Well, after being passionate about special students and the need to accommodate to their special needs, it's back to hokey pokey teaching.  I see teaching with passion is composed of five basic elements: work, vision, "wise reflection," imagination and creativity, and love.  So, let's start with a couple of reflections on work.  Substantive hokey pokey teaching without exertion is unbridled excitement and optimism. It’s just Disneyesque, Jiminy Cricket lying on a window sill, staring out at the dark sky, "wishing upon a star."  Someone said to me recently, "You know, so many students are just plain headaches.  They demand so much of my time.  It's too much work."  Well, you know, your head aches only if you do not want to work at offering aid and comfort to a student.  But, when you gladly and willingly do, no student is a headache.  It's as Richard Bach wrote in Jonathan Livingston Seagull, "You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true.  You may have to work for it, however."  

	To be sure, sometimes the effort seems effortless, and the labor doesn't have the texture of seriousness.  Sometimes, it looks like play; and, sometimes it looks like it's nothing more than impromptu.    Sometimes, all people see is the madness, but don't understand either the structure or the method to the apparent madness.  But, hokey pokey teaching it's not just walking into a classroom and magically letting it all happens by itself, although at times others may think so.  

	Hokey pokey teaching, truly caring about each and every student, is serious and demanding on.  Make no bones about, it isn't a something "I can do in my sleep;" it isn't one of those "anyone can do it" things; it isn't simply "if you know it, you can teach it."   The knowhow of teaching does take a lot of time; it does demand a lot of constant effort and commitment; it does need a lot of incessant energy; it does require persistence and patience.  Why should that be such a surprise to so many?  After all, some academic arduously researched, gathered, and organized data, and then wrote it all up for presentation or publication.  Someone poured a lot of sweat into every made fortune.  A lot of weary searching went into every important discovery.  Behind the magnificent work of art is an artist who spent hour after hour, month after month toiling at tedious and seemingly endless tasks.  Behind the beautiful, soaring music is a composer who struggled to arrange carefully each note, each chord, and each tempo.  Behind every book is an author who struggled with rewrite after rewrite to insure every word fit precisely into the prose.  

	Should teaching be any different?  It takes a lot of work to live, care, and love; it is a lot of work to reflect, articulate, imagine, devise, activate; it is a lot of work to prepare, design, deliver, evaluate to what extent it worked or needs reworking; it is a lot of work to get to know each student, to be in their thoughts and emotions; and so, it is a lot of work to know of the currents students are swimming against in order to offer the support and encouragement for each of them to have a chance to make it.  

Make it a good day.

      --Louis--


Louis Schmier                                http://therandomthoughts.edublogs.org/ 
Department of History                   www. therandomthoughts.com
Valdosta State University              
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