Copyright © Louis Schmier and Atwood Publishing.
Date: Sat, 09 Feb 2002 08:05:01 -0500 (EST)
Random Thought: "It's No Secret"
Why do things seem to happen when I'm munching on my doughnut?
This time, the other day, I was sitting out by the fountain in front of
the library in the crisp sunlit air, sipping a cup of coffee and nibbling
at a sinfully sticky glazed doughnut to get a sugar kick. After my second
literally sleepless night tending my deathly sick Susan who was stricken
with a bad case of the "crud," I was gathering my strength and meditating
for my upcoming class to get a spirit kick. As I sat there, this this
shadow came over me. I slowly looked up and there was Cathy (not her real
name).
As this smiling human eclipse hovered over me, she said, "Hey, Dr.
Schmier, just the guy I was looking for. I'm trying to find the secret to
being a great teacher. I want to write my English essay on it. How about
it? Got a few minutes?"
"Sure," knowing it never takes a few minutes. "Sit down," I
invited her by patting the cold concrete of the foundtain wall.
"Good," she exclaimed as she sat down next to me. "So, what do
think is the secret to being a great teacher?"
I hesitated. "First, tell me, you're an ed major. Do you want to
be a great teacher."
"I knew it! You always do that!" she screamed at me with feigned
frustration. "I'm the one who is supposed to ask the questions."
"Well," I smiled impishly, "if you answer me, I'll answer you. Do
you want to be a great teacher?"
"Boy, do I! I want to so bad."
"How bad?"
"I can taste it."
"Why?"
"Why? Well, I want everyone to be proud of me. You know from my
journal that I'm the first in my family to go to college and I would be
the first to be a professional like a teacher. You know, I can be someone
they can be proud of and can brag on and have other people look up to. It
was always expected of me by my family."
"What do you want?"
"I just told you."
"You probably won't make it" I calmly stated.
She looked at me with a wounded and surprised look. "Why?"
"Wrong 'why.'"
"Why?"
"It's not your 'why.'"
"Whose 'why' is it, then?"
"Someone else's."
"It's my 'why,' too."
"That's not what you just said. Be careful that you're sure of
that. It's got to be your true 'I want to be.' You can't be something
someone else wants for you. You can't be someone else expects you to be.
You can't be someone you borrow from someone else. You can't live a life
following someone else's map or walk someone else's road. You can't live
someone else's life, do what others expect, and be what they think is
important. You just can't. You sincerely have got to walk your own road
according to your own true map wherever it takes you. I know all about
that."
"Why not?"
"Because it's not you. You're enslaving yourself."
"To who?"
"To someone else's dream. If you try to follow someone else's
dream, you're not likely to reach for it or reach it. It's not your goal.
It's not in your soul. Deep down you're going to be frustrated and
discouraged and maybe even come to dislike what you're doing and you'll
get distracted and you'll complain and you'll start feeling sorry for
yourself and find reasons to feel sorry for yourself and feel sorrier and
trudge around and you'll dam yourself up with "do I really want to" doubts
and you'll go into a rut. Working for someone's expectations instead of
your own means you won't put yourself on the line, you won't really be
happy, you won't really have fun, you won't really stick to it, you'll be
easily distracted and won't focus, you won't teach with 'wit'."
"Wit? You mean with smarts?"
"WIT. W....I....T. You want to be a great teacher? I mean you
have to do 'whatever--it--takes,' W....I....T, WIT, not just to try, not
just to "do my best." I mean you have to teach with a no excuse
'whatever--it--takes.' And for you to do that, it has to come from deep
inside you."
"What has to come from inside me?"
"You do. That powerful voice you listen to, that empowering
burning desire, that intense focus, that pushing hunger, that insatiable
taste, that driving need to be a great teacher. It has to be your voice,
not someone else's."
"Did you have all that stuff of yours inside you when you started
teaching? Did you have your own voice?"
"Not at first, or second, or third, not for thirty some odd years,
not until a decade ago. If I did, all I heard and listened to was the
echo of others' voices. I was always trying to get their attention and
approval. I screwed up in college trying to be what others expected of
me, becoming a doctor, an M.D. type of doctor. I always had a sense of
failure that I didn't, and I had a sense of having disappointed them
because I fell back and became 'only' a Ph.D. doctor. But, I convinced
myself otherwise. I used to put a lot of effort into making believe I
liked what I was doing and spent a lot of energy keeping up appearances at
looking happy and looking like I was a success. It was the most loveless
thing I could do to myself. But deep down...."
"No! For real?"
"For real. Teaching wasn't something I really got the taste for,
something that started burning in my gut, something I started needing,
something that was important, something that was a top priority, something
I was willing to pay the price for until a little over a decade ago."
"Bet that was what made the difference between what you thought
was possible and what you thought wasn't."
"Well, holding back doesn't get you ahead.
"Where did this desire come fron?"
"I didn't find it in some secret book, or a special class, or in
some fix-it-all-up weekend workshop, some cure-all conference session,
some magical technology, some special formula. Some people like to think
that things like that exists. They don't."
"Well, where did you find it?"
"In me. Hidden deep inside me. Just it has to be for you."
"Well, what was it that started burning and tasting that everyone
knows you have today for us students?"
"Don't know. I know when, but I don't know why. Maybe it was a
need to do something important instead of wanting to be important. Maybe
it was a need to make a real difference. Maybe I had hit the combustion
point when I just couldn't do it anymore and didn't realize it until I
just found myself letting it all hang out. That's that mysterious and
lucky part that I don't try to explain except that I found I already had
the skills to become a great teacher. Just like you do."
"You did? I do?"
"Sure. All of us do. You can dream; you can learn; you can be
teachable; you can think; you can question; you can reflect; you can dare;
you can adapt; you can adopt; you can imagine; you can create; you can
discover; you can choose; you can decide; you can change; you can do. You
just really have to believe you have them and have the courage to
continually learn to use them."
"Can't be that easy. I bet it's that 'just' stuff, that 'now what
am I doing to do about it,' stuff that isn't easy. If it was, everyone
around here would be great teachers, and they sure ain't."
"You got it. It's not easy. "Teaching" and "easy" aren't ham'n
eggs platefellows. You know I really admire the K-12 teachers and all
they have to go through to train to teach and to keep on teaching. I
think too many of us college profs think that there's nothing to teaching,
that there is really nothing you have to learn about it to do, that it's a
piece of cake, that all you have to do is to know your subject and talk
about it, that anyone can do it, that you can do it in your sleep."
"Some surely do that, sleeptalk I mean."
"Well, you will find, like I did, that the road to becoming a
great teacher is long and rocky and steep. Easy answers and getting
solutions without work won't get you where you want to be. All you have
to do is immerse yourself, put in the time, always have the constant
energy, constantly make the commitment, and always have the enthusiasm.
They come as you constantly dig deep into the ore of your desire, mine
it, smelt it, refine it, shape it, and use it."
"That's a lot of "all you have to do."
"Well, you're not going to do it all at once. You have to give
yourself time. You have to be patient with yourself. And, you have to
work at it. You just have to take a small step every day. It's not how
fast you go, it's the direction in which you're going. Besides, I just
think even if you take a small step, you're moving ahead and you're doing
great things."
"That's hard."
"Patience is a strength. If you want it to be easy, you don't
have much confidence in yourself, you don't have much faith in yourself,
you're disrespecting yourself, you're slapping yourself in the face, and
you're giving yourself the greatest insult you can. If becoming a great
teacher is really what you want to do, the hard work becomes as exciting
and fulfilling as you can imagine. You know, what's really, really great
about the challenges that so many others avoid and miss when they treat
teaching as 'a piece of cake' or something 'anyone can do?"
"What's that?"
"You'll bump into all the magnificent opportunities. You'll
wondering at all those neat people around you. You'll feel the surprise
as all the possibilities that begin to appear. You'll find all that
priceless magic of your own that you see you can make. You'll see how
much is really inside you. You'll gain such confidence in yourself.
You'll release all that enormous potential inside you for your own special
greatness."
"That sounds nice, but what are you talking about?"
"I'm saying that if you patiently take that hard journey and don't
avoid the challenges and persevere, you'll will bring out stuff you never
dreamed was inside you. Believe me; I know."
"Look, I didn't think it would take this long although with you I
should've know better. I've got to go to class."
"Okay."
As she got up, she grabbed my arm. "Hey, I answered your
questions. You didn't answer mine. You didn't tell me the secret to
being a great teacher."
"Sure I did," I smiled.
"When? All we did was talk about me."
I didn't say a word. I cracked a slight grin. She looked at me,
puzzled and slightly annoyed wrinkles appeared, crunching her face, slowly
making her look like a Pug. And, then a twinkle appeared, the wrinkles
straightened out, a smile came on her face...
"It's me! The secret is me, isn't it! I'm my own secret to being
a great teacher! That's no big secret!"
I broke into a big smile. "Who said there was a secret."
She walked off. And, I, with a spirit kick, pulled a piece paper
out from my pocket and started scribbling.
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