HOW DARE WE

      I interrupt my series on teaching with passion with an important reflection. I was in this South Georgia outdoor sauna sweating and whiffing by my flower garden when my cell phone rang. It did not take long before I was listening with intense ears to an harangue, gentle in tone but not in meaning, from a professor at a university that was ironically a pioneer in special education. She called to tell me that she was “deeply disturbed” by the likes of you” and took issue with a Random Thought I had written about eleven years ago supporting accommodation for special needs students or what she called “learning and physically disabled students.” She found my number! Called me!! On my cell phone!!! At my house!!!! Talking about pushing your own buttons! Anyway, she rejected my position insisting that it wasn’t that she didn’t think such students should be educated, but it should not be done on her watch. After all, she said, “they’re letting anyone in….with all I have to do, I don’t have the extra time to devote to such a person….I don’t have tenure yet….It’s an inconvenience……not at ease….not inclined to offer assistance….giving accommodation an expense we can’t afford to spend….giving special attention to such a person an unreasonable disservice to others in the class whom I can better serve….they won’t have a happy educational experience….special consideration skews the validity of the transcript?” And, so on she went.

     She assured me with a patronizing “I didn’t mean anything by it” tone that there is nothing “threatening” or “demeaning” in her view, and it is nothing “personal.” Isn’t it? As the father of a son with ADHD, I took her words very personally. I had heard all this before during the years of my son’s struggle in schools from teachers and administrators while they were hacking off his pleading hands, cutting out his legs from under him at his supplicating knees, sucking the self-esteem out of him, diminishing his sense of humanity, and throwing him on the trash heap. Because of that, respectful as I was to this professor, I was not about to be coldly intellectual about it all, was not about to be clinically objective, and was not about to be distant with a spectator mentality or a passer-by un-involvement or a disengaged onlooker consciousness.

     This professor’s medieval views and mine are a collision of conflicting paradigms. Now, I do not believe she is an icy monster though I’m not sure about her sincere caring, her assurances not withstanding. Throughout her entire side of our conversation, however, she displayed a warped kind of benevolence and charitable mentality that categorized such students as pitifully “unfortunate” or sad “standouts like sore thumbs,” or admirably “amazing,” but not particularly as just another student. To her that accommodation document seem to indicate that the student was another specie of human being, maybe an inferior specie. Anyway, waving aside everything I said, she believes that giving such students access to the classroom is setting them up for a fall by offering false hopes and expectations. She seems to assume that their “disabilities” somehow get in the way of their intellect and that they can’t have a life well-learned. Because this view is apparently dominant in her thinking, it has become for her an undeniable self-evident truth. After all, the “disturbing” part takes place in her head, not in the classroom. What sets these students apart is her perception. The classroom, as life, is the way we see it and the way we perceive it and experience it. We read into others what we want or expect to find, and whatever we expect to find, will be there. At that moment, we ourselves have a learning disability and are unable to move beyond our own stereotypes and prejudices.

     The flaw in her attitude is the unexamined, shallow assumption that “disabled students” cannot be enabled to become able, that such students who need accommodation inherently have less prospects of achievement and less possibilities of attaining a “successful and happy educational experience,” that the disabled students’ “irrational” and “unreasonable” preference for an education at a “regular university” must yield to society’s “rational” economic limits, that caring and attention are quantitatively fixed, that the added attention given them subtracts from attention given to others, and that they somehow have lost their inner sacredness and nobility. This all too common prejudice taken to its logical conclusion leads to the kicking in a tragic of rejection of their humanity, of disconnection, of lack of community, of dismissal, and of selectively weeding out such “distractions.” It leads to an infection of what I call a “Dick Wittington Syndrome.” That is, bag and throw these intrusive students afflicted with LD and other disabilities off a bridge like the unwanted runts of a litter. The cure for this syndrome is to accept the truth that we are all challenged in one way or another and that the classroom, like the faculty and staff and administration, is filled with flawed human beings. We just need to have room for all the different challenges and flaws.

     As I listened, I thought of grabbing my Shakespeare and reading to her Shylock’s soliloquy. I thought of past disability discrimination and the once accepted illusion that we have the choice to educate or not to educate, and that we prefer the latter. So I ask quietly but forcefully: how dare any one of us? How dare we undervalue such persons? How dare we define what is “better” for such students by what is better and easier for us? How dare we create an inequitable caste system among students? How dare some of us have so little respect for such persons? How dare we see the entrance into college of such students as avoidable mistakes? How dare any one of us even engage in a discussion of whether another person’s education should happen? How dare any one of us should think such an issue is debatable? How dare any one of us decide that certain people “don’t belong” among us or who are among those we define as among “they’re letting anyone in” are non-persons with no right to reach for their as yet unseen potential solely on market considerations or personal convenience? How dare any one of us draw the line between those who are “entitled” to our attention and those who are not? How dare any one of us count any one among the uncounted and unnoticed? How dare any one of us get annoyed or feel inconvenienced at the prospect of having to put in time and effort for all people to experience the fullness and the fulfillment of life? How dare we find it’s in our heart to deny any person, categorically, our empathy, affection, faith, compassion, and our love? How dare any of us presume to define the capability of becoming for anyone else, to set the value of an as yet “unprepared” person lower than our high and mighty degreed and published personna, or to conclude that such a person lacks the potential for happiness and dignity because some of us are so arrogant, close minded, self-righteous, and self-centered that we cannot imagine how it could?

      After all, what is the role of an educator but service and assistance? Too many of us selectively and conditionally assist others with our support, encouragement, empathy, faith, kindness, and love so that they can fully affect their choices. Why can’t we do that unconditionally for each and every one? Why can’t we deny that a “problem of disability” exists? Why can’t we pick up the gauntlet of challenge? Each of us requires different modes of assistance. In that sense, every transcript is tainted. Shall we underestimate a person’s capacity, ability, talent, and potential based on an accommodation letter? Shall we stare at such people with annoyance, pity, condescension, and hostility? Shall we weed out for convenience and comfort sake rather than cultivate? Shall we educationally euthanize them, or at best hide them away in darkened institutions? Shall we decide who shall go to the educational left and who to the educational right? The whole of academia has a stake in making sure each of us is not tainted by prejudices, myths, discomfort, and supposed inconvenience, emblematic of broader, deeper attitudes toward disability that sometimes slide from fear to disgust and from disgust to hatred.

      I didn’t expect to straighten out this academic’s head and heart however I politely and respectfully tried. She would hear none of it. She, and others like her, think they know everything there is to know just by looking at someone’s accommodation request. That’s how stereotypes work. It deludes people into thinking they know the world of others. They don’t ask who these people are and act as if they will always remain the same. It ignores the fact that each of us have a combination of gifts, strengths, weaknesses, and flaws so peculiar that they can’t be measured on the same scale. She and others like her don’t know that they’re confused; they’re ignorant to the fact that the presence of a special need, disability, or challenge does not predict quality of any aspect of life. She doesn’t know how to look at such people beyond an accommodation agreement, a wheel chair, a hearing aid, a talking book, signing, or a reader other than as if they were curious or pitiful animals in a zoo. She is unaware she is marginalizing such people and rendering them invisible with selfish and self-serving prejudice and ignorance, and even oppression. She doesn’t realize she has to be remolded with the constant pounding of a caring heart, with the shaping of respect, and with the working in of faith, hope, and love. She should learn what to make of such students. She should stop gawking and wincing, and learn to see. What is equally sad is that within educated people such as she resides an emptiness; they will not know what both the fullness and the fulfillment of life mean unless the consciousness of the kindred spirit that lies latent in their own very selves comes to life within them.

Louis

HOKEY POKEY TEACHING, IV

      So, how does passion work in me and work for my teaching? Although I have a “steady as it goes” course, I am prone to passionately use passionate words like “excited,” “turned on,” and “on a high” to describe myself at those times when I am around students. That’s one of the situations when I feel most alive. Anyway, I have a free-floating unease about me, a kind of restlessness, and a discomfort with status quos. I feel quite comfortable living in a state of “organized chaos.” I follow my “let’s see” and “what if” spirit guides. Curiosity is my name; experimentation is my game. I am constantly reinventing myself. You’ll find no moss on my constantly rolling stone and no grass is growing under my constantly moving feet. I excitedly dance with serendipity and deliciously hug surprise. I don’t fight inspiration. I just take what comes and go on walking along that audacious road.

       My teaching involves disciplined exploration as well as unstructured play. I am by no means a conformist. Maybe, I’m a contrarian at heart. I’ve learned that to make a difference I often have to be different. I’ve learned that the classroom is a constantly continuing adventure only if I’m always seeing constantly changing students with new eyes. Where others forlornly sigh, “students nowadays,” I see the promise of opportunity and potential. I look for promising alternatives and struggle to bring out potential and convert it into actual. I tend to take the condom off the classroom rather than practice safe teaching. When I go on campus, it is with an “okay, here we go; I don’t know where we’re going with this; I’m going to let it develop as I go along.” I value risk over safety. I value creativity over productivity. I value lasting effectiveness over immediate efficiency. I value spontaneity over predictability, excitement over order, an inner freedom over authority, earned respect over entitled authority, student ownership over my deed to the class, challenge more than control, being off center more than on dead center, being off-the-wall more than pinned to the wall as a wallflower. I operate from the assumption that there is always an opportunity to change things, that there’s a chance I just may help someone become a better person and thereby make for a better world. It’s not just a “to do” on the list of things to be done. It’s not to be filed away and mentally checked off as “done.” A passion is an empowering “doing.” It’s a nurturing, cultivating, growing. I am not afraid of being wrong or of making a mistake. I value learning and improving from being off the mark and any mistakes I may make. I value being fired up rather than being a dying ember. I am a “quester.” In the spirit of Pablo Picasso, I am always seeking to do that which I have not done or cannot do in order to learn how to do it. To enter other worlds is the only way to expand my world.

      When I talk about my experience of teaching with passion, I’m never promoting myself. Rapture in teaching is always in community, connection, relationship with, and, above all, in the service of others. And yet, I freely admit that I am selfish. Selfish is a much maligned word. It’s gotten such a bad rap as a cardinal sin. If I were to carve some teaching commandments in stone, however, one would say “Thou Shalt love each student as you love yourself.” That means that I must first make peace with myself, love myself before I can make peace with and love students. That is not being egotistical or narcissistic. It means if I have self esteem, self respect, self regard, self acceptance, I’m more likely to be likeable, less likely to get depressed, more likely to love life, more likely to have an acute sense of both awareness and otherness, and certainly more likely to love people around me.

     I think the highest form of selfishness is to give of ourselves to others so that we may broaden our understanding and confidence, so that we may reach inner security, serenity, purpose, meaning, and fulfillment. The richest reward in teaching comes from helping others with no thought of reward. We cannot get unless we give, and we cannot give unless we have something to give. If you are not willing to serve students, you will not be a class act in class. If you walk into the classroom as if you’re entitled, if you shy away from sharing yourself with students who need you, if you prefer to be somewhere else, you’ll likely get frustrated and see students as an intrusion. However, if you have faith, have hope, believe, and give, the riches of the teaching coffers will never be empty and will be yours for the taking.

That’s what it’s all about!

Louis

HOKEY POKEY TEACHING, III

      My epiphany on that fateful day in late 1991, was one of those hinges in my life. It was a moment when my destiny heading toward selfishly ever-lengthening my scholarly resume skidded to a halt, made a right angle turn, and then lurched forward in a new direction ever faster toward selfless servant teaching. The result was that I increasingly saw little status in my status quo. I became less cautious, more spontaneous, and intensely more inclined to be aware of and compassionate toward and passionate about each and every student. Since that moment, I enter the classroom with more of an optimistic “oh, my” rather than a melancholy “ah me.” I’ve learned that there is nothing shallow about optimism, nothing more profound than cheerful confidence, nothing more elevating than natural exuberance. They endow a life-enriching gratitude for what life has given us rather than a life-robbing bitterness and anxiety about what it hasn’t. I learned that the passionate heart is bottomless; it is huge, vast, and limitless; it always has an upbeat; and, there is so much warmth and gentleness there, as well as how much space.

      Teaching with passion is about optimistically having great expectations of the coming of the dawn. Expectations take control during the times when you lose yourself in whatever you’re doing, and thus they exert a powerful influence. When you truly expect something, it’s like programming your heart and mind to seek it out every chance it gets. Expectations have a way of becoming reality even in the moments when you’re not aware that you’re making them happen. Your genuine expectations of others work in a similar fashion. The expectations you have for someone else are communicated to that person in a way that can easily override whatever you do or say on a conscious level. Whatever I truly expect to happen, then, has a better chance of happening.

 

       Teaching with passion means you don’t leave yourself a way out. It means you won’t walk away morosely from your vision. It means you’ll do whatever it takes to make your vision a purpose in life. It means to challenge your excuses and rationales when you hit the challenges. It means you have to can your “can’ts” each and every day. It means you have to will yourself to ‘I will’ each and every day. It means overcoming your fears with your faith. It means not hiding from yourself and working on yourself. It means always making yourself your first and best student. It means you won’t let you disappoint yourself. It means having is a deep inner burning “yes” and an empowering force to say “no.” It has a “stay the course” power. It offers the power to see beyond what’s in front of you today, to imagine, to invent, to create, to become was is yet to be. It means knowing that teaching is not an event, but a journey that develops day by day, not in a day. It means always to be ready to change. It means to accept inconvenience. It means not falling into a boring routine. It means practice and learn and grow, practice and learn and grow, practice and learn and grow each and every day. It means hang in there come what may. It means a lot more. But, first, last, and only teaching with passion means no exit strategy.

      Teaching with passion, when you’re in a groove, when you have the faith, when you’re optimistic, when you are expectant, is a willingness to go the extra mile. You’ll go beyond where others are willing to go; you’ll make the most out of every moment; you’ll give more than a little more than others are willing to give, be a little more patient, have a little more curiosity, take a little more responsibility, learn a few more things. And, it all makes all the difference in the world for making a difference in the world. Teach with passion and you cannot be stopped. No obstacle is too great to overcome. You don’t listen to the “experts” who say it cannot be done. You are completely focused and driven, and nothing can discourage or distract you. You get it done. Passion adds power to your possibilities. You don’t just think, you don’t just believe, you feel and you know.

That’s what it’s all about!

Louis

HOKEY POKEY TEACHING, II

      Teaching with passion is being in a “groove.” Ever been in a groove? It’s far from a rut. And, unlike a rut, I won’t want to get out of it once I get into it, for once I am, there is no stopping. I’ve got the rhythm. I can overcome almost anything. I can win over the most skeptical of skeptics. It has more power than knowledge, reputation, or position. It has a magic, a magic that is the difference between “just doing” and accomplishing. It has an excited “let’s take on the world” quality. It overwhelms that feeling of being overwhelmed. It discourages discouragement. It makes today the day. It lightens the weight of my work. It hastens my step. It appreciates the moment. It’s mood contagious. It delights in the moment. It makes the abundance of life become my abundance of teaching. It lifts limitations. It converts the bitter into the better. It negates negatives. It positively moves positively forward; it inspires. It motivates. It doubtlessly frees from doubt. It adds the light. It tows me out from the swallowing grasps of clinging mud. It’s a flow that can’t be dammed up; it’s always looking for new ways to be more effective; like water, it finds every crack, nook and cranny; it’s always a source of energy.

      I’m not sure any real teaching can be done without passion. In fact, without passion, teaching is bankrupt. Without passion, I can’t open any doorways to a student’s spirit. Passion is a Draino that keeps the sludge of negatives, criticism, frustrations, resignations, and angers from building up and clogging my spirit. It’s a teaching not by sight, but by faith. It is faith that gives me sight. I teach with heart, and it is heart that’s at the heart of education. It is passion that remakes my eyes for wonder, which allows me to see the extraordinary in the ordinary and knowing that if I do the ordinary in extraordinary ways, the results will be extraordinary. In many ways, passion, combined with horse sense and commitment and persistence, is the difference between mediocrity and excellence. It’s an asset that’s worth far more than reputation and knowledge.

       Teaching with passion is about being optimistic. Optimism is the currency of human existence. It is the essence of every great love story, of sweeping epics, of bittersweet tales. How can I argue against optimism. What good has pessimism ever done? I’ve never heard a pessimist say, “How great it feels.” It’s a matter of considering the consequences. The most powerful antibiotic for self defeating thoughts is being positive. If I always expecting the dawn, I never sleep in the dark very long. If I see the positives, if I help students see the positives, the positive possibilities have a better shot of happening, a better shot of staying up. I’ll have a better chance of leaving those negative thoughts in the dust while I’m making dust. It’s a challenge. What’s the purpose in tearing down, in denigrating, or in demeaning? How can anyone build a strong structure if I use faulty bricks made out of the mud of “can’t” and “no” and “wrong?” They won’t boost my energy level or put I in the mood to help either myself or others. If I am truly serious about being passionate and positive, then I must act that way. I must go on a positive diet and watch those leaded pounds of negatives melt away.

      When students are feeling joy, fun, confidence, and exhilaration, they’re grasping a wisdom of the heart that tempers the mind. The difference I will see may be a smile or a brighten eye or a straightened stance. The difference may even be so subtle I won’t see anything. Nevertheless, they can influence the way students think and act. I have seen spectacular results coming from powerfully powerful words and actions. As Nellie sings in SOUTH PACIFIC, “I’m stuck like a dope with a thing called hope, and I can’t get it out of my heart!

That’s what it’s all about!

Louis

 

HOKEY POKEY TEACHING, I

      This quiet, noisy, hometown, backyard, fire-cracking, parading weekend we Americans are celebrating self-evident truths to which we hold, which define us as a people, and which make us quite unique–and great. These truths, as George Will recently wrote, are what we choose to believe, how we dream to live, how we strive to make those ideals become reality, and thereby making them self-validating. In that spirit, I’m going to do something the same and something different. I’m going to talk about one of my self-evident truths which I choose to believe, how I dream to live, how I strive to make it and other self-evident truths my reality.

      Now, this Random Thought and the few to follow aren’t spontaneous as are almost all my Random Thoughts–kinda. The truth is that a while back I spontaneously wrote an introduction to the probably never to be published fourth volume of collected Random Thoughts. It was to be subtitled “Teaching With Passion.” Passionate is how a new-found friend described me. I won’t argue with him. It is one of the essences of who I am. Especially having survived cancer four years ago and a massive cerebral hemorrahage without any crippling effects last year, I am passionate about fervently living a meaningful and purposeful life in all of its personal and professional manifestations.

      In education particularly, there’s something so deadening that sucks the life out of teaching and learning, something so depressing that reduces focus to information transmission and gathering rather than on people, something so bland that is devoid of emotional intensity, something so stagnating that doesn’t stir the creative and imaginative juices. That something is really an absence of something: passion. Now, I’m not talking about being passionate about or dedicated to one’s discipline; I’m talking about being passionate about teaching and being dedicated to each student’s learning. So, I thought why let this reflection go to waste. And, before I go any further, I’m going to give you a warning. I am not going to be purely clinical and intellectual. Instead, I am going to be emotional. I am going to get passionate about teaching with passion by reaffirming my second principle of teaching, the Law of Juice: if there’s no juice in the battery, you’re dead in the parking lot and you’re not going anywhere. Coaches know it. Theatrical directors know it. Orchestral conductors know it. Choreographers know it. Artists, dancers, musicians, athletes, and actors know it. Both educators and students have yet fully to learn it, much less appreciate it. So, here is my take on the importance of passion in education, what I call “Hokey Pokey Teaching,” presented seven parts of bits and pieces. Part I:

                                       You put your whole self in;

                                       you put your whole self out;

                                       you put your whole self in;

                                       and you shake it all about.

                                      You do the Hokey-Pokey,

                                     And you turn yourself around.

                                    That’s what it’s all about!

      Now that is passion! If you’ve ever danced the Hokey Pokey you know what I mean. It’s really an exciting experience. You start with putting your right foot in and out, and then, with your hands held high, you turn all about. Next, you put your left foot in and out, then your right hand, then your left hand, then your right side, then your left side, then your nose, then your backside, then your head, and finally your whole self. I’ve seen people get into it, kick off their shoes, kick up their heels, let their hair down, not worry about what they looked like, not be concerned with what anyone said, and just go for it. I’ve never seen anyone do the Hokey Pokey who didn’t move, laugh, and giggle like a child. In fact, I think to fully enjoy the Hokey Pokey, you have to both figuratively and literally jump in and turn yourself around; you have to find the inner child. The Hokey-Pokey is so great that it lightens the spirit and takes years off the soul–while being just plain fun.

     That’s what it’s all about.

      With that being said, let me say unhesitatingly and unabashedly that teaching with passion, then, is juiced-up Hokey Pokey teaching! It’s all about teaching all of each student with all of me. It’s about taking the risk to put my whole self in. It’s about not worrying about how I may look to others. It’s about every pore in my body saying an unconditional “yes” to whatever and whomever comes along. It’s about being a heart specialist and having a complicated love affair with the beauty within each student. It is about being fully alive. It is about having a defiant optimism. It’s about having a committed commitment. It is about a flirtation and courting with each student that signify that nothing in the classroom goes along as usual, but holds the possibility of always being better than usual and certainly unusual. It is about having a heightened gratitude for life. It is about what stirs my soul, inspires me, motivates me, makes me feel like I’m in totally in harmony with why I showed up on campus. It’s about just picking up a few bottles of champagne and popping them every time I walk on campus. It’s about de-icing with the warmth of my own heart. It’s about knowing that every moment is a golden gateway to new possibilities. It’s about getting off the treadmill. It’s about going on a field trip as an adventurer, an explorer, a learner, and a pilgrim rather than as a disengaged and distant tourist. It’s about going into a classroom being filled with an exclaiming, “God, it feels great to be here.”

      And what am I passionate about? It’s simple, but challenging and demanding. I want to be a life-lifter. I want to be a character chiropractor and align a student’s belief in him-/herself with his/her potential. I want to be a “making the difference” opportunist. I want to be a growth hormone. I want to be a self-discovery catalyst. I want to be a TLC agent. It says in the Talmud that every blade of grass has an angel who bends over and whispers, “Grow. Grow.” I want to be one of those angels who whispers in the ear of each student, “Grow. Become who you are capable of becoming. Grow.”

      I remember once reading–it escapes me who wrote this–that the noblest joy of the senses, the holiest piece of the heart, the most resplendent luster of all good works derives from putting your heart and soul and mind wholly into what you do.

      Hokey Pokey teaching! That’s what it’s all about.

Louis