THE BEDROCK OF TEACHING

“Everybody is a somebody; never–never–treat anybody as a nobody.” I told a couple of professors at the closing wine and dine schmooze session of my two days workshop on teaching at Central Michigan. Unexpectedly I found myself going into a deeper “why” as they probed the “why” of my vision.

“Everybody is a somebody; never–never–treat anybody as a nobody” says it all about what I have learned is the essence of being in the people business of teaching. And, on that bedrock foundation rests my driving vision, my guiding purpose, my focusing intention, my unrelenting responsibility in which I invest my awareness, attention, thoughts, emotions, time, effort, and commitment: to be that person who always is there to help each person help her/himself become the person she or he is capable of becoming. My vision, purpose, intention, and responsibility make me a futurist who confidently sees each student through the clear and dynamic lens of “is becoming” rather than the pessimistic, clouded, and stasis pane of “is,”.

And so, for me, every moment is a golden opportunity blessed with new possibilities, and I “merely” have the challenge of filling it with life; of finding the magnificence in the seemingly mundane, the extraordinary in the apparent ordinary, and the something in the alleged “nothing much.” And, each time I do that, each time I go that too often seldom walked extra mile, I’ll love, live, and make each supposed wasteful “ho hum” moment I teach into the purposeful, magnificent, joyful, satisfying, rewarding, and fulfilling moment it was meant to be.

Before any of you wave me off with a “posh” because you think I am dreamy, remember what Helen Keller said, “No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.”

Yeah, everybody is a somebody, and never–never–treat anybody as a nobody!

Louis

IN THE MORNING

In spite of this morning’s South Georgia billowing pollen storms that are gold plating my recovering lungs, I thought how lucky another day belongs to me. How lucky I am to have been so close to death and now to be able to so celebrate life. With so many things to complain about nowadays, it isn’t easy to be in a thankfulness mode, but for me it is always time to think about and appreciate the many things I am grateful for: Susan, my sons, their wives, my grandmunchkins, all the members of my extended family, my dear friends. Foremost among that for which I am grateful is just having today. I know I must welcome each moment and live the treasure that comes with it. Like with my angelic Susan, I consciously fall in love with life all over again and again and again; I caress each minute of each day again and again and again. For me each day is a fresh, unique, wonderful, joyous, and rich opportunity of a lifetime to trade limitations for limitless inspiration. Death, for me, was probably the single-best invention of life. It was another brake that slowed me down further to see and hear people and things around me still more sharper than had my epiphany or my cancer.

You know life is such a grand adventure. You have to live it consciously and sincerely with passion, purpose, and resolve, or you waste it. True, it doesn’t come easy, but you don’t back away from it just because it is tough. You see challenges as opportunities to keep you up rather than as barriers to get you down; you stay energized rather than depleted; you don’t slow down and moan just because the road becomes steep or rocky.

Like my Susan, each day is a one-of-a-kind miracle in which I feel obligated to bring my beauty and to give my goodness. Just to be here in this moment, to be in this place, to feel the energy of life, to model how good the world can be, demands I live and do and love and know just because I can. I’m not going to apologize for being so dramatic. I have become acutely aware that my time is limited and it is the ultimate of sins to waste it by not making the world around me sparkle, by not filling each moment with meaning, by not using the awesome power of purpose, by not focusing on bringing to life every unique possibility life offers, by not living the miracle that is me, and by not leaving this world a better place than I found it.

All this is the meaning of an answer I gave to a question a professor threw at me last Wednesday night at the end of an intense, grueling, and inspiring two day workshop on collegiate teaching I gave at Central Michigan University to a bunch of neat, dedicated, and committed people. “If you could reduce all of these two days of workshop sessions you presented down to one question I must always ask myself,” she asked, “what would it be?”

I thought for a few seconds and answered, “Why do I get up in the morning?” But, I couldn’t stop there. “Sure, it’s critical to ask that question, but,” I continued, “it’s means nothing if you don’t live the answer. And, that answer has to be at the most personal and deepest level of a spirituality if you are going to have the commitment, dedication, strength, endurance, perseverance, and resilience to be a true teacher, especially in this day and age.”

“Spirituality?”

“No, I’m not turning my collar around,” I assured her. “By spirituality I mean vision, intention, meaningfulness, significance, purposefulness, mindfulness, awareness, nowness, otherness, connectedness to some thing or someone beyond the material academic stuff that you see on a resume.”

Louis

REAL CLASSROOM DIVERSITY

     We talk of classroom diversity in the traditional racial, gender, ethnic, religious, and whatever terms only too often to cluster students into simplistic, distorting, and misleading racial, gender, ethnic, religious, etc, etc, etc stereotypes in the classroom. Let me give you a cold fact I’ve discovered about true classroom diversity. Students are like snowflakes: no two are the same; none is necessarily symmetrical; each is spectacular; each gives you the chills. And, that’s not a snow job.