How to respond to a less than empathetic query from a professor.  I’ve been pondering her dismissal questions for quite a while.  Yeaterday, as I worked to come out from the fogs of my Thanksgiving tryptophan overdose on my 7 mile meditative power walk, I started  thinking about Dennis, and came up with a rather long answer.  Here is the first part of it:

“You know most education happens by contagion of either therapeutic or toxic emotion.   As Sigal Basade would say, if you want to retain students, increase their productivity, and raise the possibility of their success, welcome them, embrace them, love them, encourage and support them, each and everyone of them.  All life in that classroom, and elsewhere as well, is connected however you try to remain disconnected.  To be connected or to be disconnected, says Basade, is an emotional decision, not a technological or pedagogical or intellectual one.  And, however, you decide to feel and then act, as students such as Dennis reveal, your impact, overtly or subtly, expands, amplifies, lengthens, widens, deepens.   It cascades over miles, in lives, through the years.  It effects the world, it influences the future, in ways you don’t know or can’t imagine.  What you can imagine is that unconditional empathy and compassion, gentleness and love, kindness and caring, faith and hope, the intent to enrich the lives of others with support and encouragement, are essential for the nourishment of meaning and purpose in both your and students’ lives.”

“From personal and professional experience, I will tell you this:  there is a connection between service and joy, between empathy andhope, and between compassion and awe.  It is an acknowledgment, as Mother Teresa might say, that we belong to each other.  Human beings are influenced and shaped by kinship throughout their lives, and the classroom is no exception.  Human connection among students and between each student and the professor is the best teaching technique.  I have found a fullness in that connection, a call to delight in each student, a putting of flesh and bones and names and faces on the words ‘faith,’ ‘hope,’ and ‘love,’ and having an ability to be a man of innumerable second chances.  And, I have seen over and over and over again that its absence creates a cessation of caring, a fragility, a fear, a lethal absence of hope, and a cruel alienation.  Disconnection, sometimes called ‘being objective,’ is a form of spiritual ailment, a tiny spiritedness, a judgmentalism.  It’s what Abraham Herschel called an ‘eye disease’ that is a basis for an inability to see the full humanity of those fellow human beings we call ‘students.’  Now, no one can ‘humanize’ students into what they already are; no one can elevate students to the heights they already hold.  No, we cannot do anything to any student; we have to do it to ourselves.  Too many of us have to ask ourselves why do we presume there’s a distance between us and the students; why do we so often so readily hold tightly to impersonal and cardboard stereotypes, generalities, and labels; what is it that is blocking us so often from seeing the full humanity of each student.”

“I remember that in graduate school we graduates would grumble about how the professors treated us as ‘lower than whale shit.’  So, why do so many of us now turn around and treat so many students that way?   My refusal to do unto students what was done unto me  gives me the tools to release emotions.  It arms me with the ability to feel.  I allows me to be able to understand why, as Ed Deci would say, we do what we do—or don’t do.  It’s a constant exercise in increasing empathy and compassion.   It’s the way to becoming wiser, humbler, kinder, and more ‘awe-full.’  It slows; it provokes; it enriches; it uncovers and reveals hidden stories; it honors; it enlivens; it opens the eyes and heart; it recasts the personal we call ‘student,’ and even ourselves; and, it emboldens to break through what I call the ‘devalue line’ and to connect.”

“To do that, we have to focus more on establishing human connection than on changing methods, techniques, or technology.  We can’t practice an elitism that culls out the ‘don’t belongs.’  We can’t just focus on and blame the students.  We can’t place conditions on our caring.  You know sometimes, more often than I would like, think that academia is museum in which we professors practice an obscurantism with resumes, assessments, peripheral matters of pedagogy, assessment, getting promotion and tenure almost at any cost.  We ultimately have to shake out our pedagogical cobwebs.  We have to get expand our knowledge base beyond our discipline, to learn from the scientific literature on learning and apply its results.  And, we have to assume responsibility and change ourselves.  We have to see that that ‘eye disease,’ which demeans both student and professor with fear and disdain, is rooted in a deeper ‘heart disease’ of a disconnection resting on on the exercise of power and authority.  We have to see that our conditional ‘I care, if…’ is thin and imitation caring, a cheap caring that carries no weight.  We have to see and believe, and help each student to see and believe, that  there is so much more in both ourselves and each of them.  We have to see that the cure for that ‘eye disease’ and ‘heart disease’ is community that meshes that professorial power and authority with an unconditional faith, hope, and love.  When we apply that curative, I assure you, it will transform our vision from seeing an ‘awful’ student or class into an ‘awe-full’ one.”

“Now, it is not easy to change.  God, don’t I know that!  To transform ourselves, we have to explore our uncomfortable histories and habit.  We have to admit that they exist; we have to deal with what is it that wants to keep us safe and comfortable by avoiding the risks of adventuring into the unknown.  And, how well I know that kind of self-exploration can be painful and terrifying.  But, we must have it if we are to teach with integrity and wholeness.  We have to confront anything within us that is holding us back.  If we don’t work on our stuff, our stuff will continue to work on us.  It will continue to whisper in our ears; it will work on us however good our intentions may be; it will show up at every nook and cranny in our lives, and that controlling stuff will remain to us the ultimate truth voiced in “It’s not me,” “I’m not comfortable doing that.” “I can’t.” and “I don’t have tenure.”

“Now, this is not highfalutin or wishy-washy or fluff.  Let me go back to the research findings of Sigal Barsade and her 2016 article written with Olivia O’Neill in the Harvard Business Review titled ‘Manage Your Emotional Culture.’   That article led me to an earlier article in the HBR, ‘Employees Who Feel Love Perform Better,’ and then to still another that appeared in  the Administrative Science Quarterly, ‘What Does Love Have to Do With It?’  While they are writing about how emotions play in the workplace, their observations cut across all professions, and certainly are applicable to the classroom.  Two sentences in the first article caught my eye.  The first was at the beginning of the article:  ‘Most companies pay little attention to how employees are—or should be—feeling. They don’t realize how central emotions are to building the right culture.”’ Replace ‘companies’ with ‘professors.’  The other sentence was towards the end:   ‘Most leaders focus on how employees think and behave—but feelings matter just as much.’  Replace ‘employee’ with ‘students ‘and ‘leaders’ with “professors.”

“Between these two sentences, they argue, that what they call ‘cognitive culture’—thinking and behaving —is only part of the story.  The often ignored ‘emotional culture’—feeling expressed silently in unspoken facial expressions, body language, and vocal tones—is the crucial rest of the story.  And, when you gloss over ‘emotional culture,’ you’re ignoring what makes people tick.  That is, emotions determine how people perform tasks, how engaged they are, how imaginative and creative they are, how happy or sad they are, how fearless or fearful they are, how resilient or brittle they are, and how positive or negative they are.   They ask what if students came to class knowing you were really looking forward to seeing each of them and what if they came to class looking forward to seeing you.  They say that love was one of the strongest drivers of satisfaction and commitment and engagement.  What they call connecting ‘companionate love’—caring about and for one another, having a compassion for one another, having a tenderness towards one another, being kind to each other—generated better moods, better performance, more satisfaction, greater achievement.   Love’s opposite, as well as faith’s and hope’s, is disconnecting, objectifying indifference.  That indifference is a toxic attitude; it is a corrosive that makes it harder for anyone to perform.”

“For me, then, the findings of such researchers as Barsade and O’Neille communal ’awe-full,’ then, warms the icy chill of ‘awful.’  With ‘awe-full’ comes broad smiles rather than sneers and frowns, wide eyes instead of drooping eye lids, keen ears rather than deafness, an open and warm heart instead of a closed and cold one, welcoming handshakes instead of fists, embracing arms instead of folded ones, boundless energy instead of  lethargy, and, above all, a meaningful purpose.  Never old.  Never stale.  Never routine.  Never casual.  Never easy.  ‘Awe-full’ is that ‘radical amazement’ of Abraham Herschel.  He said, to paraphrase him, our goal should be to get up each morning and go through the day seeing the world in a way where everything and everyone is incredible.  Yeah, that pretty well sums up ‘awe-full.’”

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”  Was the Bard right?  Maybe.  Then, again, maybe not.  What we see depends on what we’re looking for.  If you’re looking for proof of “don’t belongs,” you’ll find plenty of evidence that they are.  Objective reality is impossible because of how our past experiences play on our memories, and that has as much to do with what we feel and think we are experiencing in the present. Our perspective and our attitude have a powerful and unavoidable influence on all aspects of our professional and personal lives.  It is my beliefs that beliefs, which are at the root of perceptions and expectations, are no small matter.  They’re just about the only thing that does matter.  They mean the difference between despair and joyous enthusiasm.  They mean the difference between stress and calmness.  And, to paraphrase Epictetus, events don’t cause stress or calmness. What causes stress or calmness are the views we have of events and people.  So, with the help of Harvard’s Ellen Langer, I think on this one, I’ll take the Bard on.

In a name, she say, rests how we interpret and respond to our environment, and how we interpret both our own behavior and that of others.  The difference of how we name a classroom is the difference of how we experience it.   How we see the classroom is formed by whether we attach “awe-full” or “awful” to those in it.  That difference in naming means the difference between creating a healthy and therapeutic climate on one hand and a toxic and pathological environment on the other.  It means the difference between delight and drudgery, enlivening and leadening, labor and laborious, meaningfulness or meaningless; it means the difference whether we care or could care less; it means the difference between patience and frustration; it means the difference between being invigorated with a “wow” and being drained by a “ah me” and “ho-hum;” it means the difference between empathy and indifference; it means the difference between being energetic and lethargic; it means the difference between encouragement and discouragement; it means the difference between confidence and doubt; it means the difference between whether we notice or ignore; it means the difference between connecting and distancing; it means the difference between being alert and ignoring; it means the difference between being attentive and being inattentive; it means the difference between being spry and being sluggish; it means the difference between being energetic and being apathetic; it means the difference between being attentive and inattentive; it means the difference between being aware and unaware; it means the difference between being mindful and mindless;  it means the difference between accepting or rejecting both students’ and our own imperfections; it means the difference between embracing and shunning; it means the difference between inner smiling and sneering; it means the difference between dancing and trudging into the classroom; it means the difference between possibility and impossibility; it means the difference between seeing a challenge as an opportunity and seeing a challenge as a halting barrier;  it means the difference between uncovering each student as a sacred and noble and unique person on one hand and hiding that flesh and blood person under the flattening, cardboard label, “don’t belong,” on the other.

So, what’s in a name?  A helluva lot!  Again, as Ellen Langer says, change the language and you get vastly different physical, intellectual, and emotional effects.  Just think about this.  Think about how so many of us react to “awful” and “honors.”  Whatever the labeling name—professor, student, administrator—it tends to render that other person as indistinctive.  But, to be human is to be unique and to feel unique.  Our degrees and titles and resumes notwithstanding, we each are human. That means we each want to be treated as sacred, noble, and unique person.    Just like everyone else.  Should we, then, treat other humans any differently?    So, what if we recognized and treated everybody else as sacred, noble, unique human beings?  What if  we stripped away those dehumanizing, flat stereotypes, generalities, and labels, with all their impersonalizing presumptions, and talked only of individual human beings?  We could.  It’s always our choice.  Every thought we think and every feeling we feel and every act we take is a choice we make.  The way we think and feel moment to moment determines how we live.  We could change our language from “awful” to “awe-full,” but we’d have to accept that, as Wharton School’s Sigal Barsade and George Mason’s Olivia O’Neill say, love, with faith and hope.