After all these weeks, I still can’t get Shawn out of my head? Well, for one thing, like him, I, too, was once considered a weed, labelled by my high school teachers as the “graduate most likely not to succeed,” persecuted as a student by many professors in academia and even executed by some, but saved by one. From that, I eventually learned that being “dedicated to my discipline” is a piece of cake compared to being “dedicated to a student.”

For another thing, I’ve been working inmy garden is starting to be an explosion of color. But, some of those touted flowers in the garden centers and welcomed in the gardens were once persecuted and executed as weeds. Chief among them are daisies.

And, for still another thing, it is the Shawns on our campuses who remind us that the true center of education is not only “white collar” vocational training and credentialling. It is also, and maybe more important, character building. Those fours years, especially the crucial first year, are still the time these kids, these “protoadults,” these “adults-in-training” make their adult-shaping mistakes. Yet, it’s tough on them because they can’t really make honest mistakes when they’re in an environment that doesn’t allow them to make mistakes.

Shape shifting education occurs widely open our arms with so much hospitality, when we embrace with overwhelming welcoming, when use a language that is so benevolent, when our actions are so giving and serving, when we feel nothing is restrictive, when we defy and even defeat confining perspectives and expectations imposed by stereotypes, generalities, and labels, when we use the spirit of faith, hope, and love to overcome the darkness and conquer disdain, when we and student call forth the potential in each other to mirror the good and beautiful in each other.

Then, it happens when we help students to have a better chance of saying to themselves, “I’m not going to believe in the same old story.” It happens when students who have been treated as unworthy are helped to come to believe in themselves; it is when they are helped to begin to speak in their own voice; it is when they are helped to act as though their lives truly matter; it is when they are helped to demonstrate a faith, hope, and love in themselves; and, then, they will have a better chance of developing the strengths they wish to develop and believe are both within them and within reach.

Louis

Still thinking of gardening as an appropriate metaphor for teaching, especially at this time of the year as I do my Spring fertilizing, pruning, dividing, planting, and transplanting. Still thinking of Shawn during my nearly 7 mile power walk a few days ago. That every-other-day walk is my mobile meditation. It a place in which I am in my own space. It is at these times that I nourish and sustain myself so that I acquire and have in order to give. These times on the street are my without and with. It’s a time to be awake, fully awake, to rejuvenate, to fuel my wide-eyed, unashamed adventurousness, child-like enthusiasm, and to douse any sparks of cynicism. I let go of the everyday stuff that is occupying me. This time the stuff is dire family issues looming in Boston, our miraculous survival of a high speed hit-and-run sideswipe near Nashville that had sent the car into a spin, the subsequent extensive damage to the car, having to get temporary repairs in order to limp home, dealing with the insurance company, arranging a schedule to take the car into the shop before our departure for Boston, getting my flower garden in shape before we leave for Boston, and figuring out a schedule for upcoming summer visits by and to the grandmunchkins.

But, life is too short to let that surface stuff be the sum and substance of our existence. So, with each breath and each step I let that stuff dissipate and disappear. As I entered a centering calmness, I thought of what the poet, David Whyte, calls, “the beautiful question.” Since the nature of the answers is evoked by the nature of the questions, the beautiful question leads to a beautiful answer. For me that question is: Do too many of us confuse “unlovable” with “unloved,” “unteachable” with “untaught,” “undeserving” with “undeserved,” “unreachable” with “unreached,” “unaccepting” with “unaccepted,” and the choice for whom to have hope with act of having hope for all? So, paraphrasing Toni Morrison, I believe that gardening is no better than the gardener; that teaching is no better than the teacher; and that the utterance of “I care” is no better than the carer. Far too often too many of us live in an either/or existence, thinking we can or must choose between things we think we can separate out that are naturally inseparable? You know what I’m talking about if I refer to left brain/right brain or cognitive/emotive. In this case, however, it is trying to filter out classroom muck from beauty, weed from flower, poor student from good student. The beautiful answer is about one phrase: “capacity for.” If there are two words that describe this season and the classroom, that join muck and beauty, they are “capacity for.” Some call it “unique potential.”

Those phrases took me back to images of reluctantly riding horses with my grandmunchkin in Tennessee’s Cedars of Lebanon State Park. The rain swollen trail was muddy and puddled. And, as the horses sloshed along, my attention focused on avoiding splashing my shoes and pants with the yuk, thinking a resigned “Oh, well, this is what grandpas are supposed to do.” And, I was still reliving how I and Susie somehow had survived that high speed accident. Then, my granddaughter shook me out my doldrums with her exclamation, “Look grandpa. The forest has beautiful yellow polka dots all over.” I looked at and saw the explosion of dandelion blooms. My perceptions immediately changed. Bland, dark, mono-color of dismal browns transformed into bright and exciting colors. I suddenly noticed slight measling of reds, blues, purples, and whites as well. I stopped disdaining the yuk. I saw in that muck was a herald of hope, a fertile mess nourishing growth, a fertility that gave fruit to the appearance of latent beauties and miracles. I see now, weeks after my conversation with Shawn’s mother, all are a metaphor for, as the poet Raina Rilke says, “living the question,” to which I would add “and the answer as well.” Both the question and answer shape a different viewpoint, influence a life, and guide in never taken directions. They are realizing the unique potential in ourselves and others, for seeing abundance and beauty that surrounds us, and for loving others as ourselves. But, if we don’t turn our eyes and ears in that direction, if we don’t stop rushing to segregate between good and mediocre or poor student, if we don’t spotlight and applaud and advocate for each student and amplify each’s vitality, if don’t have human to human, face to face, heart to heart connection, we’ll miss that grandeur; we won’t enjoy what surrounds us. If we son’t hold on to a faith, hope, and love for each student that overcome cynicism and resignation and disdain, our empathy will be mere performance. And, the Shawns will fall through the cracks.

Still more later.

Louis