For us in the States, this past weekend was Memorial Day Weekend. Memorial Day is sometimes called “the gateway to the summer.” Well, my morning walk today through the steamy vat of superheated water we call humidity reminded me that we down here in south Georgia have gone through that gate quite a while back.

On such national holidays, Susan and I are stay-at-homes, letting the over thirty-five million other cars hit the road, parks, and beaches. We had some close friends over for a quiet cook-out dinner one evening, my son, Robby, and his girl friend for another, and then a “just us” evening on the third. Each day I sculpted in my flower garden. I created floral center pieces with galardia, shasta daisies, rudibeckia, daylillies, coreopsis, french lace and snowball hydrangas from the garden. I continued my never-ending work on a metal sculpture and struggled to repair another sculpture made of driftwood and stone. I designed some desk-top mediation fountains. I planned out how to redo the master bedroom with a Venetian plaster process. And, I mulled over a couple of workshops on creative teaching and classroom community which I am scheduled to present in the coming months.

All this has put me into a strange ENFPish mood. It has gotten me to thinking about connections and the word “art.” People talk about the art of gardening, the art of design, the art of teaching, and the art of an artist. What do they mean? A searching travel? A spiritual exercise? A plumbing of one’s spirit? An act of devotion? The results of human imagination? The process of creating beautiful or important things? A unique talent attained by or honed by study and practice? A powerful metaphor for any journey or activity with the purpose of finding something that matters deeply to the practioner? If all this is true, and I think it is, then I think the qualities of a gardener and artist are those of the teacher.

A work of art, a garden bed, a classroom, a workshop session are scenes that can sensitize the individual to the deeper realities of himself and of the world about him. Each one can show that a single moment’s perception and act is more than enough to capture and contain an exciting world. Each is a crafting of something rare and precious that rises primarily from the depth of emotion. Each is an enjoyment in spite of adversity. Each accepts the normality of challenge as a way to become more. Each offers a sense that living well is more important than just surviving and existing. Each is an embrace of the present, a living of today while you can, and a thinking of the future. Each has the purpose to enrich other people’s lives through the power of sharing. In each is harbored a something as ephemeral as the idea of passing something on to others after we pass on, that we can pass on something of ourselves, something of the spirit of who we are and what we have meant.

If I qualify as a gardener or an amateur artist or a teacher it is not solely because of my technical or technological or pedagogical know-how and my informational know-what. Goodness knows I’m not going to win at any flower show or be the center fold in Architectural Digest or stand in any museum. Gardening isn’t the problem any more than is art or designing or teaching. Seeking and seeing is the problem. Seeking and seeing a purpose is the problem. Seeking and seeing an answer to the question, “Why?” Artists, gardeners and teachers are “questers” and the answer to that question is the single most significant prediction of work fulfillment, a far better predictor than technical skills or general intelligence. It is what separates the technician or journeyman from the master. A gardener, artist, and teacher, then, must be able to live fully in that question if they are to strive to use whatever it is they have to the fullest. He or she must be able to see the beauty and sacredness and uniqueness in the plant, medium or person with the eyes of his or her heart more than with the eyes in their skull. I think it was either Whitman or Thoreau who said that before you can capture the immeasurable, you first have to experience it. And, of course, if you have not experience it, for you it is not real.

To have the opportunity to experience it, you must have the capacity to be an inner world traveler and an outer world explorer, have a delicacy of soul, a deep below the surface pulse, a rejoicing in the play of all the senses, an inner silence, an uninhibited receptivity, an openness and responsiveness, a moving question mark, a constant reimagining, a spirit in awe and wonder, a graceful waiting for unexpected encounters, room for improvisation, a quality of curiosity, an awakened perception, and an intention of attention.

Whether I am in my garden or I playing at being a an artist or playing in my garden or engaging in the classroom, I find myself I cannot be still and nothing is still for I have what Rumi would call an awareness of all the messages coming through, that melody of beckoning calls that draw me out and direct me and define me. In most ways, the focus of attention away from myself to others.

True gardeners, artists, and master teachers have learned to let things and people around them pepper them with renewing and revitalizing questions: “What do you see?” “How can you see more?” “What do you hear?” “How do you listen keener?” “What do you feel?” “How do you feel deeper?” “How do you interact with the all the various colors, themes, elements, mediums and people around you?” “What are the critical elements?” “What and where are the connections?” “What is the best way to shape your experience?” “How can you pass all this on to others?” It will be the daring answers that will become the gift of the gardener, artist, teacher.

And so, I feel that the amateur gardener I am or the amateur sculptor I strive to be or the occasional designer or the professional teacher I am have a bond. When I meditate before going to class, or quietly survey the lay of the garden or am before whatever I am trying to design or create, I find that my first task is to close my eyes, both figuratively and literally, and let go of all the roaring static in my head to make room for passion and ecstasy. I clear myself waiting for the answer to “why?” I evacuate my mind of all that I know and wait for discovery. Like the times of my pre-dawn power walks, my mind and spirit work differently when the rush of everything around me rushes out, when I just breeze along in a mantra of a slow, gentle, quiet, and patient rhythm, when I am still and still moving. New ideas come and go without working for them. Sometimes new answers pop up. Sometimes new insights emerge. Sometimes new images and patterns appear. Sometimes new concepts take shape. Sometimes new approaches near. In those quests, my gardener self and my artist self and my teaching self are one and the same. It is something like always being at a crossroad without a road map. You will always have to choose which road sign to believe and which direction to take. The choices stimulate the desire, heighten the intensity, increase the engagment, sharpen the senses. As that occurs, I feel an awakefulness and alertness that cuts through any distracting, opaque daze. I come alive, thrilled with the moment, brimming with exhilaration and anticipation. And it is all right here, visits of joy and accomplishment, feasts of epiphanies, dances of marvels and astonishments, in the daily round of my activities seen both square in front of me and out of the corner of my eye. In each of nature’s molehills I receive the gift of seeing mountains. It’s hard not to wonder and it’s hard to be disappointed. And, as I am not disappointed, I find heart. And, as I find heart, I cannot teach less anymore than it’s hard to walk less, garden less, and sculpt or design less.

I told you I was in a strange ENPFish mood.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

Like a mad dog and Englishman I was out in the sun, heat, and humidity working in my front garden two days ago trying to beat the distant darkening sky and threatening thunder. As I was pruning my roses, a car suddenly swerved with a slight screech towards the curb that caught my attention and parked across the street.

As I turned. The car door opened. Out stepped Mary. She came over to me and said, “You live here, Dr Schmier?”

“No,” I answered. “I’m the gardener.”

“Let me give you a ‘thanks’ hug. I missed you at graduation.”

I stood up straight and protested, “I’m sweaty and dirty.”

“Who cares.”

As she hugged me, I asked, “What’s this for?”

“For being there all these years when I need someone even though you weren’t my adviser. For being at my graduation. I saw you. It meant a lot when you gave me a thumbs up as I got my diploma. I’m glad I saw you. We’ve got to talk.” She turned to look at the darkened clouds turning black. “Got time before it pours?”

We sat down on the grass cross-legged talking about her future. She was down. She told me how a lot of people were, in her words, “trying to steal my dream” with “why are you going into teaching” warnings about lousy pay, school politics, complaining parents, disrespectful students, overcrowded classes, loads of paperwork, overwork, and “just being treated without respect in general as an amateur who is doing something anyone can do.”

For about ten or fifteen minutes, she said how those people got her depressed and didn’t seem all that supportive of her choice of career. “I’m willing to work hard at teaching. I love children, but I don’t know…. They make it sound so, so horrible. You always came into class so upbeat, so full of sunshine with your upbeat music and your ‘Words of the Day.” You didn’t let anything really bother you for long. You somehow get over things. You never stopped believing in each of us. You were always there to listen even when we weren’t in your class anymore. We never knew what was going to happen in class because you always came in with something new that you tried on us. I’ve seen it over and over again. I’ve heard about it from others since I was in our class over and over again. My friends and family have made think twice. I’m scared I won’t be able to stick with it and do what I want to do. I don’t want to become a cynical, distant, or burnt out zombie like a lot of teachers I’ve seen. If that’s what my future is like, I’ll go into something else….”

As she got up, she asked, “I’ve got to go to my job. I want you to tell me what you think is going to be my biggest challenge and how I should deal with it. If I really know what to expect, I can handle it.”

“I’ll do that if you do something for me.”

“Always the teacher. What’s that.”

“Write down just what it is you want to do. Only two words.”

“Two words?!?!?!?”

“Two words. Something I’m developing.”

“Thanks for using me as a guinea pig again. You did that once with the Rodin Project.,” she lovingly smirked. “But, I’ll do it. I know you have a purpose. You always do.”

And off she went with a “gotta run. You made me late. See ya around. Come into ……. and I’ll serve you.”

“Those two words?”

“….And you’ll get your two words.”

“Your two words!”

“My two words!”

She drove off and left with an equally tough challenge. This is what I wrote her this morning after my walk. I used more than two words:

“Mary, what will be your biggest challenge? On the first day of the first year in your career that you enter the classroom will be the same challenge as the first day of the thirty-ninth year that I enter the classroom. And, it will be the same each and every day of your career no less than it has been for mine in the past decade that I’ve seen myself as a teacher. It will be understanding that working at teaching is not enough. You have to constantly work on yourself. The biggest challenge you will face in your careers will be, always will be, each day, staying excited every day about teaching and especially about each student. You will have to learn how to sing in the rain as well as in the sunshine. If you don’t stay excited about teaching, you’re right. You’ll stop or be stopped working at teaching. It will become just plain ole monotonous work. The tiring nitty-gritty detail, paperwork, meetings, conferences, obstacles, objections, preparation, politics, and long hours that necessarily go along with the work of teaching will lose any meaning. They will wear you down and wear you out. All that ‘miserable stuff’ won’t be miserable if you see a purpose for it and have reason to be excited about it. If you don’t, you’ll stop living and will join the ranks of the merely existing, robotic, mechanical, bored, emotionless, dead-panned walking-dead. Your biggest challenge, then, is that you will have to to keep your powder dry. You can’t light your fire or keep it burning if you’re all wet. You will have to learn to be a constant student of learning how to stop people and things from demotivating, uncommitting, uninvolving, and especially ‘unwhying’ you.”

Can you be excited all the time? I think you can, but allow yourself a slip or two here and there. After all, you’re not perfect. You are human. But, just a here and there. No more. I know it won’t be easy, which is why it will be your greatest challenge. Teaching, like life, doesn’t just happen. There are no magic wands to wave or ruby slippers to click together. Your habits play a major role in how the future of your teaching will unfold. They will decide if coach will or won’t turn into a pumpkin and the prancing horses into rats. So, you will have to program yourself to get into getting the habit of always doing four things each day.

First,, chase after and get a worthy and meaningful two-word purpose. You say you love children. So? Loving children is your attitude. For what purpose are you going to use your attitude and subsequent actions. I am talking about your precise, concise, and uncliched ‘know-why.’ However important is your ‘know-how’ and ‘know what,’ they are not much without your directing and kindling ‘know why.” Each day, look in the mirror, gaze at your navel, stare at the stars, peer into your soul, and go deep. Go on a daily hunt for your purpose, that ‘why’ that gets your juices flowing, your heart pumping, your minding focusing, your lungs heaving, your legs dancing, your belly burning, your spirit soaring, your face smiling, and your eyes gleaming.

Second, each day keep that ‘know why’ waving as a reminder square in front of your eyes. Tattoo it on your arm, paste it on your office door, tape it to your bathroom mirror, decopage it on the seat of your commode, hang it on your refrigerator door. It will keep you both going on and on-growing. Never put it on the shelf. Without it you’ll lose your focus, determination, persistence, enjoyment, meaning. You’ll start to wallow in a shallow and empty resigned “This is all there is to it. There ain’t any more.” You’ll wind up leading a small life, arguing over small stuff, crying over small pinpricks, grimacing over small disappointments, and leaving control over you and your future to someone else. And, your ‘know-how’ will be harder and harder to use until it becomes a drudgery of ‘no-hows.’

Third, believe constantly with all your heart that what you’re doing is critically and incredibly important, that you are reaching out and touching others, enriching others, helping others, and leaving behind a world altered for the better.

And fourth, know that there’s no time to waste, have a sense of desperate urgency that today is urgent.

Work hard on, focus on, expend a lot of energy on those four habits each day of getting, keeping, believing, and knowing until they become almost automatic, and each day you’ll find the adjectives: challenging, motivating, inspiring, stimulating, imagining, innovating, and creating.

Keep in touch. You know where I am. And always….

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

Ten Years. Over 400 Random Thoughts floating out there in cyber space. Two published volumes of collected Random Thoughts and two more on the way. More than 2,000 web citations. Bunches of workshops on campuses and at conferences throughout the world. Wow. Whew. Who would have thought it would have come to this when I had this mysterious urge, desire, need to share myself on that Wednesday morning of April 21, 1993 with a small message entitled “Character-based Education” at a time when the internet was in its infancy and the only web site any one knew of was the one woven by a spider.

Mark Ahlness, who has voluntarily maintained the Random Thought archive website since there was a web, has asked me to share my reflection on this decade of sharing. As he put it, “I think there are lots of folks who would LOVE to hear from you on the Ten Years of Random Thoughts topic. If you have it in you, please do share.”

What do ten years of Random Thoughts mean? I’ll leave that to each of you to decide. For me, they are reflections of a journey that have offered sharing glimpses into both my personal and professional transformation about which I have shared endlessly.

A lot of you know my story. I’ve taken many of you with me on my pre-dawn walks, through my garden, by my fishpond, into my classes, into my soul. You’ve met students, colleagues, friends, my angelic Susan, and my two sons. Many of us have forged e-friendships. I won’t belabor you with a recounting of those events leading up to and of that pivotal day in October, 1991, when I experienced by epiphany. It’s all on the archival website.

So, I’ll just talk briefly about a punctuation mark, a dash. In her poem, “The Dash,” Linda Ellis reminds us that we each will some day have our lives represented by two dates: the date of our birth and the date of our death. But, what matters most, she poetically writes, is the dash between those years. That dash represents all the time we have spent on earth “doomed” to making choices, all the time we have spent chosing to live or merely to exist, all the time we have spent chosing to be in a rut or in the groove, all the time we have chosen self-importance or doing important things, and all that we have chosen to do and have chosen not to do. And this I have learned over the past decade, our dash will not be judged by the informational things we know, the technological things we know how to use, the pedagogical things we know how to do, or the professional things we have achieved. That is merely doing the job, performing a task with little passion, belief, and purpose. It is like having a detached retina; it sends the wrong messages; everything, therefore, is blurry; and, if untreated, you are then in serious danger of losing your vision.

That is not to say we should ceased to be knowledgeable people. To the contrary, were we to do that we would become mere going-nowhere day-dreamers. It’s the Law of Juice: if there’s no juice in the battery, you’re dead in the parking lot and you’re not going anywhere. I said at the beginning of my journey and I hold to it today even tighter: “There are energizing emotional and driving spiritual components to education, as there are to everything, which are inseparable from its intellectual aspects. There is a fascinating marriage between emotion and intellect between what people feel, think, know, say, and do.” I also said somewhere at some time that if there is one principle I have come to honor in the past decade, it is that education is not a world of impersonal forces, theories, principles, statistics, test scores, and subject matter. It is a peopled world. There no learning, no teaching, no subject, no education. There is only biography.

In the course of the past decade I have become, as I recently wrote for the introduction of the impending fourth volume of collected Random Thoughts, a “Hokey Pokey Teacher.” You know the Hokey Pokey:

You put your whole self in;
you put your whole self out;
you put your whole self in;
and you shake it all about.
You do the Hokey-Pokey,
And you turn yourself around.
That’s what it’s all about!

If you’ve ever danced the Hokey Pokey you know what I mean. It’s really an exciting experience. You start with putting your right foot in and out, and then, with your hands held high, you turn all about. Next, you put your left foot in and out, then your right hand, then your left hand, then your right side, then your left side, then your nose, then your backside, then your head, and finally your whole self. I’ve seen people get into it, kick off their shoes, kick up their heels, let their hair down, not worry about what they looked like, not be concerned with what anyone said, and just go for it. I’ve never seen anyone do the Hokey Pokey who didn’t move, laugh, and giggle like a child. In fact, I think to fully enjoy the Hokey Pokey, you have to both figuratively and literally jump in and turn yourself around; you have to find the inner child. The Hokey-Pokey is so great that it lightens the spirit and takes years off the soul– while being just plain fun.

That’s what it’s all about. It’s all about teaching all of each student with all of me. No holding back. It’s about taking the risk to put my whole self in. It’s about not worrying about how I may look to others. It’s about every pore in my body saying an unconditional “yes” to whatever comes. It’s about being a heart specialist and having a complicated love affair with the beauty within each student. It is about being fully alive. It is about having a defiant optimism. It’s about having a committed commitment. It is about a flirtation and courting with each student that signify that nothing in the classroom goes along as usual. It is about having a heightened gratitude for life. It is about what stirs my soul, inspires me, motivates me, makes me feel like I’m in totally in harmony with why I showed up on campus. It’s about just picking up a few bottles of champagne and popping them every time I walk on campus. It’s about de-icing with the warmth of my own heart. It’s about knowing that every moment is a golden gateway to new possibilities. It’s about getting off the treadmill. It’s about going on a field trip as an adventurer, an explorer, a learner, and a pilgrim rather than as a disengaged and distant tourist. It’s about going into a classroom being filled with an exclaiming, “God, it feels great to be here.”

What matters most, then, are those intangible, easy to overlook, energizing, charting, essential goose bumps of excitement every morning you pull back the bed sheets, a fire that warms within, a delicious savoring of every last drop that transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary, an electrifying head over heels time of your life, a great feeling of feeling great about what you’re doing, an unshakeable conviction that what you’re doing truly matters, a deep sense of purposeful mission, an unwavering commitment and an insatiable hunger to use your time to make a significant difference in other people’s lives.

What matters is how we were life-lifters and lid-raisers and value-adders.

Linda Ellis ends her poem with these words:

So when your eulogy is being read
with your life’s action to rehash,
would you be proud of the things they say
about how you spent your dash?

This, for me, is what a decade of Random Thoughts means.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

Much of what I have learned about myself I have learned during my solo morning walks, those reflective mobile moments of meditation through the pre-dawn darkness. You know, solitude is not solitary confinement. Aloneness is not lonliness. It is, if nothing else, a way to get away from the cell phone. It is a step by step movement from tense to sense, from tuning out to tuning in, from losing yourself to finding yourself, from disengagement to encounter. My mind sort of settles down, and I get very focused. It is amazing how often I have the question, or no question, when I leave the house and find an answer before I walk inside the house. Each block I walk gets me mysteriously through any block I might have.

I do not find my reflection useless and frightening. I do not find my walks dull or boring. To the contrary, my sense of aliveness is sharpened. Understand, I love people. I love to be around people. I am a people person. But, I think the silence and solitude of going alone for six miles and for at least an hour every other day and being alone deserve a place in every day life. It’s in that mind- and soul-clearing place where I’m free of imposed schedules, from what is expected of me, from what I am obliged to perform. It is in that cleansing place that I can pay attention to myself. I can freely engage in “wise” reflection that is so necessary for “wise” thought and “wise” feelings and “wise” action. It’s in that momentary hermetic place where I submit to solitutde and silence and learn things about myself that I cannot learn among others. And, I have discovered that I would never have known who I truly was had I not been alone with the world on those dark pre-dawn streets for all those miles and all those hours over the past decade or so.

This morning is the morning nearing the end of the Spring semester. I am almost finished suffering through that very uneducational responsibility of coming up with final semester grades, and I am about to go on an involuntary leave from teaching this summer.

When I exited the house this morning, I wasn’t thinking all that much except what I’ll be doing this coming summer. With every step, however, I started thinking of Molly (not her real name) on that last day of classes in one particular class last week. She really got to me. The more I thought about her the more I took a reflective cruise through the calm and rough personal and professional seas of this past year, and started thinking about the first days of the coming fall semester.

It was closure, the last day of class, when we express consciously and publically what the class meant to each of us, what we got out of the class, and what we’re taking with us. One after another each student stood up, introduced him/herself for the last time, showed us an object he or she had brought to class, and explained how it symbolized what this class meant to him or her. Then, it came to Molly.

She was the next to last student. She couldn’t do it. She stood up and lost it. She broke out into convulsive sobbing. She needless apologized over and over as she valiantly struggled for control. From various points in the class came soft, compassionate whispers, “It’s okay.” “Let it go.” “You’re among family.” “We’re your friends.” “Nothing to feel embarrassed about.”

She excused herself and left the room. A few students got up and followed her out. We all quietly and patiently waited. She came back after a few minutes. Her eyes were red. As she struggled to control herself, she stammered, “This semester I’ve had to go through a lot of stuff that I wouldn’t have been able to handle if it weren’t for my community. My father had brain cancer. I loved him so much. I watched him waste away and had to deal with him dying. My mother learned she had breast cancer and I have had to miss classes to take her for tests and to the doctors.” She faltered. A tear formed in my eye. She recovered and looked around. “If it wasn’t for the support of these wonderful people in my community and a lot of you in this class, I wouldn’t have made it. You are the ‘salt of the earth.’ I’ll never forget any of you. Thanks.” She hesitated and then simply said, “That’s all.”

It was enough. Then, it was my turn and I started to talk about how the doughnut I had brought symbolized what I was talking with me from the class. And I have to admit, after Molly I almost didn’t make it. I was stunned by the sudden realization that each of us is the “salt of the earth.”

“Salt of the earth.” What does that mean? What did Molly mean? I don’t know if it was an accidental choice of words or whether she was merely quoting a phrase from Scripture, but she didn’t say “you can be…” or “you might be….” or “you ought to be…” or “you should be….” or “you might consider being….” Molly pronounced, “you are….” No choice. Just obligation. Just responsibility.

And, to salt both ourselves and our classes is a heavy responsibily. It means we teachers are an essential element in the improvement of the lives of others. We have the power to sprinkle around little life-sustaining white grains of a brightening smile, a reassuring word, a caring ear, an hopeful look, a believing gesture, or an encouraging touch. By our feelings and thoughts and actions we have the ability to leave such a wonderful taste in each student’s mouth. We have the opportunity to add an enhancing flavor to each person around us. We can create a thirst, if we choose to be a salt lick, to question, imagine, discover and create. And, if we do not believe with all of our heart that our teaching truly matters and that we can make a difference, if we do not have an authentic–an authentic–desire to contribute, if we have lost or never have discovered our “why,” if we do not self-administer what is right, we become a shell of a condescending person, conforming to ever-tightening and ever-dictating systems; our paycheck becomes merely a mercenary’s fee–an empty exchange of money for a task rendered at the unquestioned beckoning of a patron.

Molly and other stuff have really gotten me into me. As I look back on this year, there is so much more I have learned that can help me maintain my savor, certainly sharpen by flavor, that will help me better earn my “salarium agentum,” that will help me come closer to being worth my weight in salt. I would like to share what crystalized on my walk this morning:

that I would much prefer to be in a place where my positive thinking places me rather than where my negative thinking drags me or bogs me down;

that the definition of teaching is to change the world without taking on the world;

that teachers are like competitive ice skaters: they have to excel in both technical merit and artistic performance and earn scores based on a combination of both high tech and high tingle;

that to be a good teacher you don’t reveal to students how much you know and how smart you are. You reveal to students how much they know and how smart they are;

that it is better to act as explorers than as curators;

that behind every successful “what” and “how,” is a purposeful “why;”

that only by having the courage to be different can I be a role model for the dignity of individuality and uniqueness;

that kindness is always my best instinct, and sometimes I have to remind myself kindly and gently to be kind;

that only by being true to myself can I be true to other people;

that forgiving others and letting go of grievances is really important, but it is so tough;

that my immediate and strong emotional impulses are not always right or wise and that I’m better off not saying anything or making any decisions that can have a lasting impact;

that fighting “fire with fire,” that backfiring a flame, only leaves everyone in ashes;

that I can take more than I want to and more than I think I can, and that I’m still not wild about having to do it;

that “winning at any cost” really isn’t winning since there is no real victory without integrity;

that teaching, like anything else, is grounded in a simple manner of living–in love, belief, hope, and faith; it’s not grounded in strict adherence to the strict letters of the rules;

that often the approval of others simply costs too much;

that people of good will and intelligence often see things very differently and that disagreements are inevitable. We just have to be civil about it and respect each other;

that no matter how old I am, my life and my character are works in process and that every single day brings opportunities to improve;

that if I can learn to control my attitudes and reactions I have greater control, but it’s easier to control my actions than my attitudes;

that I feel better when I am living an important life than living a life to be important;

that the most significant thing I can do is help make someone else feel his or her life is significant;

that it’s not what happens to me that matters most, but what happens in me;

that there is uncommon and extraordinary magic, wonder, joy, fulfillment, richness, beauty, and richness in even the supposedly most common and ordinary moments and people;

that the true test is my willingness to do the right thing even when it costs more than I want to pay;

that when I am surprised at what goes on in the class, it is a reflection that I really don’t know what is going on in each student–or in myself;

that I must have an incurable heart condition;

that I must have a purpose that will energize and inspire me to the very core, and that will render the daily annoyances and distractions insignificant;

And, I’ve learned that if I throw these grains over my left shoulder to blind the evil spirits, I will be better able to keep myself righted however any situation or person may want to capsize me.

Pass the salt!

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

Well, advising has been on my mind lately. As Co-Chair of the University Strategic Planning Committee on Student Learning and Retention, all week I’ve been responding to a report by a University Committee on Academic Advising. I’ve been sharing my ideas and recommendations about advising with the members of both committees, our Strategic Planning Officer, President, and Vice-President of Academic Affairs. When I thought I was finished with the topic, I received a letter under my office door and an e-mail message on my computer. The first was a heart-tearing self-evaluation from a student. It read like a biography of Humpty Dumpty lying at the base of the wall. I wish I could share it. It is a unsettling synopsis of the daily pressured adjustments and confrontations students are having with who they were, who they are, and who they will be. I’ll just say without betraying a confidence it shows how students are being pulled in a thousand family and personal and academic directions, struggling to live up to everyone else’s expectations, finding themselves in a bubbling cauldron of testing, being tested, questioning, being questioned, doubting, being doubted, discovering, challenging and being challenged, pressuring and being pressured, be discovered, examining, being examined; how they find that college life isn’t a pretty brochure or a glitzy tour; how they get bitten on their butts by growling reality; and, how they have freedom and responsibility and independence thrust upon them with little understanding of how to handle them or their subsequent obligations and consequent consequences. This distracted silent lamb desperately was asking both if I could be one of the king’s men and help her be her own king’s man. Then, there was a message from a faculty member at a southwestern university. I had been in an exchange about faculty workloads. (Don’t get me started on that one.) Anyway, he asked me if I thought advising is so important that faculty should “have to take on the onus of this extra job and take time away from more important responsibilities.” Probably a question more of our colleagues on our campuses ask then we care to admit. He went on to ask in a tone of “I shouldn’t have to and don’t really want to do this” just “what is the purpose of advising? Can’t the students schedule their own classes themselves? After all, they’re adults.”

His was not a rhetorical question; nor was he the lone faculty voice in the dark. Why is it that so many faculty so depreciate the value of advising and reduce it to a meatless and spiritless skeleton of mere scheduling and so limit it to one week a term? I suppose if you believe you’re in the information transmission business it would be a valid position. I suppose if you believe your major responsibility was to research and publish it would be an acceptable position. And, if you convinced yourself that these kids are worldly adults, or the non-traditional adult students are stalwart persons, it would be understandable. And yet, why is it that Richard Light at Harvard said in the fifth chapter of his book, “Making The Most Of College, Students Speak Their Minds,” that good advising may be the single most underestimated endeavor to help insure a successful college experience, that “we care” advising plays an important role not only in student retention but also in student collegiate success, that purposeful advising positively influences individual growth, development, and that purposeful advising generates overall satisfaction with the faculty and the institution? Advising, then, “purposeful advising,” if we listen to Richard Light, should not be a box-checking job you reluctantly or perfunctorily perform or a burdensome assignment you have to bear, but a calling you hear and follow.

Notice Richard Light used the term “purposeful advising” and this inquiring professor asked about the purpose of advising. Purpose. Why. Asking for the purpose of advising is a good question. Asking for a purpose of anything we do is a good question, that is, providing our answer isn’t the traditional bunch of bland, vague, meaningless, empty, impersonal, punchless catch phrases taken from the “It Sounds Good” book that we find strung together in mission statements. No, a purpose has to be personal; it has to have heart; and, it has to zip if it is to have any purpose. A purpose is an empowering force. It is a tether. It anchors you against being thrown about by the forces of the random winds and the haphazard circumstances that buffet our campuses. It steadies and focuses and resolves. It steadies when we want to vacillate. It calms when we want to be impulsive. It strengthens us in the face of timidity, insecurity, and fear. It offers determination to persevere through the distractions and dissuasions. A purpose is both an empowering “being” and “doing.” It’s there in every moment of each of our decisions. It forces us to put first things first, to head due north following our moral compass, to maintain our authenticity and integrity. It gives that moment to moment meaning we all need in what we do and who we are. Our purpose is the most important thing we can have. Like the earth’s deep inner core, it’s a deep inner sustaining fuel.

My answer to this professor was short and simple:
“My purpose is to serve.”

I offered him my even simplier specific two-word purpose statement though that especially was a long time in developing:

“cultivating people.”

The full sentence of my purpose reads:

“I exist to serve by cultivating people.”

For me that defines, “purposeful advising,” as well as “purposeful teaching,” and “purposeful administering,” not to mention a “purposeful institution.”

I have become a servant teacher, a servant adviser, a servant educator living in the service of each student hoping that my university someday will become a true servant institution of higher education existing in the serve of each student. If my President has his way, it will.

Understand that my purpose statement is not just a “to do” on the list of things to be done. It’s not to be filed away and brought out and waved about at those times we consider salary increase, promotion, or tenure. I assure you, as illustrated by my good friend and colleague, Pat Burns, head of the University’s first year experience program, when you have that purpose, you don’t need a line on your resume; you don’t need to be important; you don’t need to be famous. It is enough to know you’re doing important things and that you’re making a difference.

For me, my purpose statement has become a powerful determinant. In my capacity as an adviser, which to me is an every day responsibility and activity, I exist to serve by helping a student become aware of his or her full potential, and I don’t mean just academic potential. It links my purpose of advising with my purpose of teaching, that is, to be that person who is there to help a student help him/herself become the person he or she is capable of becoming. It also links up with the purpose of any educational institution, that is, to build up people. Cultivate people as an adviser and/or as a teacher and/or as an administrator and/or as a staff person and you will create the future.

Without that sense of purpose how can we have a vision? Where do we get the power to see beyond what’s in front of us today, to imagine, to invent, to create, to have a dream snapshot, to hold on to an inspiring hope. to become what is yet to be, to have a view into the future rather than live in memories? And, without that sense of purpose how can we have a mission, that is, doing today what we need to do today to fulfill and express our purpose and get us closer to our vision? Only when our purpose, vision, and mission are aligned, are we right on our purpose’s head and exist to serve to cultivate people.

And so, in answer to this professor and with that student in mind, at our institutions the true advisers, the “purposeful advisers,” whomever they be, officially or unofficially, are more than mere schedulers. They should not be little more than ignored or tolerated “second sons.” They are critical. They are “purposeful” people. They are wisdom developers. They are people with a for-profit brain to help each student learn how to make a living and a not-for-profit soul to help each student learn how to live. We need to help students acquire wisdom, not just create a class schedule or decide on a major. Class schedules and majors will not offer any student the art of living or working skillfully in whatever situation he or she finds him/herself. Wisdom will.

So I ask. What is your two word purpose statement for whatever you do–for your advising, for your teaching, and/or for your administering, for whatever you do at your school?

Make it a good day.

–Louis–