I bumped into a student on campus last week as I went to the Union to get a couple of bags of coffee grounds from Starbucks for my flower garden.

	"Hey, Dr. Schmier, how are you doing in your retirement?"

	"Pretty good--now."

	"You know, I've changed my major from accounting to education because of you."

	"I don't think so." I replied.  "I may have inadvertently helped you nudged yourself out from where you were to where you wanted to be and to what you wanted to do.  I may have asked the questions to help you ask your own questions of yourself,  but you had the strength and courage to accept the nudge, ask the questions, come up with the 'right' answers, and follow them."

	"So, I got a question for you."

	"Shoot."

	"If you could give me one sentence about teaching that says it all, what would it be.  Now, here, don't think about it.  What would it be?" 	

	"God, you're kidding," I sighed thinking "How do I get into these things."  "There is no one sentence.  I can think of a bunch of 'one sentences.'  Remember how I said to beware of the distorting simplifiers?"

	"Do it anyway. Just one.  The one that boils everything down to what you think, feel, and do.  Now, no thinking.  Feel it.  It's a sort of one of those Rorschach tests I learned about in Psychology."

	"Let me think.  Then, I'll send you that one sentence."

	"Give them to me, now."

	"Can I explain it?"

	"Sure, but don't get long-winded.  I've got a class in an hour."

	"Okay,"  I said, "Here it is.  'Teaching is tough.'"

	"I was ready for you to say something like, 'teaching is love' or 'teaching is caring."

	"It is. It's my first principle of teaching.  It's at the top of my 'Teacher's Oath.'  But, it's tough to put that love into action.  It's easy to write it down.  It's easy say it.  But, to choose to love, to make it a way of  teaching?   Love is both a noun and a verb.  It's an intention, but it's also an action.  That's hard because you have to honor your own complexity as well as the complexity of each individual in the classroom."  I went on to tell her that too many of us are looking for or accepting the simple, easy way; all you need is a teaching method, some technology, and a strong dose of content, and, 'poof,' you have it.  Well, you don't.  You don't because there are no easy answers, no magic technologies, no sure-fire teaching manuals, no 'nothing to it' formulas.  Teaching is not like traveling a smooth, paved, well-lit road.   If it was, you'd wilt.  Each day is, should be, must be, like being a pioneer traveling in the wilderness.  Most professors walk into a classroom with an attitude of "anyone can teach," "teaching is just talking," "all you need is to know your discipline."  Too many, believe, have been led to believe, that there's nothing to it and there's no reason for any intense preparation; that it doesn't compare to the training needed to be a scholar, a researcher and publisher.  You don't need the tenacity of dedication and commitment that research requires.  So, too many don't relish problems, distaste 'disruptions,' avoid challenges, dislike discomforts and inconveniences, skirt difficulties.  And, when it doesn't go the way they want, when a certain "teaching trick" doesn't work, when students don't do want they command, when the technology doesn't prove to be a panacea, they moan and groan with a finger-pointing  "students nowadays" complaint; they get frustrated, angry, resigned, and indifferent.  Those false expectations are stifling, wilting, stagnating, atrophying, petrifying.  You can't make a difference by being indifferent; you can't be on your toes when you're flat-footed; you can't hit the target if you're not aiming at it; you can't find different attitudes and ways if you're set in your attitudes and ways.  

	"'Better' doesn't spring from 'easy,' I told her as I ended my explanation.  "Nor does learning and growth and transformation.  Deeper ruts are dug by 'easy.'  Doors are kept shut by 'easy.'  'Easy' is not a springboard for new questions, fresh hope, a drive to learn more, a lever to raise sights, a push to become more.  But, once you understand that and choose to accept--and it is a choice--that teaching is hard, the hard stuff doesn't matter.  'Hard' does become important because it's no longer a barrier, or an excuse; it becomes opportunity and possibility.  So, yeah, 'teaching is tough' says it all.  And that's the way you want it to be.'"

	"And that's why you always said to us in class when we complained that the projects or working together or remembering to journal or watching the films and YouTube clips on the computer were hard that 'it's hard that's important' and 'the road to achievement isn't lined with "it's easy" signs.'"

	"It's true for you as a student and for me as a teacher," I admitted.  Then, I added, "And, by the way, thank you."

	"For what," she asked.

	"For being you.  There's no greater sweetness then to realize, to honestly realize, to realize deep down, that having come to the end of my teaching career to realize I have taught.  Thank you for being one of those realizations."

	There was lots more to this conversation.  Julia missed her next class.  But, more on that later.
Make it a good day

-Louis-


Louis Schmier                         		http://www.therandomthoughts.edublogs.org       
203 E. Brookwood Pl                         http://www.therandomthoughts.com
Valdosta, Ga 31602 
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