That STLHE conference really left an impression on me as few conferences do. You know what that conference was all about? Not technology; not technique; not methods. Not really. It was about a blasted innocuous and powerful two-lettered word we all so often use: IF.

This tiny two letter word is a verbal Janus, watershed word, a fulcrum word, an option word, a fork in the road word, a crossroads word, an either/or word, a reflection words, a moment of truth word, a questioning word, a “the moment” word, a just imagine word, an opportunity word, a decision word, a challenge word, a consequence word, a question word, a which-of-your-halves-do-you-listen-to word. It can be a light word reflecting curiosity and investigation that lifts and paves the road. It can be a heavy word of doubt and skepticism and hesitation that deflates and barricades the way. This huge little word is the choice word of choice and decision. And, it is our choice how each of us chooses to use it. Isn’t that what so much, if not all of our teaching, is all about: choice?

And, as I face an adventurous “if” triggered by Russ Hunt in his presentation, that is what the conference brought to home: part of the woof and warp of teaching is that it is always so “iffy.”

We academics just love to talk about academic freedom. As Canada Day and July 4th approach, I will tell you this about what I have found is real academic freedom: the greatest freedom each of us has, upon which all other freedoms rest, without which all other freedoms cannot be, is choice. No, I am not just talking about the choice of what to say or what to do. They are very important. I am talking about something deeper: the choice of what to feel, to follow your better half. That is critical. Choice of feeling is the spring well of our attitude, and attitude is the root of our actions. It took me a long time to discover that **IF** I choose to fire my soul, impossibilities vanish, barriers come tumbling down, ways are found, waves of joys sweep over and innundate troubles, exciting opportunities appear, and I have to work hard to feel physicallEy tired and emotionally drained. On the other hand, **IF** I choose to douse the fire in my soul or dampen the kindling, impossibilities abound, obstacles arise, exhaustion appears, the tank runs dry, and I am trapped and troubled. All of which impacts the “what” and “how” of the classroom.

So, once again, I have come to know this to be the tough and demanding truth: I choose for me. No one else does. My “ifs” are mine. Who I am or seek to become must be independent of–and at times in spite of–the opinion and actions of others. Otherwise, I surrender who I am and these days celebrating freedom are empty. The only voice I ultimately must hear is my inner voice. The only one who makes me angry, sad, or happy is me. The only one who gives me a sense of success or failure is me. It’s my responsibility.

I think I am talking about playing good poker. It’s not just the hand I’m dealt; it’s how I choose to play it. It’s not what I experience; it’s what I choose to do with that experience. It’s not the circumstance; it’s how I choose to respond to those circumstances. I can trudge around with a “why-are-they-doing-this-to-me?” or I can walk upright with a “they-can’t-take-this-away-from-me.” I can hug my negatives or I can shun them. I can focus on my worst moments or I can notice my finest. I can remember failure or celebrate achievement. I can starve my spirit or nourish it. I can focus on those things I cannot control instead of focusing on me which I can control. I can feel smaller than my circumstance and be resigned that “it makes no difference” or I can be larger and be determined to make a difference. I can float with the current and wind up weaker in the lowest spot or I can swim against it and wind up stronger where I want or should be. I can soar or be grounded. I can feel like a powerless victim or I can be a strong overcomer. I can look over my shoulder or look ahead. I can discharge my responsibility or I can avoid it and play it safe. I can choose the “risks” of freedom or the “risks” of caution. I can hold on to my limitations or I can reach out for new horizons. I can hit a wall and stand frozen in hits shadow or I can bust through and walk warm, open, sunlit paths. I can let things happen or I can make things happen. Yes, I can be, as John Walker says, either a fire fighter putting out my inner fire and feeling burnt out or a fire lighter igniting fires and feeling fired up.

You see, I can have a group of students in a class and moan that they are mostly joyless, uninteresting, academic sinners, who very occasionally, maybe by accident, do something right. I can surrender, throw up my hands, and accept defeat with a walk away attitude. Or, I can celebrate that they are joyful, interesting, though imperfect, saints who make a mistake or two, and know I am never really out of it and can make a run for it. Either way, I still have that same group of students in a class. So what choice do I have?

Well, if I choose to find the positive in virtually every student, every day, in every classroom, if I appreciate each moment as a miracle, if I choose to have hope, faith, belief, love in every student, every day will be a happy one of discovery, every day I will be having deep fun and will be seriously playing, every day will be filled with an anticipating, “what’s going to happen next?” I will be excited and I will be happy. I will be blessed with joy, satisfaction, fulfillment, and days overflowing with “wows.” I will make every minute count so the students won’t count the minutes. I can choose to focus on the beauty inside each student, even if that student doesn’t or can’t. I can choose to be a hopeless “hope-oholic.” I can accept the identity of each person at that moment and find beauty in it. I can let each person feel that he or she fits in. I can tap that magnificance too often lying dormant within each of us. I can prefer to see so much life and beauty in a person that he or she is dazzling.

On the other hand, if I choose to find the awful, the negative, the disappointment, the ugly, the lifeless, the sadness, the discouragement, and days overflowing with “yuks” and “ughs, I will. If I am fearful; if I see each moment as a curse; if I see each class as something old hat, something routine, something “here we go again; something of a moaning “oh, not again.” if I kvetch about student imperfections; if I do not have hope, belief, and faith I will lose my youthful spring, I will curse myself with boredom, depression, purposelessness, disappointment, discouragement all of which may evolve into an anger. I will get kicked around in the classroom rather that getting a kick out being in the classroom. The classroom will be stormy instead of sunlit. I won’t give it all I have; I will give it just enough to get it over. In that place awaits despair and its handmaiden, gloom.

The choice is mine and mine alone.

Now, I can hear some of you loading up with an excusing “it’s not that simple.” So, what is? Make no mistake, ifs are complicated if for no other reason than each of us is complicated. First, we really don’t know a lot of what we think we know. Our vast memory archives are not the same as the stuff that’s in libraries. We let a lot of experience get away from us. A lot of knowledge gets lost and has to be rediscovered. Second, whether we possess a dearth of alternatives or an unmanageable number of options, when we choose what to do, we can do no better than the options of which we are aware. Third, we have to be “open,” choose to be open, to become aware of and receptive to options and knowledge that may disturb our sense of certainty and challenge who we are, what we believe, and what we do currently as it widens our ranges of choices. Third, choosing is also complicated by the fact that the number and type of options, as well as the need to choose, are never static, the students are always changing, the circumstances are always in a state of flux. Fourth, choosing is further complicated by the reality that at some point the rubber has to hit the road, there must be a moment of choosing, a moment of decision, a moment when you take the step–or the plunge. Fifth, every day is an “again” requiring ongoing raising of ifs and almost innumerable moments of taking the step. And finally, most of all, that moment of decision, putting that IF into play, isn’t made as an unemotional, detached, distant, disengaged, objective, highly rational view of the situation.

But, complexities aren’t excuses or rationalization for “I have no choice but to….” You do. You may not want to make a choice or may not want to dare to make a choice, but that is your choice. The truth is that we have no choice other than to make choices: if, if, if; choices, choices, choices; decisions, decisions, decisions. It is, as the book title says, a never-ending story.

No, with all that said and done, how we face our ifs reveals who we are at that moment or our struggle to become. And, as Kipling says in the last stanza of his challenging poem, IF, the stanza that always leaves the deepest track on my soul:

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

Good morning. Had a nice six mile walk. The sun was still groping for the eastern horizon. Its advancing rays were slightly tinting small clouds forming pale red and purple puffs that stood as the day’s heralds in dawn’s ashen sky. And talking about ash, I thought I was going to be burnt to an ash before I finished my route. The windy and chilly climes of Newfoundland made the breezeless heat and humidity of south Georgia seem unbearable. Coming to think of it, they are–without Newfoundland’s help!! At 5:00 am after last night’s rain the heat factor was 84 degrees! That is unbearable in anyone’s book!!

As I was “cooling” off with a cup of freshly brewed coffee by the darkened fish pond, the soothing sound of the waterfalls as the only evidence of its existence, I was still thinking about a letter I received yesterday from Japan. It is from an exchange student who was in a spring semester class. It is a strong reminder we educators are first and last in the people business who should be engaged in compassionate teaching. No, I am not a Bush Republican. I just have come to see that teaching has an emotional calibration. It must, for it deals with feelings–attitudes, if you will–as much as, if not far more than, it does with information. You see, we are not just in the information and knowledge business. We are also in the compassion business engaging compassionately in works of compassion. We are not merely in the transmitting “here’s what you need to know” business; we are also in the caring “you are worth it” and “you can do it” business. We are not just in the brain and intellect business. We are also in the heart and spirit business. And, I have been learning this past decade that you can’t really teach with your brain if you have no heart or your heart is not in it; you can’t teach to the brain of someone if you’ve taken the heart out of him or her.

Let me tell you what compassion has come to do for me over the past decade since I have struggled to embrace it in my teaching. It makes THE difference. It’s that overriding spirit, that single, mysterious, indefinite, connecting quality that has the power to sanctify, to transform, and to elevate both me and the person with whom I come into contact. It’s a deep caring for the dignity, well-being, and respect of each student. As my e-mail friend, Margo, might say, it washes, clothes, cures, feeds, and frees.

Compassion is a love potion. It takes an otherwise indolent spirit on an exhuberant daily and endless faith walk!

Compassion adds dimensions to my teaching. First, it is my direction finder: it tells me where I am going and what I am doing; it helps me help people. Second, it’s is my definer: it tells me who I am; it tells me that I can encourage, support, smile, hug. And finally, it is my driver: it’s my single motivating, stimulating and fulfilling “do whatever it takes” high-octanle fuel; it’s my energizer; it’s my daily pick-me-up; it’s my spiritual vitamin regimen; it gets me over the bumps in the road.

Compassion is that powerful updraft that let’s me feel like I’m soaring with the eagles. It the wings that lets me fly into the wind to find those updrafts. It is my life force that sharpens my focus, clears my head, lightens my step, tones every part of me, freshens the air, provides me a purpose, endows me with eternal patience, manages my bounty. It keeps my spiritual and physical arteries clear. It converts any anxiety I might have into positive expectation, into a positive expedition into the unknown and unfamiliar that embraces all the possibilites of today and tomorrows.

Compassion allows me to be warmed and extend warmth, to be understood and be understanding, to be sensitive and to extend sensitivity, to be encouraged and be encouraging, to be open and extend openness.

Compassion is the nobler option; it’s the worthier choice; it’s the higher road. And yet, it is the less traveled road. But, I’ll tell you something. Once you’ve chosen it it, once you’ve traveled it, once you feel that high, that goodness, that humbleness, the Ellas in the class, there’s no turning back and coming down.

And what’s really sad, is to think that the one thing that can turn a student on and around, that can elevate a student, is the one thing that most students feel they don’t receive in the classroom: compassionate teaching.

Think compassion is touchy-feely b.s.? Believe me. It’s not. Think compassion is watering down. It’s not. Think compassion is being soft? It’s not. Think compassion is a weakness? It’s not.

No, compassion is not for the faint of heart or heartless. It is for the weak-kneed. It’s the harder choice and the rockier path. It comes with inordinate demands, challenges, and difficulties. Compassion is a committment! It is a dedication. It means to be involved, to get down-and-dirty, to persevere and endure. Compassion is not an occasional thing that you pull out for an occasion. It’s not a convenience that you use when it’s convenient. It’s not something you select selectively.

Compassion is not a gloriously-sounding and obligatory mission statement; it’s a deep inner compelling sense of mission. Compassion demands that you be present every day, that you be in the moment every moment for everyone, unconditionally. Compassion silences that exasperating, surrendering, escaping, throwing up of the hands, walk away “Oh, not again.” Every day becomes an again, and an again, and an again. Every day is an again, a fresh, new beginning. It’s compassion that’s what keeps you feeling clean like a refreshing and cleansing rain–every day.

What I have found it that it is pretty darn hard for anyone to stay distant or in the shadow in the presence of compassion. No demon can stand up to the power of openheartedness. No anger can be sustained in the face of kindness. No fear can withstand the embrace of faith.

Compassion is the basic pigment with which you paint your teaching masterpiece every day. It places you among the ranks of the angels. When you feel that kind of power, you can’t either lose it–or not use it. There’s no risk, nothing to lose, no price to pay. If anything, I assure you, you get paid back ten-fold. For a teacher with compassion, it is never a matter of win or lose, success or failure, blessing or curse, darkness or light. It isn’t even challenge. It is opportunity. No, no power is greater than the power of compassion.

Think I’m crazy? To paraphrase Pearl Cleavage, what looks like crazy antics on an ordinary day, looks like compassionate teaching when the light hits from the right angle.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

Sunday. 5:something or other pm EST. Why aren’t I asleep? We, I and Susan, got up at 2:30 am EST to head home. Now, here we are, four planes, three very long lay overs in very unaccommodating airports, a few restless naps in seats designed for misshapened aliens, two life-threatening airports meals, three challenging airline culinary delights, and sixteen hours later bumping somewhere over North or South Carolina, an hour from landing and a two hour drive from the house. What a journey! Even though even my adrenalin is tired, I am still on a high from the annual STLHE conference in St. John’s, Newfoundland. It must be a new-found land; the airlines still haven’t figured out a civilized way of getting there and back. Nevertheless, the conference was well-worth the convoluted journey. It itself was a rewarding, exciting, enlightening, exhilarating, and very profound journey. I only regret that I didn’t get to kiss the cod. Don’t ask.

Speaking of journey, there in Newfoundland I made two new-found friends from total strangers. It was totally unexpected. When isn’t it. We connected, each in the strangest place and in the strangest way. Strange, and maybe not. Sometimes I don’t ask questions. Anyway, they sent me deeper on the journey into my self and sent themselves deeper into their own selfs. No, I didn’t just meet them; I was graced by them.

I once told someone about Joseph Campbell who wrote that he most demanding journey of the hero, the greatest abyss the hero has to cross, the biggest challenge the hero faces is to going face to face with his self. How right he was. How easy it is to talk of that which is easy and successful; how hard it is to talk of that which is hard and unsuccessful. How easy it is to focus our attention outside of us; how hard it can be to turn our attention within.

I had once been a card carrying member of that academic pundit class, like a zealous policeman hellbent on making an early arrest or a prosecutor determined to quickly try and convict in a high profile case, that is often obsessed with quickly finding the immediate cause. But, what if we search our own souls for culpability? Doing that may not make for a tidy sound bite or a convenient target or a simple antidote, but the simple–and unimaginably complicated–truth is that if anyone says they don’t have a subjective bone in their body, please don’t laugh or snarl. Cry. We all have one little bitty subjective bone, one little biased bone, maybe one tiny hateful bone in our bodies that bends our posture. It’s not the bone that’s the problem so much as it is our denial of its very existence. It is the utmost of absurdities to ignore the fact that “the system” is each of us, to ignore that “them” or “it” is each of us, to ignore how each and every one of us, each and every day, have had and still have an impact at least by acquiesence on the cultures of our classroom and campus as a whole.

It seems to be a vicious circle. When problems seem overwhelming, we either back away and acquiesence thereby buying into the system, or we grasp for sound-bite solutions as a way of convincing ourselves that the problems are not insoluble and the alienation is not that deep, or we point our minds and fingers in order to convince ourselves that the problems are not of our making. Of course, the hollowness of these three approaches just increases the feelings of futility and alienation, but for a moment we feel better. We pull out a plum and get elevated; the villan, the student, gets vanquished; a sinner gets stoned; the victims, us, are avenged.

Campbell is also right when he infers that only by accepting personal responsibility, by replacing the blame game with the responsibility game, can each of us possibly break this deadlock. The bottom line is that we each have control over what we do, and say and feel, and act.

We all want inward peace, but so many of us won’t look inside. The idea that we might be at fault isn’t easy to accept. We each find it difficult to think what we do and what we think isn’t all that it should be. We so often find it easy to define ourselves by the letters before and after our name or the number of lines on our resume, and let them say who we are. So often it is easy to think that the value is tied to the price ticket.

If I have learned anything about teaching, it is that the extrinsic “stuff” is so often a fashion accessory. I have learned that so much of what there is to learn about teaching has to do with discovering myself. To think that teaching is all about technique, technology, theory, assessment, evaluation, tenure, salary, and so on and on and on is akin to chugging snakeoil expecting a miracle cure.

Ten years ago, I started taking the lid off my life. Until then, I really couldn’t take the lids off students’ lives though I deluded myself into thinking I was. I mean, how could I set anyone on a journey that I had not mapped out, explored, traveled and am traveling. I have discovered that looking inside myself will uncover many potentials. From experience, I can tell you that it was and still is tough. It’s tough because I was afraid I wouldn’t like what I would find. It’s tough because I am afraid of what I would find. It’s tough because I was afraid I wouldn’t find what I wanted to find. It’s tough because I had convinced myself that I couldn’t and didn’t have to change.

Anyway, my chance meeting with these two neat people jolted me as much as those tiny air molecules are doing to this less than massive regional jet contraption by atomic size molecules of air. They startled me enough for me to again start asking myself, “What kind of a job are you doing?” Suddenly, throughout the conference, a bunch of eye-opening, mind-opening, and soul opening questions kept hitting me, and they won’t go away. I don’t want them to go away: what am I doing with what I’ve got? Aren’t I full of potential improvement that I am not using? Couldn’t I change my attitude for being grateful for the small things we take for granted and let go unnoticed? Am I so sure I’m doing everything possible to make my teaching a success. Am I using my capabilities well? Are there capabilities yet undiscovered, untapped, and unused. Do I use “that’s not me” or “it’s not my style” or a host of other disguised “can’ts” and “won’ts.” Do I recognize and appreciate all I have to be grateful for? Do I let my fears dominate in the battle with my faith? Am I in control or have I assigned control over to the actions and opinions of others?

Those are important questions for me. They are the foremost shatterers of mythology in the world, they define the too often blurred line between myth and reality. That’s important because if I have any chance of changing the attitude and actions of people around me, however slightly and imperceptively, “all” I have to do is to change myself.

So many of us want students to be perfect so we can practice e-teaching: “easy teaching.” Yet, we haven’t attained perfection ourselves or striven to improve ourselves. We criticize students, but cannot recognize the faults in ourselves. We don’t attend to our own faults. Yet, we so bemoan the imperfections of students. So many of us find it so easy to have a good whine and so hard to have a good celebration. We have such a capacity to remember difficulty and failure and forget success and achievement. So many of us are so much more negative than positive. So many of us cry over what we don’t have and wish our teaching was different. We pollute ourselves and poison our souls. We so punish ourselves with dregs of bitterness in our mouths and spirits, that we’re on the verge of practicing negative, impossibility thinking. We strip teaching of its excitement and romance, and throw ourselves into the winter of our dreams. We become fire fighters instead of fire lighters. The deepening chill saps our energy; we lose our potency; and we slowly lose consciousness as we get frozen. We don’t even think about making changes. We defend and excuse what we already do. It tends to make us lid-closers when we should be lid-lifters; it influences us to subtract value from ourselves when we should be value-adders. We put lids on students, devalue students: students who are trying to grow and stretch and don’t know how, because we don’t think they’re the “right material” with the right stuff and because we aren’t growing and stretching and don’t know how.

Storing up grievances is such a waste. But we do love our negatives, don’t we? If we didn’t, why do we clutch those “it’s not me” and “that’s not my style” and the “they say” so tightly that our knuckles whiten?

It’s a waste of time when we could be teaching with greater satisfaction. What’s the point of keeping a record of disappointments? When I keep such an accounting, all I am doing is restoring them to a painful present and reality. We so love to make memos of the horror of those moments. I think when we do we are inflicting damage on ourselves and on others. So many of us are trapped in what we feel is an irksome way of life. So what do we do? We put lids on ourselves, let others puts lids on us, hold down our potential, and try to manipulate people around us into being more acceptable to us and more like us rather motivating to strive for the best for them and us.

How easy it is to allow our old habits and set patterns to dominate us! They bring us suffering, we accept them with almost fatalistic resignation, for we are so used to giving in to them. We may idealize freedom, but when it comes to our habits, we are completely enslaved. Still, reflection can slowly bring us wisdom. Wisdom is not just a way of knowing; it is a way of living. We can come to see that we are falling again and again into fixed repetitive patterns, and begin to long to get out of them. We may, of course, fall back into them, again and again, but slowly we can emerge from them and change.

I think some people have the wrong take on change. I did. As I look back on nearly a decade of change, it wasn’t the letting go that hurt. It was the holding on that hurt. All of the important battles are waged within ourselves, all of our emotional and physical ammunition is spent in that conflagration. We are our own largest obstacles, fighting our own flaws, fears, and weaknesses. And, we are our own greatest solutions, our greatest victories. Success and failure, victory and defeat, lost opportunities and found opportunities are inside jobs. Pogo figured that out.

Would you look if you you could foresee what a fabulous experience it is to search out the real “me?” I assure you it is. And, if you tough it out and look inside I guarantee–guarantee–you will find vast unused qualities and abilities and strengths tucked away in the attics of your spirit. We each are possessors of unlimited resources. The more we search them out, discover them, and use them, the more we will push back against and cancel out the difficulties that get so much of our attention. And the freer and more authentic we will be.

Enough. I’m going to close my eyes and wish Scotty could beam me and Susan home. And, you know what, when we do get home, for me it won’t be the same place and I won’t be the same person because of at least those two wonderful people. That is how it should be.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

Something marvelously unexpected happened Wednesday, the first day of this summer semester, in one of the hallways. I don’t want to go into it. It took me aback and back to Ella.

Both that colleague and Ella reaffirmed for me that something as simple as taking time for a personal hello–and maybe a little more–in the halls really does matter. Students are no different then we are. We all want to be appreciated. We all want to be noticed. We all want to be valued. We all want to be validated. It’s nice, not as reward but as a humbling incentive to pursue and be in a right relationship with each other. After all, the bottom line of teaching and learning is about human relationship. That is what should be the true energizing and driving spirit of a learning community, of any community.

I never met a student who didn’t want to believe I was sincerely interested in him or her as a person. I never met a faculty or staff member or administrator who didn’t feel likewise. You can’t fake it. If you mean it, he or she will know. If you pretend, he or she will know that as well.

There is value in being valued. There is importance in being treated as important. Extrinsic awards, however, are no match for genuine appreciation and interest, for authentic caring and compassion, for sincere valuing and validation. I don’t think those occasional ceremonies, impersonal rites, award dinners, Honor Day ceremonies, fancy scrolls, or decorative wall plaques–even gold stars or grades–are all that critical. I do think an everyday affirming handshake, an encouraging word, a simple noticing and knowing, a supportive nod, a celebrating “yes,” a joyous wink of the eye, a grateful pat on the back, an acknowledging thumbs up, maybe even a sincere hug, and certainly an appreciative “thank you” are.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

I have a mischievous, teenage ritual I occasionally go through as Susan and I are driving down the superhighways or on the two-lane backroads. When the moment strikes me, when I want to break the monotony of steaking along these boring concrete or tarred ribbons, or I just want to feel Susan, I romantically coo, “I need some energy.” At that moment, I momentarily go into a contortionist’s act worthy of performing on any vaudeville stage. Quickly leaning way over towards her side, straining over the center panel, extended hands tightly on the steering wheel, head more than slightly turned towards her, eyes jammed hard into the left corner of my sockets to keep them on the road, face twisted, lips puckered and extended right towards her. About the only thing I don’t do, is put a leg behind my head. Anyway, with a nervous quickness, she leans over, gives me the rejuvenating peck on my cheek or lips, pushes me back with a slight smile, and tells me in a soft reprimanding tone to mind the road.

Not the safest way either to drive or get kissed.

From my experiences, I can honestly say that researching and teaching at the same time are something like that. It’s like trying to drive safely while lusciously kissing my beautiful Susan. If I want to drive safely, I can’t at the same time give that loving kiss from Susan the attention it truly deserves.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–