I was sitting for more than a few minutes on the concrete fence of a bridge, my early morning meditative walk interrupted, arms folded, head bowed, eyes closed, waiting for the long and slow freight train to pass, holding my inner silence against invading attempts of the relentless clackity clack of the train’s wheels, concentrating my thoughts on part of a sneerful message I had received from a professor. “How could you be so full of awe for a student whose performance is awful,” she asked with obvious disdainful agitation.
Just then, as the last car of the train had passed and the barriers were beginning to lift. The passenger side window of a near-by car lowered. The driver leaned over. “Hey, Schmier!” I opened my eyes and I looked up. “Thought I recognized you. Its been over fifteen years. I never told you that the only thing I remember from my first year at VSU was all that stuff we did in your class. Just wanted to say that you were the only professor who made me feel that I was somebody who mattered, and was important to you. I never let those feeling go. You made. everyone feel that there wasn’t anything we couldn’t do if we put our head and heart into it. Because of that I was determined to show you and myself that I was worthy of being noticed. Do you know that you helped me to stretch myself like no one else has in ways I didn’t know I could.” He quickly turned his head to see the cars in front of him moving as someone honk a horn behind him. “Oops, gotta go. Bye and thanks.” And, he pulled away with a wave of his hand before I could take a step or say a word. I felt like the townsperson at the end of an episode of the Lone Ranger wondering who was that masked man. But, I had my answer to that professor.
“You ask how could I be in awe of a student who was awful? It’s because I was once that ‘awful’ student,” I answered. “And probably would have become a drop-out had it not been for one caring professor, Dr. Birdsal Viault. Having graduated 86th in a high school class of 252, I was told that the teachers had decided that I was the college bound graduate least likely to succeed. Because they and all my college professors, save Dr Viault, had thought about me and allowed me to think of myself simply in the one dimension of my ‘says it all’ ugly and low—very low, very ugly—GPA. To add salt to my wounds, would you believe that my sophomore English professor, after I failed one of my written essays wrote on my paper—and I remember his exact words to this day 58 years later—that I was an ‘appalling blight on this institution?’ How could I nurture who I was if I didn’t feel recognized and acknowledge for who I was, if I wasn’t accorded worth, if I wasn’t treasured, if I wasn’t rendered inherent dignity, if I didn’t matter, if I wasn’t important, if I wasn’t a somebody? No one knew my story. No one cared about how my family upbringing had undermined my self-esteem and eroded my self-confidence, both of which had a negative impact on my performane. No one cared to know that I was working three jobs to get through school. It was only because ‘Bird’ saw an “awe-fullness” seen by no one else, including me. Because to them and me, to be seen, and appreciated, I had to be academically ‘handsome.’ And, if beauty exists in the eyes of the beholder, that meant I had to have honors level grades. Anything less made me that homely ‘don’t belong’ blight, not warranting their time and concern. Yet, what my transcript revealed to both them and me, was a small fraction of who decades later I discovered I was. Solely relying on that transcript to define me was like setting a dinner table for twelve guests using only a fork. Any hidden and potential ‘academic handsomeness’ I might have had was all so hidden in a shadowy mist to both me and them. That opaque veil, that ordinariness, they and I drew over me now seems so obviously wrong. Well, relying on that single indicator, they and I were not obviously wrong then; the other dimensions about me were just was not obvious to them and me.”
“Now, I admit during the first 25 years of my professional career when in ‘honoring my discipline,’ I dishonored so many students While putting on the respectful faces of ‘Doctor’ and ‘Professor of History,’ I disrespected so many students. Succumbing to a drive to survive, and with a deep reassuring need to thrive, I succumbed to becoming like ‘one of them.’ If we think about it, and admit it, the academic culture encourages us—demands us—to think that if we conform to do certain things and take certain steps, if we don’t stir the waters and do as expected and toe the academic line, even if in the process we compromise ourselves, we will get to certain crucial milestones of success. It was an academic version of living the lines in ‘Ole Man River”: Get that degree! Get that appointment! Get that grant! Publish the research! Get that promotion! Get tenure! I, like so many of us academics, for a variety of deep personal reasons, had succumbed to the enslaving perils of higher education. I, like most academics, allowed that quest for what I’ll call ‘academic celebrity’ and ‘academic security’ to deafen, blind, bind, confine, and numb me. I allowed that quest to feed me a diet of playing if safe with dishes of ‘I can’t,’ ‘I’m not,’ ‘It’s not me,’ ‘I’m not comfortable doing that’ and, above all, ’I don’t have tenure,’ I had imprisoned myself with anxious-ridden and submissive looking-over-the-shoulder ‘what will they think” and ‘how will this effect me acquiring tenure’ and ‘will this help get me that promotion?’ And, while I was looking over my shoulder, I was not seeing each student. Or, I saw that what I perceived as ‘awful’ students were detractions, if not obstacles, to my quest for academic accolades. We so wrongly assume that we have total control of our destiny. And, when we discover that we don’t, that nothing we can do gives us that total control over students and colleagues and administrators, rather than accepting the truth of that messy reality, we so often wallow in compromising ourselves with ‘enthusiasm depletion’ by resignation, lethargy, reluctance,despair, frustration, anxiety, anger, bitterness, fear, excuse, rationale, and blame.”
“Then, on that fateful autumn morning of 1991, as I have extensively written, for a variety of reasons, I suddenly and unexpectedly had had enough. I found myself forcing myself to face myself and to face up to myself. I was at the top of my academic game as an acknowledged authority in my field. I had a huge resume; I had tenure; I was a full professor. Yet, I heard myself uncontrollably admitting that while I had it all, I felt I had so little; I felt so hollow. My outer facade not withstanding, I was sad; I was unsatisfied; I was miserable; I was unfulfilled. As I uncontrollably exploded, I heard myself revealing the love-hate-fear relationship of pursuing an academic’s version of success that I had allow to be placed on my life. I heard myself unexpectedly erupting with an admissions that all those grants, conference workshops, or a publications didn’t make me feel all that accomplished as I had convinced myself. I heard myself spewing out about the internal problem of not being able to serve two masters, about the internal argument between the part of me that wanted to be an unknown but master classroom teacher, a Birdsal Viault to all students, and part of me that had to be a successful scholar to achieve in academia. The latter had won out for so long. But, no more. I decided I had had too many academic face lifts. Now, I needed a ‘soul lift,’ for I realized that, as Abraham Herschel said, indifference to the wonder in each person is the ultimate sin.”
“So, beginning to connect with and seeing myself in all those ‘awful’ students, I began to move from a strictly defined professorial hierarchical identity encompassing discipline, degree, title, and resume to something of a more freeing, unbounded, and pleasurable sensibility of being an authentic, sincere, caring, kindly, and serving human being. I began moving from a desire to be visibly important to an overwhelming desire to do out-of-the-limelight important things. I forsook renown and accepted possible unknown. I began to ask myself several pointed questions: ‘Is a professional resume of degrees, titles, grants, publications all there is of me?’ “Are they all that they are cracked up to be?’ ‘Is a grade all there is of a student?’ ‘Is it all that it’s cracked up to be?’ I was determined to be someone who, except for Bird Viault, I hadn’t had in my young life. I was going to give each student the gift of seeing, accepting, validating, treasuring, and embracing her and him for who she or he is, for who she or he can become, and be committed to being with each of them on part of that journey.”
“Beginning to ask such questions was for me at the core of my epiphany in 1991. It was like a hurricane rattling and then blowing down what proved to be house of cards. The initial revealing moments that started to lay me bare were tear-filled. Seeking the answers proved to be heart breaking and heart mending as I struggled for my heart to break out of a shell into the open. They were the first vulnerable, unsure, shaky steps towards looking at myself, each student, the classroom, as well as everything and everyone off campus, in a different way. I started trading in the traditional audience-oriented academic brand for a student centrism. I started a never-ending search of my own authentic, sincere, and honest soul with a “Let’s see who you could be, who you should be.” It was to be a sharp transition from scholarly professor to loving classroom servant-teacher, from going cold turkey on research and publishing to focusing all of me on classroom teaching. And, that ultimately wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. That is, once I did the hard part. And what was that ‘harf part?’ Well, to paraphrase Rumi, the Sufi mystic, to both survive and thrive—with the steadfast presence, support, and encouragement of my dearest wife, Susie—I began an excavation project to remove all barriers within myself that I had placed in my way from seeing the bigger perspective that ‘awe-full’ presents. Over the subsequent years, going through a ton of upheaval, after some heavy lifting, I saw that it is the values, beliefs, and philosophy of both life in general and teaching in particular that ultimately years later I was to enunciate in my “Teacher’s Oath,” was at the root of an emerging guiding vision. It was a vision filled with the unconditional faith, hope, and love inherent in ‘awe-full.’ It is ‘awe-full,’ not “awful,” that is a schooling of joy with an energetic, purposeful, and meaningful ‘enthusiasm infusion.’ It was in “awe-full,’ not ‘awful,’ that new possibilities and opportunities were born. It was ‘awe-full,’ not ‘awful,’ that served me and each student best. It was ‘awe-full,’ not ‘awful, that filled me with gratitude. It was like being increasingly brightened and reved up by the revealing dawning sun as it edged over the horizon and cut through the darkness.
“Then, I went further. I asked myself, “What would happen if I focused on both my and each student’s unseen but unique potential? What if I optimized my classes—unbound by any professorial ‘how will I grade this’ and ‘how will I be evaluated by students’ by me or by students’ ‘will this be on the test’ and ‘is this important,’—for what I came to see as real ‘life-long learning and living.’ What if I focused consciously and daily on finding ways to simultaneously transmit information, develop critical thinking skills, and build up each student’s character, all of which would increase the possibility of accomplishment and true happiness throughout their lives? That optimized focus became an explicit part of my individual mission, guided my north-star enunciated vision in my written ‘Teacher’s Oath.’ That is, unconditionally to have faith in, hope for, and love of each student; to help each student help herself and himself become the person she and he is capable of becoming; to help students think about their lives and not just their professions, to graduate as honors persons possessing a moral compass rather than just honor students possessing a degree and a credential; to help them decide who they want to be and not just what they want to do; to help them learn to play the responsibility game rather than the blame game; to know that while things happen to them in unpredictable ways, they have the profound power to choose the effect that has on the kind of people who they become; to help them understand that professional accomplishment, fulfillment, and happiness aren’t necessarily synonomous terms; and to send them on their way with a strength of character and deeply ingrained values that will help them keep from losing their way. I did just that. I reflected on, articulated, and shared my beliefs, my values, my philosophy of both life them. And, to my amazement it worked. That is what being ‘awe-full’ had done and still does for me. That is why I am in awe of each student, her or his GPA be damned!”
Louis