To continue this discussion with the professor:
"If you're telling me I have to love each student unconditionally,"
this professor cynically exclaimed, "that's impossible! Too many students
haven't earned it and don't deserve it, and I won't do it!"
"No," I answered, "faith, hope, and love are emotions. I'm not one to
order you around. In fact, I know it would be silly and pointless of me to
think I could 'command' you to feel that way. Anyone who has been told to
'cheer up' in a bad time knows that. Heck, administrators don't know that you
can receive policy statements from on high, for example, about receiving,
embracing, and retaining students from now until the proverbial cows come home,
but the thinning out "keeper of the gate" or "weeder" mentality and actions are
still there and won't automatically disappear in a puff. I do, however, ask
that you suspend your cynicism or resistance for a moment and 'lend me your
ears' because there's a value in discussing the role of love in the
classroom."
"I'm saying that from reading thousands of student daily journal
entries so many students feel that our classrooms are lions' dens in which most
professors don't really care about them. I'm talking about how student
self-belief has been weakened in those dens. I'm even talking about
humiliation heaped upon by those self-appointed 'guardians' and 'weeders.' I
personally know what it is like to be alone, to be lonely, to be a stranger, to
go unnoticed, to feel unloved, to feel devalued, to feel unworthy, to hurt
within, to have weakened self-esteem and self-confidence. I know how all that
is a corrosive and disbelieving "what's the use" drag on motivation to perform
and achieve. I know what that's all like. I know what it looks like. I know
what it feels like. I know. So, constantly being aware and alert to that,
recognizing that, knowing that, and especially remembering that, I don't do it!
That's all. I....just....don't....do....it! That's the whole of my
educational philosophy right there. It should be the whole of higher education
right there. So, what does love had to do it, with higher education?
Everything. What would happen to academia, if we all prioritized to love and
nourish each Billy; if we nourished that "I will be there for you" faith and
hope and love, and all they embodied; if we did it; if we kept away the
selective gate keeping; if we nourished a weeding out of weeding out? If we
created a movement, I call SML: "Students' Lives Matter" that stood for the
unconditional respect, value, sacredness, uniqueness, and worthiness of each
student, that shined positive rays of light of lovingkindness, loving
awareness, loving attentiveness, loving alertness, and loving mindfulness in
the world of both the student and teacher, that generated a genuine smile, a
friendly word, a soft encouraging touch, a slight supportive glance. Now, that
would be a different academia."
"I'm saying that the classroom has been stripped of its humanity. It
focuses on the outward stuff of subject, skill, testing, grading, etc. It
doesn't focus on the inward driving, motivating, and inspiring stuff of the
heart. It isn't concerned with such questions as 'Who am I?' 'What am I
feeling?' 'Who do I believe I can become?' None of that. It has become
droll, materialized, 'thingified,' as a matter of course (pun intended) for
acquiring credentials required by job and status. I'm saying academics have to
address the human condition and not just be concerned with the subject matter.
I'm saying we have to stop thinking about the class as something monolithic and
wrap our hearts around the truth that students bring into the world of the
classroom a world of diverse stories containing their different experiences and
histories, that the real diversity in the classroom is that it is a gathering
of separate, distinct and unique 'ones.' I'm saying academics have to learn
how to see, listen, and speak simultaneously in universalities and
individualities. I'm saying that by ignoring character development, we have
left many students unprotected, that the gate keepers and weeders are refusing
to search for the potential in people as they could become and are giving up on
them because of who they presently are. I'm saying in too many classrooms you
can almost hear Toni Morrison say, 'They don't love our children.' At the same
time, I'm saying we have control over our internal lives and can choose to
disparage or love, to knock down or up-lift, to dishearten or inspire. No one
makes you or me do anything without our active or passive permission."
I went on to tell her that for me faith, hope, and love created a
hunger, hunger for purpose and meaning and vision. It gave me a thirst to help
a student become a good person simultaneously--not instead of or at the expense
of--to becoming a good student who will graduate to live the good life while
having a good job. For me, faith, hope, and love are not antithetical with
becoming informed and skilled, but they are at the heart (pun intended) of the
people serving business we call education. They all--all--are important to the
redemptive foundation of SLM. I told her that as I acquired an educational
philosophy of unconditional faith, hope, and love for each student, as it
entered my bones, it offered beautiful hindsight, insight, and foresight for
the intellectual and character up-lifting and up-building of each student. It
forged my vision. It wrote my "TEACHER'S OATH." It inscribed my "TEN
COMMANDMENTS OF TEACHING." It gave me a bridging community "we" sight that
filled in the separating and differentiating chasm between "I" and "them"
sight. It insisted on always seeing and hearing the angel walking before each
student proclaiming, "Make way! Make way! Make way for someone create in the
image of God." It said, "I will not follow anyone's orders to disrespect any
student. No one will coerce me into believing any student is disposable. I
will not submit to anyone's demand that I believe any student is not essential.
No one will force me to accept that each student is bereft of a unique
potential. No one will convince me to give up on or write the obituary for any
student."
I finished by telling her, "As a result, as I thought and felt
differently, over the decades, as I developed a vision of purpose and meaning
by which to live, I found real and reasonable ways to do things differently, to
merge the traditional with the new into a human wholeness. And, I consequently
I jumped out of bed each morning with a "yes," recited my TEACHER'S OATH, and
entered each class each day with great expectations. Rare, very rare,
extraordinarily rare, was the time I was disappointed."
Still more 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
(C) 229-630-0821 /\ /\ /\ /\
/\
/^\\/ \/ \ /\/\__
/ \ / \
/ \/ \_ \/ / \/
/\/ / \ /\ \
//\/\/ /\ \__/__/_/\_\/
\_/__\ \
/\"If you want to climb
mountains,\ /\
_ / \ don't practice on mole
hills" - / \_
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