Once again I interrupt my reflections on responsibility and choice in the classroom.  The interruption is caused by a student journal entry I just read this morning.  She wrote:  “My philosophy professor realized the stuff we have been learning for the past two weeks is not any material that going to be on our test so I just believe I learned something that isn’t important and that I will never use.  What a waste.  It’s not just the two weeks.  It’s that this is such an unnecessary class for what I want to be.  I mean, let’s get real.  It has nothing to do with my biology major any more than do some of my other classes.  And to boot, my advisor agrees with me and told me he doesn’t know why we are required to take this useless Core stuff.  And, this course is supposed to mean something to me?  I mean why won’t someone tell me why I have to waste my time and parents’ money taking this useless class?”

Oh, the sins of a credentialing education.  Oh, the sins of so often converting our campuses into only white–collar vo-tech schools.  Oh, the sins that so many academics believe the same thing.  And, don’t blame her for these attitudes.  She didn’t come out from the womb with them; they weren’t built into her genetic code.  They are a “learned response.”.  She, like most students and parents, was well taught in it; she, like most students and parents, learned it well; and, she, like most students and hovering parents, accept it without question.

Do you think this student is unique?  I know she isn’t.  I wage a battle against this prevalent attitude every day.  But, I ask, if you believe it is your responsibility to address this myopic view of the classroom experience; if you believe in “deep learning,” in “life-long love of learning,” in a liberal arts foundation found in what we call “the Core,” what would you tell this student?  I know what I will say to her if she gives me the chance, but first I sent her a copy of a Random Thought I shared way back at the beginning of 1997 titled “Why Do I Have ToTake” and told her to read it before we talk–if she wanted to talk.

Louis

 

I know.  In this series of reflections about choice, I have spoken about the view from “in here” rather than the doing “out there.”   It almost sounds like something from Alice in Wonderland:  you’re outside and must go inside so that once you’re inside you can go outside.  But, thinking about it, part of my epiphany was a realization that responsibility is a partner of confidence.  Choosing to be responsible for who I am,  is the only way I can be confident of and feel accomplished for what I do.  After all, when I blamed others for my situation with a “they made me do,” wasn’t I saying to myself that I was not strong enough?  When I expected others to supply good fortune, wasn’t I living on their terms?   When I lived according to “what do they think,” wasn’t I surrendering any chance of being successfully me?  So, my epiphany was to go inside and ask my heart what it already knew–and listen.

My bottom line question for my heart, then, was:  How would would you feel and how would your classes look and operate if your main focus was on loving, caring, respecting, believing in, having hope for unconditionally about each person in that classroom, including yourself?  It was an easy question to ask; the hard answers were hard to accept.  From my experience, I assure you that you will have to go inside for the answers.  I also assure you that you won’t find them just waiting there for you.

The challenges are real and are not to be taken lightly.  You see, if you decide to risk the journey, and it is a venture into the dangerous unknown, you have to keep in mind a few things that the cognitive and neuro scientists tell us.  They say that because we all have the same brain, but have different stories, to be an individual is to be a variation on a common theme.  They say that too often we focus too much on the variability at the expense of the commonality.  They say that our brain does not objectively “see,” but subjectively “perceives,” that is, we see things not as they are, but as we are.  They say that while we tend to project ourselves onto others, how and what we actually know of ourselves is vastly different from how and what we can know of others.   They say while it may be bitter to see achievement through another’s eyes, we must acquire an awareness and otherness, for we can observe and learn from the emotional experience of others.  They say that the wise choices do not focus on what we get or do, but on what we truly and deeply emotionally experience.  They say that when we imagine how we will feel upon making a choice, we find it impossible to ignore the influence of how we are feeling now.  So, they say that there’s no simple formula for making any choice; there’s no simple, quick, easy, painless, and surefooted teaching method or technology that we can choose objectively.

Now, my two decade journey has been characterized by a learning and applying toe-testing, cool, balanced “caginess” rather than “jump in” or “jump on the bandwagon” or “all in” audaciousness.  I, nevertheless, reached where and who I am with slow, cautious, incremental, selective, experimental, and continuing choice.  I think Clayton Christensen would say while that I started off as a “sustaining changer,” tweaking here and honing there, I unintentionally and inadvertently became a “disruptive changer.”  Trust me, it took indomitable conviction to follow the north star of my developing, reflected upon, and articulated vision; it took a meaningful and purposeful and significant drive to step confidently ahead; it took an inner passion to keep moving forward; it took the fervor of a missionary to create new values.  The cognitive and neuro research, however, says that frequency is more important than the quantity or intensity.  The small, habitual stuff, the daily nuggets matter much more than occasionally hitting the mother lode.  It is as Leo Buscaglia said, “Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.”   So, if you choose to go inside in order to do outside, do it with while being “KISSED”:  Keep It Small and Significant Every Day!   Graciously and unconditionally make faith in, hope for, belief in, love of, and kindness towards each and every student your daily personal and style,  knowing that a small step on a great journey is never small.

To be sure, you have to choreograph each step in your own dance, compose each note in your own song, write each word in your own script, and paint each stroke in your own mural.  All I know is that when I sing my own song, when I dance to my own choreography, when I perform my own lines, when I feel obligated to enlarge my world and the world around me, that’s when I experience purpose, meaning, and fulfillment–and help students to feel the same feelings; what’s when I refuse to have pathological view of “what’s wrong with today’s students,” but have a therapeutic focus on “what’s right with today’s student’s.”   And, that’s when I am truly happy: when I truly love who I am and who I am constantly becoming; when I have a durable and enduring feeling of well-being; and, when I have a quiet satisfaction with what I am doing with my life.  I may not be able to put it into words, but when I feel it, I have no doubt of its reality and importance.  And, maybe most important, I know there is so very much more to being an educator than that resume, title, and position; so much more to being than those things you can list.

All you have to remember is that very, very few people, and that includes me and you, can truly flourish if he or she doesn’t care about her/himself or anyone, or feels no one cares about them, values them, notices them, supports and encourages them.   Then, the only way to teach, is to accept unconditionally each person each second in that classroom as that unrepeatable miracle.  “Kindsight” will give you so much insight.  Do that, and you will be determined to learn, practice, and apply methods and techniques and technologies to teach in that way.

Louis

Over the decades, from my experience and transformation, I’ve concluded that there are only two fundamental choices in life.  The first, is the choice to take the outward route and align ourselves with what we done:  with our credentialed authority, resumes, publications, degrees, and titles; and, we then can define ourselves by what other people think about us with their recognitions and rewards based on what we have done.  The second, is the choice to take the inner route and align ourselves with who we are: we can define ourselves by our spirit, our nobility, our sacredness, our humanity for which there are few recognitions and rewards.

Each choice rests itself on choosing between fear or love.  It’s an either/or choice.  It’s a matter of choosing of wanting to be in a state of fear or a state of unconditional love.  When a student says, “I’m stressed,” that’s fear. When a faculty member says, “I’m not comfortable doing that,” that’s fear.  When a student says, “I’m not good at,” that’s fear.  When a faculty member says, “But, I don’t have tenure,” that’s fear.  When a student says, “I have to drop….,” that’s fear.  When a faculty member says, “I’m not good with….,” that’s fear.  When a student says, “I can’t,” that’s fear. When a faculty member says, “I’m not comfortable with,” that’s fear.  When a student says, “What if,” that’s fear. When a faculty member asks, “Do I need this for my P/T document,” that’s fear.  When a student asks, “Will this be on the test,” that’s fear.  When a faculty member says, “You know what my colleagues will think,” that’s fear.  When a student says, “I’ll do anything not to be single,” that’s fear.  When a student utters a self-effacing negative, it’s her or his fear speaking.  Neither isn’t stressed, isn’t unable, doesn’t hate, doesn’t like, isn’t good at, doesn’t know; that student is afraid, afraid of being wrong, afraid of getting a lower grade, afraid her or his parents won’t be proud of her or him, afraid of having the wrong boyfriend or girlfriend, afraid of choosing the wrong major, afraid, afraid, afraid.  It’s no different with each of us academics.

Fear.  Constricting, restricting, enslaving. Imprisoning.  I knew it well.  It was a dear, corrosive companion of mine, but it was no dear friend. Then, somehow and for some reason, maybe it was the power of crisis, I chose to let go of things past, to get off the worn path of accepted action, to let my epiphany shift my consciousness, to strike out on new paths, and so it took me somewhere else in the very same physical place I was already at.  It was a place where I no longer gave fear a seat at the table.  It was a place with open front doors, not locked cell doors.  That energizing and liberating somewhere else is called “love.”

Love.  There, in that place, love is so transformative that its incandescence drives away fear’s darkness.  Yet, unlike an article, book, grant, degree, title, position, love can’t be neatly line-itemed on a resume or neatly packaged in a Tenure and Promotion portfolio. To paraphrase something I read, it’s like a star:  you can’t put your hand on it, but it sure is a guide to follow to your potential.  I had stumbled on happiness.  I slowly found that real inner serenity, fulfillment, meaningfulness, purposefulness are not about doing something outside you; they’re about touching that potential that is within you.  I slowly learned that judgmentalism, anger, condemnation, resignation, anxiety, and weeding out don’t “fix” anything.  No amount of fear, living and modeling it, is going to make anyone fearless.  No amount of resignation is going make one person excited; no amount of being sick of anything is going to make one person better.  No amount of negativity, is going to result in any positive thing.  Unconditionally treasuring your own magnificence, unconditionally treasuring the magnificence of each student, does.

But, the problem is:  whom to specifically love.  So, for the past two decades, each time I go into a classroom or talk with a student, I ask, “Who is right in front of me to whom I must pay attention?”  It’s a seminal habit to have, for that question has helped me do everything I do to cut through that obscuring veil, “student,” to connect with the each individual person.  To do that, I’ve replaced looking with seeing and hearing with listening:  as we do the various beginning-of-the-term “getting to know ya” exercises, when I read each student’s journal daily entry, when I look at the “how I feel” word each student writes on the whiteboard, when we briefly discuss the “words for the day” at the beginning of each class, when I read and listen to each face and body.  It also showed me that the answer I seek is usually inside me and inside each student.  We may be busier than busy, but we cannot let that question or the truth of the answer get lost in the shuffle.  If we do, we lapse into and are imprisoned by impersonal, stereotypic, generalized, and skewed assumption and perception.  The result more often than not is a misinterpretation or what the psychologists call “attribution error.”

Sure, most of us don’t pay attention to character development as part of our job description.  We display an uneasiness when we’re faced with the language of morality beyond the clinical word “plagiarism.”  But, I have come to believe that you cannot fully consider student achievement or lack of it merely by looking at tests, papers, projects, grades, or GPAs.  Other than that intellectual and academic word, we tend to reject any responsibility to consciously instill virtuousness.  Now, I’m not talking about Zen or Greek philosophy, or even Judeo-Christian theology.  Well, I am because I’m talking about respect, kindness, cooperation, consideration, compromise, self-control, reliability, self-esteem, self-confidence, service, and all that which goes into living by the entire Golden Rule–or my Teacher’s Oath.  Like it or not, we’re moral evaluators and we are actors in a morality play.  Haim Ginott reminds us, each of us, whether was like it or not, is a spiritual leader; we can chose pathologically to be self-focused, uncaringly or conditionally pulling a few students into our own limited ego while disdaining and disrespecting and discarding most others rather than unconditionally honoring each of them; or, we can chose therapeutically to make care our core, to accord each student the unconditional dignity and respect to which each is entitled; we can chose to approach each student with the realization that there is no condition to loving and no limit to loving.

With unconditional belief, kindness, empathy, compassion, service, learning, we can help ourselves and each student have a chance to think and feel differently about ourselves, her/himself, and others; to grow and transform, and thereby muster the courage to walk new roads.  After all, whether credentialed faculty or yet-to-be credentialed student, isn’t achievement made by those who do what they were afraid to do, made by those who expand their horizons, , made by those who discover that there are no limits to learning and improving and achieving, made by those who see what they can become by nudging themselves away from their stationary “I am,” made by those who do what they did not previously know they could do, made by those who reach for what they cannot yet touch?   Neither student nor us can push forward by fearfully staying safe and comfortable; or, bring new passion and strength to our lives by avoiding the path least traveled; or, discover amazing and untapped ability by holding tightly to the tired excuses, worn rationales, and outdated assumptions;  or, unwrap and use the transcending gifts of discovering new experiences, new skills, new knowledge, new self-esteem, and new self-confidence by accepting the limits of the old.  Leo Buscaglia was right on point, and the recent cognitive and neuro-research backs him up.  Nothing is meaningless and wasted when we live from a social place; from a place holding hands, connecting with, and being in community with love.

So, it boils down to this, we have to go beyond displaying our credentials and helping students get credentialed.  We have to teach both our discipline and life.  We have to live and model four all encompassing life values:  an unconditional open and generous heart to all, an unconditional empathy and compassion for all, an unconditional kindliness and respectfulness toward all, and service in the interest of others.

Louis

As I walked the wet streets this morning, an old question started once again to buzz in my head:  “Do we really believe anyone can truly flourish if no one cares about them, values them, notices them, supports and encourages them?”  It was triggered when I was at a Bar Mitzvah party last weekend.  I was mulling around after dinner with a bowl of ice cream that one of the servers, a student who had been in class with me, had “stolen” from the kitchen for me–the perks of giving her an “A.”   A woman came up to me, drink in hand, a flashing party hat on her head, a smile on her face.  She gently rested her hand on my hand that was holding the bowl.  She introduced herself to me. I looked at her.  I could barely hear her over the party’s deafening “noise” coming from the banquet room being played by the DJ who felt that volume was proportional to musical quality.  Anyway, she leaned into my ear and said in a few darting sentences, “Dr. Schmier, I know you don’t remember me.  I’m….(too noisy to hear) and I’m a teacher at….(again, too noisy to hear).”  Honestly, I was being polite since I was focusing on my ice cream, that is, until she hit me square in heart’s eyes, “I was one of your freshmen students ten years ago.  I saw you and just wanted you to know that of all of my professors, you were the most important.  I never forget you.  You’re with me in my class every day whispering in my ear.  I want to thank for loving me when I didn’t and showing me that I was worth loving myself.  You changed my life when you helped me see what you saw and set me on the right course.  And, because of you I am helping my students struggle to do that, too.  I just wanted to come to you and thank you when I saw you standing here.”

I was stunned.  Caught by surprise, I froze with a spoonful of ice cream half way to my open mouth.  Slowly, I replied with a subdued, “Thank you.”  But, before I could gather my composure and add that she should thank herself for having the courage and mustering her newfound inner strength to make the hard choice of getting off her loveless path and to walk her own loving road, she was gone.

“Loving.”  Thinking this morning of that word she used,  I know that all which is embodied in that “heart-word” was at the heart of my epiphany twenty years ago.  It was, as Carl Jung would have said, what I had chosen to allow a certain and sudden realization to take hold of me rather me having it.  That meant there was no letting when things got uncomfortable, inconvenient, and downright painful.  And, trust me, they did, for the realization was a very uncomfortable one of a need to transform my “self.”  Heeding the realization, I held my breath and consciously took the deep plunge inside looking for the answers to my five essential questions:  “Who am I?”  “How did I get here?  “Where should I be going” “What am I here to do?”  and “Why does it matter?”

The quest for answers took me on a journey traveling from an exclusiveness and selective distance to an inclusiveness and unconditional connection.  It was a change in my understanding about self-reliance.  It took me to a higher and deeper place where I slowly, carefully, hesitantly risked being vulnerable and leaving my protective ego behind.  I slowly and carefully, chose to move from an authoritative, masked, self-centered “spotlight on me” to a vulnerable, trusting, and loving reliance on a nobility and sacredness and uniqueness of my humanity.  And, I then quickly expanded my questioning to an inclusive sixth one about each student: “Who are you?”  The evolving answers helped me to decide that I should be teaching each student, not merely my transmitting the information and skills of my discipline; to see that each of us, including each student, is special; that, in the spirit of Psalms 82:6, each student is a human being, possessing a “sacredness,” a “godliness” if you will, who is too valuable to simply disrespect, easily dismiss, or quickly discard.  No, instead of being arrogantly and coldly weeded out, each student should be empathetically and compassionately nourished.

That change has become my only coin of my realm.  That realization even has had an impact on my exercise routine of daily jogging, later power walking, and lifting weights.  Triggered by a dear friend’s heart attack at 35, my workouts first had been out of a reluctant and fearful desperation to get back into physical shape.  They slowly transformed into avid work-ins to become emotionally and spiritually relaxed, fluid, and  “in shape.”  And, as that transformation too place, I slowly learned that the body and spirit that walk and work together have “heart” health together, that both are wondrous things if maintained and treated with respect.

So, slowly, oh so slowly, I acquired an awareness, otherness, and attentiveness.  I became aware of my memories and acknowledged my hurts, which made me attentive to theirs; I became conscious of my self-serving, selective, and discriminating perceptions about myself and others, which made me attentive to theirs; I became conscious of my ups and downs, heartaches, and thrills, failures and successes, with which I made a “been there, done that” connection with them.  Now, each time I feel myself becoming judgmental and critical of myself, colleagues, and especially of students, I think “heart.” When you think heart, your empathy appears; when your empathy appears, your compassion rises; when your compassion rises, you reach out in the service of others; when you serve others, you get to know their “heart stories;” when you get to know their heart stories, your heart opens; when your heart opens, you think “heart;” and it starts all over.   I call this my “Loving Edge.”

You may only look at this woman as a result of living that Edge, but you also have to look at a lot of the hard work that goes into keeping that Edge keen.  Using my Ro4 method to avoid what the psychologists call attribution error, I consciously started correcting myself, pulling back, and stopping myself.  I no longer say, knee-jerk “How can they do that?” or jump to a quick conclusion “How can they think that way?”  or automatically reflex “Student nowadays aren’t ….”  I no longer send them negative and demeaning, and pathological denigrating messages.  Instead, I stretch out my hand, open my heart, and broaden my mind.  In responses to their journal entries, in small talk, in the “words of the day” I write on the whiteboard and we discuss for a few minutes at the beginning of each class, I just send them a positive, uplifting, empathic, supportive, encouraging, compassionate, and therapeutic, “You’re better than that.” ” You can.”  “You’ll surprise yourself.” And, I when I do that, there are better chances that things will happen; when things happen, transformation can occur; and, that’s when miracles have a better chance of taking place.  I discovered that if I chose to align myself with my nobility and sacredness and uniqueness, everything I feel, think, and do will go in a certain direction, and I will align myself with each of their nobility, sacredness, and uniqueness.  And, then, I have opportunities every minute of every day to get to that place and to stay in that place; or, if I go astray, to get back to that place.  When you have given joyfully, without hesitation or reservation or condition or thoughts of gain, you never know.  Someone may come up to you while you’re eating a sinful, purloined bowl of ice cream, and tell you that it was all worthwhile.

Louis