It is Sunday. What little is left of November 20. Tallahassee
airport. Close to
midnight. Raining. Chilly. Waiting for the buses. I probably won't get into
my Susan's
arms until about 3 a.m. I was supposed to have left Cincinnati at 4 p.m. and
arrive in
Valdosta three and a half hours later. It wasn't to be. I am tired, physically
tired,
intensely tired. It's a good tired. It's reasons are of the kind that you
inscribe on
tombstones. This was my twelfth or thirteenth Lilly, but this time the normal
intensity
was more intense than usual. I was more mindful, more keenly aware, more
conscious of the
moment. My senses were sharper. I was more appreciative. I was more mindful
of a deep
and profound connection with the people around me. Lilly had a more spiritual
meaning.
This was my the first Lilly since I discovered I had cancer. I was celebrating
Lilly more
with my heart than usual, and not just because of successful treatment that has
made me
cancer-free. It also because here at Lilly, you'll find a form of the "beloved
community." Lilly's originator, Milt Cox, is an alchemist who for twenty-five
years has
been mystically transmuting the lead of hard-shelled, self-centered,
competitive "I" into
the soulful, loving gold of "we." At Lilly, Milt's vision and purpose was for
us to
experience the exciting joy of serving others, sharing with others, openly
learning from
others, and being part of a mutually supportive and encouraging community.
So, Lilly is
about more than passing the food for thought around until your head is filled;
it's more
than passing the food and drink for the tummy around until your stomach was
filled; it's
also about passing the soul food of respect and love around until your heart is
filled.
This Lilly I was especially conscious of all that. Not just because we were
celebrating
it's 25th silver anniversary, but because I was giving thanks. And though I
didn't
physically bow my head in thanks when I first arrived Wednesday afternoon, as
soon as I
saw and hugged Melodie Barton, Martha Webber, Gregg Wenzel, and Milt Cox, I
said a
thankful prayer. And the prayers kept coming as friends whom I hadn't seen in
a year kept
coming in. At these moments when we hugged and talked, I knew why I make the
Herculean
effort each year to go to Lilly. Always stuffed into the third Thursday
through Sunday
before the official Thanksgiving the following Thursday, it's the first of my
two
Thanksgiving. It has a feeling of being a home away from home among friends
and family.
Like Thanksgiving a week later, it is that time that endows me with a keen
sense of
gratitude. It is a gratitude for what on the other 364 days seem so normal and
ordinary:
the bounty of closeness I feel to so many at this gathering, "newbies and old
timers
alike." It is soul nurturing time for me to pause to fill my cup with
gratitude for all
those neat people who call me and allow me to call them friend and colleague.
I am by
nature a romantic, but in the course of the year I learned even more that there
is nothing
too old fashioned or out of fashion with sustaining gratitude, consciously and
deliberately and intensely sustaining gratitude, for more than one day in a
year.
Fellow passengers around me are milling around, annoyed and
complaining as we
wait for the buses that will take us back to Valdosta to arrive. Once you've
had and have
beaten cancer, things like mechanical problems, delays, Atlanta's airport
trains not
running, racing from A to D concourses in six minutes to make connections, not
very nice
and considerate ASA personnel, more delays, bad weather, still more delays,
diversions,
and yet still more delays, and long bus rides in the scheme of things really
don't get to
me. So, here I am, sitting on the carpeted floor that's as soft as fuzzy
concrete,
leaning against a wall, waiting for the buses to arrive, and thinking of this
year's Lilly
conference. And there is so much to think about.
One of an ongoing conversation I had with a "newbie" that began at
breakfast
Friday morning. He told me that he had been reading my Random Thoughts for
about a year
and had wanted to meet me to see if I was a real person.
I smiled. "Here I am in the flesh."
"I've been wanting to ask you a simple question," he said.
"Fire away," I smiled between sips of coffee.
He asked, "What do you think is the most important question to ask in
education?"
I put down my cup. It was 7:30 a.m. "I'll tell you what. That's
anything but
simple. I've got to set up for my session at 8. How about if we meet about
10:30 when
I'm finished?"
He agreed. We met. It wasn't until about noon that we ended the first
of what
was to prove many conversations throughout the conference. Let me give you the
pertinent
snippets of our conversation. I told him that I could think of a bunch of
questions that
would answer his question. I had to admit to him that I really didn't have
"the answer."
I had, at least, my answer. Or, better still, one of my answers. Here's what
I told him:
"What are you caringly doing each and every day in the interest of each and
every student
so that each leaves as a better person?"
"Each and every student? That's impossible," he shot back.
"Well, if you think it is, if you accept that it is, you won't go for
it.....But
you have an impact on each and every student anyway, one way or another. While
you're
getting your teaching done, you just don't realize that you're in students'
lives or how
significant each moment can be. That being the case, do you know what the
three questions
are that we should always ask ourselves in order to be awake to what is going
on around
us?"
"I don't think so. No."
"Think about it for a second."
He paused. Then, with a hesitation rooted in a fear of being wrong, he
whispered,
"Well, if I'm in the students' lives as you say I am, one question to always
ask is will I
be or am I a positive or negative influence?"
"Okay. And the second?"
After thinking for a long while, he offered, "Do I know who the
students really
are whom I'm influencing."
"Good. You always have to keep thinking about who it is you're
helping. And the
third?"
"How do I want to influence them? Do I know where I want them to go
with me?"
"See, you didn't need me. That's your 'why' question. I'd only put it
in a
different way: Do I know where I want to help them take themselves?"
"But, how do you do all that with each student?"
"Care! Care unconditionally! And, remember that the words 'I care
about
students' are cheap. You've got to live them. You got to treat each and every
student
unconditionally with respect all the time, believe in each of them
unconditionally,
welcome each one of them unconditionally into your presence, love each one of
them
unconditionally, and extend an unconditional caring hand to each of them. No
preconceptions. No biases. No prejudices. No perceptions. No assumptions.
Only a
tabula rasa each day."
"Well, how do you do that?"
"It's not so much how you do that as it is who you are. Who you are
will
determine how you'll do that. I'll ask you one more question that I don't want
you to
answer: what lurks in your heart? That is, do you feel empowered to make a
difference in
the lives of each and every student who crosses your path?"
"That's two questions," he smiled at me. I'll answer that right now.
I feel I am
empowered to make a difference in a few lives, but in the lives of each and
every student?
No."
"Ah, as Yoda might say, 'so certain are you....then impossible it is.'
You know,
I'm giving a plenary presentation at Lilly-South in February. The theme of the
conference
is "Learning So Everyone Teaches." You know what that means to me?" Before he
could
answer, I said, "It means that the theme is only half of the equation."
"What's the other half?"
"'Teaching So Everyone Learns.' I'm not sure that the true teacher
should have a
fixed plan and be intent on arriving. Sure, there has to be a structure, but
within it
there has to be a readiness and willingness for flexibility, improvisation,
spontaneity,
dis-controlling, and even dead reckoning. My secret to always being interested
in and
impassioned about each and every student is this: don't set limits on what I
can or
cannot do or on who is or is not worthy of your time. It's the simple feeling
of
possibility that hums like a dynamo inside me......."
".....But, where's the time to do all that? You do have to cover the
material and
see to it that students have a mastery of the subject, don't you?"
"Ah, to quote Maxwell Smart, 'the old "cover the material" and "mastery
of the
subject trick."' We make ourselves so time-poor, schedule-obsessive, and
material
possessive.....It's like being a tourist wanting to hit all the sights,
squeezing
everything in, following a strict list of 'things to do,' and being able to
brag, 'I've
been there and seen everything.' Ever read Steinbeck's TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY?"
"A long time ago, but I don't remember any of it. I read it in a
senior English
class. Or, I was supposed to. I used a 'pony' instead to pass the test," he
chuckled.
"Well, somewhere in there Steinbeck talks in a way about preparing for
a journey
that's applicable to teaching and the classroom. He wrote that once you've
designed,
equipped, prepared for, and go off on a journey, new factors appear for which
you haven't
prepared that take over the journey. He said all plans for the trip are
useless. No two
trips to the same place are alike....See the parallel? Steinbeck's new factors
for us are
the students. We plan our classes in any given term or from term to term as if
they are
identical merely because they may have the same number or title. Once we've
draw up our
syllabus, written our lectures, and prepared our tests, the students appear.
And most of
us have few clues of what each student is like and are at best vaguely aware of
the world
that surrounds us in the classroom. And while we may have the same syllabus,
lectures,
and tests from class to class that are numbered the same, the real life
students from
class to class and day to day and term to term are different. They each have
the audacity
to come with unexpected surprises and imperfections and paradoxes and
contradictions.
They're inconsiderate and disruptive for they clutter up our pristine landscape
with the
fallen leaves of their real lives.......You see, they learn who they are no
less than we
teach who we are......They're a bane. So, what do we do? We resist that truth
and treat
them as disrupters, sometimes almost the enemy. When we aren't relaxed about
having to
significantly adjust or abandon our plans, when we figuratively grapple with
the students
for control, when we hold tight to OUR plans and perceptions and conceptions as
if our
personhood or professionalism is at stake, we get upset to say the least only
with the
students, and our blame of them for messing things up jades our attitude
towards them--and
our influence wanes.......What should we do? I told him that we ought to write
and live
by an educational version of Matthew 5:43-48 or the Oath of Maimonides."
We talked about those two passages for a while. "You know, it's like
coming to
Lilly," I explained. "We can read everything about it and hear a bunch of
stuff about it,
but there's no substitute for smelling it. So, too, we seldom sniff the air
and savor the
aroma in our classrooms. "
"Then, what's teaching all about if not about our disciplines."
"People! Ordinary people, none of whom is ordinary! Offering and
receiving an
education is as much, if not far more, about people than it is training for a
profession,"
I replied. I went on to explain that an education is as much about if not more
about
personal growth. It's not about reaching your destiny. It's not about getting
a grade, a
GPA, or a diploma. It's about unending commencements. It's about constant
beginnings,
always going on, always knowing you never get it or have gotten there, and
always knowing
how much there is yet to go, know, and live. It's about opening eyes, ears,
minds, and
hearts. It's about a life-long dining on all that food for thought and soul
food.
"Teaching is a both very public and very private mission," I
emphasized. "It's
all about connections." On one hand, I explained, it's about "them," each
student, and
connecting with them, helping them connect with themselves, and helping them
connect with
each other; at the same time, it's about "us" and connecting with ourselves
And, one the
third hand, it's about connecting us and them to knowledge. That is, the
purpose of us as
teachers is not just to educate someone else; it's also to educate ourselves;
its not just
a matter to make a difference in a student's life, to help that student improve
the
relationship between life and his or her life, and to help that student become
a better
person; it's also to make a difference in our own lives, to improve our lives
in relation
to ourselves, and to help us help ourselves to become better persons. "In the
course of
my forty years with my angelic Susan, I've learned that a kiss isn't much good
if either
one of us is so hurried, so pressed for time, that it doesn't have any mindful
love in it,
if one of us isn't present, intensely and consciously present, in that moment.
It's no
different in education. If we are so pressed for time and so hurried to cover
the
material, we won't be genuinely and personally connected; we won't be mindful
of the
individuals in that classroom with us. An educational kiss is really all about
loving the
disbelief away and calling up the developing spirit into the present. That
goes for us
as well as for them. It's about being genuinely and personally connected.
It's about
being more mindful, aware, and present in THE moment."
We talked about it's in our thoughts and feelings that our actions are
determined
and our future is decided. We agreed that our thoughts and feelings can either
be jailors
of our actions, imprisoning and limiting us, preventing us from achieving
what's in our
hearts, or they can be liberators, releasing us from our confining perceptions,
freeing us
to achieve our unique potential. "So," I suggested, "going back to your
original
question: don't wait around making excuses; don't think the magic wand exists;
unlearn
what you have learned; alter habits; cultivate new fascinations with each
student; face
fears and hesitations; believe in the unbelievable; have an unattainable ideal
that you do
not accept is unattainable; just have a healthy disregard for the impossible
and go after
doing whatever it takes to make it possible."
I explained that I read somewhere that we are each made of desire. And
as our
desire is, so is our faith. As our faith is, so are our works. As our works
are, so we
are and become. So, I twisted Yoda's words, "So certain are you. Always with
you it can
be done." I asked him to be a believer rather than a dreamer, to feel the
force of that
belief, to use its power to look for adventure in each ordinary day and make
adventure
part of an ordinary day, and to see that beauty is more than what is on the
surface or
more than the obvious. It's all attitude, I explained, a personal act, a loving
and
intense interest in people that makes you an adventurer, discoverer, and
difference-maker
in the truest and most vivid sense of the words. For me, I told him, the world
of
teaching and learning shouldn't be an ordinary or routine one; for me,
education is about
the search for the unique. It's about opening new days each day. Do that, I
assured him,
and he'll be surprised how much he'll deepen his faith, how much more he'll
widen his
embrace, how much more he'll increase his acceptance, how much more he'll
increase his
efforts, how much more he will give of his time, how much farther he'll reach
out, and how
many more 'few lives' really will add up to.
We both realized that time had gotten away from us. It was lunch time
and we had
missed the plenary presentation by Parker Palmer I so wanted to attend. As we
got up, I
ended my part by reminding him, "But, remember, all this isn't something you
buy into;
it's something you give yourself to"
We kept on talking on and off throughout the next two days of the
conference.
Make it a good day.
--Louis--
Louis Schmier www.therandomthoughts.com
Department of History www.halcyon.com/arborhts/louis.html
Valdosta State University
Valdosta, Georgia 31698 /\ /\ /\ /\
(229-333-5947) /^\\/ \/ \ /\/\__/\ \/\
/ \/ \_ \/ /
\/ /\/ \
\ /\
//\/\/ /\
\_//__/_/\_\ \_
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mountains, \
_ / \ don't practice on mole
hills" - _\
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