A Quickie

Part of a conversation over some sinful doughtnuts I had the other day with a couple of students in the Union about what we each were going to do this summer. When one of them heard that I was attending a retreat on teaching this summer:

“Why are you of all people going off to a retreat on teaching?” she asked almost with an air of disbelief.

“As long as I’m teaching, I have to be a student and keep learning how to teach,” I answered without missing a heartbeat.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

Teaching Is Tough!!

I was sitting on the couch in the den, sipping a cup of refreshing freshly brewed coffee, fishing around with the remote just after my walk, when I settled on a sports channel to find out about some of yesterday’s scores. Instead, the “tail end” of a fishing program was on. Even though the news program I wanted to catch was about to come on, I decided to cast about and see what was on the gardening channel. Just as I was about to click that angler into oblivion, he something that caught my ear. He said, with a smile on his face and a relaxed cast, fishing for this particular type of fish was tough. As the fly went flying through the air and plopped into the water, he said he could control his equipment and how he fishes to land that fish, but he could not guarantee what the fish would do. He, the expert angler, hadn’t caught one all day, but he had expected that, and, as he said, “it takes off the pressure and doesn’t kill the fun. Just have to be ‘easy does it’ about the whole thing….”

“Fishing for this fish is no picnic” were his last words as he turned toward the camera showing his empty basket without shame, “but fishing for it sure is fun.”

That got me thinking about some bemoaning conversations I had overheard on campus and some wailing messages I had read on the internet that “fishing” for students these days is really no fun.

“Why don’t we think like this expert angler?” I said to myself forgetting the scores.

Well, maybe the answer to my question lies partly in a prevailing illusion or two in academia that teaching is low or no maintenance, that it’s easy, that it’s something anyone can do if that person knows the subject. Unlike this championship fisherman, so many academics and non-academics think that teaching is like dropping an unbaited hook over the side of the boat into the water with a guarantee that a “whopper” will just voluntarily take the bare hook and flop into our boat without any real sweaty effort on our part.

Sound silly? Does it? Really? Think about it. Need an adjunct, just pull a body off the street with the proper degree and/or expertise and throw him or her into the classroom to talk and assign and grade. Happens all the time. Need a tenure-track academic, just hire a person with the proper degree and scholarly resume and hopefully some reputation intent on research and publication to talk and assign and grade. Happens all the time. After all, all a person really needs to do is to put together a short, daily research paper called a lecture, maybe doll it up with some new-fangled technological stuff, walk into a room filled with expectant mini-scholars who are waiting on the edge of their uncomfortable seats with baited breathe for some oral pearls of wisdom, talk about and transmit some information, make a reading or research assignment, put together an exam about what you and/or the textbook said, grade it, and march off into the sunset like little Jack Horner with his thumb covered with sticky plum syrup.

But, such words about teaching are in in rhythm with the real tune. And so, when myth and reality clash, when things go unexpectedly awry, when things don’t go just the way so many of us academics expect them and/or wanted them because we consciously or unconsciously think teaching to be that easy and without challenge, so many of us utter a long sigh of disappointment and disillusionment, clutter up our thoughts with annoyances, say and think unkind things, are loudly impatient, hunt out teeny molehills and make mountains, transform incidents into a crises, and point fingers of blame at students and administrators, and goodness knows at whom else.

Such reproaches seldom improve a situation. Like Speedy Alka Seltzer, they may offer momentary relief, but in the long run our resignations and frustrations turn back on us. They only continue to weigh heavy on our spirit, sap our energy, cloud our vision, drown out our serenity, make us prone to doubt the power of hope and the wonderful possibilities of the future, make our difficulties even greater and matters worse. We become like the stinging bee, we kill ourselves in the process.

If there is one great truth about education, a truth so releasing, it is that teaching is tough; teaching is demanding. Get used to it. Live with it. Stop complaining that the students will not devote themselves to making you happy. Stop being dependent on how the students react for your teaching happiness.

Like the fisherman, once we acknowledge the fact that teaching is difficult, that there is no such thing as no-maintenance teaching, then teaching students, in the words of that angler, doesn’t kill the fun of teaching. Once we accept teaching as challenging, the fact that it is challenging is irrelevant. We can let go of burdens that were never ours to carry. As that fisherman said, “the pressure is off.” We are at peace. And if we’re “easy does it” about teaching, when we see we can’t do all we’d like or do it all in one felled course or some things seem not to go right, we can guide ourselves into a less hectic attitude that creates a more comfortable rhythm that smooths out the bumps, pitfalls, and other rough spots. We can take the disappointments as they come which makes them easier to take; we can use the troubles as opportunities to grow and learn, to make us better rather than bitter. We can make the troubles get smaller and smaller while we get bigger and bigger. Like the Burning Bush, we can burn without getting burnt up and burnt out.

In other words, once we accept the fact that teaching is tough, the challenge doesn’t frustrate or anger. No reason to feel sorry; no reason to be tense; no reason to become strangers to those hard times; no reason to run from them or avoid them; no reason to put fences around ourselves; no reason to be cut off from and strangers to those around us; every reason to have our eyes and heart wide open to receive new impressions that make each day a new adventure and a fresh delight; every reason to be aware of the people around us and appreciate the chance to touch someone and grow myself.

And so, remember those words of the fisherman, and if our Jiminy Cricket, idyllic “if only” wishes on a star do not to come to pass, as they likely are not, we can still love teaching, we can still love each student, and we can say, “It’s a nice day,” even when the weather seems not so fine.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

What Teaching Really Means

Had a situation yesterday. If you were listening to this student, a confusion of hurt, shame, and bewilderment, gazing with empty eyes and speaking with a pained voice, explaining an absence of over two weeks. She was back in the class, but she was still absent. If you had heard the story your muscles would have gone taut. Your lungs would have emptied. Your lips would have straightened like a stretched rubber band. While your blood would have boiled, tears would have swelled in your eyes. The sweat would have poured into your palms as your hands slowly clenched into fists. You would have been a mixture of anger and sorrow. No joy in Mudville today.

And yet, it was a good day, a very good day. She felt she could talk with me, whom she hadn’t had a previous paragraph’s conversation, because she knew I am “for real.” I was gratified, but I was happier for her for being there when she needed someone. I listened in an increasingly dense daze, said a few things, wouldn’t let her walk away–she didn’t want to walk away–took her to my office, made a few inquiries, left her in my office alone to make a phone call. She passed me in the hall with an almost invisible nod and what I thought was a slight, cautious glimmer of hope. Laying amid the landfill of my desk was a piece of paper on which was written a simple “Thank you. I’m going to get some help.”

I walked out of the building into the brilliant sunlight and warm air, paused for a minute, looked at some cooing pigeons, took a deep breath, headed for the V.P’s office to get some coffee, and then it would be on the Union to grab a couple of sinful doughnuts and chat some students whom I might find there. I have to admit that I felt energized by an indescrible overwhelming sense of accomplishment. It was as if a fire was burning inside me that was more warming than the sun shining down on me. I was able to help that student in desperate need.

I put her message among my sacred objects of teaching because she helped me realize that the greatest fulfillment of being an educator does not lie in that pubication, that conference paper, that grant, that reputation, that title, that position, that promotion, that getting tenure. No, it comes when we use our unique gifts and our humanity to reach out and help another person. The quality of academics does not run from the outside-in; true north is from the inside-out. Teaching is not about things or even information. It is about loving, a sense of purpose, making a difference, leaving a legacy.

Doing something transcendant, for something higher than yourself, for a purpose beyond yourself, for a person other than yourself, contributing in a meaningful way truly nurtures the spirit and lights up the soul. Then, teaching is a true joy, a mighty force, burns like a glorious torch–and lives, and live, and lives on!

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

To Listen

Went out more than a bit late this Sunday morning. The sun was already nestling among the budding branches. I am always amazed at the amazing things, the new things, the astonishing things, the touching things I see and hear walking the streets day after day, month after month, year after year when I “listen.” Today it was a fallen pine cone forlonly lying in the middle of the street, a lone echineacha scouting the way for the others in the bed, a pile of grass clippings heaped on a curb, the rivulets of collected dew on the car window in my driveway, the metalic cadence of a woodpecker high above me rapidly drumming on a power generator, a squirrel jumping from branch to branch. Each seemed so unimportant, so trivial. And yet, by the end of my walk they all had a way of adding up to a magnificent experience. But, if I was not open to these things, if I was not listening with my eyes and ears and soul, I would have missed something grand. I would have been cut off from all this around me–and in me.

Listening. That’s a very good word for my dictionary of teaching.

There is so much power in listening, much more than in talking. So many of us think that the greatest power we as teachers have is our abilty to talk and transmit. It’s not, you know.

When we talk, we talk about information; we talk about ourselves; we focus on our importance.

When so many of us say we are listening, we really aren’t. We’re thinking about how to reply. I once was very good at that. When we are convinced the students have no viable voice, that they are too young or inexperienced or lack the education to be heard, we’re convinced we’re right and they are wrong, we hear with a “be reasonable, agree with me” attitude that plugs our ears. We don’t want their opinion or even their question. We want submission, obdience, and a cloning in our image. It’s a conscious or unconscious form of arrogance.

But, when we truly listen we value others. That is why the truly memorable teacher is a good listener.

No, the greatest power of influence a teacher has, the greatest gift a teacher can offer a student is the ability and willingness to listen. The best communication skill we as teachers can have is to listen four or five times more than we speak. Listening works wonders. Listening says to eveyrone that we are less concerned about who is right then about what is right and doing the right thing. Listening says that a student can have something to say, be a resource of ideas, a repository of principles, a fount of different perspectives and insight. When we listen, we try to understand, to see things and people differently. When we listen we close our autobiography and genuinely try to understand their biography, maybe lose our arrogance and find some humility in the process. Real listening It says to a student, “you aren’t in my way. You are the reason I’m here.” Sincere listening shows respect; it gains trust; it builds relationships. Listening to a student lets a student feel that you are intent on what he or she has to say, that what he or she has to say is not insignificant, that you value him or her as a person, that you have all the time in the world for him or her. Students yearn to be heard, to be understood. They want and have to be able to explain themselves.

Listening overcomes the distance of strangers. It is an important way to overcome distance, to take our “me” and their “you” to reach and touch to form a “we.”

Make it a good day.

–Louis–