You know, Cicero said nothing people do that more approaches the gods than being a healer. I don’t think “soft teachers” are far behind. “Soft teaching” is a pledge, a moral act, a value system, a covenant, an ongoing connection, and a “we” consciousness. “Soft teaching” at its core is really about both the flourishing and the transformation of both teacher and student, for the “soft teacher” teaches in a way that brings out the better person in both teacher and student. “Soft teachers” unconditionally love each student not because they want to teach those students, but because they’re loving people. They buy an “all in,” not letting frustration, resentment, and anger dominate their awareness and skew their vision. Their attitudes aren’t skewed by negative preconceptions, generalities, stereotypes, and labels. They just respect and serve whomever enters the classroom. They are nurturers, not weeders. They know that if you want to retain and prepare all students for the future, you have to have a strong caring classroom that enables all students to thrive in it. I found “soft teaching” is a stronger force than academic elitism, proud ego, and self-interest—far more than renown, resume, title, and position. It brings out the deepest happiness, joy, meaning, and purpose. Like I said, “soft teaching” is neither for softies nor pessimists.

You see, to be a “soft teacher,” you have to pass “optimism” and “loving” tests before you can pass over the classroom’s threshold. Your guiding principles have to be empathy and student wellbeing. It takes strength and courage, reinforced by purpose to step back, take a deep breath, and leave negative feelings and thoughts behind. As Abraham Maslow said, it’s easy to stay with safety, but it’s hard to go daringly forward. It’s hard to let go of limiting preconceptions, biased thinking, and fixed feelings. It’s hard to fight the tendency to label others quickly on the basis of superficialities like GPAs. It’s hard to understand some of the dynamics that are happening beneath the surface that come up to the surface in vocal tones, facial expressions, and body language. It’s hard to reject previously held anecdotal evidence that told you your attitudes were warranted. It’s hard to ask yourself honestly, “How much of my attitude toward students is really about my lens on them?” It’s just downright hard to both learn and unlearn. But, what would happen to the environment within you if you brought into the classroom that wonderful feeling of just being alive, of delighting in living, of seeing an extraordinary, staggering, pulsating, sacred, nobility in each person? What would happen if you greeted each person with breathtaking awe? Just think of the smile that would be put on your face every day. Just think of the dance it would put in your step every day. Just think of the fire it would feed every day. That is what I discovered “soft teaching” can do for both teacher and student.

I know. It all happened to me. There I was, in the mid-point of my academic career, an accomplished researching and publishing scholar of some renown—until my epiphany in 1991. In that unexpected and unplanned sudden moment, I zoomed in on who I was at the moment and who I wanted to be in the moments to come. It was an inner upheaval of earthquake proportions that broke the imprinting chains of past personal experiences. I slowly, cautiously, over the years I took those dark memories I brought up from the dark recesses of my soul and made them into a personal story that made sense of my ongoing transformation. It wasn’t something I just figured out or admitted; it was literally a hard to explain feeling of talking myself into a new perception of the world. I learned to draw on the power of love, the power of caring, the power of commitment, the power of perseverance, the power of commitment to myself, the power of faith in myself, the power of hope for myself, and the power of loving myself. I started going from a need to be important and to impress to doing important things, from wanting to look good to doing good works. My first priority shifted from lengthening my resume to developing my inner self. To my surprise, I discovered that deep sense of accomplishment and satisfaction lay in those few moments I tore myself away from thinking about my scholarship, focused on a student in the classroom, and felt myself come alive. The classroom, I had to admit, was the place where I really felt a breathless purpose. That’s where I came to decide to lay my values and my identity. I had to admit that I wasn’t truly getting fulfillment in both my professional and personal life from my books, articles, grants or conference papers. I always felt and knew, though I did not admit it until that moment, that I was being driven to please and cater to others. It was when my search for meaning, for my own reality, abruptly took me out from archive and into the classroom, when I did a “meaning self-appraisal” and a “purpose self-evaluation,” when I consequently broke free from doing what was expected of me and from what I was told I was supposed to do, when I saw I was really in the people business as much as, if not more, in the information transmission and skill development business, when I went cold turkey on scholarly research and publication, and when I voluntarily turned to the classroom whole hog to transform from a researching and publishing scholarly professor to an intensely student-loving teacher.

Over the decades, I’ve discovered several things about what I am now calling “humanization by ‘soft teaching.’” First, to paraphrase Emerson, a person’s opinion of students is a confession of her or his character. We all infuse into thoughts, feelings, spoken words, and actions a sense of who we are, what someone called, a feeling of your spirit or soul. So, it was and is with me. The development of “soft teaching,” revealed a lot about who I was—my fears, my needs, my fallibilities, unimaginable imagination, incalculable opportunities, unexplored potential, hidden truths, untapped strength and courage—and who I could be. Second, I learned that my past, like anyone else’s, was not my potential; it was not a determinate of my future; I was. So, as I no longer needed to hold on to fixed views—including judgments I had about myself, other people, and the world—I could see and listen to fresh and new faces coming on campus every day and every term. In my own little world of the classroom, I could deal with the dilemma of retention by converting what might be called a “crisis of weeding out” with a “blessing of caring and nurturing.” Third, it’s an identity wrestling match: between the researching and publishing scholar and the classroom servant teacher; between focusing on student limitations and concentrating on student potentials; between seeing education as a business of information transmissions and skill development business on one hand and seeing it as a people business on the other; between minimal involvement with students and maximum engagement to them. Fourth, it’s an adventurous venturing out from the accepted, comfortable, known, and safe, as uncertain and scary as that is. Fifth, I’ve found a practicality in “soft teaching.” “Soft eyes,” “soft ears,” and “soft heart” slowed me down and put me into the conscious “now” of things. It makes you to “pay attention,” and you discover that anything you do is improved by paying full attention to it. It is the most basic way to connect with my inner self and with another person. Studies show that attention is one way the brain answers the question, “Is this worthwhile?” Sixth, it changed the way I moved among the students. It gave me a high. I felt feel wonder awaken inside me. I was awed. I thought and felt anew. I noticed my thoughts and feelings daringly moving from the information in lecture notes to the person of the student. My imagination was sparked. I became malleable and adaptable to that student I saw and listened to details or perspectives that I never noticed before or maybe even chose to ignore. Seventh, that slowing down revealed the complexity in the classroom that defies simplistic and distorting stereotyping, generalizing, and labelling. It helped me see myself and students in gentle technicolor instead of stark black and white. That made me more tender towards everyone, marvel how often so many students rose to the occasions far beyond their expectations. And, I learned not to be frustrated and resentful, though sad, when things don’t go right and don’t work. And finally, someone said that you cannot truly appreciate the glory of life until you’ve experienced and acknowledge life’s dark side. Similarly, I’m not sure you can practice the golden rule until you polish your own tarnished self. As Benjamin Disraeli said, “There is no better education like adversity.” Some of the most valuable experiences I’ve had—my epiphany, cancer, and cerebral hemorrhage—were not the most enjoyable, not the most painless, not the most comfortable, not the easiest to deal with, and not the least challenging.

Louis