"Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flows the springs of
life."
You know, all my degrees, titles, positions, publications, workshops,
and grants don't approach being all there is of me. They are only a part of my
being. They sure aren't the whole of my wholeness. In fact, they are the
least of me, for we all, as James Allen said, are great or small according to
our controlling desires or dominant aspirations. Our unconditional faith,
hope, and love for both ourselves and others should be a dais for being the
larger person.
The academic culture, which puts up distancing, disconnecting, and
disinteresting walls and barriers of disheartening "objectivity," that focuses
on credentialing, that almost promotes a social phobia, that doesn't recognize
education as a "people business," however, has not caught up with the research
on teaching and learning. Just one example is Stanford's Clifton Parker and
Gregory Watson who found that a central tenet of teaching is to build an
empathic-mindset in teachers, if for no other reason than empathy, a better
understanding of and relationships with each student, a compunction to be kind,
better connects the teacher with each student, supports and encourages the
teacher and each student, and improves the teacher's and each student's
behavior and performance. I was recently reminded by three students I chanced
to meet separately over the last few days, who had been in class with me that
last fall semester before I retired, that the great feat of making a difference
comes from one's humanity within, from making an altruistic commitment of
serving others, not from a self-centered lengthening of a resume, getting a
promotion, achieving tenure, or acquiring more zeros on our salary.
By seeing and listening to students through a moral lens that reveals
our own human quirks, habits, faults, and fears, we are better able to be
empathetic to the faults and fears of others; we can stand in their shoes; and,
although we may not agree with them, we can perceive the world through their
eyes; and, we can appreciate and validate their point of view. When, with a
certainly, we judge, abstract, stereotype, generalize, or label the individual
and unique humanity out of students, however, we leave ourselves little room
for faith, hope, love, respect, kindness, and caring for each. Only by being
honest with our own story, can we really begin to understand what other may be
going through. While we need to see ourselves clearly, that doesn't mean we
obsess over our faults; it means we learn from them and about others. Trust
me, that is not an easy task, and it can be at first painful.
To do this, as the Zen saying goes, we must simultaneously sit and rake
the garden. Outside and inside the classroom, we must quiet our mind, stop and
listen, stop and see, soften our spirit, and open our heart. To discover
ourself and others is, as this proverb says, loving self-kindness, and we sense
the need for connection to help others do the same; we offer because others are
part of us and what we are doing. To put it in classroom terms, there is no
teacher without a student and no student without a teacher. They go
hand-in-hand. Then, we will have learned to see the hidden beauty in the
ordinary. As Rumi said, "There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the
ground." I say there are as many ways as there are students in a classroom.
We will nurture new energies, leave worn and accepted paths, strike out on new
ones and help others do likewise, and still feel comfortable and safe. We will
see beyond the sights; listen beyond the sounds; go behind and between the
words and body movements; notice the pregnant silence. We will become
intensely interested; become curious; pay attention; shun assumption and
presumption; slowly walk rather than jump to conclusions; anticipate less.
We'll be receptive to surprise and delight; seize on the unpredictable; notice
the unique; go for potential; we see into the future and imagine what can
become. To do all this are acts of faith, hope, and love; they're acts of
respect and of giving a damn; they imbue individual dignity, nobility, and
sacredness. If we know her or him, if we know her or his story. If we know a
few peculiarities about a student, then, it is hard, almost impossible, to do a
life-sucking-out assault on her or his sacredness, to jump to conclusions and
rush to judgment, and turn her or him into a flattened, lifeless anonymity of
abstraction, stereotype, generality, or label. When we do that, as these three
students just reminded me, we will be surrounded by a field of exciting
possibilities. And, then, you enjoy it all.
"Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flows the
springs of life."
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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/ \/ \_ \/ / \/
/\/ / \ /\ \
//\/\/ /\ \__/__/_/\_\/
\_/__\ \
/\"If you want to climb
mountains,\ /\
_ / \ don't practice on mole
hills" - / \_
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