A wonderful and "chancey" good morning. I was walking this
pre-dawn morning in what seemed like nature's soup de jour. The warm,
heavy humidity that has left a salty, sticky residue all over my body,
however, couldn't dampen my spirits. I read in Sunday's NY Times someone
calling these August days the coda of summer. Not for me. These days are
a resounding, thunderous overture. It's the beginning of the academic
year. Yesterday was the first day of the semester. The campus was alive
youthful and anticipating activity. I was alive, ready to sing the song
and dance the step.
I am even more alive today because today Susan and I climax with a
romantic dinner our week-long celebration of our 35th wedding anniversary.
I've been sending her seven roses each day for the last five days, a
different color on each day. She has been leaving deliciously romantic
cards for me to find all over the house. And, we've been acting like
teenagers on our first date. Yummy! Double yummy!
No big party. No special gift. Just a very humble realization of
that the ultimate backing of life is chance: mysterious, unexpected,
uncontrolled throw of the dice.
I think of how those threads of chance, in the strangest places in
the strangest ways at the strangest times, have woven themselves in my
fabric to reweave the pattern of my life. It was chance that I was born
the second son into a very European oriented first generation American
family; it was chance that she broke our engagement; it was chance that
Birdsal Viault at Adelphi College took me under his wing during the
semester I was screwing up my pre-med program; it was chance that I wound
up at Chapel Hill instead of Duke to get my Ph.D.; it was what proved to
be magnificant chance that at UNC Susan and I met on a blind date neither
one of us wanted or expected; it was chance that an unexpected position
opened up at Valdosta State College at the very moment that it did; it was
extraordinary chance that we unexpectedly adopted my youngest son, Robby;
it was chance that we had a passing conversation with someone who knew
someone that led us to Hyde School to save Robby's future; it was chance
that at Hyde I had my unexpected, unplanned, and uncontrolled epiphany.
Chance challenged, tested, teased, frightened, lured. It threw
the novel in my face; it broke routine; it altered states; it altered
directions; it changed habits; it opened new worlds; it invaded comfort
zones; it carried me into the unknown. It just seemed that every time I
was about to punctuate my life with a comforting exclamation point or a
period, chance threw in a fearful, adventurous question mark. Every time
I thought I had the answer, here came a question. Every time I thought I
was on the straight and narrow road, here comes a fork. Every time I was
getting accustomed to the old, here comes chance with the new. Every time
I was about to ease into a life of ease, chance screamed a very
uncomfortable and jolting "Boo" in my ear.
As I am sharing this, I have to admit that there is a slight
quiver of fear, a deep breathe or two, and my eyes are getting a bit
glassy as I think of a "what if" here and there. If I said no to just
one thing chance threw at me, my whole life as it is would have never
been woven. That's both scary and exciting.
It just seems from this point of view that little if anything
wasn't left to chance, that nothing occurred that didn't occur by chance.
Chance, or what I take for chance, has been the means by which my life is
becoming realized. It just seems that I don't have as much control over my
life as I would like to believe, and I just have to ride it to wherever
it's taking me. No guarantee; no prediction; no laid out plan. Just
faith!
And chance plays no less a role in my teaching as it does in my
life. Why not, teaching is a part of rather than apart from my life.
Yesterday, I walked into class to have a chance meeting with
forty-three people. I say extraordinary because I don't think is anyone
such as an ordinary mortal. I always feel uncomfortable when anyone talks
of ordinary students because I've never met an ordinary student. Each one
has his or own unique potential; each one has what James Joyce called that
"radiance." He or she merely has to search it out, recognize it, develop
it, and run with it. I say a chance meeting because I absolutely had no
idea who was going to be in the classroom at that time. And, I have no
control over who the over 120 people are going to be in my three classes
today. We are all strangers to each other.
Now there is a idea most academics don't relish: chance. It has
the flavor of the uncontrollable, the unpredictable, the serendipitous,
the mysterious. It's is the antithesis of "classroom management."
"You can't leave things to chance. There'd be chaos," a
colleague proclaimed to me yesterday as I tested this idea on her.
"Do you have a choice?" I asked. "Every time we walk into a
classroom we take our chances with chance meetings. We don't know who any
of the students really are; we don't interview, cull out, hand-pick. We
don't know what is going on with them or inside them. We don't know what
is going to happen. We just have to accept the lot of them whoever each
one is as our lot if we want to accomplish a lot."
Rejecting what I said, talking like a factory manager operating a
production line, she went on to say that without control, things wouldn't
get done efficiently, the material wouldn't be covered. "There'd be lots
of wasted time," she argued.
"But, somewhere out there other people over whom you have no
control are recruiting and admitting. Others whom you don't know are
advising and scheduling. And, you walk into a class with a whole
new set of chance events. It's fiction to think you're not or that you
really have a handle on it." I countered.
Words like streamline, faster, efficient, guarantee, increased
productivity peppered her conversation. "They have to be told....," she
kept on saying. And, no, she is not in the School of Business.
"Well, dictate isn't exactly conversational. Choice and
responsibility," I replied, "aren't the Siamese twins of control and
inflexibility. There's a lot of manipulation and even coercion in
control, and not enough persuasion."
"But, if you can't control matters how can you control outcomes?"
"You can't! That's the point. We don't know how to 'let go' and
cut the academic umbilical cord." You know I think all this uneasiness
with chance is that we don't know how to assess it. We don't know how to
organize it. We don't know how to institutionalize it.
Our conversation ended with her uttering a friendly, "Oh, Louis."
Later yesterday morning, another colleague answered my question.
"Most of our colleagues scream, 'We want freedom in the classroom--to
control the students!" He went on to say that so many of our colleagues
violate the golden rule since they do unto the students what they resent
the administration does unto them: control and dictate. This like-minded
colleague and I, however, don't think control delivers on several
accounts.
Doggone he hit the nail on the head. We can control the assigned
textbook, but can't control whether students read the assignments; we can
control attendance policies, but we can't control whether the students
attend class; we can control the make-up and giving of tests and exams,
but we can't control whether students study or know how to study for those
exams; we can set up discussion sessions, but we cannot control whether
students will engage. Heck, we cannot even control which students are in
our classes; we cannot control whether outside forces sneak into to
influence what goes on inside the classroom.
Nevertheless, I think our major pattern of classroom behavior is
to manage it and control it because control sounds good, successful and
safe; it offers a sense of hope and maybe some guarantees of success. Now
I admit that control, especially efficient control, gets things done and
gets material covered in less time. Makes sense. Does it? Really? I
think control offers false hopes and worthless warantees, and that is the
source of a lot of our frustrations. We are confronted with the truth
that we cannot control the uncontrolable, that which is not of us and
beyond us.
I'm not sure control is an accurate map of the classroom. Control
controls; it doesn't free up. Control dulls; it doesn't fire up. Control
nails down; it doesn't build up. Control inhibits; it doesn't free.
Control saps out life; it doesn't infuse life. Control darkens; it
doesn't illuminate. Control paralyzes; it doesn't energize. Control
doesn't allow students from ever coming into contact with their unique
potential. Control is a "downer;" it's not an "upper." Control is not a
partner of initiative, creativity, imagination, freedom, choice,
responsibility, adaptability, adventure. Control creates stagnating,
inauthenticity. It walks hand-in-hand with routine, safety, convention,
familiarity, boundaries, the fixed. Students learn to stop listening to
their gut; they only listen to others to learn what to do, how they ought
to behave, and what they ought to believe. They become robotic, puppets,
products. We hear the fearful gurgling symptoms of that paralysis everyday:
"What do you want?" If students learn to only listen to what others say,
they will be nailed down.
Students can't be creative, they cannot grow and transform, unless
they are taught to leave behind the fixed, all the rules, the protecting
warmth of the womb. They won't be able to understand that they each have
within them what James Joyce calls a "radiance." They won't learn how to
look for it, recognize it, bring it forth, and go with it. A vital
teacher vitalizes those around him or her. The classroom without spirit
is a wasteland. You don't improve things by imposing new rules, by
changing the rules, by introducing new methods, or by adopting new
technologies. You improve teaching by being alive, by bringing life into
the classroom, by inviting the students to live, and being alive yourself.
I mean if control was the answer, we would have had the answer by
now and made a heck of a difference. Instead, we find that trying to
control students in a classroom is like herding cats! Trying to force
students to do everything our way, to give what we want, has proven to be
a recipe for misery, disillusionment, disappointment, and frustration.
It's not a question of controlling things better or faster or
whatever, it's a question of questioning the whole assumption of control
and management. Instead of struggling to be good at "classroom
management." maybe we ought to lay back and become good at taking chances,
taking advantage of chances, and take a chance on chance.
The problem is not to blame or ask or explain, not to fight or
reject or curse, but to take things as they come, to handle that chance,
life, hands you, to be "semper paratus." My doing is not to curse being
placed unexpectedly at the fork in the road, but to seize the opportunity
to make the choice and grow as a result. That is when my teaching is a
combination of both my doing and that of the students.
I have come to discover that my solution starts when I take it all
as it come as if that's the way I wanted it. To accept it rather than
fight it. I don't focus on pitches chance can throw at me. I learn how
to use a bat. Then, I get a shot had hitting the curves balls chance
throws at me. I have discovered that as I find a place in myself from
which I bring that ability to swing the bat, I'll be able to live with it,
affirm it, and maybe even enjoy and benefit from it. To paraphrase
Nietzsche, I have to take the chance to "love my fate."
I know, it's chancey.
Make it a good day.
--Louis--
Louis Schmier [log in to unmask]
Department of History http://www.halcyon.com/arborhts/louis.html
Valdosta State University
Valdosta, GA 31698 /~\ /\ /\
912-333-5947 /^\ / \ / /~\ \ /~\__/\
/ \__/ \/ / /\ /~\/ \
/\/\-/ /^\_____\____________/__/_______/^\
-_~ / "If you want to climb mountains, \ /^\
_ _ / don't practice on mole hills" - \____
The problem is that aside from ourselves, I'm not sure control is
an accurate map of the classroom. We invest so
heavily in techniques, methods, tools based on control. And yet, Why are
so many of us still frustrated, angry, disappointed, going nuts. Could it
be that try as we may, we really cannot control the most important aspect
of the classroom: the student? The idea that we can control is so
flawed. We cannot change our behavior and attitudes, our methods and
techniques, unless we change the way we see. Unless we change the way we
see, we won't change the way we do, and unless we change what we do, we
results won't change. We can't install. We have to plant and grow.
Changing a teaching tool or a teaching method won't create significant
change we get in our classrooms, however implied the promise that it will.
It's not a question of controlling things better or faster or whatever,
it's a question of questioning the whole assumption of control and
management.
We have to alter the progression of see-do-get
We can control and manage what we do; we can control and manage our
choices. But, we can't do either with consequences.
I think our major pattern of classroom behavior is manage it and control
it. If control was the answer, we would have had the answer by now and made a
heck of a difference. Control sounds good; it offers a sense of hope and
maybe some guarantees of success, but it don't think it delivers.
To think we are
really in control in the classroom is the ultimate of illusions.
Make it a good day.
--Louis--
Louis Schmier www.therandomthoughts.com
Department of History www.halcyon.com/arborhts/louis.html
Valdosta State University
Valdosta, GA 31698 /~\ /\ /\
229-333-5947 /^\ / \ / /~\ \ /~\__/\
/ \__/ \/ / /\ /~\/ \
/\/\-/ /^\_____\____________/__/_______/^\
-_~ / "If you want to climb mountains, \ /^\
_ _ / don't practice on mole hills" - \____
|
