“So,” asked Julia as we continued our conversation of last week, “if teaching is tough, how do you keep at it?  Don’t you get tired of it, of us?”

“I focus,” I answered.  “You don’t know the power of focusing although you use it and don’t realize it.  It’s a heart skill that too many people ignore and don’t learn.  But, it’s not just focus; it’s the kind of focus and on what I focus that’s important;  it’s the kind of focus that sends out caring rather than anger, encouragement rather than frustration, connection rather than disinterest, commitment rather than fear, and community rather than strangerness.”

I told her that focus tames frenzy; it applies brakes; it gives you a sense that you’re not out of control; it organizes your mind and heart.  When I’m focusing, I’m not caring about students in a class; I see the class as a gathering of “sacred ones;” I hear that angel reminding me that each one is created in the image of the divine; I’m caring about one person, one at a time.  It’s an unconditional, locking in kind of focusing:  believing in focusing; having faith in focusing; having hope for focusing; loving focusing.  And, that is an uplifting, invigorating, recharging, and inspiring focus for me.  When I focus I’m abiding by my “Ten Commandments of Teaching” and my “Teacher’s Oath;”  when I focus she or he is important to me; I notice her or him; I’m there to help her or him become the person she or he is capable of becoming, often to help her or him change the way she or he is looking at her/himself and life.  It’s a determined focus that gives me an effective focus, a purposeful focus, an empowering focus.  I told her that it’s both a state of mind and of heart.  It’s a filtering state that allows me to know on what to concentrate, and what to ignore.  That way, there’s little to distract me, little to throw me off track, little to frustrate me, little to annoy me.

“But, how do you do that for all of us at one time.  God, you must get uptight a lot, concentrating so much. Don’t you get drained?” she said in surprise.

“No, not really” I answered.  I told her that my focus is not an uptight focusing.  Sure, I’m moving my spotlight from person to person, and my eyes are in a state of conscious REM.  But, it’s not like I’m a stalking, muscles taut predator about to pounce on some unwary prey..  It is an intent and it is an intense boring in on one student, but at the same time it’s a relaxed reading of every student.  I focus to understand, not command; to teach with each student, not to teach to each of them;  I don’t work for the university; I work with each student.  It means to break barriers, build bridges, create connect, establish community.  That’s important because strengthening connection with students, eliminating “strangerness” and “aloneness” is the best way to help them achieve.  That means I have to be awake, alert, aware, attentive, attuned, alive, mindful, and to have a strong sense of otherness.  It’s an easy stillness, a still inner energy. No anger, no frustration, no anxiety, no disappointment, no fear.  Just opportunity for improvement, understanding, preparation, care, purpose.   No bouncing around like a ping-pong ball; no uncertainty, no desperation, no frantic, no “this-or-else.”  Focus and relaxed are not antonyms.  Focus and burnout are.  The way I focus makes me relaxed and not worrying about being careless.  It’s not a boxing match.  It’s a dance.  It’s a focus on both self and other in a way that creates and maintains a connection.  I told that if I don’t know yourself and am honest with myself, how can I decide who I should become; if I don’t know what I am, how can I figure out where to go; and if I don’t know my talents and abilities, how can I know what to do.  In this state of focus, trivial outside events do not have the power to distract or annoy me. They lose their “tug ability.”  I simply accept them, ignore them, move past them, and continue working on what’s truly important to me.  I just pay attention, close attention, not just to what I’m doing and what each student is doing.  I carefully see his or eyes, I see his or her face, I listen to her or his body language.

In fact, as an aside, I told her that focus is my best form of evaluating what I’m doing in class.  I don’t really look at the end of the term questionnaires. If anything, they’re too late.  But, to see and read the eyes, face, and body every day.  They’re the best on the spot evaluation; they offer the real shot at flexible, on-time adjustment and adaptability.

“How do you stay focused through everything,” Julia asked.

“Well, lots of ways.  I take one day at a time.  Right now I’m focused on today.  For example, are you still using the ‘uplifting word for today’ I taught you? I asked

“Yes.”

“Great!  Is it working?” I asked.

“Well, it helps me see the good stuff all around.  I pull a card and think about what I can do to live that word that day.  It’s like writing a script that’s telling me what my attitude should be and how I should act no matter what happens.  It’s hard.  I know, before you say it, it’s hard that makes it important.  If it was easy, I wouldn’t be bettering myself.  Today my word is ‘happy.’  So, I’m being happy about lots of things; I find ways to be happy; and I see the reasons to be happy, like talking with you.”

“That’s called focus.  I do it, too.  Today my word is ‘smile.’  And, talking with you is reason to smile.  Do you exercise?”  I then asked.”

“Yes.”

“That’s another way,” I told her.  I explained that my pre-dawn walks, for example, give me a break from yesterday, recharge my batteries, and help start the next day fresh.  It’s a mobile meditation that keeps me at ease and centered.  Still another way is not to take back-to-back classes.  I refused to teach that way.  You and I need a quiet place where and when we have getting down time and getting up time.  Our brain and heart need a shift.  We shouldn’t be in a desperate, rushing, frantic, helter-skelter.  During those depressurizing breaks I stroll the campus, talk with students, blow bubbles, sip a cup of coffee, close my eyes while sitting on a bench, take deep breaths, watch and listen to the birds, look at the bushes and flowers, imagine the students in the upcoming class, organize and prepare both my heart and mind.   All that allows me to shift gears, to exit one state of focus while entering another, to let go of one class and reset myself for the next one.  I also have developed a conscious sense of myself.  That means I’m aware of my emotions, both positive and negative, and fight to make sure I hold tightly to the former and that it far outweighs the latter–and not let the latter get to me.  And finally, I have an end-of-the-day  glass of wine, a piece of cheese with my Susie during out ‘just to’ getaway time.  “And when I’m with her, I know all is right with the world and I set myself right.”

“I’ve got another question,” Julia said.  “Don’t you miss us?”

My answer is the last part of our conversation.  After I come back from Hawaii.

Louis

I bumped into a student on campus last week as I went to the Union to get a couple of bags of coffee grounds from Starbucks for my flower garden.

“Hey, Dr. Schmier, how are you doing in your retirement?”

“Pretty good–now.”

“You know, I’ve changed my major from accounting to education because of you.”

“I don’t think so.” I replied.  “I may have inadvertently helped you nudged yourself out from where you were to where you wanted to be and to what you wanted to do.  I may have asked the questions to help you ask your own questions of yourself, but you had the strength and courage to accept the nudge, ask the questions, come up with the ‘right’ answers, and follow them.”

“So, I got a question for you.”

“Shoot.”

“If you could give me one sentence about teaching that says it all, what would it be.  Now, here, don’t think about it.  What would it be?”

“God, you’re kidding,” I sighed thinking “How do I get into these things.”  “There is no one sentence.  I can think of a bunch of ‘one sentences.’  Remember how I said to beware of the distorting simplifiers?”

“Do it anyway. Just one.  The one that boils everything down to what you think, feel, and do.  Now, no thinking.  Feel it.  It’s a sort of one of those Rorschach tests I learned about in Psychology.”

“Let me think.  Then, I’ll send you that one sentence.”

“Give them to me, now.”

“Can I explain it?”

“Sure, but don’t get long-winded.  I’ve got a class in an hour.”

“Okay,”  I said, “Here it is.  ‘Teaching is tough.'”

“I was ready for you to say something like, ‘teaching is love’ or ‘teaching is caring.”

“It is. It’s my first principle of teaching.  It’s at the top of my ‘Teacher’s Oath.’  But, it’s tough to put that love into action.  It’s easy to write it down.  It’s easy say it.  But, to choose to love, to make it a way of  teaching?   Love is both a noun and a verb.  It’s an intention, but it’s also an action.  That’s hard because you have to honor your own complexity as well as the complexity of each individual in the classroom.”  I went on to tell her that too many of us are looking for or accepting the simple, easy way; all you need is a teaching method, some technology, and a strong dose of content, and, ‘poof,’ you have it.  Well, you don’t.  You don’t because there are no easy answers, no magic technologies, no sure-fire teaching manuals, no ‘nothing to it’ formulas.  Teaching is not like traveling a smooth, paved, well-lit road.   If it was, you’d wilt.  Each day is, should be, must be, like being a pioneer traveling in the wilderness.  Most professors walk into a classroom with an attitude of “anyone can teach,” “teaching is just talking,” “all you need is to know your discipline.”  Too many, believe, have been led to believe, that there’s nothing to it and there’s no reason for any intense preparation; that it doesn’t compare to the training needed to be a scholar, a researcher and publisher.  You don’t need the tenacity of dedication and commitment that research requires.  So, too many don’t relish problems, distaste ‘disruptions,’ avoid challenges, dislike discomforts and inconveniences, skirt difficulties.  And, when it doesn’t go the way they want, when a certain “teaching trick” doesn’t work, when students don’t do want they command, when the technology doesn’t prove to be a panacea, they moan and groan with a finger-pointing  “students nowadays” complaint; they get frustrated, angry, resigned, and indifferent.  Those false expectations are stifling, wilting, stagnating, atrophying, petrifying.  You can’t make a difference by being indifferent; you can’t be on your toes when you’re flat-footed; you can’t hit the target if you’re not aiming at it; you can’t find different attitudes and ways if you’re set in your attitudes and ways.

“‘Better’ doesn’t spring from ‘easy,’ I told her as I ended my explanation.  “Nor does learning and growth and transformation.  Deeper ruts are dug by ‘easy.’  Doors are kept shut by ‘easy.’  ‘Easy’ is not a springboard for new questions, fresh hope, a drive to learn more, a lever to raise sights, a push to become more.  But, once you understand that and choose to accept–and it is a choice–that teaching is hard, the hard stuff doesn’t matter.  ‘Hard’ does become important because it’s no longer a barrier, or an excuse; it becomes opportunity and possibility.  So, yeah, ‘teaching is tough’ says it all.  And that’s the way you want it to be.'”

“And that’s why you always said to us in class when we complained that the projects or working together or remembering to journal or watching the films and YouTube clips on the computer were hard that ‘it’s hard that’s important’ and ‘the road to achievement isn’t lined with “it’s easy” signs.'”

“It’s true for you as a student and for me as a teacher,” I admitted.  Then, I added, “And, by the way, thank you.”

“For what,” she asked.

“For being you.  There’s no greater sweetness then to realize, to honestly realize, to realize deep down, that having come to the end of my teaching career to realize I have taught.  Thank you for being one of those realizations.”

There was lots more to this conversation.  Julia missed her next class.  But, more on that later.

Louis

Well, I’m getting myself in the groove to give a webcam session for Florida Gulf Coast University–you know that March Madness No.15 seed dream team that sent No.2 seed Georgetown packing–and then an all day workshop on creating a motivational classroom environment at Hawaii Pacific University in Honolulu a week later.  Susie insists on sitting next to me on the planes flying to Oahu–with a detour to Maui.  I can’t for the life of me understand why.   Anyway, to crack my adrenal floodgate ajar, I’ve been rereading my heavily notated Richard Boyatzis’ RESONANT LEADERSHIP, and reading two books that just came in:  Mark Goulston’s REAL INFLUENCE and Todd Rose’s SQUARE PEG.

As I read these three books, I constantly nodded my head in silent agreement as I drifted back over sixty-five years to P.S. 160 on Manhattan’s East Side and into Mrs. Satchel’s first grade class.  It’s really a challenge for me to think of Mrs. Satchel without grimacing.  Kindliness and Mrs Satchel are not synonyms for me even if I do everything I can to believe that she had my best interests at heart.  But, it’s tough.  Mrs. Satchel was diminutive in size and wrinkled in spirit.  She looked like a unwrapped, shriveled escapee from an Egyptian sarcophagus with a heart that was equally mummified.  I can’t tell you how many times she angrily rapped the knuckles on my left hand with a wooden ruler during penmanship lessons.  These weren’t gentle reminding touches.  They were Simon Legree whacks.  There was no displayed love in any of the hard blows that echoed off the walls of the classroom.   She could tell satan was in the classroom and that I in danger of being enlisted into his horde of devilish minions.  No, there was no odor of sulphur; there was just my sulfurous refusal to use my right hand as I learned to write my ABCs.   And, she was going to be a Daniel Webster who’d send Mr Scratch packing and save my soul by getting me to write with my right hand.  Now, there was no rebellion in my refusal to abandon my left hand; there was no defiance in ignoring my right hand.   I was and still am totally–and I mean totally–wired as a southpaw.  But, she saw the use of my left hand as a sign of mephistophelean disobedience.  She was going to ram that square lefty peg into a right round hole.  Nothing I could say mattered.  Nothing my parents wrote in their replies to her notes mattered.  The more her yelling, that ruler, and the notes to my parents failed to get me to forego my left hand, the more she became a condemning medieval inquisitor, and the harder and louder the torturous ruler came down.  “Stick out your hand, Schmier” was a stern command that sent shivers through my spine.  I’d go cold, twist my lips, shut my eyes tight, hunch my shoulders, and constrict every muscle in my body in anticipation of the painful descent of that ruler.  Many a day I went home with such swollen and reddened finger joints my parents thought I was in street fights, especially at the times when her ruler had drawn blood–until my father angrily accompanied me to school one day and forcefully told Mrs Satchel in no uncertain terms to back off.

In the end, Mrs. Satchel failed.  I write with my left hand.  Mephistopheles won.  My beloved Susie always says that there’s more than a little impish devil in me.  But, there is never a day, never a time–never–when I pick up a pen or pencil–with my left hand–that I don’t go back to those dark, painful classroom days when I failed penmanship day after day after day.  And, it is because of Mrs. Satchel refusal to accept me as I was that my handwriting has more than a strong resemblance to unintelligible and indecipherable Sumerian cuneiform.

Now, before I go any further, let me firmly state that what I am about to say is not only for faculty vis-a-vis students, but for administrators vis-a-vis faculty and staff as well.

Many people have asked me over the years why I poured so much time and effort into reading daily student journals, about 160 each weekday.  If I wanted to give a cryptic answer, I’d merely say, “Mrs. Satchel!”  She’s a piece of my history that is a reminder to me that I simply wanted to be one of Boyatzis’ resonant classroom leaders; I didn’t want to be a dissonant teacher such was Mrs. Satchel.    I wanted to walk in “their” shoes; I wanted to go to where Goulston calls “their there.”  “There” I could see each student as one of Rose’s square pegs.  You see, if you want to exercise the powers of persuasion and influence, if you want to be, as Richard Boyatzis says, an inspiring, magnetic, motivating, influencing, persuasive “resonant leader,” if you want to improve lives, if you want to point the way to a kinder and better future, if you want each student to reach for her or his potential, don’t fool yourself into thinking, as Mrs.Satchel did, that you will convince anyone from a position of what Goulston calls commanding “our here.”

No, the key to successful teaching is influence and persuasion, not authority.  If you want to help “them” get the most out of themselves, shake their world in a very gentle, caring, and loving way.  Get to know them, as personally as possible, as much as they’ll let you.  Connect.  Communicate.  Create a genuine rapport.  Strengthen personal relationships.   Be in a unconditional “carefull,” “believefull,” “hopefull,” and “lovefull” mode.  Start with “their,” not “your.”  Don’t act as if they’re already in on the know of how and the why of things, and are on your side of the podium.  Get out from your perspective.  Back off from your stereotyping.  Let go of your generalizing.  Approach them as the square peg each of them is, as the one size that fits none.   Meet them on their terms, from their assumptions, from their points of view, from where they see things, and from their experiences.  Pick up on things that are important to them.  Get and show a sincere  interest in them.  Drop your defenses.  Listen to them, to what and how they speak with their lips, eyes, and bodies.  See them as they are.  Go to them where they’re at.  Go into what is going on inside them.  Get and show an empathy and an awareness, that you understand what they’re dealing with, that you understand who they are, that you’re willing to connect with them on a personal level, that you’re offering opportunities for making things better.  Show them that you “get it,” that you “get where I’m at,”  that you “get me.”   Strive more for mutual understanding more than agreement.  And, as you do that, you’ll have a better chance of minimizing misunderstandings, fears, unresponses, disappointments, frustrations, and even anger.

And, I’ve also learned that it’s all about creating a super glued bond of what the Greeks called “philia,” love that serves others.  For when you love, you care; when you care, you respect; when you respect, you notice; when you notice, you empathize; and, when you empathize, you put all your heart and head into vitalizing the power of your attention.  Do that, and you’re both here and there.

Louis

The other day I met someone whom I didn’t know.  The introductory part of our conversation went according to a simplistic script:

“What do you do?”

“I am a university professor.”

“What do you teach?

What should my three word answer to that second question be?  I walk into a classroom.  Is the answer a “what” or a “whom?”  A “what” answer is a discipline, content, transmitting, cut-and-dry one that comes from “my here:”  “I teach such-and-such.”  A “whom” answer is one that goes to what Mark Coulston in his REAL INFLUENCE calls “their there:”  “I teach students.”  But, exactly who are they and where is “their there?”  That is, who are the each of them?  For which ones am I the teacher?  Am I the exclusive teacher for the “A” student, for the vocal student, for the “honors student,” for the interested student, for the self-motivated student, for the eloquent, for the able-to-wrtie student, for the question answering student, for the discussion student, for the agreeable student, for the needs me less student, for the round pegs?  For whom?  I walk into a classroom.  Am I the inclusive teacher, as well, for the reticent student, for the fearful student, for the can’t write student, for the memorizing student, for the average student, for the disagreeable student, for the poor student, for the shy student, for the indecisive student, for the needs me more student, for the square pegs?   For whom am I the teacher?  I should be the inclusive teacher, not the exclusive one.  Complexity and diversity aren’t vices.  Generalizations and stereotypes are.

Louis