I Was Conned

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I just discovered that last year I was conned by a student. Boy, was I taken in–big time. My response to her heart-rednering story had been dictated by my heart. I believed a clever and dishonest student who went to such great pains to pull a sting on me. I was set up. She had made false entries in her journal; she had others pretend to be someone else on the telephone; she had believeable reasons for missing class and not participating in the projects; she lied to the other members of her community who in support of her became unwitting accomplices; she lied to me. Like Jabez Stone, she had traded her soul. She had devalued and disrespected herself in quest of the holy grail of a lousy grade she needed to transfer. Too bad she didn’t apply her energy to better purposes. I gave her another chance at another place. I acted with sympathy, understanding, and generosity. I had misplaced my trust. Some would say I was dumb to do it. She would sneer that I was a push-over. I discovered that she had duped others professors. That didn’t ease the feeling of having been violated. I have to admit that I didn’t like my life being invaded with a lie. It was like the feeling when our life savings were embezzled by a friend a few years ago. And yet, I honestly felt more sympathy and disappointment for her than anger towards her. I honestly am saddened for her and not for me. She hurt herself, not me. She lost her integrity, I didn’t and won’t. This lousy habit of deceit she is developing will come back to bite her in one way or another. That I guarantee.

Would I do it again? Would I give another student a second chance. You bet. I presently am, and their continued commitment to their promise is making it easier. I’m not pursuing perfection or waiting until I’m perfect at what I do and what I believe. I’m not waiting until for students to act perfectly as paragons of virtue before I risk making a mistake in judgement. What she did has bearing on me only if I give her permission to grind down my bearings. I cannot and will not. However tough it is at this moment, I won’t let her have a bearing on another student at another time in another situation. I must take one person at a time without listening to the whispers of her ghost in my ear and without letting them push me over the edge into the black abyss of insulating preconception about and stereotying of “all students.”

This isn’t the first time and I’m sure it won’t be the last. Whenever we extend our hand in encouragement and support, we take the risk of getting it slapped away–or bitten off. But, if I kept my hand in my pockets, I’d stop being a teacher. There’d be no relationship, no friendship, no connection, no hope, no faith, no belief, no love. I’d violate my promise to Kim and the nail polish on my right pinky would lose its meaning and be reduced to mere gaudiness. No, my hand will continue to out there. It must. Think how darkened I would be, how less my world would be, if I no longer set out each day to make it a “make a difference” day, if I no longer set out to lighten the life or brighten the day of a student. That horrible thought gives me strength to handle this without surrendering; I can rebound from disappointment. I’m not going to over-react. I’m not going to let her shake my faith. It’s not easy. It’s a challenge. It’s tempting to take the easy way out of this and protect myself from the next time. Then, if I did, I might hurt some needy student just because I didn’t have an emotional resilence, an inner strength to cleanse my inner self of some toxic feelings, and a bounce to rebound back from disappoint.

I think if I let her make me into a cynic that would be a far greater tragedy. I would be defeated rather than merely having lost. I would get stuck rather than sucking it up and moving on. I would choose to cling to dejection rather than merely accepting rejection. No, my skin is thicker than that. I’ll trust the Chinese advisers to the Emperor, “And this, too, shall pass,” and continue to believe truly that most students out there are good people. I refuse to become so suspicious of a student’s plea that I refuse to help for fear of being fooled again. Surely, that would be foolish, for if I did, I’d have a bigger problem than being occasionally taken in. I am not going to let a coldness and distance creep into my soul and make me so cautious and callous that I will turn a deaf ear and blind eye to a plea for help. If my free-flowing kindness keeps a less than honest student in business, so be it. I can live with that. I can’t live with being a person so on guard that my caring and compassion shrivels and puts an honest student out of business.

Ms Trombly, my high school secretarial arts teacher, would have told me to listen to my compassionate instinct to be empathetic and embracing, not to listen to any egotistical instinct to be outraged and disengaged. “Louis,” she once told me, “learn shorthand, not shortcuts. They’re not the same.”

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

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About Louis Schmier

LOUIS SCHMIER “Every student should have a person who wants to help him or her help himself or herself become the person he or she is capable of becoming, and I’ll be damned if I am ever going to let one human being fall through the cracks in my classes without a fight.” How about a snapshot of myself. But, what shall I tell you about me? Something personal? Something philosophical? Something pedagogical? Something scholarly? Nah, I'll dispense with that resume stuff. Since I believe everything we do starts from who we are inside, what we believe, what we perceive, and what we do is an extension of ourselves, how about if I first say some things about myself. Then, maybe, I can ease into other things. My name is Louis Schmier. The first name rhymes with phooey, the last with beer. I am a 76 year old - in body, but not in mind or spirit - born and bred New Yorker who came south in 1963. I met by angelic bride, Susie, on a reluctant blind date at Chapel Hill. We've been married now going on 51 years. We have two marvelous sons. One is a VP at Samsung in San Francisco. The other is an artist with food and is an executive chef at a restaurant in Nashville, Tn. And, they have given us three grandmunchkins upon whom we dote a bit. I power walk 7 miles every other early morning. That’s my essential meditative “Just to …” time. On the other days, I exercise with weights to keep my upper body in shape. I am an avid gardener. I love to cook on my wok. Loving to work with my hands as well as with my heart and mind, I built a three room master complex addition to the house. And, I am a “fixer-upper” who allows very few repairmen to step across the threshold. Oh, by the way, I received my A.B. from then Adelphi College, my M.A. from St. John's University, and my Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I have been teaching at Valdosta State University in Georgia since 1967. Having retired reluctantly in December, 2012, I currently hold the rank of Professor of History, Emeritus. I prefer the title, “Teacher”. Twenty-five years ago, I had what I consider an “epiphany”. It changed my understanding of myself. I stopped professoring and gave up scholarly research and publication to devote all my time and energy to student. My teaching has taken on the character of a mission. It is a journey that has taken me from seeing only myself to a commitment to vision larger than myself and my self-interest. I now believe that being an educator means I am in the “people business”. I now believe that the most essential element in education is caring about people. Education without caring, without a real human connection, is as viable as a person with a brain but without a heart. So, when I am asked what I teach, I answer unhesitatingly, “I teach students”. I am now more concerned with the students’ learning than my teaching, more concerned with the students as human beings than with the subject. I am more concerned with reaching for students than reaching the height of professional reputation. I believe the heart of education is to educate the heart. The purpose of teaching is to instill in all students genuine, loving, lifelong eagerness to learn and foster a life of continual growth and development. It should encourage and assist students in developing the basic values needed for learning and living: self-discipline, self-confidence, self-worth, integrity, honesty, commitment, perseverance, responsibility, pursuit of excellence, emotional courage, creativity, imagination, humility, and compassion for others. In April, 1993, I began to share ME on the internet: my personal and professional rites of passage, my beliefs about the nature and purpose of an education, a commemoration of student learning and achievement, my successful and not so successful experiences, a proclamation of faith in students, and a celebration of teaching. These electronic sharings are called “Random Thoughts”. There are now over 1000 of them floating out there in cyberspace. The first 185, which chronicles the beginnings of my journey, have been published as collections in three volumes, RANDOM THOUGHTS: THE HUMANITY OF TEACHING, RANDOM THOUGHTS, II: TEACHING FROM THE HEART, RANDOM THOUGHTS, III: TEACHING WITH LOVE, and RANDOM THOUGHTS, IV: THE PASSION OF TEACHING. The chronicle of my continued journey is available in an Ebook on Amazon's Kindle in a volume I call FAITH, HOPE, LOVE: THE SPIRIT OF TEACHING. There a few more untitled volumes in the works..

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