Oh Winter, where are you? Had I to spray myself with “No Natz” to ward off the swarms of attacking mosquitos and harassing gnats! It’s February! We’re supposed to have no need for “No Natz.” We’re supposed to shiver, not sweat. The heater is supposed to be running, not the AC. Plants are supposed to be dormant, not in bloom, tra-la. And, the weeds!! Well, all those “supposed to” aren’t; and, those “not” are. It’s been in the sauna-ish 80s here in South Georgia. This is not global warming; it’s global steaming.
Anyway, as I walked the spa-like streets yesterday for my silent, mobile meditation, unbundled, with rivulets of salty, stinging water quickly meandering down my face from my water soaked headband, forming droplets on my eyebrows, nose, and chin, I silently thought of Sam, Jim, and another past student I met Friday in the grocery store. My conversation with this third past student in the cereal aisle is too personal to talk about, but it revived the vividness of my earlier conversations with Sam and Jim.
I love sinking into silent, mobile meditating. It’s not especially comfortable for me, but it is essential for pondering and rediscovering my living reality. For nearly an hour and a half, it’s like being in a deep white sound bubble. On this walk, reflections, appropriately budded by this third past student, emerged from my inner private silence. They seem to come from contemplating something of an otherness inside me. They silently called up a mindfulness within me. I silently listened to and ruminated with what they bring out from inside me. I, then, turned myself back and submerged into that inner private silence for more.
That brought me once again to the hardest—and most ignored—part of “soft teaching.” It is something first taught to me twenty-five years into my professional career by my personal epiphany in 1991. Its teachings continued with facing cancer in 2004, and deepened with dealing with my should-have-been-deadly massive cerebral hemorrhage in 2007. They revealed that I was ignorant of who I truly was and could be, and what I had; that I had been teaching myself weakened self-confidence, failure, and fear; that I had been failing myself; and, that only I could break that cycle of anxiety and self-deprecation by acting from a place of inner strength. I think it was Archimedes who said, “Give me a place to stand and I will change the world.” Those experiences did just that, and still do. They broke my inner chains and opened the doors of my inner prison; and, they released the energy of an inner freedom to be imaginative, creative, energetic, fluid, supple, resourceful, and an effective “changer.” They brought, and continue to bring me, to terms with their ever-present lessons: life, and anything in it, is an inside-outside job; that is, we teach who we are; we are the perceptions we have; we are the questions we ask. When we enter a classroom, we all carry our own experiences with us. All this means, to paraphrase Jon Kabat-Zinn. “Wherever we go, there we are.” As I continue to learn, all that means teaching, or anything I do, is a part of my life, not apart from it. All that means we have to work on our “I” before “them.” All this means if you want your teaching to change for the better, what you do will change for the better only if you change who you are. No one and nothing can bring about improvement on the outside unless you’re committed to it on the inside. If you want to reach out and touch a student, you have to reach in and down, and touch your inner self; whatever it is you want to do, first starts in your heart and mind, and then works it way out to what you do. Sound self-help-ish? You betcha! When push comes to shove, you’re only one who can do it—if you truly want to do it. You’re the only one who can motivate you.
No, I’m not being preachy. I was just reflecting on some stuff I just read by Cambridge’s Brian Little that reflects on my recent conversations with Sam, Jim, and this third past student. The gist of what Little says is that there are few things worse than doing something about which you feel is of “no use.” To be happy you have to engage in something that is fulfilling and meaningful to you; that what you do has to feel important; that you have to engage in something that brings you joy. He says that our mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing rests on the degree we feel positive and have a positive attitude, for engaging in something that we feel is impossible to attain, when we feel “stuck,” makes us truly miserable and stressed. And, that absence of fulfillment, purposefulness, and meaningfulness is a heavy drag on our psyche. And, that drag is a joyless, impoverishing, and imprisoning that creates a state of ill-being.
So, let me ask you the same question or two I first asked myself over twenty-five years ago: “Louis,” I asked, “what would happen if you saw, heard, and felt things differently each day? What would happen if you took a step or two outside your comfort zone each moment? What would happen if you ventured away from the safety of your habits? What would happen if you chanced to change your reality just a tad in each situation? Would your perspective change? Would your attitudes and actions change? Specifically, what would it mean if a student could see you more as an unconditional trusted, supportive, and encouraging friend than solely as a distant, commanding authority figure? Would it change the dynamic of the classroom?”
My answer was, “Let’s see.” And, guess what. It sure did. It cut through opaque stereotypes, dehumanizing generalities, and impersonal labels. It drew back all those curtains to reveal the wondrousness of each student. That new reality for me created meaningful new beginnings and constant continuing. You see, I discovered that trusted friendship goes behind a name. It is story-to-story, individual-to-individual, face-to-face, heart-to-heart, eye-to-eye, hand-in-hand. It is to be at ease with. It is to feel safe with. It is to be open with. It is to be empathetic for. It is to be respectful of. It is to be aware of, alert to, attentive to, and mindful of the needs of others. It is to be tender and kind. It is to be supporting and encouraging. It is to be respectful. It is to be hospitable, to be welcoming, accepting, and embracing. It is to be connecting, intimate, faithful, hopeful, enduring, and loving. It is to treat humans as humans, and acknowledge that students are humans. It is to acknowledge that each student’s life matters. It is, in the words of Isiah, to turn the darkness into light and make the crooked places straight. It is to break the chains of strangerness, loneliness, and aloneness. For both the individual and the class as a whole, it is to break barriers, built bridges, and forge community.
And, that is what Sam, Jim, and others exemplify. They are reminders that listening and seeing, and struggling to understand, are the only ways to betterment. They are reminders for me of the complex humanity in that classroom that defy generality, stereotype, and label. They are reminders for me that each of our thoughts, feelings, hidden perceptions, silenced or voiced expectations, words, and actions influence’s students’ fates. They are reminders that something as simple as encouraging someone with a soft word or slight gesture, or telling them not to give up, or telling someone that their story matters as much as anyone else’s — can make a difference. They are reminders for me that if “they’re not prepared,” they are only raw ore ready to be smelted into precious metals, not barren and worthless dirt to be discarded on a pile. They are reminders to me of the demand to teach with engagement and involvement every minute with every fiber of my being.. They both trigger and mirror the powerful and positive inner perspective of an unshakable vision that’s the result of the “soft teaching” of faith, hope, and love: to be the person who is there to help each person help her/himself become the person she or he is capable of becoming.
That vision led to the guiding and binding formula in my “Teacher’s Oath” and “Ten Commandments of Teaching.” It gave a winsome message I can give the world about each student: all student lives matter. All! Each! It made me more attentive, alert, and aware. It made me more mindful. It dug deeper past the surface appearance. It mined deeper into the deep reservoirs of potential. It put the past in the past. It put away excuses and rationales. It imagined the unimaginable. It made the insurmountable surmountable, It converted challenges from barriers into opportunities. And, it made difficulties irrelevant. It pushed my expectations beyond what I expected. It made impossibilities possible. It achieved the unachievable. It touched the untouchable. It made later too late. It strengthened, inspired, encouraged, supported, empowered—and energized—me. But, to do all that, it demanded, commanded, I constantly put in the proverbial mental, physical, and emotional sweat equity.
Now, please knee-jerk a sigh and roll your eyes. Please read me out. I’m not hawking “easy.” Anything but. You have to understand that the way to see, hear, and feel about people is the way you treat them. And, the way you treat them is usually the way they become. I’m promoting seeing and seeing into instead of merely looking at, listening to replace merely hearing. But, like anything worthwhile, they require constant effort. You always have to work hard constantly to constantly see and listen to each student. They’re not one shot deals. And, you can’t cherry pick self-serving, convenient, and safe images and experiences. Like Jim said, it takes a lot of hard work, a lot of consistent and incessant work, a lot of dedicated and committed work. It takes a lot of conscious effort to examine assumption, to question expectation, to dissipate the power of a stereotype, to rip out a label, to challenge a generality, and to assess judgment . So, I am standing up for a sustained supportive and encouraging connection and persuasive communication rather than a power commanding relationship. Like I said, “soft teaching” is the “new hard.” It’s demanding. It demands daily intervention. It demands daily engagement. It demands daily reinvention. It demands a constant renewal and demonstration of faith, hope, and love. It demands a sense of humanity and connectedness. Above all, it promotes the idea that nothing is fixed by transforming “This is who I am” into first an exploring, peering-over-the-fence question of “Who can I be?” and, then, an energetic and nurturing and confident and celebrating statement of “This is who I can become.”
No, do you know what’s easy in the classroom? Not breaking a sweat; not getting “down and dirty;” putting a mask on students and thinking you know all about them. It’s easy to look at the proverbial tip above the surface and ignore all that is below. It’s easy to be distant and disconnected. It’s easy to be insensitive and unaware. It’s easy to talk, talk, talk. It’s easy to say, “I don’t believe this,” “I will not coddle students,” “I have neither time nor inclination to wipe their noses,” “I have to be coldly objective,” I won’t allow emotions to undermine my demands for intellectual rigor,” “I refuse to allow my feelings to interfere with and cloud my judgment.” “My task is to weed out those who can’t cut it.” What’s easy is to look but not to see, to hear but not listen. It is easy to submit to what psychologists call “confirmation bias,” that is, the tendency to embrace information that supports our beliefs and reject information that contradicts them. More often than not, in looking and hearing we find only those “for instance” reflections and supporting proof of our own biases, preconceptions, expectations, stereotypes, labels, generalities. That’s why it’s so easy to be so negative. It’s easy to look at the classroom and judge with a resigned “they don’t” and a frustrated “they won’t.” It’s so easy to only hear and judge with a sneering “they don’t belong” and belittling “they’re letting anyone in” and a demoralizing “they’re not prepared.” It’s easy to look at only the surface GPA, test results, grades, and scores. Consequently, it’s easy not to be truly there when you’re in the classroom because you “have better things to do” and “have no time for.” It’s easy to constrain ourselves by being joylessly disheartened, resigned, frustrated, and even angry. It’s easy to decide how pointless it is. It’s easy to throw up your arms in surrender. It’s easy to walk away.
Yes, as I’ve often said, I am promoting a demanding touchy-feely classroom; that is, a demand to reach out and touch each student, to notice each one, to care about each one, and to feel an unconditional lovingkindness for each of them. I am pushing for a pushing away of “demoralized eyes,” “dispirited ears,” “grimaced lips,” and “burnt out hearts” that too often blind and deafen and numb us to what is truly going on around us, that skew so much, that causes us to miss so many important details that are right in front of us, that allows us to retreat to the archive and lab rather than fight for each student. So, I am stoking the difficulty of being your own stoker tending to your own inner furnace and keeping its fire ablaze.
Make it a good day
-Louis-
Louis Schmier http://www.therandomthoughts.edublogs.org
203 E. Brookwood Pl http://www.therandomthoughts.com
Valdosta, Ga 31602
(C) 229-630-0821 /\ /\ /\ /\ /\
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