Get your eyes ready to roll and your lungs to give out deep sighs.
This morning, wasn't like every other morning. At the same time it was. I
went out to work off the calories of Susie's birthday cheesecake that I
devoured all by myself in less than two days. It was not an easy walk. The
archaic coal-saving remnant of World War I called daylight savings time is
wreaking havoc with my bio-clock. But, as I engaged in my mobile meditation, a
thought came to me. One day, maybe soon, if I can muster the courage, I am
going to give a workshop, whatever I title it, at a teaching conference where
all I would offer is five words: "love. Love! Love!! Love!!! LOVE!!!!"
Warned you. But, you know, who we are determines what we feel,
believe, and do. That is, according to Gandhi, the end is rooted in the means,
and it is in our inner being that is the spring-well of the outer means. What
if love, then, was on our "being list": to love love, to love life, to love
what you doing and doing what you love to do, to love yourself, to love being
loved, to love others--all unconditionally? Imagine what our "to feel" and "to
do" lists would look like. What if we became unconditional lovers of each
student. Unconditional!! No strings attached!! What if we each were a
vessel, a model, of love, each minute of every day. What if everything was
orchestrated by unconditional love for each student. What if we took and lived
my Teacher's Oath of which love is the essence. I'll tell from experience.
Debilitating stress and suffering, false expectation, attribution error,
resignation, frustration, and even anger would be minimized, if not eliminated.
Barriers would be broken, bridges would be built, community would be forged.
Aloneness, loneliness, strangerness would be transformed connection,
friendship, family. Cruelty would give way to gentleness, sapping sadness
would give way to fulfilling joy. Closed minds would open, folded arms would
reach out to embrace and hug, hard hearts would soften. We'd come out from the
spectator stands to become players on the field. Disinterest would be banished
by alertness, attentiveness, aliveness, otherness, and mindfulness. Gone would
be the dehumanizing, impersonalizing, blurring, herding, generalizing,
stereotyping, preconceptualizing; they'd be replaced by a conscious and sharp
alertness, awareness, aliveness, otherness, and mindfulness; connection would
replace distance and draw people together; warmth would banish chill. And the
questions that would be asked are: "How can I serve each student? How can I
use love as leverage for transformation. How can I implement love to create a
motivating classroom environment?" And you know what, all this is only a
choice away, for the so-called secret to caring is no more than our willingness
to choose to truly care, that to love all we have to do is to choose a life of
love.
Rolling your eyes already? Snickering? Laughing? Freaking out?
Throwing up you hands in a gesture of "there he goes off the deep end again?"
Go ahead. Say it. I'm touchy-feely, schmalzy, sappy, fuzzy, New Agey, dreamy.
Go ahead, I understand. Feel embarrassed that I use that word? I understand.
But, understand this, students want connection, friendship, companionship far
more than information. And, they don't get it in the classroom. They want to
be wanted, to be welcomed, to be noticed, to valued, to be cared about, to be
heard, to be understood, to be seen, to have their confusions and pains
honored, to be treated as worthy. And, more often than not they don't get it in
the classroom, especially in those super and super-duper classes. They do get
it in the fraternities and sororities, teams, clubs, theater troupes, bands,
friendships, but only with rare exception do they get it in academics. And
that explains why they will even sacrifice their academics for the
socialization outside the classroom.
Now, on my campus, as State funding dwindles, as budgets experience
draconian cuts, as the State sponsored, lottery funded Hope Scholarship has
severe restrictions place on it because of past profligate dispensing of
monies, because of rampant increase in tuition and fees, my University has
discovered it's has become tuition dependent. So, retention once again is the
"word of the day." It may be the word of the day, but is it the feeling,
thinking, and being of the day? Does anyone think, really think, things will
change if we think and feel and do the same ways over and over again? Do you
think we'll change our ways without sincerely changing our attitude? Think
we'll change our doing without sincerely changing our being? I know, from two
decades of personal experience, as well as from reading the research, the
answer to these four questions is: no, no, no, no.
I tell you that if you live in and from that loving place, love guides
and calls you to be, feel, think, believe, and do stuff. So, I was thinking
what if we became poster people for love. What if we took an oath to love?
What if we learned to have the warm, green thumb of the nurturer instead of the
cold, black thumb of the weeder outer? What if we stopped with that demeaning
"they're letting anyone in" and "they don't belong here" and "I don't have the
time for them?" What if we gave the classroom the same status as the archive
or lab? What if we truly started with the "welcome" and "we want you here" and
"we here to serve you?" What if we gave a gift from our hearts rather than our
brains. What if we became transformer of people rather than just transmitters
of information. The latest research offers you the answers most academics
don't want to hear. But, from a personal view, I can tell you the results. I
do it; it's the core of my Teacher's Oath; it's the oath I read, take, and live
every day. Now, I'm not talking about anything grandiose however grand love
may be. It is just keeping it small and significant every day, that KISSED
thing, remembering that anything small that is part of a great journey is not
small. What if we became activist of love as much as people are activists of
resignation, disinterest, cynicism, frustration, disinterest, maybe even anger.
What if we push service over self-regard? It's those simple things, as Leo
Buscaglia said, not the grandiose ones, that turn lives around--and retain
students: an encouraging touch, a warm smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an
honest compliment, or the smallest act of consideration, compassion, empathy,
sympathy, and caring. No, the ground does not have to quiver violently for an
earth-shaking event to occur. What if we took unconditional love for each
student seriously. What if we brought joy and found joy in the classroom?
What if we used love to maximize our efforts both inside and outside the
classroom. What if we stopped "thingifying" what we do and replaced it with a
"lovification" of who we are. I know what would happen. We'd start being
"unconditional lovers." We'd stop being indifferent. We'd start engaging.
We'd start connecting. We'd start talking more and more about what we should
be talking about: people.
What if we authentically made love the core of our pedagogy. What if
we made love our bottom line of retention? What if we became loving people and
made no bones about it, and shouted it from the rooftops. I'll let you know
what could happen. Love will push and pull you up to the mountain top. We'd
wield the most powerful pedagogical tool at our disposal. We'd become the most
influence pedagogical resource there is. We become the most powerful force of
retention. We wouldn't sit idly by and let student drop outs or failures occur
with a haughty "good riddance" or arrogant "I told you so" or "It's not my
fault." We'd open the floodgates and become conduits for miracles. We'll show
that an education is a valuable gift, a labor of love, not a sentence at hard
labor. We'd take the supposed ordinary to extraordinary heights.
Okay, here goes. I firmly and unabashed assert, unconditional love is
the key to change on our campuses. It is the key to seeing each person as a
noble, sacred, and even godly if you wish, being too valuable to lose. It is
key to seeing each person is a piece of the future with talent and ability,
possessing a unique potential. It is key to seeing each person is someone's
son, daughter, sister, brother, wife, husband who is entrusted to us. It is
the key to seeing we must play in a "responsibility game," not a blame game.
The more people become love aware, the more they will realize they are in a
people business; the more they realize they are in the people business, the
more they will respect all those others; the more they deeply respect those
others, the more we'll give a damn about each of them; the more we sincerely
give a damn about each of them, the more we will welcome, embrace, and value;
and, the more we embrace, the more we will have faith in, hope for, belief in,
and love of each student; the more we are the embodiment of those "little big
words" of faith, hope, belief, and love, the more we will support and
encourage, have empathy and sympathy, have passion and compassion, and be there
to unconditionally be committed and dedicated to help each student help
her/himself become the person she or he is capable of becoming. And, just from
a practical standpoint, that will be the ultimate instrument of retention.
Make it a good day
-Louis-
Louis Schmier
http://www.therandomthoughts.edublogs.org
Department of History http://www.therandomthoughts.com
Valdosta State University
Valdosta, Georgia 31698 /\ /\ /\ /\
/\
(O) 229-333-5947 /^\\/ \/ \ /\/\__ / \ /
\
(C) 229-630-0821 / \/ \_ \/ / \/ /\/ / \
/\ \
//\/\/ /\ \__/__/_/\_\/
\_/__\ \
/\"If you want to climb
mountains,\ /\
_ / \ don't practice on mole
hills" - / \_
---
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