It’s dawn and I am thinking about Dawn. Strange how things happen. It’s sometimes so mysterious. I just don’t ask.

Anyway, yesterday morning I had just come out of class and was heading for the office when there she was, Dawn. It’s not her real name, but it’s the right pseudonym. You’ll quickly see why.

“Dr. Schmier,” she exploded.

I hadn’t seen her since the end of last semester, about ten weeks. I had asked around about her to see if she had returned to campus and how she was doing. I didn’t have to ask how she was doing. If she hadn’t said a word, I knew.

“Dawn,” I reciprocated with an equal burst.

We held each other’s extended hands. The movements of her body, the tones of her voice, the looks in her eyes, the expressions on her face, the feel of grip, each was like a stroke in her calligraphy that expressed her awareness, her mind and spirit, who she was at that moment. All those strokes had brushed a character, revealing Dawn’s changing character. The hesitant, dark, uneven, graceless, weak, timid, awkward, heavy, unsure, imbalanced marks when she first came into class last semester had been replaced by composed, almost bold yet thin and delicate, excited, confident, airy, joyful, sweeping strokes.

With a second eruption and a statacco of short bursts that followed, she answered, “I’m doing great! I’m doing great in school! I actually like school! I really feel happy! Its the first time in five years I feel happy!

“Why do you think you’re so happy?” I asked with a growing inner joy, knowing the answer.

“Because I love being alive,” she spurted out.

“Why do you love being alive?”

“Because I am happy about myself. I love myself now.”

“Yeah,” I softly and triumphantly replied as I gave her a smiling and congratulatory wink.

She went on, “I never thanked you. You helped me see that having this muscle disease doesn’t make me less of a person. It finally got that into my head the night we did closure last semester.”

“I think it also got into your heart and soul.”

“Yeah, especially there. I love you for that.”

We hugged and parted. As I slowly continued to my office, I stopped thinking of the low level, ever so imbalancing mini-war that my flu antibodies been waging inside me for about a week. I lost myself in thoughts of that magical, courageous early December night. It was the end of the semester. It was a night class. But, it was a beginning for Dawn, of her own inner dawning. When it was Dawn’s turn to show the closure object to symbolize what she was taking from the class, she got up and said something I have often recalled in the past weeks. This is darn close, almost verbatim:

“I brought myself as my object. When this class started I was ashamed and embarrassed. I felt self-conscious. I didn’t feel I was as good as anyone else. I didn’t think I belonged here. I didn’t like being here. I ran away from Atlanta to hide. When I got here, I wanted to hide and was afraid someone would see me. I didn’t care about my work. I….have… a….muscular….disease….that is hard to say. But, I said it. I have to fight it every day, and I was losing. I thought I was the only one like that. Then we talked about racism, homosexuality, poverty, feminism, and other stuff for tidbits. And, I realized I wasn’t alone in my battles. In those projects I read about people who were worse off than me and people who believe we all are just as good as each other. Then, we did the scavenger hunt and one of mine was Dorethea Dix. She wouldn’t have thought that just because my body was diseased my soul was. Dr, Schmier somehow read me like a book from the very beginning. He wouldn’t let me think the way I did about myself. He talked with me a lot, and was on me a lot, and wouldn’t let me give up. He dragged me to meet other people who have supposed disabilities. Because of this class, him, and them, I know now I have a problem only if I let my disease be a problem.”

“Read like a book,” Dawn had said.

So, my second “different” word in my dictionary of good teaching which I am going to initially confound Kenny is: Read.

But, not read just a book or an article or a document in preparation for class although that is extremely important. And certainly not a lecture, nose buried, eyes glued to paper.

No. When I give Kenny READ as my second word in my dictionary of good teaching, I particularly mean paying attention to the important little things about individual people in our classes because the little things are not really little any more than is each person there little. Those little thing reveal a great deal. By “little things” I mean tiny wrinkles that form because of those smiles or frowns, comforts or discomforts of known territory or excitement or fear of something new, the yawn, drifting eye, the hollow stare, turning head. I mean to scan, pour over, study, decipher the stories and poems and essays and sentences each student, like Dawn, is writing with his or her life. I mean read the calligraphy of students’ movements: their bold steps, their rushed steps, their heavy steps, their wispy movements, their sedated gestures, their composed prancing, their quiet speech, their…. Well, you get the point. Train your eyes, your mind, your spirit in reading these strokes and you will see them writing each day, like Dawn, a page in their story. And, we learn best when we read the stories of others. Read the fine print of their lives; those things are rich; don’t read them because someone told you to do. Read them because you want to, because you realize you must.

It’s reading those details that gives the good teacher the clues to what action needs to be take and whether he or she is doing what needs to be done. It’s those details that lend focus on each person in that classroom, that allow us to notice how we feel about doing it. Reading the details brings the good teacher joy and laughter; It also brings pain and sorrow. It is a reality check. They make even our most impossible situations seem less imposing. We do need to pay attention; notice what we do and don’t like; take action, to change , to understand, to discover, to know all that we can about now, to understand that by tomorrow we will have a new set of variables with which to work.

I recently shared a firm belief of mine that the truly good teacher never walks into a classroom as if she or he has lost his or her wonder at life; he or she never has learned never to take the classroom world for granted and stare blankly at it from an unnoticed distance. The true teacher savors details as a sure way to learn to appreciate life, his or hers, others.

But, to read each person in the classroom, you have to scream to yourself, “whoa horsey,” and pull hard on your reins. If you really want to see each brush stroke and hear each note, slow down; if you really want to see each detail clearly, slow down; if you want to notice and get to know each student, take it easy; if you don’t want to miss anything or anyone, slow down. “Slow” is an associate word to READ.

And, so is “Alert.” Teaching can be a dream, but you have to be awake to live it and appreciate it. Did you hear that? Did you see it? Did you feel that brushing touch? Don’t miss anything. Unless you want to be among the living dead, it’s reading the enriching and enliving individual details that fracture routine, break habit, shut off automatic pilot, make the ordinary unique, turn the mundane into something and someone awesome. make the familiar strange.

Take notice. Read those details. Be a glue to the sights and sounds and touches around you; look hard and long and sharp; decide not to miss it anymore; engage everything and everyone around you with a refreshed awareness and sensitivity. Details enrich the classroom underlining, boldfacing, italicizing, animating, and humanizing individual lives.

Yeah, some may say that the devil is in the details. I think it’s the angels who are really there.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

A good morning to you all. It’s late, I know. But, I had gone out on the streets long after the sun had risen after wrestling for a while with whether I should test a kink in my hip. After I had finished my walk, I had grabbed myself a cup of freshly brewed coffee and had gone out to the back deck by the fishpond to “cool down” in the chill of the 32 degree air. It wasn’t long before I was mesmerized by the hynoptic sound of the waterfall into meditative state that blanked out all interfering sights and sounds around the pond.

As I watched the koi’s melodic ballet beneath the pond’s surface, I slowly noticed that whether they danced in a broad and curving largo, or in a gliding and graceful adagio, or in a sharp and scurrying adante the water so perfectly molded to the smooth flow of their elegant and effortless movements that it offered no sense of movement iself. Then, I slowly turned my head and stared at the water clinging to every nook and cranny of the rock walls and ledges, creeping up and receding like slight, pulsating tidal flows in the quick rhythm sent out by the ripples of cascading water from the falls. Those ripples drew my eyes to the streams and waterfalls. I watched as the water conformed to whatever circumstance it found, customizing its shape and altering its pace, changing its pitch and resonance: flowing smoothly along the even stream beds, rushing excitedly around rocks and pebbles, jumping athletically over leaves and twigs, pooling lazily in a depression, frantically bouncing off limbs, and finally daringly leaping over the edge to merge and disappear into the mass of water on the pond’s surface.

There was an empty pail cup on the nearby table. I leaned over, picked it up, and dipped it into the pond. The water flowed into the pail suddenly, perfectly altering its shape to conform to the cup.

And, I had the beginning of my answer. It kind of sneaked up on me from somewhere when I thought I wasn’t looking or listening. I didn’t think I was really thinking about it. It wasn’t a jolting shout of a “boo” or one of those explosive eureka, “I’ve got it” instants. It was more like the slow, creeping, enveloping whisper by the enigmatic muse of a good idea as I traveled from koi to rocks to streams and to waterfalls.

Now you may ask, answer to what? What was the question? It was a question asked of me by a student I’ll call Kennny. A few days ago, as I meandered across the campus, heading for the Union in quest of a sinful morning doughnut, I was waylayed by Kenny. He is in one of our first year classes. He had already gone through the community building exercises, a couple of tidbit discussions, working on and presenting the class-rocking Tin Pan Alley project, and is now involved in preparing the Dr. Seuss Project.

As we walked towards the Union, I asked him how he liked the class so far.

“I really like your approach. It’s different, but it makes learning history interesting and fun, and I’ve already learned a lot about history and myself. I want to be a teacher and help kids to learn that they can learn….What words about teaching would you give me?”

“Give me time to think about,” I said thinking about how I get myself constantly into these situations.

“Take your time,” he answered with a impish smile as he pealed off to go into a building we were passing, “enjoy your doughnut. Just make sure you walk it off tomorrow morning. Oh, and do something different?”

He didn’t see my puzzled look. “Different?” What the heck did he mean. When I made the mistake of asking “what do you mean by ‘different?” What do you want,” he threw one of my pat answers to similar students questions right back in my face.

“Whatever. It’s not what I want. It’s what you want. It’s your answer. Take the risk and go for it. Worst that can happen is that your answer won’t be differant and you’ll have to do it again,” he smirked.

“Thanks,” I smiled, feigning an annoyed sneer and playfully thinking less than nice thoughts.

I know I could have come back to Kenny with a quick statement about expected words like love, caring, heart as kernels of good teaching, or wait to compose a reflection on hope, faith, belief, wonder, and a host of other words I have listed in what I call my “Alphabet of Good Teaching (haven’t yet come up with one for “Q”). But, he said, “different.” So, following his rules, I thought I would try to add some unique word, eye-catching and provoking words to my dicitonary of good teaching.

Well, here is the first: “WATER!”

Interesting word, isn’t it. I’ll bet it’s one he is not expecting. But, this morning I think it is a good word.

A good teacher is like that water, deeply alert to and responsive to and molding to each and every circumstance and to each and every person he or she finds in a particular place at a particular moment. The good teacher places a high value on responding to and even anticipating people, places, and things–goes with the flow, dances with to the different tunes, sculpts him/herself to situations and individuals. The good teacher, like the water, engages in a kind of dynamic play of interaction and interdependence between him or her and each student. The good teacher makes it seem natural and effortless and the flow of the water. But,t takes enormous desire, energy, preparation, practice, concentration, and discipline to attain and maintain this state of mind and soul, to stay constantly tuned it, to stay constantly alert, to stay constantly on your toes, to stay at the edge. Hey, anyone who thinks that good teaching is easy and quick doesn’t know anything about good teaching.

Certainly, the good teacher has to know something, has to have an expertise. After all, no one is going to do anything, good intentions not withstanding, unless he or she has what the jargon calls a mastery of a field. At the same time, the good teacher knows, to paraphrase Einstein, relationships are more important in teaching and learning than information. The good teacher sees every person and every action in the classroom as interrlated parts of a single, delicately interwoven ecological system which rests on the principle that the best teaching is that which is truly adaptive and responsive to both the individual’s needs and the total environment in the classroom. So that even if someone proclaims him/herself to be a standard-bearer of traditional methods, he or she shouldn’t be talking of very fixed, stagnant, unimaginative, conforming “oh, it always has been done this way” set of rules in which he or she does precisely according to the dictates of what those who have gone before have done.

It can never truly be “always has been done this way.” The good teacher knows that no two students are identical; no two classes are exactly the same as the last; each is unique. The good teacher is, therefore, always tinkering, learning from each class how to do it a little bit better, expanding his or her technique. The good teacher, traditionalist or an innovator, therefore, finds him-/herself in different circumstances that are different from predecessors and that even to follow convention must involve adaptation and modification and innovation.

So, I think I’ll tell Kenny that my first word for his vocabulary, and mine as well, for good teaching is: “water.”

Yeah, I like that. Something different. Something unexpected. I won’t tell him what I told you. I’ll him stew a bit, be puzzled, and think about it for a while to see if he can figure out what I mean.

And, you know what? The second and third unique words to give Kenny just hit me. Should I tell you? Why not. Let’s see if you can figure out what I mean. Here they are: “read,” “wobble.” Later. Meanwhile,

Make it a good day.

–Louis–