CHINA DIARY 4, TOGETHERNESS | The Random Thoughts of Louis Schmier

Hey diary, it’s May 15 and I’m still talking to you. How about that1 What’s equally amazing is that we’re all getting to know each other very quickly. We’re eating together, sleeping together, relaxing with each other, talking with each other, shopping together, touring together, doing everything together–students and teachers. Once mostly strangers to each other, and now we’re mingling and developing into a community. Strangers into acquaintances into friends. Neat. Why is this important? There’s less standoffish here, people are more at ease and feel safer, and they can deal with newness easier, that’s why. But, the answer, the real answer, is the real reason there is a growing focus–or should be–on creating on-campus learning communities. Everything, our instinct and experience and science, is telling us that it’s really simple: community cures the pernicious inhibiting, debilitating, isolating, and even paralyzing diseases of strangeness, aloneness, and loneliness. It treats isolation with doses of belonging. It pulls out from the shadowy corner and notices the ignored. It discovers the hiding. It offers the disconnected the support and encouragement of connection. It creates a motivating environment because students, like each of us, gain so much hope, more confidence, more self-esteem, and take more risks when they know they’re not alone and someone has their back. That’s why I work so hard to create and sustain community in my classes.

Louis

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