It’s afternoon this rainy Sunday. This is the first day in several weeks I’ve been unison with myself. I’ve been feeling out of sync with myself lately and not in the mood to share although so many exciting things have happened the last few weeks. I guess it’s because I haven’t wandering the pre-dawn streets in almost three weeks. My L5 & L6 degenerated discs–at least, what’s left of them–have been acting up for the first time in a few years. Ordinarily I wouldn’t let an ache or two keep me inside, but when the beautiful boss of the house, unimpressed with my proclamation of having a Ph.D., says with both her succulent lips and the piercing, laser stare of her alluring eyes, “Thou shalt not walk,” cowardice being the best part of discretion, I merely reply, “yes, ma’am” and obey. But, not having felt an ache for a few days, Susan finally gave in, unlocked the chain, and let me go out for a sort–I didn’t tell it was a fast–two-mile walk during a pause in the release of drifting rain clouds.

My muscles ached. My lungs screamed for air. My breathing heaved. But, I felt reborn. I felt like I was experiencing the effects of the spiritual counterpart to my beginning of the term class “getting to know ya” exercises. I felt as if I was breaking down barriers within myself, building bridges between me and my spirit, creating a community between the two.

As my spirit burst forth and flowed free once again, I started thinking of a student whom I’ll call Bob and of a demand he made of me Friday. Friday was the second day of the Spring Quarter and of the “getting to know ya” exercises I use to start forging a classroom learning community. We had had an in-class treasure hunt each day to see first who had tatoos and then who had exotic pets; each day we had gone on a treasure hunt searching out in the class to meet ten people whom we didn’t know. The students had engaged in a “what do you want to know about me” interview of me. And, we had just started interviewing each other with a set of questions. I ended class by asking each of them to bring in a symbol of themselves to show and explain to the class on Monday.

At the end of the class, Bob came up to me. I didn’t yet know him. He introduced himself to me saying, “You said that five years ago you started being a teacher.”

“Yeah,” I replied with an affirmative look on my face.

“Well,” he continued, “I think that sounds good, but I don’t think it says very much about what being a teacher is.”

As I heard those few words, I could feel the excitement stirring within me thinking, “and it’s only the second day of class.”

He continued. “I read one of the letters from one of the students in last quarter’s class that you asked to write us about your class. That person said that you like us to challange you and question your answers, and that we should be brave enough to risk pinning your ass to the wall. That’s what she said. Is that really true?”

“Interesting way to put it, but–yep.” My outer calm belied the fact that I was jumping up and down inside with anticipation.

“Well,” he went on with obvious nervousness, “you just told us to bring in something that we would tell the class about on Monday that would show everyone what we felt about ourselves. And, you said this was our class. So, I think you should do the same thing and bring in something to explain to us what you really mean about being a teacher.”

I almost couldn’t keep the silent scream, “YES”, what swelled up in my throat from blurting out. I almost choked keeping it down. “That’s some challenge. Tooks guts. Have a Tootsie Pop.”

I think I skipped all the way back to my office. In my office, propped my feet on the desk, unwrapped a Tootsie Pop ,and excitedly started sucking on it as I took a quick glance at the class role. It showed that Bob was in the university’s math and writing skills deficient developmental program. Maybe. His challenge and question, however, were anything but developmental. Now I had a job to do.

That was my last class of the day. I walked home, still a bit cheery. Then, reality set in. This wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought. What to find and bring in. I couldn’t bring in either an apple to cut and reveal the star at its center or bring in a hammer to represent a goldminer’s pick. They were old hat. I’ve done that before. I ran from room to room wondering; I rummaged through closets searching; I tore through drawers hoping. Nothing. I thought about it all day yesterday while I was driving and my wife was reading. Nothing. I was getting concerned. I enlisted Susan’s help. She and I searched for something while we wandered hand-in-hand through Jacksonville’s malls. Nothing. I thought about it as I was driving home and Susan was dozing. Nothing. I was getting worried. I thought about this morning. Nothing. I was getting desperate. Panic was beginning to set in. I was having occasional nasty thoughts about Bob.

But, on the home short leg of my walk, when the only thing I was thinking about was the exhilaration of just being on the asphalt again, an unexpected vision came to me. I rushed home and ran into my study. There it was. I’d bring to class tomorrow a velvet arm cover from our old couch that my wife and I had lugged a few days ago into my study and had stored standing end-up in a corner to make way for the new living room furniture. I grabbed the soft cover and rubbed it gently between my hands. And, it all made such sense. I was off the spot. Let me tell you why.

I like the touch of velvet and that touch is a perfect symbol to me for being a teacher, for this is what I will tell the students as I told up the cover: I unequivocably believe that being a teacher is far more being with people then being with a subject. Being a teacher is being in the classroom for someone else. It is struggling _daily_ to touch others and to make a difference _each_ day in their lives. I have found that in the academic world of cold calculation and cold, hard facts many people find it difficult to recognize that we all touch each other. The intellectual climate creates what I believe is a false image that there is little place, little dignity, little seriousness, little prestige, little value in what some derisivsely call the soft, warm “touchy-feely” passionate experience of learning. But, I am convinced that emotion, touching people and opening their hearts and eyes, is as important a part of education as transmitting information and opening up their minds. Yeah, that velvet arm couch cover will do very nicely as my symbol tomorrow.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

G-g-g-good m-m-m-m-morning. It’s a nice time for a warm fire, a hot cocoa, and some snuggling. It’s freezing out there! No, it’s worse; it’s in the 20s with a wind chill hovering around 10!!. What’s going on? My sprouting amaryliis are wearing mufflers! Yesterday I was traveling the pre-dawn streets bare-chested in shorts bare-chested happlily thinking about planting in my garden. This morning I could barely stand the cold in my long grubbies and am ready to shovel snow. If it wasn’t cold enough, all along this trek through this arctic, I kept thinking about a chilling discussion I was having with a “virtual” colleague throughout this week in response to my use of gold mining as a metaphopr for teaching. At one time, he had written: “Apart from being respectful of our students as people just as a matter ‘of course,’ of trying to carry out our duties with some sense of humor and a perspective that reaches at least a little beyond our discipline and our institution, WHO HAS TIME TO DO MORE?” (his emphasis). As I thought about these words, once again I began hearing a racket inside me. It was a dull, monotonous rythm of strange sounds that kept pace with my steps: boom, bang, hiss, clunk, clang–out comes a student; boom, bang, hiss, clunk, clang–out comes a student; boom, bang, hiss, clunk, clang–out comes a student; boom, bang, hiss….over and over again that maddening cadence. While this cacaphony persisted I began imagining noisy, oily, greasy, smelly vats and cogs and wheels and pistons and presses and conveyor belts of a massive, impersonal factory assembly line mass producing students as if they were tin cans.

“Who has time to do more?” To do what? More than merely going through the motions? More than merely giving a passing wave? More than offering a perfunctory smile? More than uttering a hurried, expected “hello?” And leave it at that? Excuse me, but I think it’s funny that I seldom hear anyone raising that question when it comes to a commitment to bear the demands on time and attention and energy of preparing grant applications, writing conference papers, attending conferences, offering consultancies and workshops, researching and publishing, doing whatever is needed to enlarge a professtional reputation, heighten academic prestige, get a salary increase or a promotion or tenure.

Excuse me, but after reading hordes of student journals quarter after quarter and constantly talking with students, I know we delude ourselves if we really think students–in elementary, middle school, high school or college and universityy–are so naive that they don’t see the difference between sincerity and lip-service, they are so dimwitted that they don’t know the difference between image and reality, they are so inept at distinguishing between rhetoric and practice, they aren’t watching closely to see whether our performance is a bunch of bull or whether it reflects who we really are as people.

This professor went on to say, “Let’s face it: What with the way we’re pressed to do a good job with the limited time we have in our courses, the emotional life of our students can generally only be a distraction and source of inefficiency for us.”

Excuse me? What do too many of us think our job is? Maybe, part of the issue is that too many of us think of the classroom or allow others–“The System” or “The Institution”–to forces us, like submissive hirelings, to treat the classroom as that not-so-serious-I’ve-got-to-put-food-on-the-table job. If not, if we feel truly have our finger on the pulse of students’ need and are in command of our own destiny, why, then, are we surprised when we hear students say, as I recently have heard students, who have contacted me on the interent, say: “survival is to play the damn game”; “must tailor ourselves to the distant professors”; “need to give their egos a wide berth”; “groveling to them–when I see them”; “‘yes, maam’ing’ and ‘yes, sir’ing’ has become almost second nature”; “to complete my schooling has to come before my education”; and “few care and back it up.” Maybe our surprise that so many students don’t believe so many of us teachers care about them supports their indictment. But, what do students know.

Excuse me? Students are a source of “distraction” and “inefficiency?” Well, let me tell you, as I told him, about a “distraction” and “inefficiency” who I think explains that our MISSION as educators is not to move students along an assembly line in a factory-school setting; that our interest in the students should be beyond both the confines of the subject and the classroom; that teaching is not just something to be conveyed, but some emerging one to behold; and that our interest in being in the classroom should be to be with the students. Let me tell you about Lenny (not his real name).

Lenny is in my first year night class that meets only twice a week the student of whom I am having a difficult time, more than usual, connecting with. But, Lenny stood out because of his unusual number of absences during the first half of the quarter. My eagle eye–my “blueberries”–caught the disinterest written all over his smileless face and virtually inert body as he sat aimlessly in the back corner of the room with the two young ladies of his triad . He wasn’t the most enthused and involved person in the class; he didn’t really interact with the other members of his triad; he came into class and never looked at them or talked with them; his journal was never complete; when it came time to get involved in skits or do a shield, he was at best a reluctant partner. I hadn’t talked with him. And to be honest, I felt guilty about that.

A couple of weeks ago, class presentations for a scavenger hunt project dealing with the early 19th century reform movement were due. Lenny meandered into class empty handed. The other members of his triad tried to cover him, but it was obvious he was totally unprepared. Then, one of those unexpected, mysterious, inexplicable events, which always awe me, occurred. The time had come to present a symbol depicting the significance of Dorethea Dix. One of the members of his triad began to rise. He put his hand on her shoulder to stop her. In her place, he rose, struggled would be a better description, and said, “I present myself as an example of her efforts to reform treatment of the insane because I once tried to commit suicide.” The laughing stopped. The noise abated into deep silence. After what seemed like that proverbial eternity, I forced myself to say, “Now let’s see what we’ve come up with for Mary Cady…..” All through class I kept looking at Lenny without trying to be obvious.

After class, I got a hold of him. We sat on the steps, unwrapped a couple of Tootsie Pops, and talked for almost two hours. Some of what we said is branded into my mind and heart.

I started the conversation by telling him that I had noticed how the other members of the triad had been trying to cover for him by giving him scavenger items he should have brought in himself to discuss, but I saw he wasn’t prepared at all. I asked him what was wrong.

“I dunno” was his answer. He took the Tootsie Pop from his mouth. His head bent over in defeat and his eyes became fixed to the floor. I pressed. “I won’t accept that fifth grade answer,” I firmly but I hope compassionately replied. “What’s…going…on?” I slowly and deliberately asked.

“I couldn’t find some of the stuff in the book or think of anything to represent them.”

“Bullshit,” I replied with a quiet disbelief. “Let’s be honest with yourself. Did you try?”

He hesitated. “No, not really.” He was still gazing at the floor.

“Why? You had an entire week to work on this with the others in your triad? Why didn’t you get help from them? From me?”

“I dunno. You and they would have thought like everyone else. I’m just a nobody. Why don’t you just let me fail like everyone does. I’m gonna do it anyway.”

Silent defeat screamed out in his whispered words. The will to go on seemed to have disappeared. An invisible millstone of hopelessness hung around his bowed head. I could hear dark, sapping, upspoken words–“Quit!” “Give up!” “Beaten”–bouncing around in his deflated spirit. I so want to ask him about his attempted suicide and why he had mentioned to everyone in the class at this particular moment. But, something told me not to. And, I didn’t.

But, I did say, “The hell I will. Is that want you really want?”

“No.”

“What’s this all about?” I kept pressing.

“I just know I can’t do it.”

Then I thought I’d try something. “Sounds like academic suicide to me!”

His head bolted up. He looked at me for the first time, pained as if I had just thrust a knife into his heart. A tear ran down his cheek. I hit a nerve. He didn’t say anything, but I sensed an almost desperate, yet a daring, but reluctant, desire to reach out and grab. Well, I reached back to grab his soul.

“I ain’t just going to stand by and watch you slash your wrists. Not in my class. You had the guts to stand up in class and tell everyone about your attempted suicide. You want sympathy from me? You ain’t going to get it. You got the guts to stand up to yourself?

“Well, I failed this project anyway. What’s the use.”

As if I didn’t hear him, I said “This is Wednesday. Monday, when we’re both free, you will come to my office with items symbolizing the importance of ALL (my emphasis) 36 items! I said ALL, not just your twelve! You game?”

He muttered a, “Yeah. I guess.”

“Don’t ‘guess’ me,” I retorted firmly. I grabbed one of his shoulders and gently pressed. “You with me on this.”

“Yes,” he said with what I hoped was a bit of change in his voice. We chatted some more. I patted him on the back, wished him a good night, went to my office, unwrapped a Tootsie Pop, said a silent prayer, and walked home for a much needed hug and kiss from my wife. It was 11:15 p.m.

Monday came. I was saying a silent prayer all morning. The afternoon rolled around and no Lenny. I was disappointed. Then, I got a phone call. It was Lenny. He was running late at his job. Twenty minutes later, he was there toting a large duffle bag over his shoulder! For the next two hours, he pulled out stuff he had either made or scavenged for all over town: a brailled McDonald’s container lid for the Perkins School for the Blind; a packet of “Equal” to symbolize Mary Cady Stanton and the early feminist movement; two toy dolls joined together by a stick to represent gender equality of the Oneida Community founded by Noyes; for the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, broken hand cuffs; for Samuel Slater, “factory” soot; for the temperance leader Charles Finney, a copy of the Prohibition Amendment. With each admiring and encouraging “great”, “that’s good”, “hey”, his smile got larger and larger. After it was all over, he said with a good deal of satisfaction,

“Well, I did it. I showed ya.”

“Showed who?” I asked.

He thought for a moment. “Me?” he asked.

“Well, it wasn’t me. You didn’t show me anything I didn’t know was there already. What did YOU (my emphasis) show YOU?” I asked.

“I guess that I have the ability and when I’m not afraid use it I can…. But, what if I screw up next time.”

“Well?” I answered in the form of a question.

He thought a minute or two. “Get up, figured out why I screwed up like I did this time, do it differently and better?”

I handed him a Tootsie Pop. Now, I can’t tell you what he touchingly wrote in his journal. I can tell you that it was in the form of a letter to himself, and that it brought a tightness to my chest and tears to my eyes. I will tell you that in the last two weeks he has been nothing but smiles. His inner darkness has faded. His eyes have sparkled. His head has been high. He has had a spring to his step. He has been talking with the young ladies in his triad. He has partipated in, and once led, the discussions and games demonstrating that he has learned the material. He was down on the floor, talking, suggesting, drawing–and was the triad presenter–during a symbolization exercise of chapters. Last Monday, at the beginning of class, just as we all closed our eyes for a few seconds to listen to the music and get into spirit of learning, I walked up behind Lenny, placed my two hands on his shoulders, squeezed caringly, learned over and whispered in his ear, “You’ve come a piece.” He smiled, slightly nodded his head, put one hand on mine, and leaned his head back towards me. “Don’t stop caring, ever” he whispered back. I patted his shoulder, gave him an orange Tootsie Pop as everyone around saw me catch my breath, and turned to start class.

Yeah, real distracting and inefficient.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

Well, on this two month anniversary of Kim and me being “clean.” I found lying matter-of-factly, almost camouflaged, amidst the cluttered land-fill of my desk a simple, hand-written letter Kim had written to me. I pick it up nonchalantly and started reading it. With every passing word, I realized this was a letter not to be read casually, and I slowed down. I stopped half way through, I took a deep breath, wiped away a tear or two, unwrapped a Tootsie Pop, and finished reading, grabbing at every word, through the haze of my glassy eyes. I must have re-read it two or three times. I don’t think Kim would mind if share it with you:

I am really glad that I made a promise to myself
and to you to stop drinking because of the fact
that it was really bad for my spirit and my
health. I guess I just needed someone to care enough
to get me to see what I wanted to see but didn’t have
the courage to see. No one in my immediate family drinks.
So, it was not anything I picked up at home. I
drank while in highschool. That is when it started.
Hanging around my friends and watching them drink
made me want to do it. Well, now I know no one made me
do anything. I did it all to myself. I just didn’t want
to be left out of things and was afraid of being thought of
as a jerk. I guess I just didn’t that the confidence and
strength to take the chance of saying no. I wasn’t happy
about it, but didn’t think I could do anything about
until you came along.

I made the promise at first just to impress you, but when
you proudly showed me your nails after your first manicure
and bragged to everyone in the class that the dark purple
nail polish on your pinky was a sign of our deal I knew that
you weren’t bulling me but you were showimg everyone who you
realy are. So, I had to do the same. I also saw that pinky
was a sign that you needed me as much as I needed you. That
feeling of being needed and being something made me that I
was important and could do something for others. I made me
feel good. That’s when I started doing it for myself.

Since my promise, I feel renewed and like a better person because
I have been clean since the start of the quarter and because I have
cleaned my spirit and attitude and body. I’m happier and more honest.
I like being myself and being able to turn down drinks. I feel
like people respect me more now that I have stopped drinking. I
respect myself more. That’s more important I think. I have found
out that I can handle my problems without the use of a drink and
that I don’t need a drink to solve my problems which it doesn’t
anyway. I like that. I used to only drink when something was
deeply on my mind or I was depressed. I now have found out because
of our deal that there are other ways to have a good time.

I feel really GOOD knowing that I have many people, especially you
and the others in the class, backing me and believing in me. But,
what really make me feel best is that I believe in myself now. I
believe now that there’s a lump of gold inside me to mine. It
makes me wonder that if I have it in me to put a lid on the bottle
what lids can I open in myself. I believe that if I can deal with
drinking there isn’t anything I can’t do here in school and every
where else.

Thanks for caring and believing me and asking me each day if I was
clean. You clean today? Happy anniversary.
As I dry my eyes, I look–stared is a better term–at my pinky nail, now painted with gold nail polish, and I feel a bit richer than when I got up this morning.
You know, Kim is right. The rich vein of human potential is never absent in anyone. It’s there hidden deep, hidden sometimes under an uninviting surface, waiting to be brought upon into the light of day. Teaching, then, is the mining for gold and we teachers are the prospectors whose task is invite students to dig along side us as their own prospectors mining for their own pay dirt.

Imagine if we were all willing to go at a group of students or just one student the way a prospector goes at a mountainside with a pick and shovel, if we believed that everything will go our way regardless of what happens, if we didn’t take a discouraging “no” to our dreams, if we weren’t deterred by the unassuming and barrenenss of the terrain because we knew that deep within the rock of the students’ being lay untold rich abunance of glittering potential.

I have discovered that if we mine students, and help students mine themselves, expecting to find a vein of gold, we both almost always will. Getting to that rich ore, however, isn’t something that is done very easily. It takes sweat and effort and endurance. Progress can be slow. The way through the rock can be rocky. Sometimes you have to feel your way in the darkness; sometimes you have to delicately pick; sometimes you have to blast. The rubble has to hauled out. The tunnel has to be shored up. There’s going to be the inevitable cave-ins. At times you’re battling your aching body and your strained emotions as well as the rock. At times, you feel as if you can’t go on. Nothing is guaranteed. Sometimes you’ll take a wrong turn or your tools will break or you’ll faced impenetrable hard rock or can’t dig deep enough with the tools you’ve got.

But, if and when we get down to the bedrock of that student’s human potential we strike it rich. And, I have discovered that once a student is aware of the pay dirt of talent inside him/herself, once a student is in touch with the wealth of the particular individuality of his or her own genius, once a student sees the brilliance of his or her selfhood, once a student starts mining the treasure of his or her own unique potential, the vein seldom peters out.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

Well, here it is 6:30 a.m. Inviting aromatic wisps of the hot cup of freshly brewed, specially blended coffee sitting next to me are curling about like a host of relaxing, delicate, dexterous, massaging fingers.

It was a curious walk this morning. Ever have that feeling that you’re both out of step and in step at the same time. That’s how I have felt on all my walks this past week, but especially today. Ordinarily, I would have said that I just had endured the sufferings of a five mile plod through the dark morning’s dank, stark dreariness. But, all week nothing has seemed suffering. I didn’t notice the darkness because of the light I’ve felt enveloping me all week. It’s warm inner glow has been a set of spiritual thermals that easily deflected this morning’s otherwise penetrating wet, chill. I haven’t felt this profoundly serene and alert and sensitive since the pivotal, spiritual experience I had as I climbed both that North Georgia mountain cliff and my inner cliff back in November, 1991 that was part of the regional wilderness retreat of Hyde School which my younger son, Robby, then attended. This week I’ve been more focused; everything seems more alive. I feel good. I feel alter. I feel alive. My senses haven’t been this sharp since that fateful day four and a half years ago. The beginning of last week seems like it was another world. I suppose part of the reason is the still reverberating echoes of Yemenja and thoughts of how on Friday Kim proudly reminded me, with a grin stretching from ear to ear, of the approaching two month anniversary of being “clean” she and I will celebrate in a few days. But, more than anything, I feel like I’m walking through the garden because of an act I thought was just a simple–and had convinced myself would be futile–gesture of sincere kindness and consideration that unexpectedly and amazingly novaed into event of great and loving profoundity. It has left my shaking my head in the most humbled amazement. It has left me with the feeling that the world is a bit more beautiful, cheerier, kinder; that it’s now a slightly better place where people are a bit less troubled. I know it is for me, for I can humbly hear Emerson saying that I can’t help someone else with helping myself, and that I can’t help myself unless I help someone else. It has made me even more acutely aware of the inseparable intimacy of the spiritual and emotional with the corporeal and cerebral, of how often we are so headdy and intellectual that we look for what others do rather than see who they are; that we focus only on the external surface of people’s actions and ignore the less noticeable but no less monumental buried emotions which lie hidden for so many of us even if we were to stand naked. And though this event about which I am being deliberately vague has nothing to do with students and education, it has everything to do with students and education. Maybe an important–perhaps the most important–and too often neglected part of our task as educators is to enrich where there is a poverty of spirit and nourish where there is a starving for caring.

And so, this morning I wondered. I wondered what would happen in the classroom if we teachers and professors cared more about the spirit of the students and less about a spirited lecture, if we were more concerned with a meeting of the hearts than a meeting of the minds, if we affirmed with encouragement more often and were firm with discouragement less often, if we caringly connected more and sternly corrected less, if we pointed our fingers less at the problem student and struggled more to put our finger on the student’s problems, if we focused more on students’ strengths and less on their weaknesses, if we hugged students with kindness more and squeezed them hard with fear and threat less, if we cared more about the authority of love than the love of authority, if we believed that it is stupid to think any student is stupid, if we held students hands more and chain their souls less, if we realized how much we retard students when we treat them as retarded, if we used more healing and comforting words and gestures and used less hurtful and discomforting words and gestures, if we acclaimed more what students can be and bemoaned less what they are, if we didn’t make the mistake of being afraid of making mistakes, if we took the chance to take chances, if we celebrated students for the precious gem each is, if we treasured each student as a treasured light of the future, if we saw them each as inspiration for composer’s note or an artist’s brush or a poet’s verse or sculptor’s chisel or a dancer’s step, and if we embraced students as if each was our own loving child? I was just wondering.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–