MORE ON THE ROAD TO SUCCESSFUL TEACHING

A very, very wet good morning.  Thankfully, near-hurricane Beryl proved to be something of a wimp.  It was more of a blowhard, windless, 4 rain inches event by the time it’s eye traveled over Valdosta yesterday.  Yet, yesterday afternoon, as the rains came down, my cellphone rang.  It was Barbara.  She called to remind me of her “assignment deadline,” tropical storm or no tropical storm.  “Yes, ma’am,” I replied.  Not being able to go out into my flower garden, while I was on home lockdown, I was actually thinking about what I would tell Barbara beyond what I had said almost two weeks ago.  I was also reflecting on the workshop I had just given at RCCC’s Summer Institute in North Carolina.  I hope I had offered what they wanted or needed.  I certainly didn’t cover everything that I had planned, but answering questions and going into sidebars during the presentation will always do that.  Speaking of that, I’ve learned that though I read up on RCCC or any institution where I give a workshop on teaching, I really don’t know the ins and outs of its faculty and administration. So, I can’t have any theory for it.  I also don’t know who would be in the audience, what their stories are, what they are seeking, and what they are needing whether they know it or not.  So, I don’t, I can’t, tell them what to think or what to do.  All I can do, all I should do to my way of thinking, is share me and my story making sure they see a guy who had transformed from a pontificating professor to a loving teacher and who has been on his inner personal and professional journey for the last 20 years, making sure they understand nothing is quick, simple, sure fired, or easy, making sure what they see is the result of those decade of searches, learning, experimenting, misfirings, and achievement.  So, I let the “theories” talk to them; I show them how theories talk to me;  I share with them, and model, what I consequently think, feel, and do.  I don’t, I can’t, tell them what to think or what to feel or what to do.  I do help them look through the lens of the latest “brainology” on learning and show them consequently how to think and feel, and the why of such thinking and feeling.  And, I let them draw their own conclusions and make their own decisions about what, if anything, to play with.

Back to Barbara.  Not wanting to get a failing grade on her assignment, this is the first of two parts of what I wrote her.  I told her that each day when I get out of bed I know I am going into a messy, complex, complicated life full of potential waylays, disappointments, unfairnesses, misfortunes, screw ups.  But, if I make a commitment to a higher purpose, to pull that dedication into my life, to live a meaningful personal and professional life in accordance with my values, to refuse to compromise those values, I can fend off the distractions, temptations, static, noise; I won’t let the challenges get me down; I won’t let the setbacks be discouraging; I won’t dwell on the “one that got away” to stop me.  Why?  Well, for one thing complaining won’t accomplish anything.  After all, you can’t build something positive with a bunch of negatives, and you can’t be on the move while stuck in the mud of resignation, frustration, or despair.  For another thing, each “failure” reminds me of the places I want and can go, and maybe makes me even more determined.  And finally, because who I want to be and what I want to do and where I want to go is clear as a bell, rings true as a bell, and cuts my path in the direction of true north.   It’s about morality, ethic, personal awareness, personal otherness, service to others.  It’s about what and how I can leave the world better than when I found it; it’s about doing something that will change the world and alter the future; it’s about doing something that will help others, one person at a time, become better people.  Once I make those decisions on a macro level and abide by it, live it, in my daily micro and incremental choices, life is ethically easier and certainly more significant and fulfilling.  And, to help me keep on the true and narrow, with the intention of making a difference that day, I bookend myself with a guiding morning and every-changing “to do” list and a “not to do” list, and an end-of-day, pre-wine and cheese, reflective and evaluating “done list.”

On the T.V. show, “Inside the Actor’s Studio,” James Lipton always asks his guests what would they want St. Peter to say to them when they stand before the Pearly Gates.  Well, I’ve thought about that lately, feeling a deep sense of mortality, upon the sudden and unexpected death of my friend, colleague, and VSU’s Provost.  I think St. Peter would say to me, “Hey, Schmier, before you say anything, don’t throw your resume in our faces.  We don’t care what you did.  We want to know who your are because who you are tells us why you did what you did.  Were you patently a genuine human being?  Were you too busy working to share, connect, and serve?  Did you bring your heart and soul and spirit and dedicate yourself to a cause beyond your self-interest?  We opened the doors for you to walk through.  Who do you think screamed ‘boo’ in your ear, shook you to your soul, and let you have your epiphany so that you eventually found your place in the very place you were standing?  We showed you the difference between wanting to be important and doing something important; we directed you to finding what you love doing and doing what you love.  We got you past cancer; we let you survive unscathed an unsurvivable cerebral hemorrhage.  We offered you the opportunity to see and understand what really mattered.  We provided you the means to see that your resume of publications and titles and positions were not the best marks of success.  Did you hear and answer the questions we asked of you:  ‘Whither did thou goest?  What’s was the purpose of your life?  What kind of person did you want to become?  What kind of person did you become?’   So, did you stop over-investing in yourself and your career and under-investing in people?  Did you then start investing heavily in others?  Did you discover that loving relationships with family, friends, and students are the most powerful and enduring source of happiness?  Did you see that you were your best teaching resource?  Don’t talk to us in generalities and theories.  Don’t give a list of books and articles you’ve read; don’t rattle off a list of authorities in the field of learning; don’t hand us all those pithy quotes of yours;  and don’t point us to a catalogue of methods and technologies you used.  We are not impressed by all that superficial stuff.  Don’t excuse yourself by telling us that it wasn’t your job and that you outsourced people to other people.  Don’t give us a string of ‘I couldn’t’ and ‘I wasn’t’ and ‘it was hard’ and ‘I didn’t know how.’  Tell us, what did you do with what we gave you?  Give us names!  Talk to us of how you took who everyone else condemned as a weed and nurtured into a beautiful flower.  Talk to us about someone who was labeled small and ordinary and unimportant whom you noticed, cared about, and helped elevate to the heights of huge and extraordinary and important.  Talk to us about the actual persons you found in the valley’s shadows and helped them learn how to climb to the mountaintop.  Talk to us about the individual persons you actually helped, about the individuals you actually helped become better people.”

Maybe that should be an explicit part of our individual and institutional mission, that is, to help students think about their lives and not just their professions, to graduate as honors persons possessing a moral compass rather than just honor students possessing a degree and a credential; to help them play the responsibility game rather than the blame game; to know that while things happen to them in unpredictable ways, they have the profound power to choose the effect that has on the kind of people who they become; to help them understand that professional accomplishment, fulfillment, and happiness aren’t necessarily synonymous terms; and to send them on their way with a strength of character and deeply ingrained values that will help them keep from losing their way.

That has had a heck of an impact on me.  It’s made me see sharper, listen keener, and feel deeper.  It’s made me a more aware person; it’s made me a more alive person; it’s made me a more hopeful and loving person; it’s made me a more empathic person; it’s made me a more selfless and serving person; it’s made me a more purposeful person; it’s made me a more fulfilled person; it’s made me a happier person; and, it’s made me a damn better teacher each day.

Now, it is easy to be preachy to yourself and students.  The problem with such sermonizing, however well intended, is that people, and that includes you and me, will listen and see on their own time not on our time.  Yet, it far more meaningful and just as easy to be spiritual without being preachy.  Just preach with living your life, not with your words.  Speak with you eyes, facial expressions, hands, body language, vocal tones and inflections.  And, from reading daily student journal entries and having subsequent conversations, that is especially critical, for students   What that means is that we better be living a life of values, modeling ‘do as I do’ rather than ‘do as I say and not as I do,’ so that when the occasion arises we are around modeling what we wish they would learn to live proves valuable to each of them.

Louis

ON BEING AN “AHA” TEACHER

4:00 in the Friday morning.  In the Charlotte, NC, airport.  Waiting for security to open.  Can’t wait to get to back to caring for Susie.  Thought the place would be empty, but it seems that the whole of North Carolina is about to fly to somewhere at this pre-dawn time.  Nothing to do but wait.  So, here I am on the floor, learning against the wall, tired from both a lack of sleep and the emotional drain from a full day of presentations yesterday at Rowan-Carrabus Community College Summer Institute that was composed of a 2 1/2 hour morning session I called “Creating that classroom ‘AHA moment,'” what turned out to be a working lunch, and a 2 1/2 hour afternoon session I called “K.I.S.S.E.D,” and thinking about Barbara’s assignment that I have to do before the week is out.

So, let’s talk about choosing to care.  Because when push comes to shove, the first line of my “Teacher’s Oath” is:  Give a damn.  Don’t just say; live it!”  And if you don’t really care, everything else falls out of place.  So, care.  Not just to say, “I care,” but to acting in a caring way; but, not just to act caring in either an emotionally self-satisfying conditional or unconditional way, but in a way that a student feels truly cared about.  In one of those sessions, I was talking, as I so often do, of the impact on our perception of a student, and thus our feeling and thoughts and actions, if we learned to envision an angel walking before each student proclaiming that she or he is created in the image of the Divine as a way of seeing past the outer shell to the inner essence of sacredness and nobility and uniqueness.  One professor raised her hand and blurted out, “I care, but why should I waste my time caring when the students don’t care?  You talk about an angel walking in front of them.  Well, for a lot of them it’s been replaced by Satan.  I’m just cynical.  So, if they don’t care, I won’t!  They have to earn my caring.  I’ve got more important things to do.”  What’s more important than sincerely caring?  What’s more important than caring enough to struggle to get them to care, to change what Carol Dweck calls their “self theories?”   What’s more important than caring to make a difference in someone’s life?   What’s more important than changing your own “self-theories?”  What’s more important than caring to make a difference in your own life.  I personally and professionally have come to think not much.  After all, if you want to create that “aha” moment in the classroom, you have a better chance if you are or struggle to become an “aha” person–every day.  That was the crux of my workshop sessions.  Nothing worthwhile is easy, quick, guaranteed.  Significance isn’t achieved without significant challenge; the most impressive results come from plain old dedication, perseverance, and hard work; relish the “hard stuff” and you’ll transform the other person, yourself, and each moment into something meaningful, purposeful, valuable, and fulfilling.

I mean, what do too many professors expect?  Do they really believe it’s all about them and not themselves?  Do they really believe it’s right to play the blame game and not the responsibility game?  Do they expect all students to be perfect?  Do they expect them to come into class as mini-professors, mirror images of them?  Do they expect students to be  paragons of academic virtue?  Do they focus only in the good students, that is, the “easy ones to teach” or the ones “who teach themselves?”  Do they not believe that they can make a difference in a life in need?  Do they want try to make such a difference?  Do they not care, do they understand, that they have a piece of the future in their hands?  Do they not see the hidden and unexpected blessings that are on the way in the classroom?  Do they want things to be  “easy?”  Do they really see “importance” in “easy?”  Do they not understand that skills and strengths and abilities are of little consequences without unconditional diligence, commitment, dedication, and perseverance?  Unconditional!!  Do they not understand the power of faith, hope, belief, and love?

To those administrators and professors, and to Barbara, I say, your attitude matters; it really is crucial.  I would have them read carefully and slowly the anonymously written lines that I discussed in the two sessions I offered: “No written word nor spoken plea can teach our youth what they should be.  Nor all the books on all the shelves.  It’s what the teachers are themselves.”  To which I added “technology.”  Or, have them ponder, as I did, the words of Haim Ginott, “I have come to a frightening conclusion.  I am the decisive element in the classroom.  It is my personal approach that creates the climate.  It is my daily mood that makes the weather.  As a teacher I possess tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous.  I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration.”  To be a toxin or serum, to be pathological or therapeutic, that is the Shakespearian question.  And, either answer is one hell of a responsibility!!

To put it four different ways, we, not the technology and not the technique and not the information, but we, are the most important classroom resource we have.  I’ll repeat that because it deserves being shouted from the rooftops over and over and over again:  we, not the technology and not the technique and not the information, but we, are the most important classroom resource we have.  Second, sharing–or imposing–our abilities and talents and accomplishments and know-hows is nothing–NOTHING–compared to helping each of those in the classroom with us reveal to themselves their own talents and abilities and potentials to themselves.  And, I’ll repeat that as well because it deserves being shouted from those same rooftops:  sharing–or lording over–our abilities and talents and accomplishments and know-hows is nothing–NOTHING–compared to helping each of those in the classroom with us reveal to themselves their own talents and abilities and potentials to themselves.  Third, if we accept our own fearful and unchanging and atrophying and weakening negative “I can’t” or “I won’t” or “I don’t” fixed mindset, how in heavens name can we offer students the ways and means to transform into a curious, creative, adventurous, changing, growing, fearless and strengthening positive “I can” or “I will” growth mindset?  If we accept ourselves as that “dog in the corner,” how can we help students come out from their own corners?  And finally, in the spirit Jon-Kabat-Zinn, whatever we feel, whatever we think, wherever we go and whatever we do there we are; when things go right, there we are; when things go wrong, there we are.  We, we, we!

No, as I already told Barbara and the participants in the sessions, we see who we are; we teach who we are.  The purpose is in us; the vision is in us; the energy is in us; the conviction and commitment and dedication are in us; the gyroscope is in us.   As many problems as there may be in the classroom, as many challenges are there are, there is greater potential and more numerous possibilities.  The truth is that perceiving challenge as barrier or opportunity is always our choice, caring or not truly caring is always our choice, choosing to do the hard or easy stuff is always our choice, seeing an angel or a devil before each student is always our choice, setting or casting off conditions on our love, faith, hope, and respect is always our choice; choosing to persist and do whatever it takes is always our choice:   teaching is important to us or unimportant, enjoyable or unenjoyable, meaningful or meaningless, not because of how things are or how things go or the techniques and technologies we use, but because of who we are.  Our attitude towards each student and teaching in general is a choice of who to be–and who to become.  When teaching is important, meaningful, significant, enjoyable to us, we are more enjoyable, more interested and interesting, more engaged and more engaging, more driven and more driving.  And, I read constantly in the daily student journal entries, the quality and quantity of our teaching is driven by the quality and quantity of the effort we put into each person that spills over into each student.  The real challenge is that if anyone wants to change how she or he teaches, she or he has to change who she or he is.  And, that is one heck of a long-haul, rocky challenge.  I wonder how many of us are up to picking up the gauntlet.

The challenges, unfair situations, less than perfect students do not excuse professors from their responsibility to make a difference. In fact, the situations compel them to act and to create meaningful value.   You know, while it’s not our fault that teaching is often so difficult, it is our responsibility to deal with those difficulties, to turn the supposed “ugly” into “beautiful,” to see that underneath there never really was ugly, to see the butterfly in the caterpillar.  And sure, the pressures are enormous.  But, as Viktor Frankl said in his MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING, it is because we cannot change a situation that we are challenged to change ourselves.

So, I’ve come to believe that the effort to truly and unconditionally care in the classroom is not a burden, and we can’t run from effort.  Want “Effortless” or “Easy?”  Those words mean that a person does less, could care less, has less driving desire to make what she or he does matter, and has less fight to make a dream into a reality.

Airport security is opening up and people are starting to move.  So, I’ll finish this up.  To those who still give a dissenting “bah,humbug,” I say that it doesn’t take much effort to be truly caring.  What may seem like small gestures of caring are not small; they can have an impact on mindsets, attitudes, outlooks, hopes, beliefs, self-perceptions, and performance.  But, if you don’t care, you won’t really care to be caring.  So, here are some more rooftop words that I’ve said over and over and over again–and will keep repeating to hammer home.  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.  So, again, in the words of Leo Buscaglia:  “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.”

ROAD TO SUCCESSFUL TEACHING

Well, I’m two-faced today.  One face is glum since I’m leery about leaving Susie Wednesday morning for two days just as she starts her grueling physical therapy for her shoulder.  On the other hand, I’m starting to put on my game face and get into my groove for a day-long, two-part workshop on Thursday as part of the summer teaching institute being held at Rowan-Cabarrus Community College that starts tomorrow.  But, I had a few tributaries that are raising the level of my adrenal flow.  The first was chatting with my good friend, Kevin Johnston at Iowa last week about a question some his newer faculty raised about just how much time they should devote to classroom preparation.   The second was agreeing to do a brief webcam this morning as a favor for Linda Serro during which I’ll be discussing with her faculty at Florida Gulf Coast the implications of one of my recent Random Thoughts.  The third occurred last Thursday afternoon when, as chance or whatever would have it, I bumped into a student as I was cutting through the park, heading home a bit euphoric after a crucial General Faculty meeting.

The young lady, Barbara, who had been in class Fall semester was on the swings.  She waved to me as she yelled out a “Hi, Schmier.”  I turned, smiled, and waved back.  Then, she jumped off the swings, ran over to me, gave me a hug, and said cheerfully, “Hey, Schmier, I want you to know that thanks to you I now know what I want to major in.  I’ve decided I want to an ed major.  I want to teach and make a difference.  I want to be like you.”

“Well, thanks for the compliment, but you can’t and don’t try to be me,” I replied.  “You’re not me anymore than I am you.”

Before I could explain, she shot back, “Then, I have a quickie assignment for you.  I want you to answer a question.  Tell me, what’s the road to successful teaching?”

Thinking of my two self-inspired, successful, and fulfilled sons, one a Stanford MBA V-P of Marketing in a Silicon Valley company and the other a successful graduate of the “school of hard knocks,” chef at the Gaylord Resort Hotel in Nashville, both of whom love what they’re doing and doing what they love, “Your own,” I answered quickly.

“Is that it?” she asked   “No, there’s more to it than that,” she shot back, “not with all that challenging stuff you had us do in class.  The ‘Chair,’ the ‘Story,’ the ‘paper clips,’ the journaling, the one word ‘how we feel,’ the ‘words of the day,’ the learning projects, all of it?  No, I want to know more about your  ‘why.’ Remember?  You told us that if we didn’t understand why we were doing something, you’d give us your ‘why.’  We didn’t have to agree with it; just understand it.  You always said that there was a madness to your methods.  So, what’s your ‘madness?'”

“Well, for starters, burn these words of the Buddha into your mind and heart, ‘We see as we are.’  Someone else said, ‘We teach who we are.’  What they both mean is that there are three essential needs to cut and walk that road:  attitude, attitude, attitude.  It’s not technique, it’s not method, it’s not technology.  It’s you.  You are your most important tool in the classroom.  It is your attitude,  your perceptions of yourself and of each student, you take with you into the classroom that can make or break your and their entire experience.”

“And?” she posed

“Well, there is more, but that’s the guide line to help you cut your own road.  Give me until the end of next week after I come back from a conference in North Carolina and I’ll zip it to you.  My mind isn’t working in that direction after this meeting I just got out of.  Meanwhile, I’ll send you four things:  my ‘Teacher’s Oath,’ my ‘Ten Commandments of Teaching,’ my ‘Ten Stickies, and my favorite of all my reflections, ‘To Be A Teacher.'”

“By the end of next week.  I know where you live and I’ll stalk you if you don’t.”  She gave me a quick hug and ran off to hop back on the swings before I could protest.

Yesterday, I was in my garden pulling weeds with my Nashville grandmunchkin, who was here with her parents for too short of a weekend, when the cell phone rang.  I heard this voice, “Hey, Schmier, this is Barbara.  Don’t forget me and your promise.  You always gave us deadlines: end of next week.  And don’t be wordy.”

“Well, you gave until the end of next week, but I’ll give you a sneak preview.  Here is one for starters, the foundation of it all.  I’ll send it to you in writing next week:  A class is a ‘gathering of sacred “ones.”‘  So, if you want to walk the road to successful teaching put aside all the formal theories, all the generalities, stereotypes, labels, when you reach out to touch that miracle called the individual human being.  Teach to that one student with a wild ‘wow,’ unshakeable belief, unconditional love, unending hope, boundless expectation, and unrelenting tenacity.  Teach with a smile in your heart and on your face.  I’ll get back to you.  But, read the stuff I’m going to send you first.”

So, with the help of Kevin, Linda, and Barbara I feel myself getting into my groove.  And, when that happens as it always does before a class, conference presentation, workshop, or whatever, I always do one thing; I go inside myself, slow down, pause, reflect, and focus.   It’s like a meditative look into a soulful mirror asking what am I doing to help other people?  That look in the mirror is well worth the time.  It relaxes me.  It slows me down, sharpens my edges; it makes me more aware, more attuned, more alert, and more alive; I see clearer and hear keener; I “smell” wherever I am; it deepens by sense of otherness.  It stops me from falling into the trap of “thingifying” teaching specifically and education in general, and “objectifying” people.  It prevents me from obsessing over schedules or the need to ‘hit all the points’ or to ‘cover everything.’  It reminds me that hurrying in itself is a poison.  It blurs your vision as well as all your other senses.  It means you no longer have a sense of what is inside you and around you; it means you no longer care about what you’re doing; it means that you want to get on to other, more important, things.  It always reminds me, as I’ll tell Barbara, that whatever your road, walking it is more than style and technique and technology because it’s not the particular path Barbara or I or anyone else choses to walk that’s important, it’s why you chose that path.  That ‘why’ will determine the how and what you do on the walk for whom.  There is a Talmudic saying, “whoever loves money never has money enough.”  So, my final words are these, “whoever truly wants to make a difference never makes difference enough.”

Louis

IT’S KINDA SIMPLE AND COMPLICATED

Well, those uneducational things that have little to do with deep and lasting learning we call “final grades” are finally in. Took me a couple of “late nighters,” since my first priority was nursing Susie. Anyway, the semester is completely over for me.  By my reckoning, I just ended my 44th year here at VSU, and I don’t intend to stop counting.  You know neither longevity nor age itself doesn’t stop anything, attitude does.  That is, only I stop creating, I stop imagining, I stop experimenting, I stop risking, I stop improving, I stop growing, I stop changing.   I am, like everything else, the embodiment of change, a proverbial work in progress.  I am not a “human being.” I am a moving, dynamic “human becoming.”   My routine is to never let anything become dull, boring, “in-my-sleep,” rut-ish routine.  I am a sculptor, always chiseling, chipping away here and there, reshaping everywhere my life sculpture.  I am an artist on whose life canvas I am always painting, a stroke here, a scene change there, a change everywhere.  My life, any life, is a work in constant process.   It is a curious paradox that as I accept me for who I truly am, I then can transform me into becoming.

So, what have I learned in these 44 years of teaching, 71 years of living, as well as having survived both cancer and a massive cerebral hemorrhage, about what really matters?  A bunch of things that I use to keep me on the move.  But, if there are any items that should be at the top of that list, these are the five:  first, education has become too “thingified,” that is, degrees, resumes, publications, grants, renown, titles, tenure, grades, GPAs, recognitions don’t really bring lasting inner peace and fulfillment as too many people expect;  second, what matters is not what you have, but what you feel about and do with what you have.  That is, it is always your choice, and your attitude is always your choice;  third, education is not an exercise without human beings, that is, the beat of the classroom is the heart beat, not the clicking computer, not the clicking clickers, not the turning of lecture pages, not the scratching of notes; fourth, the vision in your heart and soul directs your line of sight and what you see; and last, but maybe first, get up with a “yes,” enthusiastically get going, and live every aspect of life joyously now.

How do these five teaching impact on my teaching–and my personal life as well?  Well, as I get older and gain more experience, the outer shells have been stripped away.  All the “what have I done” resume crap drops away revealing the significant soulful presence of “who I am becoming” stuff.   I’ve found that a lot of people, far too many people, are asking “where’s the beef,” but are really looking for and accepting “pink slime” filler.  They may truly want a newness, sometimes even a purpose, for their teaching, but, they are restricted by what I’ll called a “negative fixedness,” that is habits of perceptions which blind and deafen them to who is inside them and right in front of them. They so fixate on a negative reality; they care more about the security for their job, more about what others will think and do, than for their soul and their happiness.  They seem to forget that there’s risk in everything; they seem to forget to accept, manage, or learn how to manage risk and transform it into achievement.  Instead, they let a habit of fear become more powerful than a habit of purpose.  They close their minds and hearts, and consequently are prone to raising drawbridges and shutting doors.  They want a new teaching method or approach on their quick, easy, comfortable, convenient, guaranteed, and safe terms, and let their fears deafen and blind them to what the latest research on learning is recommending.  They want results but not at the expense of remaking their lives, of opening the gates to their protective walls,  preferring to live by guarantee, rationale, and old habit rather than by intuition, inspiration, purpose, vision, new habit, and significance, never realizing that what they fear is far more often benign than malignant, never understanding that protective walls are also imprisoning walls.  They weren’t ready, didn’t feel a strong need, to change what Charles Duhigg calls a “keystone habit,” to “rechunk” thoughts and actions, necessary to reprogram the other attitudes and routines in their professional and personal lives.

Where’s the “beef?”  It’s in a steady and unswerving dedication to a vision. And, the vision?  My vision?  I’ll keep it simple.  For me, teaching has come down to seven words:  “Do it unconditionally for each ‘human being.'”   I’ve learned to strip away preconceived, impersonal, cold, distant, disconnected perceptions inherent in the surface label “students;” I’ve learned to go deep and see each of them instead as a “sacred human being” or “noble and unique person,” and a class as a “gathering of diverse ‘ones.'”   I’ve learned to guide myself by one question and one question only:  “What will make each person’s life better and help her or him live the better life?”   It’s a vision that can’t pry me from believing in, having hope for, unconditionally loving, and plying what I do in that classroom in the service of each of them.

So, if you want a resonant, positive, growth mindset and believe you can help change a life–and that is THE essential “if”–, if you want the sense of satisfaction, fulfillment, and significance of what it is you do in the classroom–and that is THE second essential “if”–, if you want to be in the service of others–and that is THE third essential “if”–you have to change your routine.  You have to learn to listen closely, see intensely, think hard, connect tightly, feel deeply, roll up your sleeves, be patient with yourself and others, go into the risky “scary zone,” challenge any “negative fixedness,” create and experience a “positive reality,” be a “disruptive innovator,” be a “resonant leader,” create and enjoy, know and admit to what you don’t know, populate that lonely extra mile, walk more on that road less taken, be in it for the long haul, move incrementally but significantly.

But, take care, this is not as easy, quick, simple, risk-free, error-free, guaranteed, or “in-my-sleep” effortless as it may seem.  Nothing worthwhile is.  But, if you want to get into and stay in shape you have to keep that heart pumping not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually as well.

Louis

WHAT KIND OF TEACHERS HIGHER EDUCATION NEEDS

Took a very brief respite from nursing Susie while her cold rush therapy machine eased the pain in her shoulder.  Haven’t gotten around to putting together those very uneducational things called “final grades” due next Monday.  Am in communicato with students.   First things first, and helping Susie recover from her surgery comes first, last, and only at this time.  If heaven can wait, so can final grades.  Anyway, I was sitting by the pond.  No walking.  Muscles ache.  Little sleep.  All night medication and icing down regimen meant I was on the den couch next to Susie in the reclining chair with my eyes closed and ears cocked listening for both the timer and Susie.  Haven’t gone deep in two nights.  It may not be restful for me, but it’s comforting to her.  And, that is all that matters.

It was dawn.  Keeping the patio door open so I could hear Susie through the screen doors if and when she needed me, I braved the awaking mosquitoes and sat by the fishpond, sipping a cup of freshly brewed Tanzania Peaberry coffee, listening to the sooth sounds of the waterfalls.  Heralding first light, some birds chirped above me in the branches of the pine and magnolia tree that majestically stand guard over the pond.  You know, some would just look at those trees and don’t see a thing; some would see so many impersonal atoms or impersonal laws of nature; some would see so many board feet for construction; and, some would see both a miracle of life and a life full of endless miracles.  Jack Kornfield said, “Those who are awake live in a constant state of amazement.”  It’s true.  If you do things “in your sleep,” you won’t have your eyes, ears, and heart open.  If you don’t open your eyes, you won’t see;  if you don’t open your ears, you won’t listen; if you don’t open your heart, you won’t feel.   If you aren’t awake and alert, you won’t see, listen, and feel the miracle that is today; you won’t see the beauty that is you, others, and everything around you; you won’t act from a perspective of those beauties; you won’t feel how good and powerful it is to be alive; you won’t understand and appreciate how extraordinary each day is; you won’t understand how extraordinary each person is; you won’t see the boundless potentials in each day and each person; you won’t see, listen, and feel below the superficial and shallow surface to what really matters about things and people; you won’t be able to imagine the amazing possibilities around and in you, as well as in others.

And, if Kornfield wasn’t talking about being in a classroom, as I am sure he specifically wasn’t, I am.   So, in the spirit of both him and Thurgood Marshall, higher education needs more teachers who are alive, who aren’t just getting by.  By that I mean teachers who are wide awake, peering through a human window into the classroom, looking at classroom caterpillars and seeing butterflies, understanding that educaton is made out of people, fueling a curiosity about each student, living mindfully of who is in the classroom with them, relating to students joyfully, opening themselves to even the smallest things, teaching engaged with other lives, delighting in the beauty that is the classroom, being nurturers, reminding themselves that it is good to be in a place filled with endless possibilities, going that sparsely populated extra mile, having a vision and living it, letting themselves be a conduit of learning’s immense joy, being empathetic of the inner and outer battles we’re all fighting, feeling empowered by an ability to make a difference, overwhelming the difficulties with unmatched joy, transforming obligations into opportunities for spectacular achievement, and knowing how good it feels to be in awe of each moment they’re in and of each person they are with.

Louis