A tad belated Happy New Year! Well, a new semester of the twelve day
old new year
begins today, and a few days ago I heard from Kenny. It has been a while. He
wants
another word from my "Dictionary Of Good Teaching" to start his new year.
Okay. Here it
is, clean, neat, direct, and brief : dilate.
My job.... No, I'll take that back. My mission, my purpose, if I am
to live by
my vision, has been, is, and will be to practice in my life and profession a
wholeness
that tightly weaves wonder and reason and values--and joy--into every thread of
the fabric
of everyday life. Here's where "dilate" comes in. As a teacher I must widen
my eyes,
open my mind, enlarge my heart, and expand my soul to that miracle of each
unique human
being. That means I must treat each and every person as sacred and noble and
unique; to
love, have faith in, believe in, and have hope for each person; to inculcate
ethical and
interpersonal moral skills into each student along with the intellectual and
professional
skills of academics; to help each student understand that we each exist by
co-existing,
that there is no "I" without "thou." As a teacher, I must be there to help
each student
love, have faith in, believe in, and have hope for herself and himself. I must
open not
just a student's mind, but her or his eyes to her or his potential and promise,
as well as
her or his heart to others; to help prepare future professionals and
businesspeople who
are not just good at their jobs but who perform those jobs and live in society
as good,
caring, trustworthy, and respectful people; to help each student see that there
is no
innate conflict--no competing pressure-- between material and professional
success on one
hand and ethical behavior on the other; to help them achieve a material success
that is
not divorced from a sense of humanity, from ethical behavior, from proper
values, and most
important of all, from a regard to relationships with other human beings.
Rolling your eyes? Think I am being "warm and fuzzy," "touchy-feely,"
an
out-of-touch idealist, a walking greeting card cliché? I don't. My castles in
the sky
have a bedrock foundation. After all, what good is it if we prevent ignorance,
but do not
improve the quality of life. It is of no use and it serves no worthy purpose
if all we do
is graduate professionally skilled moral dropouts. Just look around and you'll
see what I
mean.
Make it a good day.
--Louis--
Louis Schmier http://www.therandomthoughts.com
Department of History
Valdosta State University
Valdosta, Georgia 31698 /\ /\ /\ /\
(229-333-5947) /^\\/ \/ \ /\/\__/\ \/\
/ \/ \_ \/ / \/
/\/
\ /\
//\/\/ /\
\__/__/_/\_\ \_/__\
/\"If you want to climb
mountains,\ /\
_ / \ don't practice on mole
hills" -
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