Boy my fingers are hurting from replying to the unexpected and overwhelming response to Tuesday’s Random Thought. As I was deafened by those continuing bays of these dogs of August, I thought some more about that professor’s message, about a heated discussion the RT triggered in which I am engulfed where I am being accused of being touchy-feely, mushy, naive, childish, self-congratulatry, oversimplied. But, I was also thinking about an evaluation a student whom I’ll call Tom wrote in his journal whose words probably answer better those naysayers than anything I could write:

Hey, doc, I know you’re going to read this. So, I want you to see a longer version of the sealed letter you have us write and I wrote to some student next quarter about you and this class. You know I came into this class as a cocky striaght A senior business major who felt stuck in a useless freshman history class I had to have because of a useless advisor’s screwup. I had a “I dare you, you Sonofabitch.” But I want you to know that in most classes, all classes to be honest, I have done everything I could to get a good grade and didn’t really care all that much if I learned something. In your class, I found myself struggling to learn and not worrying particularly about the grade. And you know what? I didn’t even realize that was happening and I didn’t realize how much I was learning because I had so much fun doing each of the projects. “Fun Learning,” that’s what this class is all about, not just boring lectures, threats of tests, and stuff like that. It’s becoming part of the subject and tying it to our lives, being trusted that we can become our own learners, giving control of the class to us. You gave me stuff to think about as I start helping my father run his business, something like “fun working.” You can have fun and like your class be demanding and serious and keeping your feet to the fire. You taught me that if it’s fun and rewarding, work isn’t work, and you accomplish an awful lot. I don’t thnk I’ll ever forget Hamilton and federalism because of the commerical ad campaign project, or the struggle of women in colonial times after writing that piece of historical fiction, or the early nineteen century reform that we studied through the scavenger hunts or all the other informations we got into with the other hands on projects. I can never say that after a test in other courses. Minute for minute, day for day, I’ve learned more and will remember more information, and understand it more in this class than in all my other classes put together.

I don’t think, I know, I will never forget the time you slapped me hard when I came to you arrograntly complaining to you about my other triad members and told you they were impossible and that I didn’t want to rely upon someone else for my grade and liked to work alone and I didn’t want my 4.0 to be hurt. You only asked me what my major was which you already knew. When I told you that I was a management major about to graduate with honors, all you said was, “well, start managing,” and you walked away. Remember? I was pissed and called my father. He told me that being in business was not a grade or a degree, and that I better start listening to you. Boy was I pissed at him, too.

But, I have to admit now that I never had a class that did so much for me in one quarter. And, I know I’m not the only one. It would have been easier to have taken a class when I could sit back as usual, take notes, study for an exam and get a good grade,forget the stuff, and go out for a beer, but it would not have been better. Your class was fun, but you never demanded anything less than our best, and I thought it would be easy what with no tests and all, but I never worked as hard in a class. You’re doing what none of my business profs had the guts to do. You’ve challenged us and yourself; you stepped outside the lines and made us do the same. Businessmen that don’t have to guts to do that get passed by. This was a history class, and I learned a hell of a lot of history, but it was also a class in life, and I’m going to take into my dad’s business a lot of what I learned in this class. My grade for you is a “B” for “bringing it home.”

I share this message from Tom not to toot my own horn or to demand you teach with the style I use. I share this message as an unconditional rejection of the assertion that the real sin is caring too much or expecting too much. No, the real sin, I just told an new found e-mail friend is to limit “IS” and to give “CAN’T” a free rein both in the students and in ourselves. As my good friend, Neil Coddington–actually he often acts as a welcomed conscience, and sometime an unwelcomed one–recently told me, we devote so much time and energy pointing out the negative, trying to determine why someone cannot succeed rather than trying to find how success will thrive. How true. Anyone who proclaims “I can’t reach them all,” can’t, and is just struggling to excuse and rationalize and validate not wanting or being able or being afraid to reach out at all. But, anyone who says, “I’m not reaching them all, but I want to” will struggle to find ways to do it.

Time and time again, I have found that my strong and unswerving beliefs in, caring about, and high expectation of both myself and each student have yanked me outside of the limits of my view of teaching and so many students’ view of education, have stirred new passions in both of us, have offered us up new adventures, have handed us challenges to take risks, have led us into doing new and exciting things, have given me new and exciting ways of seeing and hearing those unnoticed people whom we pass by in both the hallways and classes and who pass themselves by everyday, and have taken us to new places in old classrooms. In these new places, stagnation and boredom and routine are forebidden. “Can’t” is the worst of the curse words; “don’t and “won’t” are the greatest of sins. There the ghost of King Midas is running around touching so many students, slowly and painfully turning supposed waste into value, shadows into light, accursedness into sacredness. Everyday people turn into the extraordinary, the salt of the earth, hope of the world, glistening light of the future; their everyday sounds turn into music, their everyday items into sculpture, their everyday images into art, their everyday activities into invention, their everyday actions in heroic efforts, their everyday words into literature, their everyday struggles into achievement and growth.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

As I trod the dark streets of Valdosta this morning it was hard to meditate. Those howling dogs of August sound as large as the hounds of the Baskervilles. They’re baying so loud I wonder how anyone can sleep. Down here, as the editor of the local newspaper said, we know these dogs intimately by their first names: “heat” and “humidity.” It was a vain attempt to keep them from nipping at my dripping heels. But, I did manage to think of a message in which a howling professor from a mid-western univeristy was trying to take nips at me.

“Louis,” she wrote, “you’re an idealist and a dangerous promoter of humanist education.” I think she was cussin’ at me. Personally, I take the barb as a compliment. Anyway, she went on to write, “You believe too much in each student. You care too much. You can’t reach them all. Your expectations are too high?” I am sure she meant all of those activities to be sins.

Too much? Too high? Nonsense! Let me tell you a quick story about a student I’ll call Helen who was in my class a few quarters ago. Bright, alive, cheery, this young woman in her late teens is racked by the ravages of chemotherapy that is keeping her cancer in remission. She is doing everything she can to live a normal life and enjoy each day that is given to her. Her thoughts for tomorrow center not letting her afflication stop her dream of becoming a vetinarian come true. She activly participated in class discussions and was a viable member of her triad. On the day, a Wednesday, the class triads were presenting their scavenger hunt project Helen wasn’t in class. No one in her triad knew where she was. Some of the items for which she was responsible she was not present to discuss. About half-way into the class period, Helen meanders into class with an unusual non-chalant canter and a “who cares” snicker on her face. But, I thought I felt a hidden sense of near-defeat. Anyway, when it come to her turn to present, she’s obviously was not prepared. The second time she tried to wing it, I called her down on it since I had cancelled class for three days so all the triads could work on the project. Her snicker became a frown. She ploped down on the chair with a huff, loudly tore a piece of paper from her notebook, wrote something on it, folded it, interrupted the class by walking up to me, handed me the folded paper, and walked out of class. I put the paper in my pocket and the class went on. After class, at home, I took the note Helen had written me out from my pocket. In it I read a heart-rendering message about discovering she was pregnant, the unsupportive father who didn’t care, and an irate mother who was threatening to disown her “after she kills me.” She ended the note saying something to the effect that she didn’t have the strength to argue with me and that she frankly didn’t give a flip (not her word) about the project, about school, or about anything else because her life has so suddenly and drastically changed. But, she offered an opening by giving me her telephone number if I felt I needed to contract her.

I picked up the phone.

“Helen,” I asked softly, “this is Louis Schmier. You okay?”

“I was hoping you would call, but I wasn’t she you really cared like you told us.”

We talked. Actually, she talked and listened. I remember one comment as if I had a photograpic memory and will remember it to the day I die. “You know,” she cried, “it took me a while after I learned I had Hodgekin’s that I learned to feel felt each day was a gift. I guess I opened that gift one night too many. Momma says God is going to punish me with more cancer. Will he really? She says I need to get an abortion and get rid of that sin before God does something. But, that’s a life in me and it ain’t it’s fault it’s there. I don’t know who I can talk to but you. The days just don’t seem wrapped in pretty paper any more.”

I told her that she had to talk with people in support groups on campus or in town if she wanted to tie beautiful ribbons around her spirit. She balked at that saying she was strong enough that she didn’t have to talk with anyone.

“You’re talking with me,” I quietly argued. I went on to say something to the effect, “Getting help is no a sign of weakness. It shows you how straong you are. You went to a doctor to treat your cancer. What’s the difference in doing that from getting help from someone to treat your spirit.”

“Didn’t think about it that way. None, I guess.”

Then, I asked if she had talked to her oncologist about how the chemicals in her body would effect the fetus. She hadn’t thought of that and would call him the next morning. We went on and finally I said, “Why don’t you let me make a phone call tomorrow morning and get you an appointment just to talk about things. Think about it and let me know tomorrow morning.”

She called and asked if I would go with her for introductions. I agreed, made a phone call, set up an appointment, met Helen who told me what her oncologist had recommended, and left her with a councilor.

The next class day, she was her old self. She came up to me after class and said, “Thanks for being you and giving me back my gifts. I think I have to do a project, the whole project, even the other triad members’ share, to make it up to them for leaving them in a lurch.”

I agreed. She did the project and tore up the class for the remainder of the quarter. I never asked her about her decision. She never volunteered to tell me either in conversation or in her journal. But, for her closure item, she brought in a piece of gift wrapping and–to the tears of all of us–talked about her cancer and how so many people are taking their time on earth for granted and are wasting their precious days on earth by “going through the motions, just gettin’ by and only doing what you have to.”

At the end of class, she handed me a gift-wrapped an orange Tootsie Pop. Inside was a note. It said, “Don’t let nothing or no one stop you from unwrapping today’s gift.” I took a deep breath. It now has a place among my sacred objects of teaching.

I haven’t seen her since that quarter. But, somehow I know whatever her decision was, she is at peace and she is opening her gifts once again.

Too much, too high? Tell Helen that. I would rather intensely believe in, support, care about, be involved with, challenge, and encourage each student and have my expectations sky-high, and get only to 80% or to 75% or to 50% or to a third or even to just one student such as Helen rather than get all of beliefs in and expectations of students that are rock-bottom.

Passion in education for the student, THE WHOLE STUDENT, the inseparable connection between a person’s life in the classroom and a person’s life outside the classroom, is not a transgression; it’s the right stuff.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

A few weeks ago, at the Student Union, some of my students threw a curve ball at me. As I munched on a doughnut or two or three, we were talking about the class and how much they enjoyed it and got out of it. One of the students asked why I have them do the “stuff” that they do: the “getting to know ya” exercises, the music at the beginning of class, the moment of silent meditation, scavenger hunts, theatrical presentations, creative writing, abstract drawing, game playing, chain essays and the like.

“Did you know,” she said in a whisper as if someone was trying to overhear our conversation, “that some other professors think what you do is kindergardenish and doesn’t belong in a university?”

“Don’t you care what other professors think about you?” another chimed in.

I told them that I did, but I care more about what the students think since I am in what I called “the student business” and have to be true to myself and my beliefs. Beside, I added so few of my colleagues really know what I do because they haven’t sat in our class and observe.

“Would you let them?” another student asked.

Before I could answer, a third student jumped in, “They won’t because they’d be a guest and would first have to join ‘our community’ and sing!” Everyone laughed.

Then, came the pitch. “Seriously,” Sheila asked, “in a nutshell, what do you think an education should be?”

“That’s a hell of a question.” I answered. “A nutshell? I’ll need some time to think that one over. Class time. Gotta go!”

We all got up as I promised to have an answer by tomorrow. “A bag of Tootsie Pops for each of us if you don’t,” Charles laughed.

“You’re on,” I shot back accepting the challenge.

And, I’ve been cursing Sheila since then. What was I going to tell them. I was having trouble with that nutshell part until I engaged in a neat exchange on a particular discussion list. Today, I got the answer I want to give them.

I’ve decided to tell them that when I answer their question, I’m really revealing my values, my character, and expressing my credo on which are founded my truths and beliefs, and on which I base my attitudes and actions.

So what’s my credo? As I once told an e-mail colleague, its core is the value of the individual worth of each human being, that as an educator, a teacher, I enjoy and serve the people who have been placed in my path. This value translates into my techniques, my interaction with students, my behavior. It a value which indicates my strongest beliefs, on what I would be unable to compromise, how I view the worth and capability of other individuals, how I view my responsibility of treating students in my daily encounters, which choices I make. I guess I am revealing who I believe I am; what is my relationship to others; what I believe about others; what is my responsibility both to myself and those others. Fundamentally, I believe that all individuals are entitleed to respect, care, and deserve my best efforts to serve them in their needs, their achivement of their goals, and a deeper understanding and regard for themselves. To believe otherwise, I would overlook their worth and create innocent waste. I believe it is my responsibility to help them find the material to fill the potholes in their spirit, find the fuel to energize their ability and light up their understanding of their potential, help them rise above their own limiting preconceptions, and challenge their limits. I believe it my responsibility to do likewise to myself. I have found that it is those times when my attitudes and actions are congruent with my values that I draw affirmation, energy, and fullfilment.

And so, this is what I will tell those students what I believe an education is not and what an education is. This nutshell is going to save me, to their dismay, many a bag of Tootsie Pops.

I do not believe an education is a degree. To believe it is, is probably the greatest weakness in our educational philosophy. A grade is not a sign of an education. A GPA is not an education. A curriculum of largely unrelated classes is not an education. That is, “X” number of minutes, “Y” number of credit hours, “Z” number of core and/or major courses do not constitute an education.

So what do I believe an education is? I strongly feel that first and foremost an education must be a transforming and it is learning to face such growth, development and change. An education should be getting a license to be endlessly curious, to continually ask questions, not just getting the degree for a job. It should be a means of becoming less self-righteous and inwardly stronger, less arrogant and more humble. That is, an education is the acquisition of the ability to listen without losing your cool or self-confidence. By this particular measure many of us with many degrees, long resumes, and wide-spread reputations are not particularly educated. An education is getting someone to know how much they do not know and learn how much they have to learn. An education disciplines rather than just fills the mind; it trains the mind to use its own powers independently rather than being dependent on someone else filling it. An education should develop hearts, not just minds so that people can live noble lives as well as have productive careers. An education should be, then, the development of character, a quest for values, the raising of visions, not merely the hoarding of facts and honing of skills. It should be a the creation of a way of life–a way of looking at people and things–not a problem or an assignment or a job.

This is what I am going to tell my questioning students what I believe an education is not and is, and why they are at VSU.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–