And finally, why did I say the FYE teachers and advisers are probably the most caring of faculty or staff on campus? Because they are. Do you really think that by and large most academics other than the FYE teachers and advisers would be in those first year classes if they had a choice? Think they would much prefer to deal more with professional upper-class majors or graduates? Do you really think that institutional leaders who crowd those first year students into nameless and faceless lecture halls by the hundreds in the name of economy and efficiency really are fond of those students or give much credence to those classes? Do you think institutions would be concerned with retention and graduation numbers if it weren’t for obligations imposed by contemporary outside pressures? Do you think the students don’t know all that? Why do you think those students are stunned, literally stunned, when a professor truly cares about them and respects them? If you want a glimpse at the answers to these questions, take a look at PBS’ Declining by Degrees.

 Now, why are those first year students crucial? My god, they’re human beings. They’re each a sacred, noble, valuable human being. They are each are someone’s son or daughter and we should treat them no less than we would want someone to treat our son or daughter That’s all anyone should have to say. But, alas, it’s not. I’ve said this once and I will say it over and over and over again. I will shout it from the rooftop and mountain peaks. What if we imagined that an angel preceded each student, walking before her or him proclaiming: ‘Make way! Make way for someone created in the image of God!’ What if we constantly thought of this, believed this, felt this, lived by this, clearly saw and heard such divine and ethereal messengers. Think it would make a difference how we would see each of those students, how we would listen to her or him, how we would feel about and think of and behave towards her or him? It does. Trust me. I know.

 In a practical sense, those FYE programs are critical. Why? Because the first year students are at the intersection of fundamental issues for themselves as well as for the whole of society. If you nurture them and they make it through successfully, they’re set up for life, and society is better for their achievement. If you weed them out and they don’t make it, they could end up in the burdensome underclass. This is why it’s almost malfeasance to treat the first year students the way most are coldly, matter-of-factly, even callously treated outside the FYE programs.

 Do you know what caring, respecting, loving do? The FYE people do. They know those attitudes encourage optimal intellectual, emotional, and spiritual growth; they know where caring rules, there is no will to ignore. They know that the creative heart and mind plays with those whom they love. They know the condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses. They know respect does not oppress, it liberates. They know caring, respecting, and love believe in the impossible and makes the impossible happen. They know caring, respect, and loving defy all reason. They know these attitudes don’t let their humanity get numbed by automatic conformity or uniformity. Instead, they force an individualization of those in that classroom, clarify vision, focus the senses, and strengthen convictions. They know that caring, respecting, and loving offer a deep immersion with students that nourish and enrich—and scares the hell out of those who don’t.

 That is why a teacher-student relationship based on trust and respect and confidentiality–and love–is so crucial. I see it all the time. Respect, caring, and love connect, empower, illuminate and understand like nothing else can. When given the chance and support and encouragement, these supposedly “don’t belong,” “letting everyone in” students are incredibly thoughtful, creative, imaginative, and talented. If you just love them, they lose their attitude; they stop posturing they come out from behind their defensive masks of toughness or shyness; they melt; and, they make it.

 Enough. Susan is stirring. Got to keep getting ready for China. We leave early tomorrow morning.

Make it a good day.

      –Louis–

 A student in one of my FYE courses came up to me after I had written the last “Words of the Day” on the board. “Who around here are the people you most admire?” he asked.

 I turned to him. “You know, I used to admire people who were famous, who had a sizeable reputation, who were in positions of authority, who were artistic, who were clever and witty. Man, for so many years I wanted to be like them. But, now, I admire especially our FYE teachers–to the person. .”

 “Why?’ he asked.

 “They, of all the academics on campus, care and are kind the most. ”

 “So?”

 “Have you seen on your FYE teachers, really seen them? I have, and on other campuses as well. For a variety of reasons, most professors really don’t like to deal with you first year students. Well, They’re teachers who have a special dedication and commitment to your achievement. They believe in you the most; they have hope for you the most. But, most important, they have a special affection for each of you; they get so excited about you, sing in the halls, and dance on their desks. They see you people; they see you as worthy purposes as you can find.”

 I went on to tell Sean that you can’t be kind and caring while being an egoist at the same time; you can’t be selfless and selfish at the same time; you can’t have a big heart if you have a big ego. Kindness is a welcoming embrace. Kindness has a healing power. It’s a heart softener. It clears and refreshes the air. Sometimes, just being kind, just saying that kind word or making that kind gesture is all that’s needed. Tenderness is a heck of a lot more important than toughness, and service is a greater remedy than self-centeredness. Some academics who are into their heads or their disciplines, but not really into people, may shake their heads and others may laugh, but we underestimate the healing power of kindness, sincere compassion, concern, empathy, and love.

 “Your FYE teachers are alchemists with a greater capability of transforming every one around them than most on campus because they are in the habit of consciously and unconditionally thinking, feeling, and pronouncing the words ‘I love you.’”
 
Make it a good day.

      –Louis–

 As I was saying, so many of us call these first year students “young adults” because it rationalizes and excuses the inclination of far too many of us academics to follow a “hands off,” disengaged policy. If the truth be told and admitted, so many of us just don’t or don’t want to deal with them as sacred, noble, unique, valuable, worthwhile, complex, complicated, and individual human beings. We usually have contact with them in those nameless, faceless, corralled herds we call survey courses too many of us feel we’d be better off without or are beneath our professionalism or are an imposition on our time or are palmed off to inexperienced and equally distracted TAs. So, we usually don’t want to deal with those students in a ways they need and in ways we demand others deal with each of us. We take or prefer the easy route of merely depersonalizing, transmitting, testing and grading information and skills.

 But, those faithful, caring, hopeful, and loving academics I know in the First Year Experience programs by whatever name they go by, I so admire them. Since I, by choice, handle only first year courses and participate in VSU’s first year experience program, I see their struggle every day. They are nurturers rather than weeders. Their hearts are filled with kindness. They bear the subtle and sometimes not so subtle slings and arrows of outrageous academic disdain. Nevertheless, they persevere. They have such stature. They find joy where others find nothing. They place no conditions on happiness, purpose, satisfaction, and fulfillment. They embrace the uncertainty of each student and see in that uncertainly a limitless fertile ground for planting faith, belief, beauty, satisfaction, fulfillment. They see the abundant richness in each tiny seed that is a first year student who supposedly doesn’t belong or can’t perform. They are not only magicians and servants; they are patient dreamers as well. That is important. These first year students are far more seeds than the blooming flowers or ripen fruit that so many academics demand they be. One of the great Greek philosophers, Epictetus, I think, said that you need time and nurturing. Nothing great, not a beautiful flower or a delicious fruit happens in an instant: “If you tell me that you desire a fig,” he said, “I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.” I would add, before all that blossoming, there must be all that constant time and effort—and love–preparing the soil, planting the seed, nourishing it, watering it, and tending to it.

 There are times, a lot of times, more times than most academics wish to devote, you have to be the student’s dream in order to help her or him out of her or his own nightmare. There are times you have to be the expression of her or his dream so that she or he has a shot at attaining that dream. There are times you have to give real life, color, texture, sound, taste, feel, emotion, and layer upon layer of substance to transform a student’s hopeless nightmare into a faithful dream. There are times you have to demonstrate to a student that there is nothing too far away for her or him to reach. There are times you don’t accept an escaping “I tried,” or evading “I did my best,” but only, like Yoda, lovingly—lovingly–firmly demand a “Do!.” There are times you have to urge them to be their own voice rather than an echo of someone else. There are times you have to help a student find joy where she or he sees nothing but joylessness. There are times you have to help a student see that “hard” is not the same as “impossible.” There are times you have to help a student see that the impossible is so possible, that the supposedly unattainable is attainable, and that the unreachable is within her or his reach. There are times you have to bend over and help a student get up when she or he stumbles until she or he learns how to get up her- or himself. There are times you have to help a student see that not only are those first steps tough, but so are each of the continuing steps. There are times you have to help a student realize that she or he can be the dream she or he wants to be, that she or he can infuse that dream more and more into her or his life, and that by constantly reaching out and touching that dream, she or he can become that dream. That’s the magician and servant in these first year experience people as well.

 Don’t want to bother being that student’s surrogate dream and dreamer? Fine! Don’t want to be an academic magician? Okay! Don’t want to be a servant teacher? Sure! Then, understand, all too often you leave behind at term’s end a withered plant that could have been cared for back to life, an empty shell that could have housed delicious fruit, and a hole in the future that could have been darned.

Make it a good day.

      –Louis–

 My eyes are getting bloodshot. My muscles are aching. I feel my energy draining. For the past few days, I have been reading, pondering, reflecting upon almost 600 evaluations written by the students of themselves and each other, pouring over notes I’ve taken during the semester about students, going back to read project evaluations, pulling up a host of journal entries out from the pool of over 10,000 entries. Grrrrrrrr! All this is for the most uneducational and education-destroying aspect of getting an education: final grades. It is struggling times like this I wonder at my “idiocy” of not just giving tests, grading them, adding up test scores, dividing by the number of tests, throw something in for participation and attendance, and finally, when all the curving and bending and twisting and doubling up and dropping lowest and generally skewing is done, inscribe the appropriate subjectively arrived at objective letter on the final grade sheets, and just saying with a note of self-serving satisfaction, “the grades made me do it!”

 But, as I waded through this weighty process I’ve weighed on myself, words and phrases in these evaluations, notes, and journal entries waxed and waned like a series of verbal novas. Put together they made for host of wow-type realizations about these students that fast danced through my mind. So, for the next few days, I’m going to rat-a-tat a series of “quickies” about my experiences with and impressions of these first year students before I depart on Monday to teach in China as part of VSU’s Maymester Study Abroad Program. Here goes the first installment.

 By and large, except for the very, very few non-traditional first year students, the first year students are high school graduates facing the future without much know-how which way to face and how to face it. They are not “young adults.” They haven’t gone through some genetic mutation during the summer between their June high school graduation and August entrance into college. They are not those so-called “young adults” so many of us academics like to call them–however we may often treat and control them as children–when we don’t want to get involved with them or take any responsibility for what they do or don’t do. In many respects, I understand. Outside those in the collegiate First Year Experience programs, so many of us academics have no preparation, much less inclination, support or encouragement, to deal with eighteen and nineteen year old adolescent teenagers. Those first year students, especially emotionally, are far more demanding and dependent old children than self-reliant and self-directed young adults. They are still molting teenagers. They are, at best, what I call “adults in training.” And, we have the heavy responsibility to be their trainers in some manner, shape, and form!! In the thriving, tenure seeking, resume growing, time consuming world of research and publication, of classroom lecture and testing, these first year students demand a lot of time and attention and effort; more often than not, individual time, attention, and effort. To spend that kind of energy, a teacher is forced to “low tech” it and find the time and make the effort to see, to listen, and to feel. They have to do subtle teaching in areas not associated with their academic discipline. A day doesn’t go by that they wouldn’t have to intervene, ameliorate, negotiate, advise, guide, console, and, at times, prevent. It’s so much easier to weed out with “oughts,” “shoulds,” “they aren’ts,” “they can’ts,” and “they don’ts” than it is to nurture. The problem is, as a friend told me, a weed is Mother Nature’s magnificent flower that is just as beautiful as a rose; we just don’t want them in our organized and pristine and low maintenance garden.

Make it a good day.

      –Louis–