Well, after nearly three weeks of spoiling my West Coast grandmunchkins rotten, I’m back home. From the fresh, cool, tolerable breezes of the San Francisco area to the still, hot, muggy, buggy, nearly intolerable air of Valdosta. Fresh breeze and stagnate air are good metaphors for the continuation of my serial reflection on Proverbs 4:23 and its meaning for teaching. This segment, Part VIII, is full of questions. The first one is: Which shall it be in the classroom? The fresh, uplifting, hopeful breeze or the dismal sweltering air, the hopeful or despairing?
“Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flows the springs of life.”
You know, Kierkegard said, “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” So, let me assert two incontrovertible truth: First, just like us, students are real people. Stereotypes and generalities and labels of them are not. Second, just like us students want to be noticed and valued. Stereotypes and generalities and labels of them do not. Yet, too often too many of us are “fixists” who are fixated with these fixed and false images, who are increasing deaf and blind to each’s unique story, who wish away all that human wondrousness with flattening and simplifying stereotypes, who snarl and snark with inflexible generalities, and who thereby widen the chasm of misunderstanding. Too often our disinclination to be open and to embrace and to be connected, is not a matter DNA or of so-called “human nature.” It is the result of having them unnaturally “academicized,” or “thingified,” or “objectivized” out of us.
“Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flows the springs of life.”
That raises the question of what does it mean to be a teacher. My answer is intimately and inextricably linked to who we are to each students and who each student is to us. At the core of my is answer is the assertion that before we can truly teach, we must learn to truly have unconditional faith, hope, and love. We must treat students as the people they are. We must treat them the way we want to be treated. We must learn to have emotional connection for there is a lot of significance for everyone in such empathetic connection. If nothing else, it makes us better communicators and, more importantly, better people. Empathetic connection, soldered by faith and hope and love, helps us to understand, to relate, and to find common ground. It reminds us that the best way to get what we need and want is to help others get what they need and want.
“Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flows the springs of life.”
There is, then, so much work a passionate faith, hope, and love have to and can do in the classroom. They deal with the glorious Goridan Knot of human frailties, flaws, short-comings, fears, disappointments, shames, weaknesses, fallibilities, accomplishments, confusions, strengths, and complexities in the classroom. So, we must have an insatiable appetite for knowing each student We must be amazed at the maze that is each student. Faith, hope, love, caring, and kindness are not complicated; people are.
I have discovered, as a past student recently reminded me, before we can truly teach, it is not enough to read each student’s transcript. No, we first must know who is in that classroom with us. To know each student, we must see and listen to each student; we must imagine what each of their lives must be like; we must see into each’s heart and mind; we must see future potential and we must imagine who each can become. When we see each student this way, when show them that we notice, when they know we truly give a damn about them, it is so empowering. We help each of them to help themselves to learn how to reach to become the person she or he is capable of becoming and to make the most of her or him life.
“Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flows the springs of life.”
When we enter that classroom, then, we cannot refuse to believe what is before our noses, however inconvenient it may be. I think it was Xavier Le Pichon who warned that rigid views are void of movement and commotion needed to generate questioning, curiosity, adaptation, adjustment, and adoption; that the view of stereotyped uniformity creates a rigidity that, in turn, creates a darkness which is more pessimistic, more unwelcoming, more draining, and harder on all concerned. Unnatural “fixism,” as it fights against natural flux, turns teachers into those inhumane, weeding out gatekeepers. He would argue that allowing ourselves to be enveloped by such darkness forces us to deal with that which is not natural and is the source of most frustration, resignation, pessimism, and even anger.
He’s right. Darkness cannot shed darkness: only love can do that. Disdain cannot banish disdain: only faith can do that. Resignation cannot transform resignation; only hope can do that. The stagnating air of indifference cannot push out indifference; only the fresh and relieving breeze of caring can do that. Pessimism cannot drive out pessimism; only respect can do that. Weeding out cannot weed out weeding out; only the nurturing kindness of faith, hope, and love can do that. More questions: Are we aware of the enveloping negativity such unnatural rigidity imposes on others as well as on ourselves? Are we ready to solve the mystery of each student who doesn’t give us a direct clue of why what is happening or not happening is happening or not happening?
Unconditional faith, hope, love–faith, hope, and love that is gritty and tough–turn on a beautifying light in the classroom where everyone is seen, accepted, supported, and encouraged unconditionally. They erect a much more flexible and adaptable structure, with a different, easier, and more respectful mode of life. Now, that awareness, that alertness, that mindfulness, requires the creation of a new classroom culture fraught with unconditional compassion and empathy for each student–unconditional–that comes before and has a higher priority than any pedagogical and technological considerations.
I will attest from the past 25 years of personal and professional experience that if we unconditionally are willing to go to each student, walk along side each them, identify ourselves with each of them, connect with each of them, embrace them, value them, we will see how it changes both us and each of them.
“Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flows the springs of life.”
Louis