Burnout, II

I had to interrupted my response to the professor who was worried about burnout and go grocery shopping. I’ve been doing that for the last four weeks, along with cleaning the house, straightening up, doing the wash, cooking meals, and most important, taking care of Susie. She’s has her right foot immobilized and has been ordered off her feet. The doctor is trying to prevent a torn achilles tendon from rupturing and sending her into a surgical room. As the fates would have it, as I was pushing the shopping cart around, pulling stuff of the shelves, I bumped into Anthony. He was a student from many years ago, and I quickly jotted down the words of our conversation on the back of the shopping list Susie had given me after it was over. It went something like this:

“Hi, doc,” he said with a broad smile. “Guess what. I’m going to graduate this year, finally. But, it’s taken me six years to do it.”

“Congratulations. But, ’But?’” I tinted my congratulatory tone with a bit admonishment. “Why a ‘but?’ Sounds like you’re apologizing. No need for that. So, it took you longer than others. So, what. The important thing is that you’re doing it.”

“Yeah. You’re right. Sorry. I guess that shows I’m still not all ‘there.’ I mean, who would have thought.”

“I did,” I interrupted.

“I know you did. You know, you were the first to believe I could do it, even before me. You what was the hardest thing for me to do all these years, especially after our class ended?”

“Working and going to school?”

“No.”

“Keeping at it?”

“Close, but no. Believing I could do it so I could and would keep at it. You know my story. All my life, people—my family and teachers, everyone—made me feel small by always saying I would amount to nothing. They made me feel that I shouldn’t be confident. I came to believe that. So, I never tried to be something, something I didn’t believe I was or could be. It was like I was making their attitude about me true. I felt unwanted and discriminated against. Even when I ‘squeaked’ into college, everyone looked at the ‘squeaked’ part, not the college part and put me at the bottom in the ‘they’re letting anyone in’ category. Then, here you come along. You saw me; you listened to me. You believed in me, when I didn’t believe in me. The only one! And, I wasn’t sure why you did. I wasn’t one of those ‘good students’ with a high GPA. Didn’t even have an ‘average’ one. You scared me.”

“Well, you caught my eye when you were the only one imaginative and creative enough in all four classes to successfully accept the crazy challenge I threw out to all of you (long story).”

“Yeah. That, and what you told me, after reading one of my journals entries in which for some reason I poured out my heart. I remember crying as I wrote that one. Boy, it was long and I knew you wouldn’t read it. And, then, you surprised me that you even read it. Stop focusing on anyone’s opinion of me, you told me, that I shouldn’t let them define me, that I must learn to focus on defining myself. Everything you said and did told me that what I was believing was wrong, or could be wrong. Do you know what it is like to have to look at yourself that way? Do you know what it’s like to unlearn everything you believe about yourself in order to learn who you really were and could be?”

Quickly reliving growing up as an ignored second son, judged as one of those “will never amount to much’s” in high school, seen as one of “those don’t belong’s” in college, and my epiphany at the age of 50, I answered, “Yes. Yes, I do. But, I told you all about that in our conversations. However, I didn’t push those memories aside. I still remember them. They tell me how far I’ve come and what I’m really made of. They’ll do the same for you.”

“Yeah, that’s what gave me the confidence to believe that if you went through that stuff and came out at the end, so could I. It’s not easy though, is it. It’s downright painful at times. The memories of those dark experiences. Boy, there were lots of times I wanted to give up and stop trying, but you were always there in my face with a believing smile and kicking me in my butt. You kept telling me to believe, have faith and hope, to keep at it, don’t get tired of struggling to get there; don’t lose heart and give up; and if I do all that, I’ll get there. You used to say to me and others, ‘if you want to do it, you can do it; and, if you can do it, do whatever it takes to do it.’ Now, I say that to myself all the time to kick myself in my butt whenever I waver. Just yesterday, I had a professor in my major ask what was wrong with me that I didn’t graduate in four years. Wrong!! He didn’t know me one bit, and I’ve been in several of his classes. He didn’t know, or want to know, that I my family refused to help me, that I had to work to make tuition and living expenses, that I don’t want to graduate with a lot of debt, and I that with all that I’m still keeping up my grades. After he dissed me, I heard your voice. Screw him! Here I am, still here, after six years. So what! I’m going to graduate, and with a damn good GPA. It’s taken me six years, but I’m—going—to—graduate. I owe you, big time, for that. You taught me how to put heart into my learning so I wouldn’t loose heart however heartless others might be towards me, just as you taught. Oops, got to get to work. Have a happy Thanksgiving. I’m giving thanks for running into you and reminding me how lucky I am to have you in my life now and always.”

And, I quickly started writing on the back of that grocery list.

Now, while I told that I couldn’t tell her how to stop from burning out, I did tell her to consider this. Antonio’s “learned growth mindset” is the fuel that kept my afterburners incessantly turned on full blast—day after day, class after class, semester after semester. I found that emotions like disdain didn’t keep my tanks full; they drain them. Haughty emotions based solely on grades and GPAs don’t do justice to the complexity of the likes of so many Anthony’s. Negative “I don’t have the time for” or “I’m wasting my valuable time” or “I’ve got more important things to do” impedes a “getting to know ya” learning about each student. With frustration based on unreal stereotypes, with annoyance based on denigrating and dehumanizing labelling, with condescension based on impersonal labelling, with presumptuousness based on categorization, you go emotionally, intellectually, and morally numb. We’ll never to pause to understand the likes of Anthony. We’ll merely presume in a self-satisfying and self-gratifying way that we know what’s going on when we really don’t, when weu’re merely guessing and presuming from an “on high” skewed view. The result is that we will never know how to constructively respond. Getting to know and understand Anthony beneath the surface does.

You see, I reminded her, students are not touched by a discipline, by a major, by a grade, by a test. The research tells us that students, like all of us, are touched by relationships, by human relationships. And, faith, hope, and love are necessary forces that bridge those chasms and forged supportive and encouraging connections. I know, from 25 years of experience, that when faith, hope, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, support, and encouragement are dominant in both my teaching and life, doing good is the inevitable result, and the results are good.

They constantly fed my fires. So, to paraphrase Anthony, you’ve got to put your heart into teaching in order not to lose heart and fend off the heartless. Shortly after my epiphany, I took the wax out of my ears and took off the blinders of fear in order to see and listen to what was really in the classroom. I found that empathy is not weakness; it is not amnesia. It is understanding that too many students feel that in the eyes of the profs they don’t really count or matter. Their sense of being diminutive or nothing in the eyes of someone is authority is debilitating, even painful. We should never send signals of disregard. I know that when I helped any student receive and use the gifts that prevent him or her from treating herself or himself as a less-than-nothing, I am uplifted and energized. When I practiced inclusion rather than exclusion and selection, however challenging that may have been, I was reminded of what was really important, what I cared about, and what gave teaching meaning.

Of course, frustration and fear and even anger are what makes empathy difficult. So, we have to figure out how to let go of these negative feelings. One way is to admit that while students may need help and support, so do we. I had to recognize and admit how those acidic attitudes ate away at me, how it was impacting on my perceptions and relationships with the students, how it frayed connections, how I fled to judgment and conditions for safety and peace. I found that faith, hope, and love are an intense force. They are reconciling attitudes that neutralized the eroding acids of negativity. We have to find faith, hope, and love that are lurking in our hearts and minds. It’s not a passive act. It’s takes time, energy, and work to acquire a new way of thinking and feelings and doing. It requires letting go and transforming despair, disappointment, resentment or, anger into a reality. Closed minds are open; folded arms are extended; sneers become smiles, inflexible attitudes become pliable ones; disconnection become connection, chasms are filled, distances are closed.

More later on burnout.

Louis

Burnout

I interrupt my response to the professor who disowned me because I asked “too many” questions about the Ivory Tower. I had received a message from another professor, one sentence of which read: “You call yourself an ‘enthusiast.’ How did keep yourself fired up without burning out? What specifically did you do? I teach four sections of the same class over and over and over. I feel myself getting bored and flaming out. I am afraid of crashing.”

“First, your premise is wrong. It’s autumn. Go outside and look at the bare trees. Do you see the unique complexity of each tree’s branches that were hidden beneath a summer foliage that made every tree look alike? Though, like you, each term I taught sections of the same numbered class, as you say, ‘over and over and over for years,’ but I remembered by Heraclitus: I never stepped into the same class twice, for it was not the same class. The students were different from day to day, from class to class, from term to term. And, I was not the same person. That is, underneath the identical number, each class had it’s own uniqueness and complexity; it had its own gathering of unique and complex, and ever-changing individuals. To me, each section of the same number class, each day, had it’s own personality; each class, each day was a new and exciting—and scary—‘I wonder’ adventure.”

“I never played the ‘perfect’ or ‘100%’ or ‘best’ or the ‘numbers’ game. I accepted my imperfection. I let an ‘ooops’ lead me back to the ‘let’s see’ drawing board. I was always studying about the latest research on teaching and learning.  As a result, I was always changing what I was feeling, thinking, and doing. I was always changing and tweaking according what I was learning about learning. So, I never gave up when things didn’t always work out or I didn’t reach a student. But, I never let that get to me; I never let up; and I never gave in; I never gave up. I didn’t try to be a door suddenly thrown open to let in the blinding light. A crack of light at a time worked, for I never knew upon whom the crack of light would shine. As I always reminded myself, all I had to do was to touch one student—just one student—and I changed the world and altered the future. I followed Mother Teresa’s dictum that she didn’t tend to the masses; instead, she loved one person at a time and tended to one person at a time.”

“What I am saying it that I didn’t allow my attitudes to flatten my attitudes. I didn’t allow my attitudes to go stale. I stayed away from the ruts of mindless repetition and thoughtless rote. Nothing ‘yellowed’ in the classes. I constantly studied and applied my studies. I became what the psychologist, Julius Segal, called the ‘charismatic adult’ to myself, banishing the draining ‘yuk’ and ‘ho-hum’ of stagnant and paralyzed ‘learned helplessness’ and seeking the invigorating ‘wow’ and ‘aha’ of ‘learned optimism.’ I become a student of Carol Dweck’s ‘growth mindset.’ I learned, applied to myself, used in the classroom, and lived outside the classroom with a mindset that I had derived from studying Carol Dweck’s ‘mindset,’ Barbara Fredrickson’s ‘love,’ Gregory Berns’ ‘iconoclast,’ Martin Seligman’s ’learned optimism,’ Richard Boyatzis’ ‘resonant leadership,’ Daniel Goleman’s ‘emotional intelligence’ and ‘social intelligence,’ Sonja Lyubomirsky’s ‘happiness,’ Angela Duckworth’s ‘grit,’ Albert Bandura’s ‘self-efficacy,’ Bernard Weiner’s ‘attribution,’ and a host of others.  All this put me in control of teaching. No one made me do anything. I didn’t surrender myself to anyone or anything. I didn’t go into the classroom according to someone else’s expectations. I always remember my Rumi: ‘Let the beauty of what you love, be what you do.’ So, I consciously nourished and cared for my spirit. I became a ‘prisoner’ of unconditional faith, hope, love, caring, kindness, respect for each student. I didn’t let a lab or archive or tenure or title, a publication or grant or conference presentation, have priority over each student. I came to believe, fundamentally, in the full-bore power of person to person, human to human, heart to heart transformation. I didn’t believe information to person or technology to person had the same power. However, I could’t help students get a positive attitude unless I establish a caring and trusting relationship with each of them that offered a sense of belonging and worth. To do that, I saw people as living people, not as stick-figured stereotypes, generalities, labels, or categories; and, I saw individuals as what I call ’sacred ones,’ not as people;’ and I had to find a way to get to know each of them beneath their surface foliage.”

“In Higher Education we tend to look at what Booker T. Washington called the ‘talented tenth,’ which we make far more satisfying than gazing at the other 90 percent. It makes us feel less complicit with an almost disdainful ‘anyone can do it’ while disinterest persists. While that may soothe our psyche, and we don’t have to gnash our teeth or feel inadequate, it’s educationally unacceptable. When, however, you recognize the worth of each student, you let go of the urge to simplify, to look for sure formulas, magic tricks, and easy answers; you begin to appreciate the fact that life is complex under the ostensible foliage; and, just as life is complex, the lives in that classroom are complex; and, then, those impersonal generalities, labels, stereotypes, and categories melt away. And, you begin to see that students are not numbers, objects, or ‘its.’ You begin to see a class as a gathering of ‘sacred ones;’ and, each ‘one’ is too valuable to lose without a fight.”

I went on to say, “All this means, you’re not talking about the classes; you’re not talking about the students or colleagues. Like Rumi said, you’re talking about ‘who you are.’  We cannot reach out to touch a student unless we reach in to touch ourselves, and be open to be touched by a student. We can serve others, but we must serve ourselves as well. We can energize and inspire others only if we find the energy and inspiration within ourselves, and let them inspire us. We should settle only if we settle for more from ourselves. We should make our teaching a monument to true worth, value, meaning and purpose. That means, as someone said, don’t walk in shoes that too small for you. Realize your power is in yourself, but your riches are not. But, they have be dynamic, for you can’t be content with being selective and having faith, hope, and love for only a select “honors” or “outstanding” few.”

“So, my simple answer is in the form of some questions: ‘Who are you? In what direction is your mental and emotional momentum going? Are your thoughts and feeling helping or hindering you? If you see negative forces around you, you’ll find them and they’ll be a drag on you. If you positive scenarios, you’ll find and they’ll uplift you. It always begins at home. Your thoughts, your feelings, you actions, your effectiveness, your results are influenced by your mental and emotional outlook. We always have personal control in our lives, and we have to admit to the responsibility to exercise or to surrender that control. I’ll quote Viktor Frankl, ‘Everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.’”

“Let me offer you the guiding words of the psychologist Haim Ginott to which I have referred so many times over the years that I’ve lost count: ‘I’ve come to a frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or deescalated and a child humanized or dehumanized.’ It’s our choice, then, to be pathological or therapeutic. Which gives you joy, happiness, meaning, accomplishment, and fullfilment? Now that is tough. Teaching is tough. But, once you understand teaching is not a breeze, you accept that; then, it doesn’t matter if teaching is demanding.’”

“A few last things before I give you a listing of my beliefs and attitudes that directed me. We always say students have to learn to experience the disappointment and frustration that occur from life’s inevitable problems so that they can grow up to be successful, resilient, and self-reliant adults.things. The same it true of us. We can’t avoid skinned knees while teaching; we can’t overprotect ourselves from mistake, much less challenge, with a backing off ‘I can’t’ or ‘It’s not me.’ Whether we know it or not, wanting teaching to be easy and risk free undermines our self-confidence in the face of challenge. If we don’t pick up the teaching gauntlet, when we allow challenge to become an obstacle rather than an opportunity, we sure aren’t modeling much for the students. Instead, we throw ourselves into a ‘do as I say, not as I do’ posturing. And, the students know it! You, me, all of us are human; we are ’afflicted’ with imperfection. We should embrace our own imperfections as well as those of others. That means we have to be prepared for those inevitable ‘didn’t work.’ So, the questions are whether we use those disappointments as a blessing or curse, and how do we give ourselves the gift of coping successfully with those setbacks.”

“Being hopeful and being ready for the setbacks are not contradictory. It anything they are complimentary. That is, it’s important to have and model a resilient mindset, to use an “oops” to find another or better way to “aha.” You have to realize the personal control you have. That is, it’s it okay to be disappointed, but don’t let go of hope in the face of possible or actual disappointment, and don’t let disappointment have the last word. Understand reality; you know you can’t just focus on yourself and your dreams; you also have to take into account possible obstructions because they involve others over whom you don’t have control and may be obstructions to the instant fruition of your dreams. As Leonard Cohen might say, you just have to learn to take the risk to feel, think, and act the way you’d like to be. And, if you do, you’ll have a better chance of finding that you have the courage and strength to be the way you feel, think, and act. I did—eventually after a long rocky journey.”

“Now, what specific attitudes did I acquire that constantly fired my afterburners and prevented a depletion of my inner fuel?”

Later.

Louis

How “High” Is Higher Education

To continue my answer to the professor who was disdainful of my raising questions about academia:

“We both are scholars. Curiosity is name; questioning is our game. The quest to find the answers to our queries is the spring well of our research and publication, if not our promotion and granting of tenure. If that is true in our discipline, should not be true in our teaching of that discipline? Now, you say that for me to ask questions about ‘wither goest’ Higher Education is an indication of what you call my ‘corrosive attitude.’ My reply is that the efficaciousness in the classroom is identified on three axes. The first two are associated with the conveyance of our discipline: information transmission and skill development. The third concerns the receptor: the humanity of each student. The first two are products of questioning in the lab, archive, and out in the field: curiosity, investigation, discovery, and application. Why, then, is it anathema to raise questions about the third as well? Stereotypes, generalities, and labels don’t do justice to the human complexity of each student.

“You, I, and each student have very real reasons for feeling, thinking, and acting as they do. Our best teaching strategy is to get through those opaque images of ourselves and them, as well as to help them get through the curtains they drape around themselves, to understand, to address those reasons, and adjust to them. Boy, do I understand that understanding is time consuming and demanding of our efforts. But, that is what produces real and lasting results. It is true in the lab; it is true in the archive; it is true out in the field. It is no less true in the classroom! We have to do the work, take deep breaths, and go deep beneath the surface; we have to be willing enough, we have to care enough, to spend the time and energy, to find those deep reasons and address them, if we want to truly get things done.”

“If we don’t ask questions about the validity of our assumptions, presumptions, and perceptions generated by these fixed and oversimplified images, we are being very ‘unacademic’ by closing off debate with what I call ‘educational correctness.’ However, how are we to understand, rather than assume, what is really going on in the classroom? How do we care about what is going on in the hearts and minds of those on the receptive side of the podium? To paraphrase Mark Twain, unbending loyalty to a particular view is not a way to effectiveness. How can we be otherwise then numb to the complexity of students as individuals and as a whole? And, if we are numb, how will we know—know—how to respond constructively to improve both the effectiveness of our teaching and the depth of their learning? Questions.”

“So, as far as at the classroom is concerned, to paraphrase Hamlet, to question or not to question; that is the question. Disdain for my questioning of academia, or anyone’s questioning, impedes learning about the new research findings on learning and the implications it has for our approaches to and methods of teaching. If you dismiss questioning, you’ll never pause to understand what’s going on in the classroom. As both a scholar and teacher, I am a life-long believer in the power of the question to transform beyond the moment of the question. When I question, I examine my assumptions and perceptions of what I am feeling, thinking, and doing. Not to question, is like not exercising and still expecting your muscles to be firm and strong. To me, question and freshness are almost synonomous, for when I ask a question, I force myself to see people and things anew, and face new opportunities and possibilities that may be coming my way; that is, to question is not about condemnation; it is about hope”

“When my heart and mind hear and feel a question, they have no choice but to answer. And, the questions I ask have a powerful impact on my professional, personal, and social lives. The most basic multi-part question is: what assumptions have I made and what perceptions do I have today? Are they accurate? Are they limiting and holding me back? What is my purpose in this world, and is that purpose related to my responsibilities to each student? The target of any thoughtful questioning reflects what a person cares about the most. In my case, it is each student. Questioning is the first step to investment. The more you invest, the more you’ll be mindful; the more mindful you are, the more you’ll be alert, aware, and attentive; then, you’ll see, listen, empathize, and sympathize more. The examination of choices, decisions, aspirations, and goals leads to awareness, attentiveness, mindfulness, reflection, investigation, discovery, analysis, admission, responsibility, imagination, creativity, and action.”

“For me, questioning, fends off a passive acceptance of the existing academic culture that emphasizes scholarly research and publication that too often looks upon the demands of classroom teaching as an interference and distraction of scholarly pursuits. For me, questioning keeps me humble as a reminder of imperfection. For me, questioning is an investment of my time, energy, attention, faith, hope, and love. For me, questioning puts all I have into what I love most and releases all my inner creative power. For me questioning allows me to see, resonate, empathize and understand. For me, questioning breathes new life in my sense of purpose and keeps the juices flowing. Powerful and meaningful questions lead to powerful and meaningful feelings and thoughts which, in turn, lead to powerful and meaningful actions. For me, asking questions is audacious, for it is about transforming the visions of faith, hope, and love in education into flesh and blood; it is about honoring the complexity of student; it is about seeing a student as a person not yet realized and walking with the student into the depths of that experience;

“So, I do have a question or two or three or more about Higher Education….”

Louis

Questions

I thank some of you for missing me and asking after my health. I know. I haven’t shared a though since the end of September. Susie and I have had a series of “distractions.” First, it was over three weeks in Boston caring for both her brother and his wife. Then, we come home for a few days to discover that Susie has a torn Achilles tendon from incessantly climbing the steps of the three story Victorian Boston house. And, then, it was a week in Nashville “babysitting” our tween grand-daughter while her parents go off into Atlantic with Susie forbidden to climb any steps. And, finally, we come home to discover my computer is as dead as a dead cockroach: on its back, feet up. There went another week to get the new iMac.

After experiencing almost two days of unexpected travails struggling to set up the computer, this is my first Random Thought on my new iMac.

To be sure, I used my iPhone while on the road and during the time the computer was down. I sifted through my email and text messages, but my stubby fingers made it unreasonably awkward to reply at length. One of the messages, I was biting at the bit to answer came from a professor at a prestigious northeast institution. Now, I can share my response in several parts. Here is the first.

“You ask so many questions about Higher Education,” this professor professed in an admonishing tone. “If you didn’t like being a professor, why didn’t you go into another profession?”

The first part of my answer was this: “My love of being an educator doesn’t preclude the asking of hard questions and considering even more uncomfortable answers; it doesn’t mean I have to accept ego and pride over aspiration and inspiration. It does mean being a “change agent” for each student. My mission is to stop the use of lazy, self-serving stereotypes and generalizations and categories and labels, to stop reducing and impersonalizing complex blood and flesh and bone students into simplistic inanimate and inhuman stick figures. We in Higher Education are awash in those chasms causing stereotypes, generalities, categories, and labels My mission is make each student, without judgment or conditions, seen and listened to, and to feel seen and valued; it is to be there to help each student to find ways to help herself and himself become the person she or he is capable of becoming; it is to establish the tight connection and forge the supporting and encouraging community of what Martin Buber called constant and compassionate and trusting “I-Thou” relationships by which I and each student learn, grow, and change for the better. That means I’m always on the hunt for better ways to be more open minded and open hearted as means to improve the life story of each. It means uncovering the means to have a profound and beautiful impact on each student that will last far beyond us.”

“With our heavy emphasis on honors, recognitions, awards aren’t we missing and missing out on the vitality and liveliness of the ordinary student? It is as if we declare it is immoral to be average and ordinary; it is as if we brand those students with an “A” or “O” on their chests; and, in so doing we forget to hold the average, ordinary student as worthy of our time and effort. The irony is that we make people in both categories more stereotyped and labelled, and less human in our eyes. Teaching is not an ‘I’ endeavor. It is forged in the binding cords of those constant serving communal ’Thou’ moments. The teacher is Buber’s meaningful center of nurturing faith, hope, love, caring, kindness, trust, support, encouragement. Teaching should be an adoration, celebrating of each and every average student no less than the exceptional. No, I raise questions about the prevailing ‘I’ in Academia in order to set the table for an educational ’Thou”….

More later.

Louis