I feel like an aging star that's going out like a bright supernova.
I'd exploding with Ideas, thoughts, feelings. They're dancing on the stages of
my mind and soul like Tchaikovsky's dancing sugar plum fairies. They're
pirouetting, leaping, arabesque-ing, batterie-ing, pointe-ing almost
uncontrollably from my head and heart, down my arms, and into making my fingers
do their own ballet steps on the keyboard.
As I told an e-colleague, this time I was looking at a sheet of paper
the other morning. I don't know why. Well, I do. It was triggered by both a
tearful conversation I had with a student as I brought my classes to an end
that threw me into a loop and read an equally heart-tugging journal entry that
followed that made me even more tearful. That's all I'll say. I'll leave it
at that. Back to the sheet of paper. At a glance, the paper seemed simple
enough. Just a blank sheet. Then, I stopped merely looking and began to see,
to see deeply, so deeply I felt I was an electron microscope. And, guess what
I saw. I saw trees. I saw sun. I saw soil. I saw rain. I saw seeds. I
saw nutrients. I saw growth. I saw miracles of life. I saw all that made up
the previous life of that piece paper. I saw fibers. I saw invention. I saw
imagination. I saw ingenuity. I saw creativity. I saw civilization. I saw
process. I saw progress. I saw all that made up the human capacity and
potential.
I saw what seemed so simple only when I just looked was truly complex
and even mysterious when I intensely saw. I read somewhere something someone
said that stuck with me: "He who looks outside, dreams; he who looks inside,
awakens." Ain't that the truth. And, I will attest without any reservation,
hesitation, or equivocation that when you see a student through the prisms of
unconditional faith, belief, hope, and love, that student will enter your
heart, awaken your heart, and stir your soul. So, I wonder what is it that we
can discover if we stop just looking and begin to see, to see deeply, to see
ourselves, to see others? What if we stopped being content to merely gaze at
images on a screen? What if we were no longer satisfied being spectators in an
arena. What if we started looking other people in the eye, not just through a
camera lens? If we participated in, engaged in, experienced and lived first
hand, touched and felt, saw and listened to, were fully involved, and lived the
details, we see that the classroom is a place of unseen potential, a place of
possibilities, a place where we should keep open our options.
Understand that true faith, belief, hope, and love, that the acts of
true empathy, sympathy, and compassion, occur only when we are aware of,
attentive to, mindful of, caring about, and knowing--really knowing--who that
person in the classroom with you is. Thinking of this student, it is so
important that we put aside our resumes, titles, and positions to be deeply
human and to know how deeply human each student is. Someone once said that the
real measure of how you live is the extent to which your presence and absence
both mean something significant. How true. How true.
Make it a good day
-Louis-
Louis Schmier
http://www.therandomthoughts.edublogs.org
Department of History http://www.therandomthoughts.com
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" - / \_
---
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