faith and guarantees, risk and control, safety and danger. Don’t be hard on yourself. You’re not relieved from human frailities.

Louis, you can’t run faster than a speeding bullet no matter how many degrees you have earned. You’re a person. There are chinks in your armor and cracks in your ivory tower. You’re not a perennial tower of strength; you’re not always all smiles; you’re not the eternal flame of support and encouragement; you’re not always full of vim and vigor; you’re not a constant paragon of virtue; you’re not a constant source of flowing pearls of wisdom. You don’t always go tip-toeing through the tulips delightfully singing “zipity do-dah…” You can get bored or discouraged; you can get lethargic and tired; you can be short-sighted and be able to see beyond horizons; you can be sloppy and neat; you can be prepared some days and say the hell with it on others. It’s not a weakeness or cowardice to admit to imperfection. Allow yourself to admit to and show them. It’s okay. Mistakes will happen. Expect them. No matter how hard you work, no matter how hard you want to do it, sometimes you will screw-up. Don’t put on sack cloth and ashes or flay yourself–or hide. It’s human. If you’re afraid to fail or won’t admit to it, you won’t aspire to succeed. Don’t deny them. Instead, learn from your screw-ups; build upon them. Like a toddler, from a fall learn how to stand steadier and walk better.

Louis, you cannot leap over tall buildings with a single bound no matter how long is your professional resume. You’re a person. It’s tough to surf everyone of life’s waves that swell and recede. Some will come crashing over you and toss you about. It’s tough to endlessly swim against the daily, relentless, and threatening undertow without occasionaly tiring and letting it pull you out and under. You are not a specie set apart from humanity; you do not live in a world segregated from the rest of the world. You are neither a winged or haloed saint to be blessed nor a horned, tailed sinner to be cursed. You’re probably some of both. You’re a victim of others’ folly, a receiver of others’ gifts, and a benefactor of your own essence. You’re a part of life, a journey rather than a destination, a never-ending story. You’re part of having been, of being, and of becoming. You’re a unique, sacred individual with yet to be tapped inner strengths, worths, and potential without whom the world would be lesser.

No, Louis, you’re not a Ph.D., a teacher, a professor, a professional residing on the mount. You’re just an ordinary, magnificant person struggling in the valley. But, you are a person who teaches and explores, and unless you first explore within yourself, you will be a closed system, a fossil encapsulated within the stifling, musty fragments of functionaless functions, unable to assist others on their explorations. You must be courageous enough to force yourself to face your inner, pervading, driving forces. You cannot provide an environment for others that is filled with windows that bring to light the mysteries and insecurities of growth until you lift your own darkening inner window shadees.

Louis, don’t forget that it is not merely survival that is the measure of success, but triumph. But, you will only survive if you act from the outside in. You will triumph only if you act from the inside out. You, must then be your own relentless critic, for ultimately you will only listen to yourself. Use yourself to pressure yourself to face the reality that you need to change, to grow improve and develop; to face the need and to accept the responsibiltiy to taking your own action. Let your prayer become an evocation and then a commitment and finally an action.

Louis, always remember that real change and growth is what happens in you, not to you. Let your internal voice call out to you again and again and again, “Face yourself and lead yourself to change and grow and improve and develop. Change yourself and grow. Change yourself and grow. And as you do, you will be able to help others lead themselves to change and grow and improve and develop.” Tough chore, but it’s being hard that makes it an important and worthwhile task.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

The Real Miracle of the Classroom

I’ll say that I truly believe that the real miracle of the classroom–what I think is far more exciting then the transmission and ingestion some facts–is not a concern with some axionms, facts, statistics, or principles. It’s not a great essay or project or grade in an of themselves. It is the growth of character and moral development and social experience to which the student are exposed and experience. It is seeing students develop into a closly-knit community of people, begin to care deeply about each other, assume responsibility for each other’s success, support each other, feel free to argue, be at ease to take risks. It is seeing them attempting to understand why things happened the way they do and how such people and events have impacted on us. It is being witness to a class room slowly and painfully becoming a place where the students are struggling with new ideas, enjoying and playing at learning, learning how to communicate with others, trying to listen to others, working to respect the views of others, forge links of cooperation, feeling that what they have to say or do is significant and interesting. It’s helping the classroom become a place of fairness where a student increasingly feels important and interesting, included, noticed, proud, dignified, equal, positive, able, growing, and learning. It is a place where the attitude that students are reduced to inanimate numbers is banished.

Let me give you a specific example from something that happened last spring of how this environment and attitude soars in a way to promote the students’learning about both themselves and the subject.

I give each triad of students a chapter assignment that is composed of a list of 30 individuals. In this case, the chapter dealt with the rise of early 19th century, ante-bellum technology. With this list in hand, each triad had to go off on a scavenger hunt for several days and bring back items which symbolize the historical meaning and significance of each individual, display each item, and explain each to the entire class. On one of the days of show and tell, one student–a reticent African-American, single parent, female (almost too stereotypical to be true) with noticeable self-confidence and self-worth issues–stood up and with noticeable pride said, “This one is mine.” The person the triad was to symbolize was Eli Whitney. She held up an empty Beefeaters bottle (I didn’t ask how it was emptied) with a long wad of cotton sticking out from the neck into which one end was stuffed. Everyone laughed and applauded her “cotton gin.” But, it was not to end there. She said something to the effect, “This is more than a cotton gin. This is really also a Molotov Cocktail.” Everyone looked at her during her breath pause. “Because this was going to explode at the beginning of the 1860s, and the whole country was going to go up in the flames of civil war.” I looked on flabbergasted. She had used her imagination and creativity that she never truly believed she had in a way she never before had or dared, and had tied together the issues of technology, Whitney, the cotton gin, cotton, sectionalism, slavery, abolition, etc in one neat symbol and statement. She had taken Whitney and the cotton gin to a higher level of perception than most students would have.

After the class, I asked her how she felt. “Real good. Proud of myself. Surprised as hell! I wasn’t sure I was right, but in this class I could try among my friends and not be afraid of being wrong.” she beamed.

“Hold on to that feeling and never let it go,” I advised her. “Maybe you should think about what this says about your ability and your potential. You took one step today. You learned a lot about yourself and a lot of history. You can take another and another and another, and learn more and more and more.”

In her journal she wrote, “I never beieved I had that in me. No one let me dare believe that. I am so proud of me. Is that wrong? You better believe I will never forget Eli Whitney, the cotton gin and the causes of the civil war in all my days. If I done it once, I bet I can do it again over and over and learn lots more about history or any other thing I want.”

She did, and that’s a miracle of no small proportions.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

A Letter

Somewhere in the Talmud, there is something that goes, “I have learned a lot from my teachers and more from my colleagues. But I have learned the most from my students.” How true. I just received such a profound lesson from a student who wrote an anonymous letter which I found a few minutes ago slipped under the door of my office. I want to share it with you because it teaches me that….. No, you decide what it teaches and why I want to share it with you:

Dear Dr. Louie (sic):

This is almost two years overdue but I’m going to graduate soon and I just finished your book and my folks are here for Homecoming. We were talking about me becoming a teacher and talked about you and felt I had to say something to you before I graduate, but I don’t want to say it to your face. So here it is many months since I did a shield in your class and read a tidbit and jotted off a ratty evaluation and many miles down a road in both my school’s and life’s journey. I will write this as a reflection of where I was and where I seem to be now thanks to you. I don’t want you to know who I am. I don’t know why. I just don’t. I don’t think it’s all that important. In fact, I wouldn’t mind if you tore up this letter after you read it.

I always wanted to be a teacher, a real teacher not just a self- serving class room controller like most of the teachers and professors I’ve had, and I will be one next year. I have never talked to you about teaching or anything else for that matter, but I want you to know that you have talked to me when you knew my name and said “hi” as I walked by at the Student Union and when your eyes said you gave a damn and when you came over to me in the library and wanted to know how things were going and when you noticed me enough in class to throw me a Tootsie Pop across the room to brighten a miserable day and when you believed in me and gave me slack and when you trusted and respected me and the others to hear us and give us free rein in class and when you came into class saying you were down and needed us to help pick you up and when you exposed your inside to us without a hesitation and when you did a bunch of little things that meant a hell of a lot to me than I think you thought they did.

God knows that I learned more American history that I even thought I could. I still am amazed how much I am using in my other classes. Just as important are things that I learned in your class that had very little to do with American history. They had more to do with me and my own history and perceptions. I am one of those people who detested change and upheaval of any sort. The year prior to your class had been one of tremendous change and emotional trauma because of death in the family and broken love. So, by the time I came to your class my world as I had known was upside down, inside-out, and I was frozen in fear and lack of confidence. And I knew you sensed it and cared. I won’t tell you how you did otherwise you might remember me. But, you did.

Your class, the others in the triad who I still go out sometimes with, the stuff and projects we did in class, and above all, you, enabled me to begin facing some fears although this has been a slow change for me. My definition of a leader, for example, has always been of someone who is out in front of everyone, leading them loudly into some sort of physical action. I was always a follower trailing behind. I used to let others including teachers lead me around. I never realized until my experiences in your–oops, OUR– class that there are different kinds of leaders and in a real sense I *am* now a leader even though I am quiet. I can see where following what’s true in my own heart and having the strength, courage and conviction to face myself and be responsible for myself is a trait of a leaders–and a teacher. I am beginning to understand what you mean when you always said that self-acceptance is the mark of true development, not the need to have the approval of others.

The experiences I had in your class, the challenges, the support, the encouragement, the achievements began a questioning in me that was a very necessary part of my beginning to grow as a person. To me, just the encouragement to risk to do, just that, was one of the most powerful tools for living that I learned how to use in your class and that I continue to use today in other classes and more important in my life. I know that for me today, the truths in my life are only momentary perceptions which, if not revaluated, can stagnate my potential as a growing human and a teacher.

You probably thought you never touched me because I was one of the quiet ones. Maybe even a resistant one. But, I want you to know what you’ve shown me what it is to be a teacher. I know now that to be a teacher I have to worry more about what I plant in a student’s heart instead of just what I pour into their heads because real education is the spirit for learning what’s left over after the facts have been forgotten. If I want to be a great teacher I can’t just tell or explain or demonstrate, but I have to inspire. The greatest power I will have as a teacher is the power of example. I know that students will do best when I do best. I know now that what I will teach best and receive the greatest joy when I am generous with my heart, when I teach more by who I am than what I will say or do because I can’t love students without giving myself to them, and only by caring can I truly be a successful teacher. I have learned that for teaching to be real I have to have it make a life for myself and not just be a living and I have to show that to students about learning, too.

Well, that’s all I want to say. Have a Tootsie Pop.

I am not going to tear up this letter. A friend of mine, Judi Neal, says she has what she calls “sacred objects” in her office to remind her that when things get her down, they’re there to nourish her as reminders about all the things she loves about teaching: the students, the chance to make a difference, the chance to grow and be a better human being. She say meditating on those objects all of her negativity slips away and she feels good about who she is, where she is, and what she’s doing. I understnd that. I guess by that definition of a sacred object I have my belaying rope at home in my study, a kuumba wood carving a student spent all last summer fashioning for me. Now, I have this letter as well.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

HEART, INTELLIGENCE, AND RESUME

It is a nice early, cool, inviting morning. I hardly broke a sweat. As I was pouring my cup of coffee, I looked at the button that was lying on the counter and it reminded me of a small event at the Student Union that happened yesterday afternoon.

It’s Homecoming Weekend at VSU. And there’s a lot of crazy stuff going on this week. I standing in line chit-chatting and laughing with a bunch of students as we waited to get one of those useless, over-sized, computerize photo portrait buttons. I had gone to the Student Union to get a pair of tickets for tonight’s George Carlin show. I noticed the students waiting to get their electronic picture taken. I decided to get one.

I was admiring my button and thinking mischievously that my beautiful wife would love to have me pinned on her chest at work and had turned to walk upstairs to get my tickets when out from the line came a voice.

“Hey, Dr. Schmier.”

I turned toward the voice. “I saw you getting wet in the dunk pool during ‘Happening.’ Even tried my hand at it to get even with all you professors. I’ve heard a lot about you and I’ve got a question for you. I want to be a teacher. I was wondering what you think is the one thing I need to be a good teacher?”

Without missing a beat I quietly shot back with a big grin, “A loving, caring, nurturing, supportive, encouraging heart.” I told him remembering a conversation I recently had with a friend. “A teacher with a large heart is more important for students than one with a big reputation, great intelligence, large title, and a long resume.”

He smiled. And off I went get my tickets with my button pin to my chest.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

THE “I” OF TEACHING

I went out walking early today with something of a “morning after the day before” spiritual hangover. We of the Jewish faith have just finished an eight day period of self-examination and self-reflection called the Days of Awe. For a little over a week, we are asked to recognize that the precise hardware of the brain is useless without the mushy and messy software of the heart to drive it; we are asked to acknowledge that the thinking machine is energized and directed by the feeling machine; we are asked to understand that our hearts and spirit hold dominion over our heads and intellect. It is a time when we are supposed to come inside ourselves from the outside and transfer our attention from the external “you” and “it” and “that” to the internal “I”. I am always surprised by the uplifting effects of these days, which begin with the Jewish New Year and culminate with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. I always seem to start these holidays in my head and end up in my heart. So, I guess it is fitting that I wound up thinking about the “I” in teaching as I struggled to answer the questions of some nervous students who are aspiring to be teachers. They wanted to know what they should do in the classroom and how they should relate to students.

First, I think I will tell them that it’s okay for them to be uncomfortable, nervous, anxious, and even scared. I have discovered that usually meaningful and lasting success is attainable only by the uncomfortable people who find themselves in or face uncomfortable situations, by people who are not so sure they have discovered the academic mother lode that they have stopped searching, by people who are not so sure they have all the answers that they have stopped asking questions. I find the daily discomfort I experience as I prepare for or leave class sharpens my self- awareness, makes me more alert to what I feel and do, humbles me, enhances my teaching, makes me more aware of the student, focuses me on him or her so that I can search for ways to help and guide, and thus gives me a better shot at improving as both a teacher and person.

I will also tell them, however, that it’s important–far from an easy task–not to let their discomfort spin out of control so that it controls them, not to let it cloud their thinking, not to let it shackle their actions, and not to let it lead them off onto the side roads of resignation and rationalization and denial. For I think that any style of teaching is best judged, not by controlling the students, but by empowering them; not by certainties or by the students who meet prior expectations, but by the surprises and by the students who don’t do what the teacher expects.

I will tell them to worry about the right person at the right time in the right way for the right reason. Worry about themselves, about cultivating and improving the inner “I.” Don’t worry about something or someone out there. Don’t worry about “that” or “it” or “him” or “her.” Rivet their attention on the inner “I” of teaching, not the outer “it”. For unless the teacher values, respects, likes, and accepts him/herself, he or she cannot reach out to value, respect, like, and accept the students; unless the teacher has a high opinion of him/herself, he or she cannot have a high opinion of the students; unless a teacher is sensitive to him/herself, he or she cannot be sensitive to the students.

I will tell them all this because I think teaching technologies and teaching techniques and scholarly resumes are educational camouflage; they’re academic window dressing. The critical issue of education and teaching is neither the quality of the students nor the expertise of the teacher. It is neither the implementation of the new technology nor the introduction of new techniques. No lecture from the podium, no book in the library, no computer on the table can teach young people what they can be and should be. Only who the teacher is can hope to do that. For if students learn the kind of people they can and should be by imitation, if they learn by seeing who the teachers around them are, what they believe, and how they act, students will be….or feel….or believe….or do what is or is not modelled, recognized, supported and encouraged by the teachers.

So, if I’m right, as I think I am, the real critical issue of teaching is being a caring and loving person with an honest desire–and maybe daring–to reach out to touch another person.

I know that to think of teaching in terms of “I”, of inserting the personal, is unsettling for so many academics because they have been taught to see teaching as an abstract, impersonal, technical, technological action of presenting information. Many have taken me to task for the “I” woven throughout many of my Random Thought sharings. The critics charge that I am egotistical, self-righteous, self-serving, self-absorbed, and self-promoting. They laugh that the “I” is full of distracting and unnecessary reflection, undermining excessive bravado, unsound observation and deliberation, and/or superficial apologia. They are uncomfortable because concentrating on the “I” rather than “you” and “it” recharts the course of teaching as “someone personal and close inside here” rather than as “something impersonal and remote out there.” The “I” of teaching blurs the supposed distinctive lines between professional and person, between teacher and student. It requires an understanding of what aspects of “I” are the most important lens that focus what “I” perceive of myself, of the students, and of what I do. It challenges them to think of both themselves and the students as individual human beings. The emphasis on “I” urges them to perceive teaching as a very personal human activity in which the teacher must establish a personal connection with what he or she does and with the people whom he or she comes into contact.

Nevertheless, I am not afraid to say that the “I” of teaching is a concept that is near and dear to my heart. It’s in everything I say. I unswervingly believe that spotlighting the “I” of teaching transforms education from the cold-hearted transmission of hard facts it too often is to the warm-hearted compassion about human beings it should be, and takes the theoretical and abstract world of teaching into the real and human world of teaching.

I don’t think anyone can truly separate the professional from the person even though many people do their best to try to make the reality of the inner “I” irrelevant. It is, however, the “I”, our inner passions, emotions, beliefs, and attitudes which chart the course of our voyage. It is the “I” that influences our ability to risk using techniques in a manner that is far more for the benefit of the students than for us. And though so many in education are uncomfortable with the idea of “I”, of personal story, personal questions, personal missions in teaching, I don’t believe either teaching or learning is a spectator sport where we observe, analyze, assess from distant platforms, but do not go into the arena. In fact, that may be why many others have told me that telling my own story, my own travails, my own accomplishments, my own failures, my own searches, my own growth and change, have made teaching intimate, whole, human, and real for them.

The “I” certainly makes it more difficult to “jargonize” education in a way that restricts it to the limited number of professionals who speak the jargon rather than opening it up to the public, that confuses the purpose of education rather than clarifies it, that isolates the mission of teaching rather than making it accessible, that makes academics dull rather than resonating, that conceptualizes rather than humanizes, that makes teaching exclusively intellectual rather than including the emotional as well, that places teachers at safe and cold distances rather than at involved proximity to students, that places teachers safely in touch only with the subject rather than with the human being, that is cold rather than warm, that rests on detached analysis rather than on engaged experience, that separates rather than includes, that silences rather than voices, that is elitist rather than democratic, that is clinical rather than inspired, that has educated out virtues like “compassion” and “touch” and “feel” and “experience” and “personal”, that has educated in non-involvement and viewing from afar, that has no room for human interaction, that is boring and stifling and dull rather than poignant, heart-rendering, moving, exciting, strengthening, enticing, and inspiring.

And finally, I would tell the students that if ever I felt my teaching was directed at something distant, an “it”, rather than involved with the intimate spirit of “I”, little meaningful and lasting learning would occur. If ever I felt teaching was an infringement on my scholarly profession, then I may as well forget it! If ever I felt teaching would take even an hour from my more important scholarship, if I ever I felt it would be an interruption, I may as well forget it! If ever I thought that teaching would be a pain, if ever I felt that students would be a pain in the neck, I may as well not even bother. If ever I saw teaching as a shrewd career move to fatten my wallet and enhance by reputation rather than as a craft and a mission, I may as well get out of it. If ever I saw teaching as just a collection of days rather than an unending adventure, I may as well stop doing it. If ever I sucked up to my resume rather than work for the students, I may as well not be here. If ever I thought that my subject and research, not the students and my teaching, is my real profession, I shouldn’t even do it!

And finally, I would tell them that if I feel that everything out there is an interruption of and infringement on my teaching and the student’s learning, I should bother! If I feel it is my mission to find a way to reach a student who has been out of reach, I should do it! If I feel teaching is fun, more of an avocation than a vocation, I should keep doing it! If I feel that every student needs a chance to be a dreamer and to realize his/her dreams, the class room is where I should be. If I feel that teaching is a life passion what enriches my soul, if I feel it offers me the opportunity to experience all that is good in life, the class room is where I want to be.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–