I’ll keep this brief and let you draw out the meaning of this part of a conversation we had yesterday in class about “studying.”

“Why do you underline or highlight what you’re reading in the textbook?” I asked.

“So I can go back over it,” Sheila (not her real name) volunteered.

“Why do you want to go back over it?” I probed.

“Because it’s important,” she answered.

“What makes it important?”

“I feel it’s going to be on the test,” she asserted with confidence.

“Feel it’s going to be on the test.” I calmly and softly repeated her words as I sprung the trap. “But, we don’t have tests in this class. So, what are you going to underline or highlight as you read the textbook?”

A sudden, stunned, and confused look. Silence. Pregnant, telling, and revealing silence.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

I am an activist. I actively have discussions with myself, usually on my pre-dawn meditative walks. But, for the past month I’ve been grounded by this cold that has been hanging on and on and on and on. So, this balmy January springy morning I had a pre-dawn conversation with myself by the fishpond. It’s at these ruminating times I dare to look at myself and reflect on what is working, what is working sometimes, and what is not working. It affords me the insight to know that I have a choice to react to that and those around me. It’s at these times I talk with myself about whether I am pursuing my vision, whether I am best serving, am I adhering to my creed. I think asking the questions is far easier than hearing the answers. But, if I didn’t hear the answers to my compelling questions, I couldn’t make the necessary decision to walk the right road.

So, I thought I’d share with you some thoughts that crossed my mind and heart as this new semester just completed its first week:

1. From experience, from passion, from a vision, from reflection, and from common sense, I am a student of daily life. It’s an interest in people that has led me to understand that everything in a person’s life has an influence on everything else in a person’s life. Wherever you go, there you are. What happens outside the classroom is tightly intertwined to what occurs inside the classroom, and what happens on the inside of a student reflects in what happens on the outside. It no different with me. So if I am interested in both my and a student’s performance, I have to be interested in both the whole student and the whole me as a person.

2. It’s the power of creativity and imagination that makes us all powerful. The power doesn’t solely lie in acquiring information. It’s more about acquiring the ability to learn how to learn and to be imbued with the love to learn That ability doesn’t lie in memorization or in grade getting or even smarts. It doesn’t lie in knowing the material because odds are that material will be soon outdated. It lies in the talents of curiosity, passion, perseverance, imagination, creativity. They are more important, far more important, to individual achievement than any IQ or GPA.

3. Test. Test. Test. I sometimes think that No Child Left Behind and the Spelling Commission’s Report are and will be to education what Katrina was to New Orleans. Standardized testing, under the aegis of accountability and answerability, is the most effective means our governmental and educational systems have created for suppressing individuality and creativity.

4. Test. Test. Test. Educational is not just about teaching and learning content. It’s also about the development of sensibilities of one’s self and of one’s place in the world. A student’s development depends on learning values, building self-esteem, understanding how to deal with frustrations, having respect for others, increasing self-confidence, delaying gratification, rising to challenges and seeing them as opportunities to grow, all these things are essential for a student, a human being, to learn.

5. Test. Test. Test. Our educational system has become too instrumental. It’s teaching students that the only important things are those things that will be on the test. It’s teaching them more how to do well on tests and less how to think for themselves. So, while it may produce more informed people, the question is whether it produces more innovative people?

6. Test. Test. Test. We academics have only ourselves to blame. We think if you have been in business or you have an advanced degree in a discipline that you can go into a class and teach without any preparation for classroom teaching. That suggests that the content of what is “taught” is the only thing that matters. It’s that old bugaboo of “if you know it, you can teach it.”

7. Each student you meet has something to teach you. If you choose to learn each lesson, teaching becomes increasingly fulfilling, difficulties will become less difficult, many of the things that once held you back will lose their power to do so, and joys will become more profound.

8. For a teacher to be inspiring, her or his teaching must be inspiring to her/himself. She or he must have intense feelings about teaching and deep contemplations about it no less than she or he has about her discipline

9. We say that many students have turned into cunning little careerists, jockeying grades, and awards. Why shouldn’t they. They’ve been trained to be that way. In fact, many academics have turned into cunning careerists, jockeying for renown, tenure, advancement, and building their sub-specialty empires called expertise.

10. There is a superiority of the quest to make a difference in someone’s life over entering an additional line on a resume

11. A devotion to reputation can easily erode an academic’s integrity in the classroom.

12. A devotion to tenure can more easily erode an academic’s integrity in the classroom

13. Teaching is more attitude, more intention, than method or technique. I think teaching is in many ways like art. When teaching is alive in the teacher, she or he becomes inventive, creative, imaginative, adventurous, daring, challenging, and enlightening

14. By accepting our own shadow we see the sunshine in others.

15. Any student, anyone of us, has to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; we should never ignore, let go unclaimed, and throw out anyone.

16. Teaching is not a celebration of ego.

17. Our work as scholars is fueled by an insatiable curiosity about matters related to our discipline. Why don’t we have comparable curiosity about the people we label students. Why isn’t our classroom a room filled with ‘I wonder?

18. We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily difference we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee. The foundation of being a great teacher, then, is honoring the small things of the present moment, instead of pursuing the idea of becoming a great teacher.

19. Too many use the “100% game” as an excuse not to experiment. Achievers concern themselves with excellence, but do not obsess over perfection. Nothing is perfect and works for everyone. Things get done by doing them in the real world, not by rationalizing that conditions aren’t perfect and the result won’t be 100%.

20. I am always amazed how people think it so necessary to create an abstruse jargon when it comes to education–or anything for that matter. I find that when I am deeply affected by a student’s achievement beyond what that particular student believe he or she was capable of doing, I can’t find adequate words to describe it.

21. For the sake of each student, that’s why the whole of academia exists.

22. You know, if you see the beauty and sacredness in each student, you’ll connect with each student’s possibilities. That why seeing each student that way feels good. It encourages, inspires, supports, and reinforces.

23. Power! Want to exercise power? Want to be a powerful influence? Then, don’t see power in terms of imposing or controlling or manipulating or dictating or being tyrannical. That kind of exercise of authority doesn’t reflect intelligence or wisdom. It is exercised by the weak and insecure. It smothers. Its impact is pathological. Well, Jung reminds us that where the most powerful power you can exercise resides. It’s in a little gentleness, a bit of kindness, a tad of caring, and a lot of loving.

24. Nothing is more valuable than every moment of teaching, for each minute should be a sacred quest. The glory is for each student to be fully alive in the teacher’s eyes and heart. A true teacher has these qualities: love, faith, generosity, caring, empathy, compassion, and humility.

Whew. An even two dozen. That’s all for now.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

Can’t sleep. Can’t go out on the streets. Coughing. Coughing. Coughing.

Hope each of you had a joyous holiday season. I did–and didn’t. Susan and I had spent the week of Chanukah in California lighting up our lives by spoiling the grandkids. Unfortunately, our little, mischievous, “two and three-quarter” year old Nina gave both us, especially me, one heck of a cold in return. It was not a nice present. I’m still unwrapping it. This “crud” just won’t go away.

We returned to Valdosta on Christmas. And though I was sick as a dog and not looking forward to turning around for a New Year’s week in the uninviting and cold environs of Boston, off I went with Susan to see her brother and his family coughing, sneezing, wheezing, and aching. I’m glad I did even though I placed myself under virtual house arrest.

We hit Valdosta Thursday night. I don’t want to see another plane, especially those thirteen row cigars with wings they call regional planes, for a long time. This morning, on the computer screen a list of 929 messages faced me. Not really in the mood to engage in serious discussions about final grades, student course evaluations, teaching religion in class, the education value of community colleges, I exercised my index finger and tested out the deleted key. But, one message struck me and stopped me in my tracks. It merely said, “Joyful.” That’s what I needed in this time of a stuffed nose, watery eyes, a pair of clogged lungs, and atrophying muscles.

It wasn’t the uplifting, “motivational” holiday message I thought it was. And yet, it was. It’s turning out to be just what the doctor ordered. Certainly a better treatment for my spirit than the foul tasting cough medicine I am being force to swallow by my personal Nurse Ratched. Anyway, the note was from a student who had been in class this past fall semester. She had been a constant challenge, and that’s all I’ll say.

“….I just looked at my grade in class. I can’t believe it and I still can’t believe what I had to do and did to deserve to keep that A you gave us on the first day of class. I never would have gotten it if you hadn’t gotten in my face that day and said to me, ‘I won’t let you fail yourself or this course.’ I learned so much about myself thanks to you. I’ll never forget how you said, ‘It’s not about your ability. It’s all about attitude. So get a good one that makes you feel capable.’ You kept being in my face until I slowly got in my own face. Why did you do that? Why did to put so much into me when no one else ever has?….”

I just wrote her back:

“It’s simple. Like I said, it’s all about attitude–yours and mine. When you feel confident in yourself, you’ll feel better about yourself; when feel better about yourself, you’ll be comfortable in your skin; when you’re comfortable in your skin, you’ll take pride in yourself; and when you take pride in yourself, you’ll be stronger to take on any challenge hurled at you; when you’re stronger to take on any challenge, doing all those apparently little things lead to doing the big things. As that happens, you’ll be less mousey, will disbelieve less, come out from hiding in the shadows more, blend less in with the surroundings, and go along to get along less. You’ll motivate yourself more, take on more challenges, see them more as opportunities than as obstacles, achieve more, dazzle more, be more confident, and be more joyful. It’s no different with me or anyone else. When I had begun to believe that there was joy for me in working with and for each student such as you rather in just working for myself, and experienced that joy, the classroom truly became a significant and even momentous place of joyous celebration. It still is. So, to answer your question, you give me joy as much as you give yourself joy. Never underestimate the power of joy. To ignore or deny the value and power of joy in yourself as well as in myself, is in itself a form of obstructive sadness.”

My new semester begins Monday. This message reminds me of the human element in education. I must always remember that with emerging demands for independence, fears about peer acceptance, pressures of family, worries about extracurricular activities, unsuredness with new and unfamiliar surroundings, a continuous search for self-identity, these adolescents–they are not “adults–and even “non-traditional” people, are on a physical and emotional and intellectual and spiritual roller coaster. I must remember that like every generation before them, including ours, these fellow human beings have a surface shyness or arrogance or over-confidence that reveal or mask deep insecurities about most things. They will make mistakes, act irrationally, behave badly, and be thoroughly self-absorbed. They actually need us more, though they and we will usually deny it. And despite continual “battles,” if I’m open, if I’m caring, if I’m authentic, if I’m approachable, I will experience glorious moments that both they and I will cherish always. I must remember not to belittle, ignore, or underestimate the importance of their feelings. It may seem like they are overreacting, but they feel emotions like embarrassment, loneliness, insecurity, confusion, frustration, and love truly and intensely. It’s horribly disrespectful to minimize or discount these feelings with useless advice like “It’s nothing” or “You’ll get over it” or “Everyone feels that way.” Nor is it helpful to dismiss or invalidate their feelings by saying, “That’s touchy-feely nonsense” or “They’re adults” or “It’s not my concern” or “I’m not a counselor, parent, or clergyman.”

I must remember that each student is important. Someday, these students will be the future. And, I have a hand in shaping them and influencing it.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–
——–