Date:Tue 4/10/2007 2:25 AM
Random Thought: Another Quickie On Caring

I read this in a student’s journal this morning. “Don’t you love it when professors so carelessly say they care about us and think that’s its enough just to say it when they don’t act that way? Who are they kidding? Themselves! Not us!”

That got me thinking. Caring about each student is not shown in the pronouncement, "I care about students." Claims to care or to be caring are easy to come by, but are no guarantee of genuine caring. There has to be a strong connection between conviction and virtue, that is, between word and deed. Not only must professors feel that something within them that forges a common bond with the students, but the students must feel as well that something within them that forges a common bond with the professors. No, caring is not really exercised when you care, but when you act with a guiding sense of awareness and otherness and service, and each student feels and knows she or he is really noticed, wanted, and cared about.