Diary, it’s Tuesday, May 24th.  We’ve already been to lots of places and have done bunches of stuff so far that I won’t list.  The one thing everything had in common were the cameras.  Hoards of people were snapping pictures with an almost mindless “I’ve been here” abandon.  They looked like Borgs from Startrek, each with a protruding mechanical eye.   You know, this trip I decided to do something “untouristy.”  I didn’t take all that many shots.  It was exhilarating. I was actually seeing and listening so much more.  I felt released from point-and-shoot social obligations.  In fact, one person in our group asked me why I wasn’t taking any pictures.  “Is this boring to you?”  The question had the tone of accusing condemnation as if I had committed the sin of violating the eleventh commandment:  thou shalt take a picture.  In contrast to all this shutter-bugging, I noticed a person, at the Forbidden City, a single person, sitting on a collapsible stool, a sketch pad on his lap, a piece of charcoal in his hand, his head bobbing up and down, concentrating, studying, and drawing.

It came to me.  To schedule exactly where you’re headed, to be there just for the sake of being there, to cover for the sake of covering,  may be the best way to go astray. You know, diary,  not all those who loiter are lost.  Most don’t miss the enticing unexpected as much as those looking straight forward through the lens or at the schedule.  While they think they’re preserving something in the picture, they’re really letting it get away from them.  Most people seem to assume that taking a picture automatically assures them of having paid attention.  It is the ritual rite of the tourist.  It has become a substitute more often than a supplement to active and engaged conscious engagement.  There’s no searching for the complexity, no spur of the moment, no penetrating the minutest parts, no noticing of different elements, no posing of questions, no slow reflection.  Just point and click and run, point and click and run, point and click and run to meet a jam-packed schedule.  Like the hare in Alice in Wonderland, no time to take your time.  Arousal of the sublime is confounded.  Little is allowed to develop; so little is empowered to inspire; so much is haphazard.  Sharpness gives way to blur.  We become little more than shallow picture takers.  Certainly not penetrating artists.

We’re deluded into thinking that just being there to take a picture is enough for us while we let the camera do all the work.  Yet, the camera decides matters for us.  It is no longer a tool in our service.  We don’t put it aside to alter or expand  the attraction.  It’s almost as if we have slavishly surrendered to the camera to decide for us our sense of place.  So, we overlook certain places because nothing has prompted us to set down the camera to just quietly appreciate.  If we did, we might ask questions in our quest to understand and value where we are; we might stop merely looking at and start seeing.  Instead, the camera blurs the distinction between looking and seeing, hearing and listening, passing by and noticing.  In fact, we close our eyes–one eye literally–to the extent we open the shutter.  We’re deadened to the smallest features of the visual and audio worlds.  We don’t notice the details.  That’s why I hate being a tourist.  That why I shudder at being merely a shutter bug.  That’s why there is always a why to whatever picture I take.  That’s why I’m always lagging behind and wondering.  That’s why I’m always being hurried up.  The tour, with its deadlines, a slave to the clock, is like driving on a super highway–or lecturing to a superclass.  It’s efficient.  It gets us quickly from place to place, but in speeding past everything, everything become less distinct, the soft and subtle–and, at times, meaningful–are gone..  So, the tour tends to blind and deafen its members to the true sound and appearance–and meaning–of things.  It takes us into the shallows at best, but not to the depths.  The hurried tourists look at so much, but don’t notice much, and so much is missed.  Most haven’t learned to see or listen to.  It’s that “beauty deprived” I told you about earlier.  And, I haven’t said a word about those blasted, intrusive, and distracting cell phones.

Back to this artist at the Forbidden City.  He reminds me,diary,  of a technique I use in one of my teaching workshops and will use at one of my Lilly presentations in September to deal with classroom “attention deficit disorder.”  The most effective means of understanding is by slowing down, peering, focusing, noticing, and describing what we see or hear by descriptive “word drawing,” that is, writing, or by drawing.  I have the people draw or write about the room they’re in.  It’s not about how well they can draw or write; it’s about learning how to see, to notice, to develop a sense of “otherness” rather than merely look.  I mean, two  people go out for a walk; the one is has a sketcher’s eye that is accustomed to searching and penetrating, the other just takes pictures and passes along.  There will be a great difference in what each can later describes.

How accustomed we’ve become to inattention.  There is such a desire to say, “I’ve been here.  I’ve seen this.”  There is so little time given to “This is how I felt.  This is what I came to understand.”  It so often ignores how rich in meaning details can be. Reflection is fugitive.  It requires time, effort, and penetration that’s contrary to the tourists hectic pace.  Think about how long it takes that artist to sketch one of the buildings.  And, then, think about these tour groups being hussled along as if it would be a crime to stop and peer at, and engage in acute concentration to think about, a place for as long as it would require that artist to draw it.  It seems that our desire to do travel fast and furious, to look at as many things as possible, is connected to a declining appreciation and a rising presumption.

Am I being too harsh, diary?  Maybe, but it’s curious, that the most meaningful and penetrating, and by their own admission the most memorable, times for the students are those when they are not clicking cameras and personally interacting with the Chinese people.

Sounds like a lot of what goes on in the classroom, doesn’t it.  Student, like tourists, have academic ADD.  They madly rush through class having been trained to think that it’s enough to blindly takes notes that they will vomit back on a test, think what’s important is only what will appear on the test, think of other things outside of class while in class, don’t pay all that much intense attention, don’t see much purpose or significance in what’s going on, cram for that test, want only that passing grade, seek the credential for a job.  Deep, lasting education, penetrating insight, meaning and purpose beyond job and themselves, emotional and social growth are low on their list of priorities because they are for most professors.  Click, click, click.

Professors, like tourists, also have ADD.  They lecture, transmit information, let the technology do their job, speed to cover the material, assume little responsibility for students to secure “mastery of the subject” (whatever that means),  distance themselves from students by claiming they are experienced and accomplished adults, often don’t give the classroom its due, don’t really know who is in that room with them beyond at best a name, test, grade, think of and are distracted by other things outside class such as research and publications and securing tenure while in class, and equate learning, like the students, with a grade or score..  Click, click, click.

Diary,wouldn’t it be great if we all, professor and student,went go into a classroom as an artist with a penetrating artist’s eye rather than merely as an impatient shutter bug.  I know what you’re going to say, diary, but…..

Louis

May 23rd.  Diary, I got up this morning thinking about Joseph Campbell who said we should follow our bliss.  I think he’s right.  Life in general, teaching in particular, is not about doing only what makes sense, not just transmitting information; more importantly,  it’s also doing what makes rapture, what is meaningful, purposeful, fulfilling, satisfying.  If nothing else, having had a massive cerebral hemorrhage I should not have survived taught me that.  Yet, more than a few times I feel that if I can describe the reason for my “why” of my feeling and thoughts and actions in words, it’s not really the ultimate genesis of the why. There would always another more profound, deeper, indescribable reason beyond it for it.  Sometimes, I just have to say to myself and others, as I have more than a few times, “You just don’t ask.”

What got me onto this “bliss thing” was that I woke up this morning still thinking about Tom, especially that haunting phrase he used, “student whisperer.”  I like that description.  Diary, do you know what that term refers to?  It’s a play on a 19th century Irish horse trainer who had developed a knack for rehabilitating abused or traumatized horses.  He would stand face to face with the troubled horse. People at the time thought that it was mysterious, that he was capable of speaking “horse talk” as he whispered into the horses’ ears, that the horses could understand him–and trust him, and that they were quickly calmed by his magical techniques. But, there was nothing mysterious and magical about what he did.  What he really did was have a tender regard, be empathetic to the motives, needs, and desires  of the horse.  He would seek out, find, and see that something beautiful that was to be found in that frightened, aggressive, and uncooperative horse.  Sometimes it was obvious and overpowering, and other times it was subtle and delicate, and still other times it was totally hidden.  But, it always took a lot of quiet and reassuring love, faith, commitment, and perseverance to uncover it and for the horse to feel it.  He was posing no danger or harm, calming both his and the animal’s thoughts, simply being, feeling the power he and the horse were, softly touching and caressing that animal, feeling the strength and passion, enjoying, refreshing, living.

In the spirit of the Horse Whisper, we should be “student whisperers?”  It is at the core of my “Teacher’s Oath.”  As a “Student Whisperer” we would know that the classroom and those in it are rich and varied beyond anything we can imagine.  We would celebrate and, more importantly, live the uniqueness, sacredness, nobility, and worth that is each student.  We would be truly moved by the awesome wonder of each of them. No longer would they be unnoticed and ignored “cellophane people.”  No longer would they be rejected “don’t belongs.”  We would have an unconditional–unconditional–appreciative,  loving, thankful, kind, empathetic, supporting, safe, encouraging, and calming heart.  It sure beats thinking we’re jolting bronco busters who break the rough-stock, feral, recalcitrant students into submission.   As “Student Whisperers” we should work with, rather than against, each student; we would love those we see, for all we have to do is to find little bit of beauty, develop our powers of empathy, and we open ourselves up to finding more in both ourselves and others.  In the spirit of Ed Deci, Carol Dweck, Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, Howard Gardner, Peter Senge, Peter Vail, and a host of others, we should nurture self-esteem and confidence, faith and hope, autonomy and ownership, and optimism; we should understand and appreciate each student’s strengths and abilities, and utilize them to help the student help her/himself develop emotional, behavioral and intellectual proficiencies; we should help them find a sense meaning and purpose; and we should help them help themselves become the person each is capable of becoming.

Louis

Diary, the 22nd is about to leave us. Have you ever thought about how people spend their precious feelings and thoughts?  Today my heart and mind were focused on “mindful,” which is still my “Word for the Day” for the next few hours.  Yeah, I take my cards with me wherever I go.  Why do I have them?  It’s because our lives flow from and unfold through our thoughts and feelings.  We live the images we create and feed.  I mean where our feelings and thoughts go, our actions are sure to follow.  What I feel and think has a direct and undeniable connection to what I do.  It’s not technique, method, or technology that provide the stage upon which I perform.  It’s the thousands of thoughts and emotions that I think and feel each day which are the script of how my life will play out.   That’s what Jon Kabat-Zinn means when he says, “wherever you go, there you are.”

So, diary, it pays for me to keep my mind focused on the highest and the best, for they get me to get to and keep in an empowering, meaningful, and purposeful place.  My “Word for the Day” is my way to greet everything and everyone, especially each student, with a sharp stillness and keen focus that cut through distracting noises.  That’s why I still can’t get Tom out of my heart and mind.  I’m not sure I want to because his message is for me a reminder about what would happen if we always accentuated the positive and meaningful, if we were always on the lookout for wonder and awe, if we never succumbed at the first hint of challenge, if we weren’t dismayed or resigned or annoyed, if we never gave up no matter what.

So many people think that the way you feel depends on how things are going when the exact opposite is true.  I mean the likes of Tom is what could happen if we enjoyed the journey.  You see, diary, I refuse not to be awed by each and every student, to find warmth and joy even on the grayest and coldest day.  Yeah, diary, it’s wonder and awe that drive me on.  They’re the alchemist’s lodestone:  they convert the dull into the sharp; they turn a leadened classroom into a dance class; they transform a heap of coal into a treasure chest of sparkling diamonds; they loosen the vise grip of a boring rut; they break numbing routine.  They force me to wonder what each could do if I gave them a chance.  They give me a craving to do better and to see each student do better; they open me up to new and exciting experiences; they keep me awake and alert in class; they unmoor me; they let me be and feel free; they create a reality that is better than anything I can dream. My feelings and thoughts are my deepest and most sincere expectations.  Every fibre of my being picks up on these expectations.  Now, diary, there’s lots I can’t control.  But, I can choose the way to see things and people through the lens of my “Word for the Day, and how I respond to them.  So, I can make the classroom into anything I wish–and do.  Think about it.  In the dead of winter there is always the promise of spring; when all seems lost, there’s always something to be found.  In nearly dying of a cerebral hemorrhage I found how to live even more in the “now” more intently and intensely than I have since my epiphany in 1991.

You know, diary, I love whom I see. I delight in the beauty of every little simple detail of each student.  For me, diary, a student is not an object to be judged, but rather an aspect of my wholeness.  She or he is not apart from me, for whether we see value or worthlessness, we see who we are.  Whether we know it or not, we each have our “words for the day,” that determine how we choose our perspective, our feelings, our thoughts, our words, and our actions. So, we each have the power and potential, no matter what the classroom sends our way, to choose how to look at it and what to do with it.   But, it depends on the nature of our feelings and thoughts, on our sense of meaning and purpose, and whether and to what end we tap them. We just have to work hard at consciously choosing and living by the right words–everyday.

Louis

Diary, it’s the 21st.  I did something this morning I have been resisting since we arrived in China.  I went on the internet to check my e-mail.  Well, let’s say, I gave it a shot.  The computers to which we have access around here are archaic and slow, that is, those that aren’t down.  Of course it didn’t help that VSU has converted to a new e-mail system back in the States since I left and that I don’t know yet how to use.   But, after an “adventurous” struggle wading through the obscure instructions, I did manage to get into what was left of my mailbox.

Anyway, one message I was able to pull up intrigued me.  The subject line read, “Who would believe!  You Would!!”  It was from a student, Tom, who was in class in those early years when my personal transforming epiphany was beginning to transform what I was doing in class.  By his own admission, Tom had “only by the grace of God” graduated from VSU, and that was a long ago.  And, now here he was, an accomplished business executive.  He had contacted me after all these years for a “long overdue ‘thank you’ for being all over me…not taking and surrendering to the crap I and others handed out….for seeing a special, future ‘me’ that at the time I did not….”  and for “especially kicking me in my ass, respectfully and kindly to be sure, until I figured out that you saw my ass was worth kicking before I did and that I should take over from you….Over the years, you don’t know but you’ve been my guide.  When I’ve had similar personnel situations in my company I found myself first going to the list of what I thought at the time was your ‘bumpier sticker’ Words of the Day that we spent five minutes each day talking about and relating to the material we were working on.  For some reason that I didn’t know at the time, I wrote them down, kept with me, and kept looking at them.  Still do, though I’ve added my own to them over the years.  So, when I’ve had to handle someone, as I remembered how you handled me, I always found myself silently saying,  ‘How would Schmier deal with so and so?’ At the time when I was admittedly a young and adrift snot, I didn’t like that you got in our faces, on our backs, and on our asses, much less understand why. I never saw you after that class.  I didn’t want to.  I felt relief I didn’t have to.  But there you were, in spirit, always at my side, still on my back, on my ass, and whispering in my ear like some angel countering the devils temptations in the other ear.  I couldn’t get you (I later realized that didn’t want to) out of my heart and kept going back to those Words of the Day time and time again whenever I was in a jam.  You were like an annoying gnat buzzing in my ear that just wouldn’t go away no matter what I was doing or thinking, on or off campus, saying “you’re better than this.” And, I don’t mean just class work.  I’ll leave that at that.  Now I realize that I had kept you next to me like some ‘student whisperer’ interested in helping me become a better person, not narrowly just as a better student.  So, now it’s time to say ‘thank you’ for your determined caring.  I don’t think I’d be where I am with whom I am if it wasn’t for you in that one class….”

Diary, I have to admit that I read and reread and reread that message through teary eyes.  I haven’t been able to think of much else all day.  I’ve kind of kept to myself in some reflective, spiritual corner.  I’ve been going over that one last phrase, “that one class,” again and again and again.  It was just fifty minutes, five days a week, ten weeks, so many years ago.  Tom brought home the realization how we academics, like it or not, every moment we are “in the now” as futurists.  And so, as Jon-Kabat Zinn always says, we have to be “in the moment” with intense awareness, attentiveness, and otherness.  Actually, diary, “that one class” really has gotten to me.  You see, diary, I’ve been racking my brain, but I just don’t remember Tom and I haven’t the foggiest idea of what I said or did!  In those days, I was groping and stumbling on the first legs of my inner and outer journeys as I was coming out from behind my own self-created and imprisoning walls.

Nowadays, everyone is on the assessment and accountability bandwagon as if we’re merely quality controllers of simple tin cans coming off the production line.  But, that perception restricts us to looking only at tin cans, only at that which is quantifiable and supposedly assessable.  People are a bit more complicated than tin cans.  Wouldn’t it be interesting, then, if we evaluated our teaching effectiveness–as well as slapping labels of “good student” and “bad student” on people–not on the basis of factoryesque class grades, GPAs, recognitions, awards, standardized test scores, student evaluations, and/or on a whole bunch of narrow and shallow focusing assessment and evaluation tools, but rather on how people fare in their future professional, social, and personal lives?  That is, how and to what purposes and in whose service the graduates use the information and skills those traditional indicators say they supposedly–supposedly–acquired.

After all, that is the prize we should have our eyes on:  to graduate students who wind up being good persons, to have academic graduates walk across the stage who are not moral dropouts.  I know. I know, diary, it’s impractical because we may never know how many Toms are out there, that we may never know how what we have said or done has an impact, for better or worse, on future lives.  But, that’s the real proof of the pudding, isn’t it?  Anyway, it’s more than just an interesting thought.  That’s not being “soupy,” “dreamy,” “touchy-feely,” “Oprah-ish,” “bumper sticker-ish,” or “harlequin novel-ish.”  It should give us great pause.

Louis

Diary, good evening.  It’s Saturday, May 19.  I’d like to continue this thing about being close with students because I think it’s very important, especially after talking with some Chinese students here at Zhengzhou.   They are so surprised how approachable and accessible we are.  They all seem to have this expansive chasm between them and their own austere professors.  Some say it’s a matter of deep and unquestioned, almost unconditional submissive, respect for authority.  Having had Chinese students in an occasional class, I know its partly a cultural thing.  Nevertheless, I think that any separating ravine has a negative impact.  Diary, I know you’ve never heard of Julius Segal.  Well, he was a prominent psychologist who said we all need what he called “a charismatic person.”  I had one at Adelphi.  He was a history professor.  His name is Birdsall Viault.

I think we teachers, like Birdsall, have to be one of them.  That is, be the person to whom students can turn in times of stress and pressure, someone from whom they can gather strength, someone who can help ease the pain, someone who can end the isolation and loneliness and aloneness, someone who can help them face life’s challenges; someone who can be a “friend.”  I’ve found that the less someone like that is around, the more students find life more troublesome; the more they find life troublesome, the more troubled they are; the more troubled they are, the more distracted and the less happy they are; and, the less happy they are, the less they perform and achieve.   Sure, you’d think that charismatic person would be a parent, but this psychologist says that because so many students feel they cannot or are afraid to talk with either parent, that there is are all sorts of chasms between them and their parents, as I remember from my days, a surprising number turn to teachers, a role all too many professors are disinclined to play.  Certainly, almost none in China as far as I have been able to see with my limited vision.

It’s too bad most professors don’t recognize, appreciate, and acknowledge all the possible and significant roles that they, like or know it or not, play outside of being scholars but are critical to being inside the classroom.  Nor do they realize or want to realize how complex and unique each student really is.  They’d much prefer to play the impersonal and dehumanizing and collective stereotype, generalizing, presumption, and preconception games.  They’d much prefer to be in the distant information transmission and skill development business  They much prefer to focus on the use of technology and on testing and grading.  They don’t see themselves in the close-up and engaged people business.  Because they don’t realize that whatever they do, their success in the the classroom is so dependent on how they connect to students, they generally cast blame on the students for any failure rather than accept some of the responsibility.

Diary, if you could see the journal entries so many students write during my regular classes back in the States:  abuse, neglect, racism, poverty, illness, learning disabilities, special needs, drug abuse, alcoholism, personal and family trauma, low self-esteem, lack of confidence, and all sorts of self-imposed and external pressures.  It’s as if in writing about these things they have both an outlet and are issuing a call for help.  Sometimes it’s “TMI,’ but so often it’s enough to make you cry.  And, the recent research on how the brain functions in the learning process shows that feeling accepted and being connected are the most powerful human drives.  Our amygdala translates aloneness and loniness as “prey.”  Little wonder so many students seek out the comfort and solace of acceptance and being part of a group in the associations and connections offered by sports teams, clubs, sororities, and fraternities; why they’ll do almost anything to go along rather than be isolated or ostracized, or even stand alone.

Sometimes, a lot of times, more times than most professors know or want to admit, that classroom, with the adult and/or learned authority figure of the professor, is the only opportune moments of safety, security, and acceptance for a student.  And, so many of us ignore or reject that role.  Dismissing such needs with a “it’s not my job” or “its not me” or “I’m not comfortable with…” or “I don’t have the time” as if it demanded unwanted extra curricular time and effort that is diverted from transmitting information or engaging in research, however further such attitudes and actions deplete and deflate a student and add to her or his misery, sense of rejection, sense of unworthiness, and general unhappiness.  Disconnection, disinterest, and exclusion can have disastrous impact on attitude and performance.

So, in the spirit of Maslow, to be pathological or therapeutic, ah, diary, that is the question.

I have never forgotten Dr. Viault.  He was my serum.  I worked harder for him because I felt he was the only one–the only one–who truly cared about me.  He believed in me.  He encouraged and supported me.  He helped me start to do at a least an academic 180.  That’s why I find ways to make sure that students know I care about them; that I am not judgmental; that I believe in them; that I am approachable and accessible; that I never give up on them.  Leo Buscaglia was right.  It’s amazing how a little caring shown in such little ways that take no time at all can have so much impact:  to smile, to laugh, to have fun, to be interested, to listen, to be there, to be open, to be non-judgmental, to say an encouraging word, to issue a warm greeting, to give a slight tap of approval or congratulations.

Often–but not always since you can’t win them all–such attentions and appreciations can go such a long way to help students believe in themselves and motivate themselves.  Knowing this, with my background, having been there, I don’t want to be distant and disengaged.  I personally can’t cast aside such reality when it hits me, if for no other reason then to help a student go see a councilor.  It’s not head-in-the-clouds and dreamy; its not “touchy feel-ly;” it’s very down-to-earth and practical.  Often such attentions and appreciations can go such a long way to help students motivate themselves.   If students are to learn, are to be truly educated, I have to touch both their hearts and minds, both their attitudes and behaviors.   So, if someone asks me what I do, I just may start answering with a “I save lives.”  It’s a much deeper answer than a bland “I teach history” or my usual “I teach students.”  After all, that is what my “Teacher’s Oath” is all about.

Being close to students for me, then, means I’m living every word in my “Teacher’s Oath.”  It’s centrality is unconditional love, connection, hope, empathy, faith, and compassion.  If a student reaches out, I’m ready to be grasped and to grasp; I’m ready to be embraced and to embrace; I’m ready to listen; I’m ready to be an advocate in tough times; I’m ready to help that student by making her or him feel that there is someone who believes in and stands by her or him, maybe even someone with whom she or he can identify (that often happens when I tell students I am a cancer survivor); I’m ready to have faith in, have hope for, and to love; I’m ready to help nurture self-worth and confidence;  I’m ready to help plant seeds of inner strength; I’m ready to touch a heart;  I’m ready to lift a spirit; I’m already to help her or him pulled her/himself up; I’m ready to help a student help her/himself become the person she or he is capable of becoming.  I’m ready to make a difference.

The Chinese faculty and students don’t understand that. A lot of faculty and students back in the States don’t understand that either.

Louis