It’s More Than Just The Subject

As I walked through dark, pre-dawn, soggy morning, I was thinking about fire storms and tomatoes. Wierd combination. Maybe it’s this heat and humidity, even at the wee hours of 5 a.m. Well, it’s not a weird as it sounds, really. I’ve been engaged in a private discussion in which a professor threw a tomato or two at me. “What do you know! We are professors of history! Let’s teach history. Go into the priesthood if you want teach morality! All that character nonsense ofyours is none of our business!”

Is it not, really! Now, I am an historian by training. I just think that teaching only history doesn’t go far enough. I truly believe, like the Greeks, that an education is more than just about a subject. I have a wholeness approach to education that includes and goes beyond transmitting and gathering information. Some would call it character education. It’s a good characterization of my educational philosophy and vision. It is a matter of not just knowing the right stuff, but having the right stuff; not just knowing the right thing, but doing the right thing despite the costs and risks because it is the right thing to do, not because it results in approval and advantage. It deals with helping student develop knowledge, people skills, commitment, dedication, perseverance, optimism, self-esteem, self-confidence, deep caring, a powerful sense of duty and service before self, complete trustworthiness, absolute integrity, boundless creativity and imagination, and even courage. It is these “who you are” qualities, not the “what you know,” that really inspire, motivate, and persuade others.

Events of the past few months have made me more aware of their need. I have been reading about the deliberate man-made causes of the raging and destructive forest fires in Colorado and Arizona. Like all of us, I’ve been reading also about the man-made raging and devastating fire storms of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church and a few years ago in the evangelical movements. And let’s not forget those devastating man-made fires used by the chief financial and executive chefs within some great corporations to cook the books. These ecclesiastical and entrepreneurial conflagrations are racing through jobs, spirits, confidences, futures, reputations, stock portfolios, state budgets, devotions, pensions, homes, hopes, souls, and mutual funds. Oh, the fires will be extinguished in the forests, corporate offices, and holy sees, but many of the hurts won’t heal; many spiritual and financial savings won’t be saved; many lives won’t recover; many nest eggs will remain cracked; many careers won’t be rebuilt. And, there will be scars.

These fires weren’t set and fanned by back alley, ignorant, illiterate, academic dropouts. They were ignited by spiritual and economic leaders, talented graduates of our colleges and universities and seminaries, who were moral and ethical dropouts. The deeply disturbing revelations about these ravaging clerical and corporate fires that are shaking the very foundation of our religious and economic systems show how easy it is for supposedly educated people to come up with a bunch of very defensive and self-serving excuses, rationalizations, and explanations for some immoral, unethical, dishonorable, and illegal acts.

Now, we in the Ivory Tower are so pure of heart that we smugly can look down our noses from the battlements on such sordidness. Don’t think that Ph.D. is an abbreviation for perfection. We have our share of miscreants who also have been seduced by short-term gain and expediency: prominent professors plagiarizing and engaging in various other forms of academic dishonesty; academics compromising themselves, often at the expense of students, in their self-centered quest of the holy grail of tenure; egotistical turf wars; university research scientists playing with results of experiments; coaches fudging resumes; faculty in cahoots to falsify grades of athletes; presidents kowtowing to alumni and engaging in face-saving and rationalizing damage control when scandalous sports programs hit the headlines; an overwhelming majority of students on our campuses believing that cheating is part of the “game;” and, don’t forget the sheepish herds of “I don’t have the time,” “I don’t have tenure,” nowhere to be found, go along to get along, self-indulged and self-absorbed, and look the other way submissive faculty. No, let’s not hold ourselves up as the paragons of virtue. Just because we have a few letters before and after our names doesn’t automatically mean we are moral and ethical.

To many people are moving to the tune that it’s no one’s fault because it’s a “cultural problem,” or “it’s the system” where “everyone’s doing it, doing it, doing it.” To them it’s “no big deal.” To them it’s a resigned go-along sigh of “oh, well.” Well, it’s not well; it’s down the well. It’s not a game; it’s gamy. It not a tune; it’s a song and dance. And, it is a big deal. It’s a faustean deal with the devil, for our graduates will take, as so many obviously already have taken, with them into every facet of their working and personal lives a corrosive fear and cynicism that expects and accepts and condones self-righteous “dog-eat-dog” immoral motives and unethical behaviors.

These people are our past and future graduates! Too bad we often train them without educating them. If we don’t frontally address these issues day in and day out in and out of all of our classrooms, if we don’t inoculate students with a high expectation for themselves and others to live noble and worthy lives, if we don’t assume responsibility of modeling and instilling virtue–honesty, respect, and integrity–in our students, if we don’t think it is our business to be in the character business, we will keep on producing a bunch of characters who are little more than animated scandals waiting to happen, persons without character or with weakened character, persons unencumbered by scruples, persons with a compass that has no markings, persons without the will or the courage to stand up and say no, persons with a willingness to look the other way.

If I teach more than–not instead of–my subject of history, if I promote character education as well, if I take a wholeness approach in and out of the classroom, will I be doing any good? Will I really put fire-retardant on or in front of these consuming flames? Will I make a difference? Will I have a lasting impact? Maybe. Maybe not. Even without a crystal ball, I do know that nothing will happen if I do nothing. The fires will rage unabated consuming all within their path.

I also know that it matters that I be true to my true north. I do know that when anyone stands up and stands out, he or she will get hit by a tomato. When I or anyone seeks to truly make a difference, there is always someone around who is going to tell me that I’m nuts or I can’t do it or it’s not my job or I am out of step or I’m not a member of the team or I’m not with the program or it’s not going to mean much. Some people are just not going to like what I do; some people are going to disagree with me; some people are going to feel threatened even though I’m not doing any threatening thing; some people are going to ignore me; and some people are going to flat out attack. I’m not Joshua. I cannot control that anymore than I can make the sun stop in its tracks. What I can control is the realization that the actions and opinions of others have no real bearing on my worth as a person or the legitimacy of my vision. It’s not the end of the world when I experience the passive or active rejection or shunning that inevitably is going to occur. Rejection hurts only when I allow it to hurt, and there’s no reason whatsoever for me to allow it to hurt.

I also know that just because someone diminishes or ignores or rejects or attacks what I believe and what I’m doing does not mean I must diminish or ignore or reject my beliefs too. I always have to keep in mind that the opinions of others are just that– opinions. I will, however, always practice an open openness: I will always listen; I will always consider; I will always reflect; I will always be teachable; I will always learn and grow; I will always change. I don’t let criticisms automatically stop me. I keep looking beyond them and focus on my “why.” In many ways it would be so much easier, more comfortable, and safer to ignore my vision, to remain silent, to let myself be distracted, side-tracked, stopped in my tracks, and be tossed aimlessly around by everything and everyone of those “others” who comes along. Sure, to follow a steady and positive purpose is harder, less comfortable, and maybe riskier. It demands an outer thick skin and an inner strength. It requires a deep commitment, a perseverance, and a determination. But, it’s truer. For too long, I had traveled, like most, that well-traveled road. Only a little over a decade ago did I discover that if I venture and struggle to travel that regrettably road less traveled, will I actually get somewhere and at some place valuable and do something truly far more meaningful than lengthening my resume and puffing up my reputation.

I do know that character does count as much as, if not more than, knowledge. I do know what we do with what we know is far more important and lasting than that soon-to-be-obsolete information. I do know that we help students prepare themselves to make a living. I do know that it is also important that we help students prepare themselves to live rightly. I do know we urge students to attain honors. I do know it is also important that we help guide students to become honorable people. It is important that we be concerned with preparing the whole person and not merely the one dimensional professional and wage earning drone. It is important that we have a combined character based and knowledge based approach to education rather than merely an information based approach. An education without guiding character is no education at all; it is not transforming; it is merely training and schooling that is in danger of producing a bunch of dangerous characters.

I do know that I have to be true to this purpose that motivates, energizes, guides, and drives me. I do know that I don’t have any other choice but to give it all I have. I do know that I must know what must be done, go confidently forward, and just do it. And, if I discover that it’s not enough, and it never is, I just have to learn how to do it harder and better. And, for me, the character of recent headlines about these characters who have little or no character makes the need for character or wholeness education even more imperative. Otherwise, we will continue to be part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

The Two Fundamental Problems With Grades

This is another one of those shot-across-the-bow, non-random Random Thoughts for my VP.

I was reading an article on the SAT in today’s USA TODAY that drew me back to an on-line, week-long discussion that had started out about that undefined, “oh you know what I mean” phenomena called “grade inflation.” Quickly it embraced the issue of grades in general. In the course of the exchanges, it dawned on me that there are two questions that are asked constantly on our campuses. One perniciously myopic question is asked by the students: “Is this going to be on the test?” The other insidiously myopic question, which came up during a workshop I presented a few days ago, the faculty ask: “How do you grade that?”

And so, the issue of grade inflation or of grades in general can be reduced to two fundamental, complimentary, and inseparable problems. The first problem is that students have been trained like seals to believe that getting grades is all there is to an education. They have been led to believe that the yellow brick road to a good job and a good life is paved with grades. They have been schooled in becoming masters at grade getting instead of becoming master learners, in believing that what is important is only that which is going to be on the test, in doing as little as possible to get the grade, in focusing far less on thinking about and understanding the material and far more on memorizing it, and engaging in what a colleague calls “bolemic learning.” They hardly ever consider those “ungradeable” character and principle essentials of an education as essential. The second real problem is that far too many faculty seem to think that giving grades is what education is all about. Though they often themselves artificially manipulate and skew the grade, they believe that dealing with those “ungradeable” essentials of an education is not their job; they believe that the results of any teaching method must be gradeable; they believe that the grade is an absolute indicator of the extent a student has mastered the material; they believe the grade is a reflection of a student’s character; and they believe the grade is a predictor of future performance.

The grade has all too often become the alpha and omega of both teaching and learning, and the result is an visual educational astigmatism and a bodily educational anorexia.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

Opening Night

It’s “opening night!” It’s the beginning of the semester. Nothing ho-hum about it. It’s exciting. No, it’s downright electrifying. There’s an energy in the air. There’s a stimulating and refreshing newness all about. There is a permeating expectation. There is a penetrating anticipation. Thers’s a rush of enthusiasm all around. It’s so magical! It’s as delicious as a warm melt-in-your-mouth glazed doughnut!!

You know, the one thing about teaching is that it isn’t a dull, monotonous, unchanging, over and over and over again factory production. It is a glittering stage production that changes every day. There’s always something unique about each day. The audience is always different; the chemistry is always different. The delivery of the lines is always different. Each day everyone gets further and further into their role. Each day their understanding deepens. Each day is a tweak here and a tweak there. Each day is a try this or that and see what happens day. Each day is one of unlearning, relearning, and learning. Each day is one of growth, development, and change. Each day, from the first to the continuing to the last, there is mystery and surprise in the air. Each day is a special, precious, thrilling, adventurous, memorable, anticipating, heart-fluttering opening night.

No, nothing ho-hum about any of it. And if you treat teaching in this way, the result is a sustained run under the lights worthy of standing ovations and encores.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

Three Laws of Teaching: Sales, Surroundings, Glue

Good morning. Went out real early this morning. It didn’t go any good. It was still hot and hazy and clammy. Even in the dark I was getting a South Georgia tan. The mildew was turning my skin a slimy green. You’d think by the end of my walk, I had become The Hulk! Anyway, I was thinking about something my VP for Academic Affairs said me when I bumped into him and the new President at a local restaurant last Wednesday. He said jokingly that for once he would like to read a “non-random thought.”

So, obedient servant that I am, I bow to his request. Here is his requested non-random, Random Thought. It has a planned spontaneity about it. It is something that I’ve been walking on and putting together for the last three weeks. It’s sort of a Janus reflection on both looking back on what I’ve learned this past academic year and looking forward how I better can apply my learning in the coming academic year.

I always say that the classroom is a Roschach test. That is, what I do is an reflection and extension of who I am. If that is true, then what I do cannot be replicated. If it were to be totally true, then anything I share is virtually useless for others. Fortunately, that only is partly true. What I do, however, is to obey and apply in my own particular personal and educational and physical context certain teaching “laws.” It’s like composing variations on a theme. The problem was figuring out just what were these themes. This morning, as I excitedly thought of “opening night” tomorrow, it started to come together. The themes or laws seem so plainly obvious and commonsensical.

In my syllabus, I list two set of rules. The first set says that no one may look at the back of anyone’s head; no one may say anything without first introducing him or herself; that we are all members of a mutually supportive and encouraging classroom community. The second set lists what we call “Rules of the Road:” 1. Give a damn! Care! Love! Don’t just mouth it, live it; 2. Focus on the student and his/her learning and then worry about the subject and your teaching later; 3. Don’t enter the classroom expecting students to fail. Expect them to learn and succeed. Help each student to expect that of him/herself; 4. The class is a “gathering of ones,” of diverse, individual, sacred human beings. 5, No one in this “gathering” is dumb and unwanted; 6. Every student is entitled to the personal, equal dignity and treatment of a human being; 7. No one’s face gets erased and no one goes nameless and no one is left in the background and no one is allowed to be overshadowed by anyone else; 8. Every student starts with a clean slate. Don’t judge a student by any body piercing or tatoo or the whispers of other people or a GPA or the accent of the speech or the the color of the skin or religious and ethnic background or gender or sexual preference or….; 9. Love every student. It’s OK to be disappointed in or even frustrated with their lack of effort or success, but don’t stop loving them as persons. 10. The 3 R’s don’t mean a thing if they don’t make the student more humane.

I am beginning to see that these sets of rules are really merely an obedience of three distinct, separate, and inseparable, but often ignored and unapplied, Laws of Teaching and Learning. These three fundamental Laws of Teaching are the tap root from which grows everything we should think, feel, say, and do. In a nutshell you can reduce them to three words: sales, surroundings, glue.

The first Law of Teaching and Learning what I’ll call “The Law Of Sales.” This law says that the master teacher is a masterful salesperson with a particular set of studied and natural personal and social gifts, abilities, and talents. They sell themselves far more than the subject matter. These kinds of people are all around us; they are even hidden within each of us. They are socialable; they are communicators; they are connectors; they are reachers; they are touchers; they are relators; they are smilers; they are persuaders; they are kindly; they are igniters; they are authentic; they are persuaders; they are optimists; they are synchronizers; they are senders; they are receivers; they are knowledgeable; they are helpers; they love people; they are infectious; they are contagious; they love what they do; they have energy, enthusiasm, charm, likeability. Teaching for them is relationship resting on love, fatih, belief, hope, and respect. This law says that the likes of them are infectious and contagious. They are “turners,” turning on the turned off, turning the negative on its head, turning prison cells called classrooms into majestic cathedrals.

The second Law of Teaching is what I’ll call “The Law of Surroundings.” I once read a study on urban dropout rates that showed a student seemed to be better off in a good neighborhood and in a disfunctional family than he or she is in a bad neighborhood and a good family. This law says that students–as well as faculty and staff– are a lot more sensitive to their surroundings than they let on or know themselves. They are extremely sensitive to the slightest changes in their surroundings. Students–as well as faculty and staff– are strongly influenced by the circumstances, culture, climate, conditions, and specifics of the educational environment, from the prosaic to the subtlest, in which they find themselves. They are powerfully shaped by their external environment by a flow of outside-to-inside influences. This law says that the features of our immediate social–particularly peer influence–and physical environment are powerful in shaping who students–as well as faculty and staff– become and how they act. The surroundings in which a student finds himself or herself affects his and her personal and social thinking, feeling, vision, field of view, capabilities, actions. This law says that if you salt the oats, you can lead a horse to water and get him to drink.

The third Law of Teaching is what I’ll call “The Law of Glue.” The law says that we have to spend most of our time not on what we say and do, but on thinking how to make what we say and do stick. Glue means adhesiveness or stickiness. It means what we say and do makes an impact, a lasting impact; they have a staying power; you can’t get them out of our head; they’re there glued in our memory. This law says that unless the student remembers what we say and do, he or she won’t be more knowledgeable, won’t change his or her attitudes, beliefs, and behavior. This law says that there are ways, ways most of us have not paid much attention to, simple ways of presenting ourselves and changing both presentation and structuring of information, for making what we say and do memorable.

I hope this satisfies my VP.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

The Exotic Classroom

Well, it’s the beginning of the semester. I am teaching four first year history classes of the same numbered course as I have chosen to do every semester for the last three years. Yesterday, the inevitable question arose, “Louis, don’t you get bored teaching the same thing over and over again?” At the core that question is a fundamental issue that I answered a different way this time. I gave him my copy of Botton’s THE ART OF TRAVEL.

I asked her to read the book because Botton, makes another point that is regrettably too often analogous to how too many of us enter the classroom. If too many of us don’t know how to vacation properly, aren’t receptive to newness, it is because too many of us act as if we were at home. And at home, what we see and hear, we reduce it to the ordinary and old hat. We act with settled expectations, with assuring familiarity, and with securing safety. We are convinced that we have uncovered all there is to uncover of interest. By virtue of having been there for a long time and have been doing the same things for so long we have become practiced at what I call indifferente and disinterested “unnoticing.” So many of us wrongly assume–armed stereotyping images–that people and things remain unchanged, things and faces become passe, invisible, unstimulating, uninteresting, unprovoking, unexciting, unfilling, and even at times empty. We get into the ruttish habit of being set in our ways. We become passive. We become bored. We get mesmerized. We stop looking and seeing. We stop hearing and listening. We stop talking. We stop being curious. The desire wans. And, as the desire weakens, so does the drive to understand. We consider the classroom and students a boring and unfulfilling “ho-hum.” And both the classroom and students obey and duly fall into with our expectations. And we fall into a slumbering “I can do this in my sleep.” The bottom line is that knowingly or unknowingly we lose the real desire to be there. We seek our excitement and fulfillment elsewhere in the archive, in the lab, in our writing rather than in our teaching. For in many ways, what disappoints or angers or depresses us in the classroom is the obverse of what drives us in the research archive and lab.

None of us scholars would dare to enter an archive or experiment in a lab or go out into the field with a certainty that everything is known, everything has been measured, and there is nothing to discover. And yet, so many of us to that very thing when we enter a classroom. We proclaim with a paralyzing and deafening and blinding certainty that we know “students are” as if we know each of them like the proverbial back of our hand. We ignore the immense and wondrous and challenging diversity of humanity in that classroom and impose a bland uniformity. We have to take care, for such certitude makes us less mindful and respectful of the truth that our life and that of each student is a glorious and sacred and unique–and exotic–being.

So many of us, then, are an educational paradox. We are purveyors of change, of growth, and of development. We call it learning or educating. And yet, so many of us ourselves are not willing to learn, to change, to grow, to develop. So many of us are not teachable, for “knowing it all” or “having made it,” we don’t see the need to learn. Until a tad over a decade ago, I could be counted among them.

We can’t do go unchanged however hard we try or convince ourselves we can. And, that fruitless effort is a major source of our discomfort. The subject, the class, each student, and each of us are all exquisite contradictions. Each of us today is the same person we were yesterday, and yet we are different from who we were before and who we will become tomorrow. Each of us is changing every moment, and yet in some mysterious way we remain the person each of us had always been. Each of us is an ever-changing variety on a constant theme. The trick to focus on, appreciate, respect, honor, give balanced meaning to both the constant and the change.

The classroom, then, is also a beautiful paradox. It may be titled and numbered the same semester after semester. The subject may be ostensibly the same. But, if nothing else, the people who populate it each semester, each week, each day, each moment–we and they–are not the same. It that Heraclitus you never step into the same river twice thing while the name of the river never changes. Each student is an individualized ever-changing constant. Each is moving through life learning, growing, experiencing, becoming, changing. Quite often, if we see, that occurs before our eyes. There is a conjoining of the fixed and the flexible, the familiar and the unknown, the firm and the adapting, the changing and unchanging. In the classroom you are at anchor while you are lifting your anchor to sail, your sails are rolled while you are setting your sails. To recognize this natural reality, it is not a matter of weakening, diluting, or dumbing down. It is not something that heralds impending academic doom. It is, in fact, unnatural to remain in stasis while everything and everyone is in a state of change. For what it’s worth, I discovered that I could change my ways without losing my way. In fact, I discovered my way. I could embrace change without changing my fundamental values. In fact, I discovered my values and ways of strengthening my values. I discovered that to change, as some of my colleagues suggest, is not a sign of weakness. To the contrary, I created a solid foundation for my existence, my purpose, my fulfillment.

There is a value in those things which do not and should not change. There is also a value in those things which can be changed. And, there is still another value in those things and people who do change. They all have a place, a value, a meaning, and a fulfillment. The trick is to offer up the serenity prayer and have it answered by working hard to answer it ourselves. Then comes the hard part: living it.

So, I think a lot of us have to shake ourselves, force ourselves out of what is too often a walking trance notice things and people we either have forgotten how to or have never done before. Why? For me in the last decade the answer has becoming very more simple. To paraphrase Botton, if the meaning of exotic comes from the simple idea of novelty and change, then the classroom is so fraught with newness each day that it is one of the most exotic and exciting and stimulating and fulfilling places on earth that I know.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

A Vacation It’s Not

Come on! Grab your hat! Put on your sunscreen! Take your Fodor’s! Trees and sun and water awaits you! Visit lush green rolling hills! Walk among ancient ruins! Stay in historic Inns! Eat exotic foods!

Sound like an alluring travel brochure, don’t I. I just finished reading Alain de Botton’s ART OF TRAVEL. Interesting book. What he said about the art of travel reminded me a lot about how so many of us travel into the classroom and deal with the students.

In many respects, so many of us think that entering a classroom is like going to a vacation place. This is especially so at the beginning of a semester or the beginning of a career. So many of us, unchaste, look at the classroom as a pristine place. It is a place of great expectation. Each term, each day, We set out to be happy; we think we can be happy; we expect to find a happy place. Like a vacation, we expect a vacation place that is free of every day threat, worries, and challenges.

And then, we find that the place or getting to the place isn’t the picture perfect place pictured in the travel brochure. Our dreamy expectation is confronted with reality. You have to deal with dinky or vast and jostling airports, long and tiring flying or driving times, miserable weather, lines, delays, more lines, awkward digestion, fatigue, boredom, confusing money exchanges, traffic jams, sunburn, and still more lines, lost property, frayed nerves, financial anxiety, confusing maps, confusing road signs, another language, misplaced luggage, time changes, getting lost, forgotten essentials, unavailable car rentals, crowds, unaccommodating rooms, strange plumbing, sickness, accident, odd tasting food, banal food, rushing, worrying about what’s going on at home, conflicting interests, and a host of exasperating unexpecteds. The quiet and hypnotic trance of exotic scenery competes with concrete ribbons of highway, billboards, parking lots, gas stations, noise.

We have spent a lot of time, a lot of energy, and a lot of money to go to a happy and relaxing vacation place. And, we work hard to make it a happy and relaxing place. Then! We spend a lot of time with the anxious and picky: “Didn’t you bring it?” “This is how much?” “Where is the….” “How did this happen?” “What do you mean no reservation?” “We’re going to be late.” “It’s closed!” “We missed it!” “They told us….” “Run!!” “Why do we have to get so and so something?” “What’s it? It’s just a…” We get annoyed when things don’t go perfectly as planned. We get upset at the smallest and least significant things. We let the littlest of things get deepest under our skin to make the biggest difference and generate the largest–and silliest–arguments. And, then we blame that thing for “ruining things” and, we wish we were home or someplace else. At times, we do and go, we reluctantly and often begrudgingly, temper our desires to fit the expectations of traveling companions or others. They have a particular vision of what we should see, what we should go and where we should go. We inhibit what we see and do and go in order to seem normal to others although deep within us we are at the least uncomfortable. Nevertheless, we continue on because we don’t want to come home to a “you didn’t see?” or a “you didn’t go to?” or a “you didn’t like?” We stress ourselves to make sure that the vacation goes well. We stress ourselves when it doesn’t. We’re particularly unhappy because we’re unhappy in that the special place and at special time because they aren’t what we conjured up in our dreams and plans. Then, as Botton says, we “absent ourselves.” We withdraw. We brood. We skulk. We blame. We complain. We bicker. We argue. We make it worse. And, when we get home, we drop the lead-weighted luggage in the middle of the floor in a gesture of “thank god we’re home,” collapse into the couch, and deeply sigh, “We really need a vacation now.” And, the planning and dreaming starts all over.

And so, it is with the classroom. Too many of us, and the institutional administrators as well, in higher education especially feel forced into the bread-and-butter teaching place away from the hallowed place of research and publication in order to put food on the table and pay bills. So often, the classroom of students is not how we imagined or want to imagine. We think that by going to the classroom we can be another person. We forget that we can’t forget ourselves; we can’t leave ourselves behind; we cannot step outside ourselves. We must bring ourselves with us, with all our idiosyncracies, our expectations, our frustrations, our issues, our hurts. Students do the same. Botton says something amazing. We don’t realize that happiness is not a place; it’s all in our hearts and heads. Maybe, he says, to really get a lot our of a vacation, we have to know about ourselves.

So many of us enter the classroom as if we had been mesmerized by a quick scan of the enthralling brochure. We look improperly with a too often superficial glance that leaves us indifferent. Few of us stare at the vacation place for a long period of time. If we do stare, we would get a truer sense of the place. We would see that the classroom isn’t a photogenic campus recruiting brochure come to life. Imperfect students are there with their regrets and worries; imperfect we are there with our regrets and worries.

And so, as Botton says of the vacationer, we should enter the classroom with a mind set the chief character is of which is “receptivity.” We should approach the new semester, each class, each student with a receptive humility without any rigidity to what is or is not beautiful, important, wondrous, worthwhile. We should be alive to the layers of which each person is composed. We have to make appear those whose faces and expression had been invisible. We have to unlearn our habits of being blind to what we assume is the known and routine and develop a piercing and searching eye. We have to obey a mental command of seeing the subject, the class, the students as if we had never seen them before, and marvel in their newness. He is right. When we do that, our uvea widens and we become eyes wide open. Our habit of inattention is slowly, and arduously, replaced by active, conscious seeing. We intentionally start noticing instead of merely seeing, listening instead of merely hearing. We being to make a conscious effort to notice and apprehend the smallest of things and the faintest of words and the littlest of expressions and the slightest of movements. On our travels or in the classroom oases begin to appear in the desert; we begin to take heed; people release their worth, people becoming interesting and beautiful and individual. We start to travel through the landscape of people and begin to feel their spirit. We begin to understand. And as the scene changes in our spirits and before our eyes, so do the values it suggests and so we.

Someone once said that teaching is no vacation. After reading Botton, maybe it is–if we vacation properly.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

Let Nothing Be Ordinary

God, I love to walk in the dark. It’s a spiritual aerobic. It’s a meditative workout. I am aware that there is nothing ordinary about any step I take however steps I have taken over the years and miles of power walking. Every step is a step removed from the noisy static and chatter and confusion to a place where I can hear and see more clearly. Every step in the dark is toward the dawn of the day’s possibilities. Every step is a step toward a new and powerful insight. Every step is a step on my journey. Every step makes a difference. Every step strengthens me physically and spiritually. Every step is more than changing; every step is transforming. No there is nothing ordinary about any of my walks.

That is as it should be.

After graduation, as I was taking off that decorated sauna suit called academic robes, I heard my name called. I turned. It was Selma (not her real name). I hadn’t seen her in a couple years until she walked across the stage. She rushed over to me. She stopped, smiled, and then threw her arms around me. As her parents looked on with cheshire smiles, we engaged in a short but gleeful fencing duel.

“What’s that for?” I asked with a congratulatory smile.

“You,” she squealed

“Me?”

“This is because of you,” she smiled as she held up her diploma.

“THAT is because of YOU,” I parried emphatically.

“You wouldn’t quit on me”

“You wouldn’t quit on yourself,” I said with a riposte.

“You helped me.”

“You had to courage to ask for help,” I answered with a swift octave (gosh, I remember the terms from my ole college fencing class!).

“It was your class.”

“It was your four years,” I replied with a deft quarte.

“Okay. I give up. Let’s call it a draw. It’s because of both of us.”

“I’ll buy that.”

“Come me my parents…..This is him.”

“First one in our family to even think of goin’ to college much less finishin’,” her father said with indescribable pride.

We chit-chatted. Then, her mother said, “Now that Selma has walked across the stage, she’ll be walking into a class room in a week or two. Who would have thought. From our family. What can you tell her?”

I turned to Selma. “Never let yourself experience an ordinary day. Don’t ever let yourself believe that any student is ordinary.

“Just like you did with me and all of us.”

“Just like I did with you. Now it’s your turn. Be my legacy. Pass it on.”

She gave me a peck on my cheek, whispered in my ear, “I will. I’ll keep in touch,” turned, and yelled at her parents, “We have some celebratin’ to do.”

“And some thankin’ on our knees, too,” her mother lovingly and firmly reminded her.

I walked towards my office with a feeling that wasn’t much different than when I was watching my Susan come down the aisle thirty-six years ago or when I see my Susan each day or when I held each of my new-born sons or when I first held my new-born granddaughter.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–