Couldn’t sleep. I guess I was still thinking about a student I’ll call
Dave into whom I bumped a few days ago about on the back leg of my walk. We
had an interesting conversation that I’ll tell you about at a later day. For
now, he gave me more of an answer to the professor who kept throwing
cyber-barbs at me.
“You accuse me of having a point of view,” I replied to the
professor’s criticisms. “Of course, I do. Who doesn’t? None of us are
automatons. You certainly do. You reveal yours by the emotional tone and
language of your flame throwing email. Admit it; we’re all subjective human
beings. Cold, calculating, disengaged, distanced objectivity is a myth. So,
my point of view is summarized by my ‘Teacher’s Oath.' In this age of
overwhelming and consuming vocational credentialism in academia, we need more
than satisfying the requirements of a major just to get a good job; we need to
understand we are in the people business as much if not more than we are in the
credentialing business; we should have a classroom starting counterpoint of
unconditional faith, hope, and love to acquire the means to live a good life as
well. They are clarity and truth and belief. They’re the light that pushes
away the darkness. They erase the limits imposed on unseen unique potential.
They strip away everything that stands between us and seeing—and
unconditionally nurturing—the sacredness, uniqueness, nobility, beauty,
potential, and awesomeness of each student. They don’t allow anyone to get
lost in the clutter of tests, grades, GPAs, awards, assessments, and
recognitions.”
“There is a yiddish saying, ‘fun gornish gibt gornish.’ It means
roughly ‘from nothing you’ll get nothing.’ So, what something comes from the
nothing of poor mouthing or ridiculing any student behind her or his back? Do
you think such a negative attitude isn’t revealed in your actions, subtle or
otherwise? Where’s the morality in treating so many as if they’ve passed their
‘use by’ date? What positives do you find in treating these less than stellar
students as the Rodney Dangerfields of academia, giving them no respect? What
uplifting is achieved if your expressed purpose is to go into class, as I
personally knew some of my colleagues intended and did, to ‘cull out the herd?’
What kind of excitement do we have if we believe we’re going into that
classroom to face a hoard of those we judge to be the unwanted ‘don’t belongs.’
How do you look for, find, and save someone you already have surrendered that
person as a lost ‘unprepared?’ How much true focus do we have on those whom
we view as distractions from more important things? How much effort do you
exert for those whom you say you don’t have the time. Tell me the benefits of
ignoring those who too many brand as inferior ‘they’re letting anyone in?’ Who
is going to walk that extra mile for those condemned as ‘hopeless?’ Is
denigration and demeaning and blame creating the best of conditions for
learning we can create for the majority of students? Is forsaking all but the
supposed best the only way forward?
“We all tell ourselves and others about how we got where we are. I
know I do. All I’m asking is: have you rewritten the story of how you got
here, do you really believe you got here on your own, what can you do for those
who are not there yet, how much is not enough or enough or too much, who is not
a vital piece of the future; which student’s life is not precious; who should
be cast out; who is not education’s purpose and meaning personified? Do you
know how easy it is for all this to remain abstract? Do you know that the way
in which we tell our own stories to ourselves and to other, as well as the
language we use, has a huge influence on how we see other people’s potential,
what we look at and hear about their inspiration and motivation and ability and
potential—or lack thereof? Are those students out there strangers whose
stories we don’t know or don’t care to know or aren't curious about? What
would your story be like if ‘hard work’ and ‘good fortune’ and ‘lucky breaks’
were replaced with ‘unequal advantages?' Instead of pointing blaming fingers,
maybe we should show up in community that what would shred the thin veneer of
deafening and blinding ‘strangerness’ so we can be consciously in sight and
sound of each other. Maybe, instead of throwing up our hands in frustration or
gnashing our teeth in anger or twisting our face in writhing dread, we ought to
look at ourselves and ask ourselves better questions and ask better questions
of each of them. Maybe we should think about what happens when we do all that
all the time.”
“Remember, what we think and feel, we practice; and, what we practice,
we become. If you can practice a positive language, if you can practice
leaning into unconditional acceptance and connection in the classroom on a
regular basis, you’ll start to reexamine your memories, and then you’re going
to be more likely to do those practice more automatically. It’s what the
psychologists call a ‘learned response.' For me, it has closed the distances.
It has removed all the angst and divisiveness. And, it has replaced them with
a loving. hopeful, supportive, encouraging, joyful, meaningful, purposeful, and
‘awe-full’ engagement.”
“Now, I understand that one of the hardest things to do in class is to
stay in community when you feel a surge of agitation, disappointment,
frustration, and despair. What nourishes my spirit when I’m getting a feeling
of being drained, is each day to read and swear live consciously by the tenets
of my ‘Teacher’s Oath.’ I also understand that there can be great fear—and
risk—in inviting the unknown into one’s life; there can be a horrible and
disturbing disorientation behind all that anxiety and frustration. But, if we
accept the assurances offered by the ‘hard evidence’ of the scientific research
on learning, we can see that no student is irreversibly a slacker; we can see
potential ‘human becomings’ rather than fixed ‘human beings’ in a class; we can
move to a rhythm of wondrousness in the classroom; we can offer unconditional
understanding, sympathy, compassion, caring, and kindness. You know, I’ve been
in education for all but the first five years of my life: as a student in
kindergarten, elementary school, junior high school, high school, college, and
graduate school: as a TA and part-time instructor; and, finally as a college
professor for 46 years until I had to retire. And, I can tell you that for me
as a student and as a professor, the finest moments were the ones that had
nothing to do with tests, grades, GPAs, degrees, titles, grants, publications,
and recognitions; they weren’t ones you could really put your fingers on; they
weren’t ones that you could assess and quantify—or, perhaps, even explain.”
"But, how to describe what I call those 'you just don’t ask' moments.
I like the serendipitous words ‘mysterious’ and ‘inexplicable,’ though so many
academics gnash their teeth and contort their faces at the sounding of those
words because they supposedly so go against the grain and are such an anathema
to academics’ demand for objectivity and ‘hard evidence.’ Most academics love,
have a lust for, answers, closure, resolution, clarity, certainty. They live
within imagined stereotypes, generalities, and labels that seems to
conveniently and comfortably—and safely— explain everything about students.
Yet, the more we see and listen to each student, the closer we come to each of
them, the more we see each is a proverbial “exception to the rule.” Heck, if
we saw and listened, we’d see that there are so many exceptions to the rule,
the rule would be obliterated. And so, the more we accept ambivalence,
surrender to contradictions, are unafraid of paradoxes and seeming
inconsistencies in both each student and ourselves, and almost everything else,
we tolerate and become comfortable with ambiguity, not to feel the insatiable
urge to make the classroom “unmysterious” and explicable. I don’t truly know
why I had the epiphany when I had it; I don’t know why I responded to it as I
did; I don’t know why I accepted having had cancer as a gift as I did; I don’t
know why I was uplifted by my cerebral hemorrhage and why being a “walking 5%
miracle” made such a dramatic impact on my outlook on teaching in particular
and life in general. I do know this. Each experience, and others, determined
the course of my life; each proved to be a great gift to my aspirations; each
readied me more and more to go into the ever deeper inner recesses of myself
where I was wont to go, not knowing what I would come up against, and have a
conversation with myself about things I hadn’t known or wanted to know, to see
and to listen to and to face up to what I had buried, rationalized away,
ignored, but which was that which was holding me back from reaching my full
potential as both a teacher and human being. And, it wasn’t as terrifying as I
feared. To the contrary, I was humbled, stood in awe and in wonder, before the
inexplicable mystery of it all. And, I understood how subjective all of our
views—me, colleagues, students, everyone—of reality really is and how we have
the power to choose to change our view of ourselves and others.”
"With your indulgence, I’m going back to something I shared almost six
years ago to the day. To quote myself, 'What's that saying about what doesn't
kill me makes me stronger? Maybe, then, we all too often don't give thanks for
the unwanted challenges, altered courses, and to things that turn our world
upside down. After all, if you can't hit the curve balls, you'll sure as hell
will strike out. Maybe, then again, we ought to give thanks for such unseen
blessing, discovering that we can come out okay because bearing the burden and
consequence, and facing down adversity, we emerge tougher and better than ever,
able to be more, believe more, have faith more, have hope more, do more, be in
community with others more, and imagine more.’"
“So, you see, I have come to believe in mystery and the inexplicable,
and to trust them. I’ve been close to too many students, read too many journal
entries, had too many small talk and serious conversations, read too many of
their “how I feel today” words, and have had too many unexpected personal
experiences not to find that these two words, full of hints and guesses, bring
full meaning into the lives of those human beings in the classroom. And, as
such, I’ve found that each person is a mixture of the penetrable and
impenetrable to reason, of the expected and surprise, of the seen and unseen,
of the known and unknown, of the aware and unaware. I mean, tell me, why
is that when a hard and fast formula doesn’t fully solve and explain each
student taken individually, we call that person “an exception to the rule?”
And, a sensitivity to this mixture, unseen in skewing impersonal percentage and
stick-figure stereotype and cardboard generalization and flattened labelling,
is essential for according to each student dignity and respect and nobility and
sacredness and uniqueness, for being hospitably….and patiently….and
generously…. open to and welcoming and seeing and embracing and supporting and
encouraging and forgiving and listening to each student, for evaluating our
feelings in terms of empathy and faith and hope and love and caring and
kindness and compassion, for judging our reactions to what is happening around
and before us in terms of focused and keen acknowledgement of the humanity and
uniqueness and sacredness of each student in order for us to be human: taking
nothing and no one for granted; never treating anyone casually; never thinking
anyone is less than phenomenal.”
"Now, I am not talking about dreamy head-in-the-clouds optimism or
wispy gossamers of assurances that everything will turn out okay or oozing
beliefs that everything will be perfect. I’m talking about a
feet-on-the-ground struggle supported by insights from the finding of
scientific research on learning. And, yeah, it’s not a piece of cake. It’s a
struggle. I’m talking about struggling to get students to believe I am
sincere. It’s a sweaty and achy struggle to rip out the restricting brambles
of self-deprecation and fears. So, yeah, it’s a struggle to resist and to
defy ‘ah, me’ pessimism and frustration. It’s a struggle to be understanding
rather than agitated when things inevitably don’t go as you wish and expect.
I’m talking about struggling to be continually empathetic, supportive and
encouraging. It’s a struggle not to throw up your hands and walk away with an
'I give up.' I’m talking about struggling to be committed, to remain
determined, to continue to persevere. I’m talking about being realistic, about
seeing each student as she or he is, about who she or he could become, about
who she or he might become, and about who she or he is afraid to chance
becoming all at once. Doing all that is a struggle, a struggle to tell each
student what I see, a struggle to help each student see as I see, struggle to
see all the new possibilities and opportunities, struggle to make that struggle
worthwhile, struggle to make that struggle exciting, struggle to fill that
struggle with joyfulness. I’m talking about a struggle to make all that into
realities. And, that is why I say teaching is not easy, but oh so joyous.”
Make it a good day
-Louis-
Louis Schmier
http://www.therandomthoughts.edublogs.org
203 E. Brookwood Pl
Valdosta, Ga 31602
(C) 229-630-0821 /\ /\ /\ /\
/\
/^\\/ \/ \ /\/\__
/ \ / \
/ \/ \_ \/ / \/
/\/ / \ /\ \
//\/\/ /\ \__/__/_/\_\/
\_/__\ \
/\"If you want to climb
mountains,\ /\
_ / \ don't practice on mole
hills" - / \_
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