About to head for the streets. Been out of bed since 3:30, thinking, feeling, turned on before I turned the lights on, flipped out before I flipped the light switch, fired up. No fear of waking Susie; I'm bacheloring this week while she sails the seas of the Caribbean with my Michael's family and especially his two grandmunchkins.
Today, now, is an opportunity of a lifetime. Today will come to pass and I can't let it pass me by. It's the first day of the Fall Semester, and, as the research says, I have only the first three minutes of each class to "grab" each student who comes through the door. So, as Bob Fosse always said, "It's showtime!" It's time to get up, get out, and get living with everything I have while I have it. You know, to get my juices flowing, I was thinking about the last day of the Spring semester in one class. It was closure, that day of class when we each openly reflect, "What did I get out of this class and what will I take with me?' One of them asked me what the core of my teaching was. I answered with a question, "Don't you know by now?" "Yeah, I think" he replied, "but just tell us." Without missing as beat, as I have often said, "Love, unconditional love, of each of you." They looked at me and listened, the puzzled stares and uneasiness with the word they first heard on the first day of that semester was still there. One of them then asked me, "Why? Some of us really don't deserve it the way we treated you and this class." I told him poetically, "When I love, I carry with me my own sunshine no matter the weather. When it storms, I see the rain watering my flowers or imagine and feel the sun about the clouds." I remember them throwing a bunch of negative challenging "what ifs" at a me. I parried, "'Unconditional', no qualifications, no exceptions, no 'buts.' You don't have to earn anything. You have it. It's the starting line." Now they looked at me, still looking nervous and confused, as if I was some kind of nut they hadn't yet cracked. "I still haven't ever heard any of my professors talk like that," one of them said. "Why is that so important?" The question sounded as if I was an embarrassment for having uttered as something intellectually insulting as the "L" word. Then, I answered him in less poetic terms. "Nothing steadies my mind, heart, and soul as steady, unconditional love. Nothing demands more understanding, compassion, and passion. There's no multi-tasking with it because it demands that I give each of you my fullest attention; it focuses me; it makes me listen and see intently. It holds my feet to the fire of my Teacher's Oath. I remember going on to tell them that attention makes visible what I might never have seen. "Sure, I get in your face so you can face yourself. Sure, I kick you in your butts in the hope you'll soon kick yourselves. I know no one is perfect," I told them. "I don't expect or demand it. I'm no fool. I'm not fooled by imperfection. I don't allow myself to be fooled by mistakes some of you have made into believing you are lesser than you are; I am not fooled by the dark images you have of yourselves." I continued to explain that I see their beauty when they feel ugly; I know they can be whole when they are broken; I know they are innocent when they feel guilty; I see their purpose when they are confused; I see their potential when they feel all is lost. "When I love each student, where's my limit," I asked. "Where's the limit to my faith, hope, perseverance, and endurance? Where's the limit to my empathy and support and encouragement? Where? Love helps me to defeat cynicism, frustration, false expectation, and resignation. What situation or person, then, can I not face and face down, when I make my work a labor of love and purpose? When? What? Who?" "So," one of them had asked me, "you ask us to grade ourselves and you. You have to give us a grade. Grade yourself in this class." I thought for a few seconds. With a mischievous smile, "Everything I've done is worthy of a 'B. They looked at me, stunned. They thought I was going to give myself an "A" or that I was going to say that I, too, had made mistakes. I did, but that's not what I meant. I continued and explained, emphasizing and slowing down at each time I came to a "B," "'Be'-cause I had to 'be' in the moment; 'be' willing; 'be' authentic; 'be' mindful; be' aware; 'be' attentive; 'be' alert; 'be' hopeful; 'be'-lieve; and, like I said, unconditionally 'be' in love. With all that, I 'be'-hold!" On this yet to dawn first day of class, I think... No, I know you don't get what you wish for; you get what you love for, work for, and what you live for. What I experience in the classroom, or anywhere at anytime with anyone for that matter, is how I consciously choose to live it. My priorities. my values, aren't what I espouse; they are what I live. Like the first lines of my Teacher's Oath, "I will give a damn about you in the class! I will care! I will support! I will encourage! I won’t just mouth it. I will live it! Each day, unconditionally!" Each day gives me an opportunity to make a difference, but I've got to work the opportunities. Each day I rise, I rise to the challenges, opportunities, possibilities. We, student and professor alike, would do well to skip the wishing and get to the living. We can make now the time, this day the day, this moment the moment; we can make now that wishful when. We can see much farther from mountain summit than we can from the valley. We can transform our world in general and our world in the classroom specifically in an instant by the way we choose to see it. we more beauty we see, the more beautiful we are. We can change problems into opportunities, anxiety into enthusiasm, and despair into determination if we raise our perspective. The quality of what we see depends on the perspective from which we see it. We more beauty we see, the more beautiful we are. And that perspective is entirely up to us. We can choose to live from a constant and unassailable perspective of love which makes each day a wondrous and miraculous time, an inspiring time, a very beautiful, special, loving, and lovely time. Damn, I'm going to miss all this if I have to retire in December! Make it a good day. Louis Schmier http://www.the randomthoughts.edublogs.org<http://randomthoughts.edublogs.org> Department of History http://www.valdosta.edu/~lschmier/publicity Valdosta State University Valdosta, Georgia 31698 /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ (O) 229-333-5947 /^\\/ \/ \ /\/\__ / \ / \ (C) 229-630-0821 / \/ \_ \/ / \/ /\/ / \ /\ \ //\/\/ /\ \__/__/_/\_\/ \_/__\ \ /\"If you want to climb mountains,\ /\ _ / \ don't practice on mole hills" - / \_ --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. 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