Oh Winter, where are you? Had I to spray myself with “No Natz” to ward off the swarms of attacking mosquitos and harassing gnats! It’s February! We’re supposed to have no need for “No Natz.” We’re supposed to shiver, not sweat. The heater is supposed to be running, not the AC. Plants are supposed to be dormant, not in bloom, tra-la. And, the weeds!! Well, all those “supposed to” aren’t; and, those “not” are. It’s been in the sauna-ish 80s here in South Georgia. This is not global warming; it’s global steaming.

Anyway, as I walked the spa-like streets yesterday for my silent, mobile meditation, unbundled, with rivulets of salty, stinging water quickly meandering down my face from my water soaked headband, forming droplets on my eyebrows, nose, and chin, I silently thought of Sam, Jim, and another past student I met Friday in the grocery store. My conversation with this third past student in the cereal aisle is too personal to talk about, but it revived the vividness of my earlier conversations with Sam and Jim.

I love sinking into silent, mobile meditating. It’s not especially comfortable for me, but it is essential for pondering and rediscovering my living reality. For nearly an hour and a half, it’s like being in a deep white sound bubble. On this walk, reflections, appropriately budded by this third past student, emerged from my inner private silence. They seem to come from contemplating something of an otherness inside me. They silently called up a mindfulness within me. I silently listened to and ruminated with what they bring out from inside me. I, then, turned myself back and submerged into that inner private silence for more.

That brought me once again to the hardest—and most ignored—part of “soft teaching.” It is something first taught to me twenty-five years into my professional career by my personal epiphany in 1991. Its teachings continued with facing cancer in 2004, and deepened with dealing with my should-have-been-deadly massive cerebral hemorrhage in 2007. They revealed that I was ignorant of who I truly was and could be, and what I had; that I had been teaching myself weakened self-confidence, failure, and fear; that I had been failing myself; and, that only I could break that cycle of anxiety and deprecation by acting from a place of inner strength. I think it was Archimedes who said, “Give me a place to stand and I will change the world.” Those experiences did just that, and still do. They broke my inner chains and opened the doors of my inner prison; and, they released the energy of an inner freedom to be imaginative, creative, energetic, fluid, supple, resourceful, and an effective “changer.” They brought, and continue to bring me, to terms with their ever-present lessons: life, and anything in it, is an inside-outside job; that is, we teach who we are; we are the perceptions we have; we are the questions we ask. When we enter a classroom, we all carry our own experiences with us. All this means, to paraphrase Jon Kabat-Zinn. “Wherever we go, there we are.” As I continue to learn, all that means teaching, or anything I do, is a part of my life, not apart from it. All that means we have to work on our “I” before “them.” All this means if you want your teaching to change for the better, what you do will change for the better only if you change who you are. No one and nothing can bring about improvement on the outside unless you’re committed to it on the inside. If you want to reach out and touch a student, you have to reach in and down, and touch your inner self; whatever it is you want to do, first starts in your heart and mind, and then works it way out to what you do. Sound self-help-ish? You betcha! When push comes to shove, you’re only one who can do it—if you truly want to do it. You’re the only one who can motivate you.

No, I’m not being preachy. I was just reflecting on some stuff I just read by Cambridge’s Brian Little that reflects on my recent conversations with Sam, Jim, and this third past student. The gist of what Little says is that there are few things worse than doing something about which you feel is of “no use.” To be happy you have to engage in something that is fulfilling and meaningful to you; that what you do has to feel important; that you have to engage in something that brings you joy. He says that our mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing rests on the degree we feel positive and have a positive attitude, for engaging in something that we feel is impossible to attain, when we feel “stuck,” makes us truly miserable and stressed. And, that absence of fulfillment, purposefulness, and meaningfulness is a heavy drag on our psyche. And, that drag is a joyless, impoverishing, and imprisoning that creates a state of ill-being.

So, let me ask you the same question or two I first asked myself over twenty-five years ago: “Louis,” I asked, “what would happen if you saw, heard, and felt things differently each day? What would happen if you took a step or two outside your comfort zone each moment? What would happen if you ventured away from the safety of your habits? What would happen if you chanced to change your reality just a tad in each situation? Would your perspective change? Would your attitudes and actions change? Specifically, what would it mean if a student could see you more as an unconditional trusted, supportive, and encouraging friend than solely as a distant, commanding authority figure? Would it change the dynamic of the classroom?”

My answer was, “Let’s see.” And, guess what.  It sure did. It cut through opaque stereotypes, dehumanizing generalities, and impersonal labels. It drew back all those curtains to reveal the wondrousness of each student. That new reality for me created meaningful new beginnings and constant continuing. You see, I discovered that trusted friendship goes behind a name. It is story-to-story, individual-to-individual, face-to-face, heart-to-heart, eye-to-eye, hand-in-hand. It is to be at ease with. It is to feel safe with. It is to be open with. It is to be empathetic for. It is to be respectful of. It is to be aware of, alert to, attentive to, and mindful of the needs of others. It is to be tender and kind. It is to be supporting and encouraging. It is to be respectful. It is to be hospitable, to be welcoming, accepting, and embracing. It is to be connecting, intimate, faithful, hopeful, enduring, and loving. It is to treat humans as humans, and acknowledge that students are humans. It is to acknowledge that each student’s life matters. It is, in the words of Isiah, to turn the darkness into light and make the crooked places straight. It is to break the chains of strangerness, loneliness, and aloneness. For both the individual and the class as a whole, it is to break barriers, built bridges, and forge community.

And, that is what Sam, Jim, and others exemplify. They are reminders that listening and seeing, and struggling to understand, are the only ways to betterment. They are reminders for me of the complex humanity in that classroom that defy generality, stereotype, and label. They are reminders for me that each of our thoughts, feelings, hidden perceptions, silenced or voiced expectations, words, and actions influence’s students’ fates. They are reminders that something as simple as encouraging someone with a soft word or slight gesture, or telling them not to give up, or telling someone that their story matters as much as anyone else’s — can make a difference. They are reminders for me that if “they’re not prepared,” they are only raw ore ready to be smelted into precious metals, not barren and worthless dirt to be discarded on a pile. They are reminders to me of the demand to teach with engagement and involvement every minute with every fiber of my being.. They both trigger and mirror the powerful and positive inner perspective of an unshakable vision that’s the result of the “soft teaching” of faith, hope, and love: to be the person who is there to help each person help her/himself become the person she or he is capable of becoming.

That vision led to the guiding and binding formula in my “Teacher’s Oath” and “Ten Commandments of Teaching.” It gave a winsome message I can give the world about each student: all student lives matter. All! Each! It made me more attentive, alert, and aware. It made me more mindful. It dug deeper past the surface appearance. It mined deeper into the deep reservoirs of potential. It put the past in the past. It put away excuses and rationales. It imagined the unimaginable. It made the insurmountable surmountable, It converted challenges from barriers into opportunities. And, it made difficulties irrelevant. It pushed my expectations beyond what I expected. It made impossibilities possible. It achieved the unachievable. It touched the untouchable. It made later too late. It strengthened, inspired, encouraged, supported, empowered—and energized—me. But, to do all that, it demanded, commanded, I constantly put in the proverbial mental, physical, and emotional sweat equity.

Now, please knee-jerk a sigh and roll your eyes. Please read me out. I’m not hawking “easy.” Anything but. You have to understand that the way to see, hear, and feel about people is the way you treat them. And, the way you treat them is usually the way they become. I’m promoting seeing and seeing into instead of merely looking at, listening to replace merely hearing. But, like anything worthwhile, they require constant effort. You always have to work hard constantly to constantly see and listen to each student. They’re not one shot deals. And, you can’t cherry pick self-serving, convenient, and safe images and experiences. Like Jim said, it takes a lot of hard work, a lot of consistent and incessant work, a lot of dedicated and committed work. It takes a lot of conscious effort to examine assumption, to question expectation, to dissipate the power of a stereotype, to rip out a label, to challenge a generality, and to assess judgment . So, I am standing up for a sustained supportive and encouraging connection and persuasive communication rather than a power commanding relationship. Like I said, “soft teaching” is the “new hard.” It’s demanding. It demands daily intervention. It demands daily engagement. It demands daily reinvention. It demands a constant renewal and demonstration of faith, hope, and love. It demands a sense of humanity and connectedness. Above all, it promotes the idea that nothing is fixed by transforming “This is who I am” into first an exploring, peering-over-the-fence question of “Who can I be?” and, then, an energetic and nurturing and confident and celebrating statement of “This is who I can become.”

No, do you know what’s easy in the classroom? Not breaking a sweat; not getting “down and dirty;” putting a mask on students and thinking you know all about them. It’s easy to look at the proverbial tip above the surface and ignore all that is below. It’s easy to be distant and disconnected. It’s easy to be insensitive and unaware. It’s easy to talk, talk, talk. It’s easy to say, “I don’t believe this,” “I will not coddle students,” “I have neither time nor inclination to wipe their noses,” “I have to be coldly objective,” I won’t allow emotions to undermine my demands for intellectual rigor,” “I refuse to allow my feelings to interfere with and cloud my judgment.” “My task is to weed out those who can’t cut it.” What’s easy is to look but not to see, to hear but not listen. It is easy to submit to what psychologists call “confirmation bias,” that is, the tendency to embrace information that supports our beliefs and reject information that contradicts them. More often than not, in looking and hearing we find only those “for instance” reflections and supporting proof of our own biases, preconceptions, expectations, stereotypes, labels, generalities. That’s why it’s so easy to be so negative. It’s easy to look at the classroom and judge with a resigned “they don’t” and a frustrated “they won’t.” It’s so easy to only hear and judge with a sneering “they don’t belong” and belittling “they’re letting anyone in” and a demoralizing “they’re not prepared.” It’s easy to look at only the surface GPA, test results, grades, and scores. Consequently, it’s easy not to be truly there when you’re in the classroom because you “have better things to do” and “have no time for.” It’s easy to constrain ourselves by being joylessly disheartened, resigned, frustrated, and even angry. It’s easy to decide how pointless it is. It’s easy to throw up your arms in surrender. It’s easy to walk away.

Yes, as I’ve often said, I am promoting a demanding touchy-feely classroom; that is, a demand to reach out and touch each student, to notice each one, to care about each one, and to feel an unconditional lovingkindness for each of them. I am pushing for a pushing away of “demoralized eyes,” “dispirited ears,” “grimaced lips,” and “burnt out hearts” that too often blind and deafen and numb us to what is truly going on around us, that skew so much, that causes us to miss so many important details that are right in front of us, that allows us to retreat to the archive and lab rather than fight for each student. So, I am stoking the difficulty of being your own stoker tending to your own inner furnace and keeping its fire ablaze.

Louis

I was all spiffed up,—uncomfortable noose of a tie, sports jacket, non-jeans slacks—small talking, waiting for the dining room doors to open. It was the community’s “Law Enforcement Appreciation Dinner” sponsored by the Rotary Club. Someone, passed by me, whom I’ll call Jim (not necessarily his real name or gender), stopped. turned around, looked at me, asked quietly, “Are you Dr. Schmier?”

“Last time I looked, but you have the better of me,” I said, not knowing to whom I was talking.

Suddenly small talk became big. He gave me his name and blind-sided me—in a good way—with something like, “You don’t remember me, but do I remember you. I was in class a long time ago, almost twenty years ago. What a class. It started with those trust falls off the desk and never let up through the whole term. I couldn’t believe you weren’t going to lecture or give us tests. Those triads, projects, and daily journals were something else. I want you to know that I’m here because of you. Every now and then, when I’m down and need to get myself going, I pull out my class notebook and read one of those inspirational ‘Words for the Day’ you wrote on the board at the beginning of class and we talked about as it related to the lives of the people we were studying and our personal lives. But, the one thing I remember over and over and over again, is the time I told you that I was not a great student. You didn’t walk away from me like a lot of others had done. All you did was to ask me if I was a great person. When I said yes, you softly whispered with a caring force, ‘Then, why don’t both of us work hard to partner up and get that great person to help you become the great student you can be and a great whatever you want to become.’

As I stood stunned, he went on to say something like (quickly had gone over to the bar to scribble his words on a napkin), “I never forget how that got to me. It turned me around. You had a quiet, focused, demanding softness about you for each of us. Somehow, you made time to see and hear each of us. I opened up to you in those journals like I did with no one else because I knew I could trust you and that you really cared. You just helped me understand that I didn’t have to believe my thoughts and feelings, that I could break those bad habits of doubting myself if I wanted to, that I could defeat that defeatist attitude that I had for so long, and that I could respect myself. It took a lot of work, hard work every day for both of us to do all that, a lot of hard work. But, I really got to enjoy watching me do the things I thought I could never do as you helped me see that I could. I saw possibilities inside me I never imagined. You helped me push my expectations of myself beyond where they had been stuck. That gave me a direction and momentum. All through the class, you were by my side with what you called those ’little big words like faith, hope, and love,’ those soft smiles, little nods, and quiet encouragements that helped me take those scary first steps to where I am now. And, you know something? I learned to work hard to treat my employees the same ‘soft’ way. I think I owe you a mountain of thanks for that.”

As he walked off to join others, I wondered if he had been eavesdropping on my conversation in the streets with Sam two weeks earlier. All through the dinner and in the days that followed, Jim’s words whispered in my ears: “Caring force,” “demanding softness,” “hard work every day for both of us.” I kept wondering if there was a pattern. Saturday, as I was meditatively walking the morning streets, it came to me: It’s the enormous power of mindfulness directed by unconditional engaging and involved faith, hope, and love. It’s the hard work of seeing with “soft eyes,” hearing with “soft ears,” and feeling with a “soft heart” beneath the surface of stereotype, generality, preconception, and label to each student’s hidden quality and unique potential. To put it another way, one of the great insights I had from “soft teaching” was that students weren’t who most faculty thought they were.

But, “soft” certainly is one of those words, like “love,” academics can’t get past. It causes so many of them to wince, gasp, and throw up their hands in horror as if it’s a threat to the intellectual integrity of academia. To them, it’s the leader of the insidious invading horde of wusses assaulting the Ivory Tower: “new age,””push-over,” “patsy,” “mushy,” “bosh,” “sappy,” “lovey-dovey,” “easy,” “coddling,” “wishy-washy,” “sentimental,” “touchy-feely,” “subjectivity,” “fluff.” Nevertheless, thinking of this businessman’s terms, “quiet, focused, demanding softness” and “a lot of hard work,” I don’t think “soft” has anything to do with that which is contrary to “rigor” and “demanding.” I’m going to be hard-nosed and rigorously stick with “soft.” if for no other reason than over the past couple of decades that living that word, as the last couple of weeks has reminded me, had really stuck with me as an essential and very effective teaching and learning tool.

Let me give you five hard facts about “soft teaching.” First, as someone said, “feeling are the first facts.” You can choose to let them be a bad master or a good servant. You can let them limit you with a sense of false safety or use them to break out in a daring escape for freedom. To do that, however, you have to ask yourself a very hard introspective question as I had to do, “Why do I feel what I feel about myself, what I do, and the students?”  Second, “soft teaching” has a dramatic impact on your inner climate, the inner climate of each student, and the climate of the class community as a whole. “Soft teaching” nudges you into becoming a compassionate and attentive revolutionary, certainly a rascally iconoclast, urged on by a “who are you” curiosity about each student and a supportive and encouraging “I care about you” for each student. Third, “soft teaching” also asks, “What does a GPA, grade, score, or award really describe?” “Does the GPA, grade, score, or award tell the whole story, the human story, of a student?” “What is this person capable of becoming? and “What is the ultimate reality of the classroom.” A fourth hard fact about “soft teaching” is that its a habit breaker; it opens your eyes, ears, and heart to the grandeur that is each student. It forces you to slow down; it sharpens an engaged attentiveness, alertness, awareness of the humanity of each student. You can listen to each voice; see each face. It is infectious as you embody it and it radiates from you. And, that brings me to the fifth and final hard fact about “soft teaching”: if you want to be alive and keep your flame burning, if you want ignite a student’s flame, see and listen to each student, engage with and be involved in each student, never loose your sense of wonder and amazement at how extraordinary each student, not just the honors student, is, if you see, hear, and get to know her or him. It will whet your appetite for more and more—and more.

Soft eyes, soft ears, and a soft heart. Faith, hope, and love. Caring and kindness. They help us to understand that all these facts and questions they stimulate matter because we teachers have a moral mission to serve and help make things better for each student. They help us see details or perspectives that we’ve never noticed before or maybe even chose to ignore, that is, the humanity of each student and the need to know each student’s story. You see, when you don’t have information about each student’s story, you don’t have knowledge about that student; when you don’t have knowledge about her or him, you really can’t make wise, much less informed, choices on how to deal with her or him; when you don’t have that wisdom, you can’t truly be caring. So, they don’t accept blindness or deafness to that which is going on around you,

These attitudes, these feelings only require empathy. To have empathy, however, you have to have humanity and connection. To have humanity and connection, you feel that each student counts, that each student matters, that you treasure each student, that you appreciate each student, that each student is something in your heart, that you include and nurture, and that you never give a demeaning message of disregard.

As Sam, Jim, and others reveal, That makes these outlooks a presence that is more powerful than absence. Their openness opens a new way to think, feel, and do. They ask you to explore beneath the surface and mine for the hidden gold of unique potential that lies in each person. You know Yeats said, “In dreams begins responsibility.” Therefore, there’s nothing soft about them, nothing passive, nothing sluggish. They’re synonyms for caring engagement, kindly connection, faithful support, hopeful encouragement, and loving understanding.

For me, that makes “soft teaching” the “new hard.”

Louis

There’s a 35 degree chill in the dawning air. A slight fog is muting the sharp lines of everything. Wisps of steam are rising from my freshly brewed cup of coffee. Standing by the Koi pond, listening to the soft music of the water falling off the rocks and seeing the smooth, graceful sweep of the koi, is my “just to” time when I just listen to my heart. I love this silent time of day. It is such an uninterrupted time. It’s so unhurried and slow-paced. It’s so far away from mind chatter that I can stay in the moment with just myself. It’s a time of clarity when I can pull together who I am, who I still might become, the distance between the two, and what I still have to do to close that distance. It’s a time when I can be most intimate with my heart, my spirit, and my mind; when I can just quietly make room, softly invite in, silently listen, focus attentiveness and awareness until it all transforms in reflection and contemplation. This morning, as I stood there in the graying light of the day’s beginning, my eye caught a tree by the pond and I silently asked myself, “Are you just another tree or is there a pulsating miracle behind the bark?”

I don’t remember whether it was Whitman, Emerson, or Thoreau who said that what keeps you ablaze is greeting each day, walking through each day, and ending each day with a joy and satisfaction that emits a fragrance like flowers. I surely know what whomever said that means. When you’ve been to the edge as my epiphany, cancer, and cerebral hemorrhage had taken me, it’s the mother of all sins not to have that wonderful feeling of just being alive, of delighting in living. For me, that means waking up and being excited and curiously restless to face the day ahead, and being very present with that day, and then going to bed knowing I actually accomplished something significant; that I knew I had lived the entire day. I mean, there’s nothing more than that, really. Nothing more.

I stood my the pond wondering what would happen to the environment within each of us if we brought into the classroom, to quote myself, that “wonderful feeling of just being alive, of delighting in living,” What would happen if we hospitably greeted each person. Just think of the smile that would put on both our and their faces every day. Just think of the delight it would inject into both our and their hearts each day. Just think of the dance it would put in our step every day. Just think of the fire it would feed every day.

I’m not talking about a current, static condition. I’m thinking about a current dynamic mission. It’s not actual; it is aspirational; it is promise; it’s faith, hope, and love. It is a greatness of heart that unconditionally cares about each and all. It is soul to lift burdens and allow others to strive to be the person each is capable of becoming. It is to see and listen to cares and concerns of others over our self-interest, to see each person as a dynamic “human becoming” rather than as a fixed, stereotyped “human being.” Then, you constantly rediscover the human condition in each person in each classroom each day. That is an ecstatic act of adoration I call “teaching from life.”

What got me here was an unscheduled conversation I had with a past student I’ll name, Sam, whom I met a few days ago. Let me tell you about some of that conversation.

I was about a quarter way through my morning seven mile power walk. I was just about to step off a side street curb when a car turned into the street, stopped, and blocked my path. I went over as the window rolled down. “Hey, Dr. Schmier. I’ve been following your internet essays for a long time. This time I saw you walking and decided to stop and tell you what you’ve meant to me when I was in college and still do after all these years.”

We talked for a few minutes. Then Sam said, “I’ve often wondered why and how you saw me when I couldn’t? I looked at myself, but I never could see myself until you came along. I remember you once telling with a forceful love, that’s the only way to described it, ‘See yourself; don’t just look at yourself. Listen to yourself; don’t just hear yourself. If you do, you’ll see you’re full of possibilities you didn’t know existed.’ I owe you a lot for helping me do just that. I felt I was just so ordinary at best at the time until you made me feel otherwise.”

“Well,” I answered with something like, “you were never ordinary and I never thought otherwise. I exercised my power to have faith in you, hope for you, and love of you. When you do that, you’ll start to see how extraordinary the supposed ordinary is. Everyone is worthy of being noticed; everyone is worthy of being seen; everyone is worthy of being listened to. Everyone is worthy of your attention.  So, in my eyes, you weren’t ordinary. I didn’t just look at the surface you like you and others did. I saw the beneath the surface. I saw you with ’soft eyes.’ I heard you with ’soft ears.’ And, I cared about you with a ’soft heart.’ That way I opened myself to everything that was going on in the class, and I remained more fully present in the moment in the class with all my senses while focusing on each of you.”

“So,” he smiled, “you admit you’re a ‘softie.’”

“Sure. It’s called ‘lovingkindness.’ But, I’m a ‘challenging and caring softie.’ I ask in no uncertain terms that you not accept any ordinariness about you. I demanded that you not accept being ‘just average.’ I demanded that you saw and heard yourself with your own ‘soft eyes’ and ‘soft ears’ so you could care about yourself with your own ’soft heart.’ I demanded of myself that I exert the time and energy to help you see you were something special, like you said, ‘filled with possibilities you didn’t know existed.’”

“I know. You said at the beginning of the class not to accept being mediocre, that we each can be an honors student if we were willing to do what it took. Boy, was that a throwing down of the gauntlet. I know all that now. That was the purpose of those diary-like journals and those out-of-the-box projects. That was not lecturing and testing. You never did anything at us; it was always with us.  You never accepted an ‘I can’t’ or ‘I’m not’ from any of us. You challenged and stretched us in ways we never were. It was like you said, and I have never forgotten it, it was breaking barriers, building bridges, and creating community with yourself and others. I’ve been struggling to that ever since. You did that with each of us, and it sure worked on me. I found I could be creative and imaginative in ways I never thought I could. Still do. You saved me. You changed where I was heading. For that I thank you, and I just wanted to say it to you this morning.”

“Thank you,” I quietly said with a tear forming in my eye. And, thank yourself even more for finding the courage to admit that you had to change course, that you could choose another path to walk, and that you did.”

“You know, I still read your syllabus for that class every now and then. Even show it to my children.  Say,” he then asked, “did ever really finish your reflections on burnout? I really was getting into them.”

Now don’t hold my reply to these exact words, but they’re close enough. “Yes, and no. What you do during your ‘dash,’ whether you see, listen, and feel with ’softness’ or not will influence whether you’ll keep on burning or you burnout. You have to dispel life-sapping tedium with a meaningful vision, follow it, and keep it alive. And as long as you have that vision in your eyes, ears, and heart, you’ll keep your resolve; you won’t lose the importance and good of what you’re doing. Doing good work is a good way to live and work. You’ll always find reason to be joyful and excited. You’ll always be alert, attentive, aware, mindful, and alive. You’ll always have faith in, hope for, and love of. You’ll always open your eyes, ears, mind, and heart. You’ll see beauty in everything and everyone. You’ll always reach out to embrace and make a positive difference. You won’t allow yourself to be numbed or depressed. You’ll just teach yourself over and over and over with purpose, meaning, joy, excitement, fulfillment, and satisfaction.”

We chatted a bit more. Then, he drove off and I continued my walk. But, now it was a different walk. Sam put me into more of a pensive mood than I’m normally in during the time of these mobile mediative miles.

There’s more. Later.

Louis