As I am inching out from the haze of Susie’s birthday cheesecake induced caloric shock, being totally grounded by both the surgeon and Susie, I have little else to do but ruminate about a question. Rene Decaartes said except for our thoughts, there is nothing in our power. The motherboard of our integrated intellectual, emotional, and physical actions, then, are guided by our thoughts formed by ideas, outlooks, visions, philosophies, and memories. So, this is my question: what if we thought of the classroom as a moral entity? That is, what if we thought the essence of the classroom is the nature and quality of the relationship among people? By that I mean the core of morality is love. Love is at the heart of presence, mindfulness, awareness, attentiveness, alertness and otherness; they are the bedrock of respect for others; respect is the basis of concern for others; concern is upon what empathy rests; empathy is the foundation of compassion. Compassion is upon what sympathy sits. Sympathy is love, respect, concern, empathy, and compassion in action. They are all forms of generosity; they are the glue of connection; they’re the fabric of authenticity and openness; they put us in the present; they give us a presence; they are an expansiveness that brings us out from our tunnel vision imposed by label, stereotype, and generality; they make life happen in the classroom.

Each is limitless fuel. Each operates more and more for the good of both each of us and each of them. Each offers deeper and deeper ethical and moral insight. Each challenges taboos, rejects conventional mores, opposes traditional stances. Each rips out labels and destroys the scaffolds of stereotype and generality. Each allows us to slip gently into another person’s life. And, each is a stronger and stronger foundation of dedication, commitment, and perseverance. The irony is that in their sweat equity is an unbelievable liberation for both student and teacher. It is simply committing the Golden rule to living your life rather than committing it to memory.

Last Sunday, I spoke of some life lessons I had learned in the course of the last 25 years of my life. Life has a way of coming into and getting in the way of each of our lives. Life comes onto campus and into the classroom. It does not need a visitor’s pass, nor does it stop at the classroom door’s threshold. Understanding that we really only wear one hat in and out of the classroom, from my nearly five decades in the classroom, I’d like to take these life lessons into the life of the classroom:

• First, and most important, each teacher should silently sing to her/himself Fred Rogers’ “It’s You I Like.” about each student, and loudly live the lyrics; the way we see each student is the way we treat each of them, and the way we treat them is what they become in our eyes.
• Life in the classroom is not as simple, not as static, as far too many profs make it out to be; actually it is a complex and complicated and dynamic entity made up of many moving “parts;” we cannot be deaf to Heraclitus’ assertion that all is flux and nothing stands still while we teach as if the classroom is a scene in Madam Tussaurd’s wax museum
• We can’t applaud classroom diversity with one hand and shove everyone into impersonal and conforming and uniforming and confining categories, labels, stereotypes, and generalizations; we should see the sacredness, uniqueness, and nobility in that those human beings. If we don’t, there is no loving respect, no caring empathy, no hopeful compassion, no encouraging connection, no supporting community.
• A teacher should be led by a deeply reflected upon and publicly articulated vision of teaching and a philosophy of education, not pushed by her or his problems and fears.
• A teacher is chosen to be a servant to meet the deeper needs of each student and make that four letter word, “love,” resound louder than that other four letter word, “fame.”
• A teacher should not ignore or be ignorant of the latest research on learning while pouring endless hours into her or his scholarly research. Instead, she or he must spend those countless hours pouring over research on teaching methods that encourage learning and generate positive attitudes towards learning, and learn how to apply them.
• I am convinced that a teacher should be a transformer, not merely a transmitter; that she or he should help a student become a better person, not just get a better grade.
• I am convinced more than ever that we teachers, as futurists, should use our teaching talents for something that will outlast us. Each day we should sacrifice what “is” for what “can become.” To use a gardening analogy, the true meaning of teaching is to plant the seeds for a forest through which we won’t stroll.
• Before students will speak, they have to feel noticed, respected, safe, and heard; too often the worse thing a teacher can do is to bring her or his authority and power to bear.
• It you want to be a better teacher and if you want better students, become a better human being.
  A teacher is like a flame; she or he can warm, but she or he can also burn.
• I’ve learned that it’s not enough to do the scholarship; I must do the faith, hope, and love of each student as well, if not more.
• The less you open your heart to each student, the more your heart suffers. If you don’t open your arms and embrace each student, you’ll wind up embracing only yourself.
• The better teachers are the better see-ers and listeners, not the better talkers and more published.
  Effort is not something to be diligently avoided. To wish for a classroom free of challenges, to be dismayed when things aren’t as you wish, to be frustrated that you cannot control circumstances, is to wish for a life in which it would be impossible to find anywhere any time.
• The great teachers never are leached of emotion. They are never so-called objective. They have the ability to enter into the moment so totally that they lose themselves in the power of that moment and bond with the students in the classroom.
• If something is working out well for you at that moment, by all means stick with it. Yet, like all things around you, that moment will change. So, also be open to new and different people, places, methods and things; and, to be a perennial “adjuster,” “tweaker,” and “modified.”
• Getting an education should make hours seem like minutes, not minutes seem like hours.
• Enjoy the difference. Don’t shrink individual students into a common herd. Don’t rob them of their dimensions and flatten them into lifeless, stereotyped placards. Don’t strip them of their names, identity, stories, and uniqueness.
• Students rarely succeed unless they enjoy what they’re doing and they’re having fun at what they’re doing; enjoyment and fun are not the opposite of work, boredom is.
• Teachers can accomplish more and make more of a difference by being interested in other people, by having people as their passion, than they can by trying to be interesting and getting other people interested in them.
• Neither students nor the subject make teaching enjoyable. Teaching is enjoyable when the teacher decides to enjoy it; when they find gratification outside of themselves in service to others; when they delight in the beauty of each student, they make each one of them more beautiful; when they cherish teaching, they make it more meaningful. Everyone has an opportunity to be a great teacher because everyone has an opportunity to serve a student.
• Why do so many academics think that in the fabric of the classroom their fibers aren’t woven together with the fibers of each student.
• No matter how much you plan, life in the classroom will throw you a curve ball. Learn to hit it. Within every pitch thrown at you there’s an opportunity to make a hit and become a better batter.
• Be happy with the little “victories,” and they soon add up to big accomplishments; appreciate and value every moment, and they will add up to a great treasure. There’s no such thing as a small step in a great journey; no such thing as a small attempt in a great effort. No such thing as a small kindness in loving.
• Focus your thoughts and your feelings on the goodness that’s there in your present situation. Then consider what you can do to make that goodness grow.
• You can’t reach out and touch “students,” but you can reach out and touch one, one at a time. Being good and doing good is the best way to feel good; be thankful for being in the classroom and you’ll make it better; focus on the goodness in each student and you’ll do whatever you can to make that goodness increase.
• So many of us so often talk of students as if they are completed adults. First, the research says that, with the exception of “non-traditional” students, they are not adults. They’re at best “protoadults” or”adults in training.” Second, just who among us is ever so complete at any moment in our life that we have no need to grow, change, and transform?
• All students want teachers who are accessible; too many teachers agree to be accessible only to the “good” student whom they find agreeable and when it is convenient for them.
• There is so much more snap, crackle, and pop in the classroom, there is so much more adventure, imagination, creativity, allure, fun, and excitement if it is a dance among equals rather than between professors who want to be treated as kings and students who are treated as servile subjects.
• The enemies to learning are the isolators and alienators of “strangerness,””aloneness,” and “loneliness.”
• On the surface, most students seem completely ordinary. Yet when you make the effort to truly know each of them, you’ll find a unique and fascinating, complicated, and complex individual..
• Finally, and also most important, the best evidence of the quality of our teaching is not that we just produce first-rate students, but that we help produce first-rate people; not just in helping them write a better paper or perform a better experiment or paint better or sculpt better, but in helping people improve their lives. Not just in helping learn how to make a living, but to learn how to live. The proof of the educational pudding is not really in the grades, GPAs, or awards the students receive, but in their character and the quality of the lives they lead.

Now, there is nothing pollyannish or hallmarkish about these observations, for they are an effort, patience, commitment, perseverance, and endurance. They are in accordance with the latest findings of the research on learning. In the last analysis, they are about optics: how we see each student, ourselves, the world about us. They are about otics: how we listen to each student, to ourselves, and to the world about us. They are about lyrics: how we feel about others and ourselves. They are about kinetics: how we act towards others and ourselves.

Louis

It’s 4:30 am–I think. I hate this time change. Can’t sleep. Still recovering from blepharoplasty, or eyelid and eyebrow surgery to correct my continued loss of peripheral vision. Not allowed to do anything. Anything!! Do you realize what you can do if you’re not allowed to lift anything or bend your head down or in any way shake or put pressure on your head? Nothing!! NOTHING! Nothing, except sit on your butt. Been this way for ten days. Susie, my hovering, angelic drill sergeant is lovingly and caringly staying on top of this. My eyes shave been so black and blue that I’ve looked like a ghoulish raccoon. Both my sons said that all I had needed was to add two bolts to my neck and I would have had the perfect Halloween Frankenstein’s monster costume. And, those stingy five metallic rows of staples in my scalp itch and sting like you can’t believe aren’t coming out until next Thursday. But, then, I’ll have at least another two weeks of imposed inactivity while everything heals.

That inactivity almost had cast a pall over the Schmier household–until I came to my senses. It’s cheesecake day!!! I had been hesitating, for just a moment or two, about being willing to have a caloric overdose and go into a Susie’s cheesecake induced food coma. That unmatched scrumptdelicious delight is her delightful annual birthday gift to me. Today, November 1st, is my birthday. That my birthday always falls on the holy day of All Saints Day, according to my beautiful Susie, is the “mother of all oxymorons.” This birthday, however, is supposedly different. My birthday this year is one those supposed auspicious moments, a plateau that so many people make so much fuss about. I will be 75. I don’t feel, however, whatever I am supposed to feel standing on this high ground. It’s ironic that so many people dislike being 75 when everyone wants to get there and loves being there. For too many, when they talk of this age, they talk of being in the “autumn of life.” For them it is a metaphor for browning, antiquating, lessening, declining, dulling, decaying, and dying; they mean “past your prime,” revealed by sagging eyelids, sagging turkey necks, sagging skin, sagging muscles, sagging clothes, and sagging other stuff; their images for this time of life are canes, walkers, wheel chairs, rocking chairs.

But, in my favor, research shows that there is no such thing as “prime of life,” when we’re best at everything or most things. In fact, the findings reveal that one’s zest for life actually tends to increase with age. Ain’t that the truth! I’m no antique. For me, 75 is just a number that is slipped between 74 and 76 during which I feast on this feast day, actually sinfully gorge myself, on Susie’s delectable cake. For me, this day, or any day, is a wonderful “now” day if for no other reason than I made it to this day and is presently the only one I have. You see, having survived cancer and a massive cerebral hemorrhage, I don’t play the feeble wishing and empty hopeful “some day” game. I live a real “this day,” each and every day I have. And, I’ve found, with the latest scientific research bearing me out, that to keep flexible at this age, for my whole well-being I must do three things: exercise, exercise, exercise. I must physically exercise and keep my muscles limber, mentally study and keep my intellect ablaze, and emotionally love and keep my soul joyful. They are the ingredients in my concocted “elixir of youth.” In fact, having taken a couple medical life-style surveys coming out of these studies, I have a “heart age” of a robust 60 year old, a spry spirit of a 20 year old, and a calculated life expectancy of that will make me a centenarian.

Anyway, I do not see “autumn of life” as a metaphor for wilting. Seeing this period of my life as a beautifully colored time of spreading and sowing seeds of future growth, I’ve been hearing the voices of Confucius, John Dewey, and Socrates whispering in my ears: Confucius whispered “By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest;” Dewey murmured, “We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.” And, in a hushed tone, the Socrates said, “The unexamined life not worthing living.” Who am I to argue with such men of stature. Reflection, reflection, reflection; go deeper into the roots of who it now means to be “me;” go still deeper and be mindful of who I can become. Without reflection “is” is just to be; but, with reflection, “is” is to live, and that is holy.

I have come to believe over the last two and a half decades that true peace on earth is a healthy inner serenity at every step. I’ve learned that as I reflect back on life, like a mirror, life reflects back on me. Confucius, Dewey, and Socrates were right. Only when your entire life is founded upon exploration, only when you’re as comfortable in the mystery and unknown that accompany change and growth as you are with certainty, only when you can be open to that change and embrace new things with the ease and constancy of breathing, only then will you have met life’s personal and professional challenges. So, I am looking back on this year that I turn 75, reviewing and reflecting upon regrets and gratitudes, upon unfulmillments and accomplishments, upon upheavals and serenities, upon sadnesses and joys. For what purpose? Well, William Wordsworth beautifully tells us: “What we love, others will love, and we will show them how.” Thinking how I will choose to live in the coming year, and thinking about the seeds I which to sow, I think I’ll reflect on some what I have learned in the passing years, and will continue to learn in the coming years:

I’ve learned that I only wear one hat; that whatever be my values, like it or not, want to or not, I cannot leave them at the threshold of the classroom, or at any door for that matter. For, as Jon-Kabat Zinn said, “Wherever I go, there I am;”
I’ve learned that we each must live with and according to a persistent but gentle faith, hope, and love;
I’ve learned to be enriched by the authentic, unique, and different; I find an uncreative, unimaginative, uninteresting, and a flatness in bland, plastic, unnatural labeling, stereotyping, categorizing, and generalizing.
I’ve learned that Andy Rooney was right: if you smile when no one is around, you really mean it; if you smile, all you’ll see are smiles around you; if you sneer, all you’ll see–if you see at all–are sneers around you;
I’ve learned that I have to be more underwhelmed by technology and more overwhelmed by compassion;
I’ve learned, as both religions and social sciences have shown, that one of the great determinante of happiness is serving and doing good to others;
I’ve learned that the world is a much more beautiful place when I choose to be beautiful myself;
I’ve learned our lives are made up of our days; so, how we live our lives depends on how we live each of our todays; if we wait for tomorrow, we’ll always be a day away;
I’ve learned that just because a situation or person is negative doesn’t mean I have to respond negatively;
I’ve learned not to use seriousness as a battering ram against fun, laughter, smiling, and joy. I can, I should, enjoy “serious fun and play;”
I’ve learned that too often we value only past and present work, and ignore unique potential;
I’ve learned that as my faith in myself is strengthen I will have less need to control things and will be stronger against those who would control me;
I’ve learned that an inner peace is an energy arouser and strengthener;
I’ve learned that you don’t have to be loud and obvious to be enthusiastic;
I’ve learned to grow slowly taking leaps of small steps;
I’ve learned that action speaks louder than volume;
I’ve learned that my purpose is to make this world a better place, not to better my resume;
I’ve learned, especially having had cancer and surviving a cerebral hemorrahage, that there’s nothing gained by whining, that you can’t build anything positive with lamenting negative;
I’ve learned from having had those two afflictions that that the greatest sin we can commit is not to unwrap and use the gift offer by the present;
I’ve learned that blame and responsibility are not synonyms;
I’ve learned that kindness is more important than cleverness;
I’ve learned that the more I love doing what I’m doing, the less I call it work;
I’ve learned that happiness comes from a gratitude of what I have, not from striving to attain what I don’t have;
I’ve learned to be kind whenever possible, and that it is always possible;
I’ve learned it’s dumb to carry a grudge, for the longer you carry one, the heavier it gets;
I’ve learned that great ideas, good intentions, vast visions that are not put into action shed as much light as unlit candles;
I’ve learned that cynicism and enthusiasm are both contagious;
I’ve learned that cynicism makes things worse and enthusiasm makes things better;
I’ve learned I can be as happy or sad as I am choose and am willing to be;
I’ve learned I can live any life I choose to live;
I’ve learned to see what people do far more than what they say;
I’ve learned that it takes a long time for anything to happen overnight;
I’ve learned that the best foundation for anyone is good character;
I’ve learned that the greatest gift I have to give to anyone is not my knowledge, it’s my time and attention;
I’ve learned that nothing has meaning unless it has an inner meaning;
I’ve learned to respect, not just tolerate;
I’ve learned, the second most important of all things, that Leo Buscaglia was right on the mark when he 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;”

And finally, and THE most important, I’ve learned that the best things I’ve done in my life have nothing to do with my resume; they are to be a loving dad and father-in-law to my two sons and their lovely wives, a doting grandpa to my three grand-munchkins, and a devoted romancer of my Susie.

Now, many of you may think, since I haven’t said a word about teaching or education, that all this has nothing to do with teaching and education. Ah, but it has everything to do with teaching and education. As I always have said, we teach who we are; we are the perceptions we have; we are the questions we ask. All this means that who we are is inseparable from what we feel and what we do. All this means is that teaching and education are a part of life. They are a part of our lives. They are not apart from life or apart from our lives. The more we understand this, the more we can be empathetic to students and ourselves. And, the more lessons we consciously can take from life, the richer are our lives that we bring with us into the classroom, and more meaningful are the lessons we offer.

More on that later. For now, pass the cheesecake!

Louis