WHAT IS AN EDUCATION

            A while back, my friend, Alan Bender at IU, asked me to make a priority list of the most important roles of education.  Before I could reply, I got hit with that cerebral hemorrhage, went on medical leave, and I admittedly forgot to answer him.  Then, a few days ago I read a message from a student whom I’ll call Gloria.  Here is some of what she wrote:              

At first when I came into the class I was not crazy about meeting the   White students, shaking their hands, and introducing myself during those “treasure hunts”on the first days of class.  I thought you were crazy.  And I sure did not like your idea to divide the class into communities where we had to be strangers and that had to be gender and racially mixed, especially because there would not be another African-American person in my community with me. To be honest I had never stepped outside the box and made any attempt to be friends with a caucasian even here at VSU.  I went to school with 90% African Americans this was so different and frightening.  After working nearly half of a semester with three non-African-Americans, I have realized how wrong we all are.  They’re nice.  We (Blacks and Whites) are not as different as I thought  we were and I now am beginning to understand Dr. King’s dreams and I realize  now that it is up to each of us Blacks and Whites to make his dream that we judge each other by our character rather than by our skin color come true.  I think because of all that I feel myself feeling more confident about myself and less self-conscious.  I’m more willing to give anything a try and worrying less about screwing things up and what others think about me.  I am surprising myself more and more each day, and that is all because of YOU! …. I’ve heard the same thing fom other African-Americans and even from some Whites.  The “madness” of your  methods are not crazy.  They are as sane as can be.  You are really making a difference dividing the class up like this. You know the saying:  as long as you effect one person you have done your job….well you have had such a positive effect on me and all my views. I just want to say thank you for doing your job…            

       Her message stirred my memory.  So, with apologies to Alan for my belatedness, here is my reply to him.  I don’t like lists.  I don’t think a list tells the story.  It’s like asking me to list the order of importance of the liver, stomach, intestines, brain, lungs, adrenal gland, skin, and heart in my body.  They each have a significant role to play without which the others can’t function.  Now, I have never played an either/or or a most important game in education.  I’d be the last one to play down the importance of acquiring information or the development of thinking skills or the use of these skills in applying the information.  I do believe, however, that there is much more to the body of education if it is to function in a healthy manner.  After all, we are talking about people.  So, the intellectual skills must be fused with people skills.              

      Academic well-being, if it is to lead to economic well-being and personal well-being, must be partnered, if not driven by, as Daniel Goleman would say, emotional and social intelligence as well.  I think about that a lot when I call myself a “wholeness teacher” or a “character educator.”  I see myself not only as a professor of history, but as a life coach as well.  I work hard to help students break down barriers, build bridges, and forge community in each classroom.  I help students learn not only history and its importance, but I find ways to daily address such characteristics as self-discipline, self-esteem, honesty, self-confidence, integrity, faith, love, hope, perseverance, commitment, endurance, empathy, resilience, fun-loving, humility, compassion, respect, fairness, daring, courage.  I am more convinced than ever that the quality of our lives and the level of our performance and the depth of our learning and extent of our caring are determined more by our attitudes than our bank of information and skills.   If students can learn more than information and thinking skills, if they can acquire social and emotional skills, if they can learn people and communication skills, if they can learn to care about and believe in themselves and for one another, if they can appreciate their own and each other’s uniqueness, if they can respect the importance of each other; if they can accept different opinions and beliefs, if they acquire the courage to fail and the daring to make mistakes, if they leave our campuses with bachelors ofexperiences rather than with bachelors of grades, if they graduate as innovators rather than merely as test takers, if they start on the road to becoming true life-long self learners and visionaries, today’s classroom just may lead to a better society tomorrow.  If we can find ways to weave all this into the fabric of each of our classes we will make a difference and help each student help her/himself become the person she or he is capable of becoming.

             My answer to Alan, then, is that education is all about helping the mind create and the heart both guide and control. 

Make it a good day.      

Louis

POWER: A WORD FOR “MY DICTIONARY OF GOOD TEACHING”

     A chilly good morning. I just got a message from Kenny “demanding” another word from “My Dictionary of Good Teaching.” That’s curious since I had been thinking about him on my walk this pre-dawn morning and had realized I hadn’t sent him a word in quite a while. This morning I sent him the word, “power.” Let me explain as I did to him. Actually, I sent him two words. “Play-Doh” was the other one.

      Before I got side-tracked by Play-Doh, however, during the interminable waits in the Greensboro and Atlanta airports, between bouts of studying my Chinese, I thought of all those conversations I had at the conference, Bill “Shoes” Johnson’s session, of being one of the “lucky” three to accept the dare to do an interpretive dance of my educational philosophy in front of a couple of hundred people (Nureyev, eat your heart out), of later hearing a number of academics saying, like so many students would, “I would have been mortified” and “I’d be afraid of embarrassing myself” and “I could never do that” and “I would have died if….”

      I was thinking how nearly seventeen years ago, before my epiphany, I would have felt the same way, though I would not have shown it. I realize now that all those advanced degrees, all that professional training, all those appointments, all those resumes don’t make a lot of people happy, don’t stop so many of them from feeling so insecure, don’t stop so many of them from telling themselves what they couldn’t do, don’t stop so many of them from focusing on what could go wrong, don’t stop so many of them from looking over their shoulders and worrying what others thought. And, they don’t stop so many people from building protective walls without realizing those same walls imprison them. Not surprisingly, in sessions and conversations many shied away from putting themselves on the line, avoided challenge and controversy, preferred to hedge their bets, deployed defensive arguments of “if only” or “they expect” or “the system demands” that seem to absolve them from the responsibilities of making decisions or taking action, laid blame on others, and gave over control of themselves to others by allowing those others to create their future.

       I looked out the airport waiting area windows and realized that the planes taxing and taking off needed fuel to power them if they were to do what they were designed to do. It’s no different with us. We need fuel to power us. Now, you’ve heard that knowledge is that power. If that is true, why do so many academics feel so powerless? I certainly am not talking about the kind of knowledge so many are. I am not talking about knowing information or knowing the technology or knowing the teaching methods and techniques however important they are. I am talking about knowing of the power we each have to shape our attitudes and actions, to forge and guide our values, to maintain our integrity and authenticity, to defeat our fears and doubts, to influence our choices, to make those choices, and to live them. I am talking about the fuel in our tanks; I am talking about inner personal strength; I am talking about the fuel that allows us to take off and raise our expectations; I am talking about the power that drives commitment, perseverance and endurance; I am talking about the power that gives us courage to take risks and the daring to make mistakes; I am talking about the fuel of self-confidence and self-esteem and self-respect. I am talking about the power of unlearning learned helplessness. I am talking about the power of personal control. It is the power of self-efficacy. Without that kind of power, we’re like a very expensive car sitting in the driveway with a dead battery.

       Yeah, “power,” my kind of power, is a word I’ll send to Kenny from “My Dictionary of Good Teaching.”

Louis

PLAY-DOH

       So, there I was, in the waiting area of the Atlanta airport, waiting–and waiting–and waiting.  I was futilely struggling to concentrate on my Chinese language lessons.  I felt like a Jekyll and Hyde, exhilarated and, though I kept my promise to Susan not to over do it, emotionally drained and physically dog-tired.  I had just spent what for me were three intense days in Greensboro, NC, at the Lily-South Conference on College and University Teaching.  Susan had every right to be nervous and ask that I check in with her every day.  It was the first time since my cerebral hemorrhage that I’ve gone off on my own.  I was biting at the bit to get there.  You see, for me Lily-South was both a coming out and a coming home party.  There were hardy hand-shakes, tight hugs, toasts, and some kisses.  A couple of people, hearing I would be there, brought “glad you’re still with us” presents.  It was a humbling time that brought tears to my eyes and chokes in my throat on more than one occasion.  Aside from my Susan’s arms and the classroom, the Lily gatherings are one of the most comfortable places for me.  It’s when and where I’m doing what I’m supposed to do.  It’s very natural to me, and I am extraordinarily grateful. 

       At Lily, I did not see one person, not one, who was there to impress anyone with any credentials however so impressive so many were.  We all were there as learners.  No one was there regretting that she or he should be somewhere else doing something else.  We each were there to help others learn with all the fullness and richness we could imagine, with all the creativity and imagination we could muster.  It was a time of a lot of listening.  It was a time of making new friends.  Maybe the most important thing was in a session on getting students to dream where I was once again reminded that through thick and thin, ups and downs, sickness and health, I know one thing for sure.  Just to be alive is a magnificent thing that is not to be wasted for one moment;  that whatever we focus on grows more influential in our lives; that far too many of us define ourselves by the difficulties that come our way and how others define us rather than by the possibilities and our own true selves, that this conference and other Lily conferences, and the supporting and encouraging networks we consequently weave, help us to focus on possibilities and our potential rather than on those problems and limits.  There are lots of reasons to surrender; there are lots of reasons not to surrender.  The question is which we each choose to focus on is our choice and our choice alone.   But, I also left Greensboro with all sorts of new ideas bouncing around in my head on how to improve in the classroom.  I’m now figuring out how to incorporate You Tube into my classes.  I learned about things to tweak and improve my “getting to know you” classroom community building exercises.  And, I learned to improve my syllabus.  You see, you can always teach this young dog new tricks.     

       Anyway, sitting next to me in the airport was a mother reading a book. Her little boy was playing with a batch of differently shaped and colored Play-Doh.  Getting nowhere with Chinese, I put down my textbook and watched, and watched, and watched.  He pressed his finger into a small square of a blue piece and left a hole.  He rolled a cigar shaped yellow piece on the less-than-clean carpeted floor.  Bits and pieces of all kinds of what was once invisible yucky stuff became embedded that was impossible to remove.  I asked the mother for permission to play with the boy.  When she agreed, the child in me came out.  I told the boy to take a green piece, flatten it, and press it against a comic strip of a newspaper that was lying on a near-by seat.  To his amazement, when he pulled the piece back, it mirrored the pictures.  Then, we took a red piece and rolled it against my skin.  I showed him that every hair left its mark.  Finally, just before my boarding call, he pulled away another piece and pressed it hard against my sweater.  When he pulled it away, he showed me every impression of the fibers as well as the embedded fibers themselves.  As a present, he gave me a few pieces. 

      On the plane to Valdosta, thinking about that upcoming glass of wine with Susan, I started to unthinkingly play with the Play-Doh.  I impishly squished it on the tray, rolled it, flattened it, twisted it, and made it into a bagel and pretzel shape.  I almost asked what the person sitting next to me was thinking as I noticed his furtive glances.  Yet, the longer I played with the Play-Doh, the more serious I became, the more I began to study it, and something began stirring within me.  As in the airport, I pressed it against a magazine, against my sweater, against my skin.  I stared at the images, the impressions, the marks, the stuff sticking to it.

       It suddenly hit me.  Play-Doh, like those people in the classroom with me, comes in a variety of different shapes and colors; no two pieces are identical; each has limitless potential to become the infinite number of unique shapes, colors, and sizes.  That’s what makes teaching is so important, so complicated, so demanding, so humbling, so exciting, and so fulfilling.  Everything about a teacher, her or his attitude, perception, assumption, emotion, demeanor, and action touches a student and makes an impression. 

Louis