Just Some Thankful Random Thoughts

I apologize for sending another Random Thought so close on the heels of the previous one. I scribbled this down last Sunday night and had forgotten it until I cleaned out the pockets of my pants last night. I hope you will bear with me:

Here I am, sitting on the floor at Gate 29, E Concourse, waiting in Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport. It’s an especially reflective wait. I’m waiting for a flight home into the arms of my Susan; I’m waiting to take a biopsy on my prostate; I’m waiting for the coming Thanksgiving with family and dear friends–and some strangers.

I just spent what can only be called four glorious days at the Lilly conference on excellence in college teaching. It is tempting to think of the Lilly conference is just another professional conference. That isn’t true. The conference, for me, was about more than sessions on pedagogy, technology, methodology, techniques, philosophy of teaching. On the surface, the Lilly conference is one of information, association, education, and affirmation. For me, as I told many first-time attending “newbies,” as it is for others, Lilly is not just a professional conference. If anyone saw how many of us hug each at the conference’s beginning and end, you’d know what I mean. It’s like a Thanksgiving gathering. It’s a feast; it’s a retreat; it’s an experience; it’s a learning community; it’s a family reunion at which we old timers strengthen friendships, make new ones, and exuberantly welcome others into the fold.

A lot of us who have attended the Lilly conference year after year after year talk about something we call the “Lilly spirit,” something that transcends each of us, but few of us have really nailed it down. The fact that we feel and acknowledge the presence of such a transcendental feeling is evidence of its existence–whatever that it is–and separates Lilly off from most other professional conference.

Here and now, feeling that aura still enveloping me, I’d like to take a stab at it. Lilly is something that lures us. Lilly lets us see how very rich we who attend are. When anyone is experiencing the proverbial slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, others protectively hover around them in support and encouragement. I’ve seen that occur time after time after time. It happened to me. Whenever anyone one of us cannot attend they feel an emptiness and they are consciously missed. Whenever anyone of us dies, we feel a deep and sustaining loss and mourn together. I remember how we felt when we lost Beverly Firestone and Tony Grasha.

Lilly is a bonding of friends old and new; Lilly is a sense of belonging. Here you will not find the flaunting of resumes. Egos and reputations are set aside, for egos and reputation are incompatible with sharing and gratitude and humility. In all the years that I’ve attended Lilly, I’ve never heard one back-stabbing word, not one word! Never! Unlike most other professional conference, unlike the machination on many campuses, Lilly honors generosity, humility, encouragement, uniqueness, creativity, imagination, uniqueness, tolerance, respect, kindness, welcome, inclusion. At Lilly there is plenty for all and plenty for all to share.

Most of the “newbies” don’t expect that; upon their arrival they don’t understand that. But, at Lilly there is no cast system as the old timers consciously make efforts to take newbies under their wings; and most “newbies” quickly and unexpectedly embrace it and get wrapped up in it. Few, to their surprise, fight it. It is so easy for a “newbie” to be transformed into an “old-timer” at his or her first conference. It is magical; it is mysterious. Then, again, is not when you’re in a gathering where everyone cares for and about each other.

We all find each other in a common effort than can only be described as courageous. Yes, courageous. Whether those who attend Lilly know it or not, they are courageous people. They have the courage to change. Most everyone is there to listen and to reflect far more than they are to talk. They are there to unlearn as they learn, to break old habits as they find new ones, to share themselves as others share with them. They was there because they have a sense of how complicated education really is; they came with the admission that they know what they’ve been doing hasn’t been working properly; they come knowing they can do better; they come to find ways to improve and change; they graciously accept criticism that is always respectfully given; they come with to find things that make more sense.

So, while waiting in Atlanta as everyone who flies through Atlanta does, I thought I’d jot down just some, but by no means all, of what I’ve learned in formal sessions, at the dining tables, in the hallways, on the steps, and upon what I must reflect in the coming weeks and months. I offered a full day pre-conference workshop and a three hour conference session. Yet, I took so much away from so many people than I gave. On this Thanksgiving day I am so thankful:

I am thankful to Alex Fancy from Mount Allison, who reminded me, as he always does, that teachers who know how to give their all all the time are the ones who have the best chance of getting others to give it their all;

I am thankful to Linc Fisch who shared that the most effective teachers are not the ones with the longest resume or the greatest reputation. The most effective teachers’ effectiveness is in their attitude and their ability to energize and encourage others with their optimism, enthusiasm, encouragement, support, faith, belief in them.

I am thankful to Craig Nelson who said teachers should be lousy poker players; they should never know when to fold.

I talked with Dee Fink from Oklahoma about things other than football. We agreed on the importance of purpose and meaning in what we do. Over coffee we talked about how academics can’t be wrapped around their self-centered “I.”

Jim Eison and I discuss that we will not get to the purpose and meaning driven “why” of all of our “hows” and “whats” as long as we ask self-centered questions dealing with “my” security, “my comfort,” “my safety,” “my ambitions,” “my reputation,” “my dreams.” If you want find your “why,” if want a purpose driven teaching, you have to have an “otherness,” a focus on each student.

Doug Robertson reminded me of what I’ll call “the power of new,” how we should do new things and stretch at least a little bit each term. Radha Gracia showed me that, literally, in her two hour heat Yoga session as we stretched, twisted, bent, sweated, creaked, cracked, and groaned.

An education should be about respecting freedom. Ken Styer from Stark State University of Technology and Kathyrn Locke from Shawnee State University helped me see more clearly that a true education should be about helping students become thoughtful, about helping students develop the habit of teaching themselves to think in informed and flexible ways across a whole range of concerns in life beyond mere employment. Ken and Kathern came as newbies. They came to learn and I learned so much from them. We came as strangers to each other; we left as new-found friends.

Pablo Aquino offered me insight that teaching is not primarily a matter of authority or knowledge, but of the use of authority and knowledge to cause change. They not only could choose their values, attitudes and behavior, but they promote changes in their school environments through advocacy and action. Teachers who simply do that job so well change lives for the better.

I was told by a “newbie” in hotel management that the taste of a chicken is determined by what the chicken eats. It’s no different than a student or each of us. So, I ponder the question of what it is we are feeding each student and ourselves.

There is my good and zany friend, Ron Berk, who unabashedly oozes the joyful child as we all should. He said in one of his rare sane moments, attitude is more important than information. And so, when we enter a classroom, we should think of the student first and the subject second. Ain’t that the truth.

I remember talking with Todd Zacrajsek from Central Michigan about the need for academics to accept the hard truth that they are not immune to the affliction of learned fearfulness and helplessness that plagues so many students.

Teaching is a matter of setting examples, Ken Barton and I discussed, of modeling principles above convenience and safety and politics, of doing rather than merely mumbling or saying, of standing up rather than merely sitting around.

Milt Cox, mentioned in a passing conversation, that teachers, like anyone else, are going to have precisely what they think they’re going to have. They are going to become precisely the persons they think they are going to become. So, we each should take heed in what we want and think.

Want to think of something scary? The number 3. My good friend, Luz Mangurian from Towson State, reminded me once again that a teacher has just the first three minutes–I repeat that, the first three minutes–of the first day of class to grab a student; otherwise the student is lost for the entire term. Want to think of something just as scary? 93% of what students hear is spoken with facial expressions, body language, and vocal tones. 93%!! And we academics so love to talk. Luz also reminded me, that students size us teachers as soon as they enter the classroom, that they are most interested in who we are than in what we know. It is the students, said Luz, who are the real experts in who cares about them. The students! Not us. But, who truly listens to the students. We should however uncomfortable or inconvenient their words may be.

In sessions after sessions, conversations after conversations, I was reminded how much in our humanity we faculty are like our students and how much we faculty ignore that simple but powerful tool of empathy.

Milt Cox, the founder and continuer of Lilly helped to create a paradox. I left physically energized and bone tired; my brain was bursting, going on and on and on like the pink bunny, and dead. I was filled and depleted. All at the same time. Neat trick.

At the end of the conference, we always ask of each of us give a hearty and deep sincere thanks. And, we do. Here, at Hartsfield-Jackson, for all of this and so much more, I am so thankful as Thanksgiving day approach to all of those–Melody, Melissa, Laura, Michele, Will, Gregg, Miami University student helpers, et al–who worked behind the scenes in preparation and worked equally hard during this conference. I know a lot of them. I am grateful to them. The magic of Lilly is that all those chores don’t seem like chores to them or us. The “spirit of Lilly,” to me is not conference we all do everything in our power to attend; it is the idea that we care about and tenderly nurse.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

Why Do I Have To Wait?

“When I retire, I will _____________(fill in the blank with something joyful).” If you read the newspapers, with companies going bankrupt and government taking over corporate pension funds, retirement doesn’t appear to be so much of a guaranteed guarantee, appealing prospect, or blissful promise as it once was, even if you were a high level manager.

But, why does finding my bliss have to be something in the blessed future?

What got me to thinking about this issue was a brief conversation I had yesterday in the local hospital’s outpatient waiting room as I waited to do the pre-op paperwork for my biopsy.

“You still out at the university?”

“Yes.”

“How many years have you been there?”

“Thirty-seven plus sick leave time.”

“You’re about at the point to retire, aren’t you?”

“I can any time I want.”

“You going to?”

“No. They’ll have to carry me out if I have my way.”

“Why don’t you retire?”

“I’m having fun. I wake up with a ‘yes’ every morning looking forward to going into class. Why do I stop doing something that I’m happy doing and where I can make a big difference?”

“That’s good,” this person sighed. “That’s important. Really important. Going to the garage became a chore, a real heavy chore, for me. It had no purpose for me except being just check getting work.”

I can’t tell you how many times I had similar conversations week after week. When anyone asks me if I am retired or when am I planning to retire or if I know that I’m “losing money” still teaching, it gets me to wonder about those supposed wonder years marketed in the slick retirement community brochures and all those solving “golden years,” “the creative age,” and “101 Ways to….” books. It gets me to wonder about all those people who so look forward to retirement that they overlook today.

This is how I look at it. There’s a lot of attitude, attitude, attitude in my attitude.

Why do I have to wait to retire for a life of meaning, personal growth, and spiritual development? Why can’t I find them in a life of teaching?

Why should retirement be the best years of my life? Why isn’t now the best years of my life?

Why should I focus on retirement benefits when the real benefits are in today’s class?

Why should I wait for my retirement years to experience, as one book puts it, my “creative years” and the time when I awakened my “human potential?”

Why do I have to wait for the retirement years to be imaginative, creative, productive, and making a difference?

Why is the journey liberating and enriching only after retirement?

Why do I have to endure a sighful “ah me” until I retire to an excited “oh, boy?”

Why is the good life and a life of goodness something to look forward to rather than something lived right now?

Why do I have to retire in order to take time for the things that enrich my inner life?

My answer? I don’t. I don’t because I don’t choose it to be. It’s so much, almost all, attitude, attitude, attitude. This, today, is when I choose to feel purpose and meaning. This, today, is when I choose to be filled with fulfillment, happiness, and contentment. This, today, is when I choose to spin gold. This, today, is when I choose to experience my creative age. This, today, is when I choose to be adventurous. This, today, is when I choose to stretch myself, when I choose to have a good stretch, choose to become more. This, today, is when I choose to be awake to my potential. This, today, is when I choose to make a difference. All this choice makes the difference. This, today, is when, as Joseph Campbell might have said, I choose to follow my bliss.

Before I forget. Let me take this opportunity to wish all my American friends a most joyous and festive and sumptuous Thanksgiving. And, as you are about to go into a food coma from a caloric overdose, please remember: don’t eat and drive.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

A Failing of Our Higher Education System

Well, I’ve been meditating to get in the mood to go to the Lilly conference on excellence in college teaching held annually on the campus of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Actually, I don’t have to get myself up too much since I haven’t as yet come down to far from the conference I attended last week in Montreal (pronounced Mon-ray-al).

As I started warming myself up for Lilly in the chilly air on my pre-dawn walk this morning, I was thinking about a column by David Brooks that appeared a couple of days ago in the NY TIMES. In commenting about Thomas Wolfe’s recent book, he asserted, with what I feel is some degree of accuracy, that highly educated young people are tutored, taught, tested, monitored in all aspects of their intellectual and even sometimes their physical lives. There is, however, one area that is generally ignored, and it is the most important: character building. When it comes to this, most universities leave students alone and run for cover.

But, first a disclaimer. What I am about to share has nothing to do with liberal, middle-of-the road, conservative, humanist, secular, religious, left wing, right wing, and other labels. If it comforts anyone, I am an unashamed left over liberal dinosaur from the ’60s and ’70s, an unabashed card-carrying member of the ACLU, and president of my synagogue. I am a self-avowed character educator and wholeness teacher. I make no bones about that and offer no apologies.

With that being said, and there’s something to say for to having the need to say that, there’s a big push at my institution on retention, as well there should be. We assume that there’s something automatic about receiving a college degree, that a person with a degree is a better citizens, that a person with a degree will live more comfortably. And, when we accept a student into our academic fold, we accept a responsibility to that student to do whatever it takes to see that he or she graduates.

I don’t believe, however, success of any retention program should be merely determined by the increased numbers of persons who remain in school until they receive their degrees. It must also be determined by the quality of learning and personal growth that occurs during a student’s tenure on our campuses. It must not be determined just by a degree people receive to pursue a job. It must also be determined by the character of the people who leave and represent our institutions. We should be concerned with graduating an educated person, not merely a “degreed” person; we should be concerned with graduating a person with a “bachelor of experiences,” not merely a “bachelor of grades.”

What go me to thinking about this issue was a recent editorial by David Brook in the NY TIMES.

He may have overstated the situation, but not by much. The word character, the ground rules of life, seems so obsolete to so many of our students, a view that very few of academics seem willing to address head on. So many teachers think other are out of their minds when they advocate getting out the mind and into the heart and soul. So many academics wrap words like character, ethics, spirituality, heart, soul, spirit, virtue and morality in banishing, disowning, and often disavowing quotation marks as if there’s something quirky, out of place, about them that doesn’t belong in an intellectual climate. Sometimes I think so many academics feel so embarrassed, uneasy, queasy about having to get into their hearts and soul.

We academics will teach students “critical thinking skills;” we will hand students the information of a discipline; we will have them write term papers; we will test them; we will give them grades; we will teach them how to hunt for a job; we will get them ready for the research and publication world of the scholar. We will bestow on them the B.A., B.S., M.B.A., M.A., Ph.D. and a host of other often contrived degrees. But, where is our moral substructure? We teach the mind, but do we teach the soul? Ask that question and so many academics will assault you with “You’ve got to be out of your mind! This is not a church!”

Yet, I ask. Where is the guiding light, the true north, the value system? Where and when do we teach them how to use their learning beyond getting a grade, GPA, diploma, and paycheck? How do we show them the way to a proper and moral and ethical way of life? How to we help them traverse the spans between information, knowledge and wisdom? Do we teach them that the right thing is not always the easy, quick, and simple thing? Do we teach them that good people have to act like good people rather than merely mouth the good words. Do we help them learn to do the right thing in a world that seems to promote rationalizations and excuses that demean or trivialize simple acts of virtue? Do we help them to learn courage, to be willing to take risks, to stand up and be counted, without which there can be no lasting achievement?

I think it was Theodore Roosevelt who said, “To educate a person in the mind but not the morals is to educate a menace to society.” We’ve seen proof of that in headline after headline.

Yet, when it comes to morals and values and virtues, students are left so often in a vacuum, confused and with a vague feeling in their gut that they really should develop it on their own, outside, out of sight, in some place, from someone else, in some manner, shape, and form that only God knows how.

But we academics heartily and spiritedly man the battlements in defense of the Ivory Tower against such attacks that we must address the heart and spirit as well as the mind. We say “that’s not my job.” We say we’re not councilors or parents or clergy. We say that kind of education belongs in the home, church, synagogue, mosque, or wherever. We say we have to be dedicated to our discipline. We point to these one-shot band aid courses in business ethics, medical ethics, leadership we have created. We highlight clinical statements about plagiarism in our syllabi. We spotlight the glowing language in our mission statements. Then, with our thumbs held high, like little Jack Horners, we walk around, proud as you please, saying to ourselves, “What great character builders are we.”

Well, are we? Are they really learning “do what is right?” Or, are they learning “do what it takes?” Do they learn the value of virtue rather merely about virtue? Do we teach them to resist the temptation of trading integrity and honesty for grades, income, position, and power? Do they learn that the most important thing about being a good person is wanting to be a good person more than they want a big house, a big paycheck, a big bank account, a big reputation, a big wardrobe, a big ego? Do we enforce, advocate and model the core ethical values of trustworthiness, honesty, caring, integrity, respect, humility, responsibility, courage, and fairness? I wonder.

Look at so many of our graduates: athletic boosters, athletic coaches, athletes, college administrators, business executives, doctors, CPAs, clergy, lawyers, politicians, educators, soldiers, and God only knows who else. Most of them were not college dropouts, but they have proven themselves to be moral dropouts. No, it must be the dual mission of our educational system not only to teach students how to earn a good living, but how to live the good life as well. And, in that I wonder if we’re doing a good job.

You know, there are two kinds of people in this world. There are those who find the strength to do what they ought to do and those who find excuses not to. Whom do we graduate? People of character do the right thing even if no one else is, not because they think it will change the world, but because they refuse to be changed by the world. We have to strive to graduate not only honor students, but people who are honorable and put principle above convenience.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

There’s Nothing To Teaching

I had just returned from the exciting POD conference in Montreal. For almost two days, I ate, walked and talked among a large group of people associated with Teaching and Learning Centers on various collegiate campuses. In my reflections of the conference, I had said that to the person the people attending were a caring and mindful gathering of neat people, of educators dedicated to improving teaching and learning. Everyone really did care. They cared about each other; everyone really cared about their colleagues and students; everyone cared about teaching and learning; everyone listened carefully to each other; everyone was truly interested what each had to say and what each was doing; everyone was supportive and encouraging. The presenters in session after session dealt with ways to improve teaching and learning. Then, last night, still flying as high as the plane that brought me home, I received a sort message from a professor at a northeaster college which illustrated the difficulties the people in the Teaching and Learning Centers face. Short it may have been, but that message said a lot about academia. “Dr. Schmier,” she wrote, “I don’t see why you make such a big deal about teaching. There’s really nothing to it.” That was it!!

“There’s really nothing to it.” You can imagine how I felt, especially having just return from a conference of Teaching and Learning Center personnel who would argue that there’s a lot more to it. Needless to say, it raised an eyebrow. I wondered if this professor felt and displayed the same cavalier attitude towards her research and writing. I read that that short message over and over again. Then, it struck me this morning on my pre-dawn walk. She was absolutely right!! There is nothing to teaching! In fact, she didn’t go far enough. There are a whole lot of nothings to teaching, to effective teaching:

Nothing is routine
Nothing is mistake free
Nothing is comfortable
Nothing is safe
Nothing is convenient
Nothing is simple
Nothing is taken for granted
Nothing is always the same
Nothing is easy
Nothing is perfect
Nothing is quick
Nothing is guaranteed
Nothing is insignificant
Nothing is impossible
Nothing is objective
Nothing is disengaging
Nothing is from a distance

Yep, there’s a whole lot of nothings to teaching. When anyone accepts these nothings to teaching, those nothings will matter; and that will be something.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–