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Copyright © 1997, Louis Schmier and Atwood Publishing.
Date: Fri, 26 Dec 1997 08:01:42 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Random Thought: What Have I Learned This Year?
Well, five more days to New Year's Eve. We're at that time when
everyone is recapping the past year with the best, worst, least, and most.
So, who am I to argue. Feeling like Janus with one facing looking forward
and the other backward, as I wonder about what is to come in the coming
year, what have I learned in what is about to become last year:
Through my ups and downs, successes and failures, gains and losses
of this seismic year, this is some of what I have learned. And if they
are not new lessons, I've learned more about old ones:
In the scheme of things maybe it is less important to impart
information than it is to offer students opportunities to learn how to
discover on their own. I truly believe that the more I empower students,
the more I empower myself; when I control someone, I am restricting
myself. The more I struggle to control the classroom, the less faith I
have in students and myself; if I truly trust them, I will help them to
learn how to educate themselves. Otherwise, I'll only have trained and
schooled them in dependency; As the chinese proverb says, don't give a
man a fish to eat for one day. Teach him how to fish so he will eat all
his life. That is not a "dumbing down" or "watering down;" it's just
taking out an academic triptik and finding another scenic, enjoyable,
meaningful route to reach my destination.
What I do each day in classroom is determined by who is in the
classroom. I, therefore, must struggle harder than ever to know who is in
the classroom. By "who," I just do not mean the students.
It's not enough to transmit information. It's also our
responsibility to see that such information is used well. Information and
knowledge is of no value, if values are not learned; and, the character of
the application of such information and knowledge rests in the character
of the person. No, if I only focus on today's class and only on the
subject material, I am shirking my responsibilty to tomorrow.
Teaching is not a on lower rung than scholarship, nor is to be a
teacher something lesser than being a scholarly professor. If I consider
teaching beneath me, of lesser value, I will not find it valuable enough
to rise to the occasion and do it well. No one can make me feel a lesser
person for being a teacher or make me believe I am doing something lesser
by focusing on my teaching without my consent. I have to let my teaching
be led by me, not by others
If I believe the absurdities or abberations told about the
students or dwell on the extremes of the good and bad, I will find it
harder to commit myself to each student and easier to do harm by ignoring
them. A student uneducated or miseducated, is a person tossed away and
lost. The way to value and love each student is to realize that very
horror can happen so easily.
If I display a disdainful attitude towards students, I am not
displaying a misuse and abuse power, control, and authority. I think I am
revealing weakness and fear and insecurity and perhaps inner hurt, as well
as a disdain for what I do and for myself.
Students may act ignorant, but they are not in a state of
ignorance; their spirit is not stained by original ignorance.
I've come to the frightening and humbling conclusion that I am the
decisive element in the classroom. As the teacher, as the role model,
it's me, my moods, my personal approach, my beliefs about myself and each
student that makes the classroom's weather warm or cold, that makes the
air polluted or clean. It is awesome to think of the moral authority I as
a teacher possess, how I can be a humiliating or uplifing, sour or
humorous, hurtful or healing force. It all depends upon whether I
dominate, recognize, humilitate, respect, hurt, care, notice, ignore,
love, reject, accept; and that I am so not just with my words, but with my
eyes, face, lips, vocal tones, body. I have to be conscious of and
sensitive to the fact I possess a tremendous power to make a student's
life miserable or joyous, suffering or enjoyable. I can turn the lights up
the classroom or throw the classroom into darkenss. I can make the
classroom as bland and sterile as an operating room or as exciting and
enchanting as a Martha Stewart room; I can be a thumb-screw or a rack and
make the classroom into a torture chamber or I can be a singing violin and
make the classroom an inspiring orchestral hall; I can make the classroom
into an imprisioning dungeon or a releasing cathedral. In all situations,
it is my response that decides whether a student will be humanized or
de-humanized.
A student is never simple; nor am I.
Complaining about students is such a waste of time and energy. I
can't use it as a foundation upon which to build. It's only a mudhole in
which to wallow, a quagmire in which to sink.
Each class, which may seem ostensibly the same--the title of the
course is the same, the room number is the same--is, in fact, quite
different from any other. I should always be walking into the unknown as
I realize the people inside are different not only from those in another
class which might be listed under the same title, but are different from
one another. And when I walk into that class the next day, it is different
and the people are different from the one and the ones that I left the
previous day. Nothing is ever the same. Every day of every term of every
year, then, should be a day of wonder and wonderment; it should be count
down time; it should be a special first day; it should be gearing up for a
new game, a new challenge, a new venture, a new adventure, a new
unfamiliarity, a new excitement, and a new unknown. When the butterflies
are not aflutterin', when I'm not on the edge; when I am not on edge
wondering if I can still pull it off, I've lost my edge. I've dulled and
it's time to quit.
What is important about students is not visible except to the heart.
So many of us want to work in a risk-free, mistake-free
environment. But, I tell the students that if they are afraid to fail,
they will not strive to succeed. And so it must be with me. If I never
make a mistake in what I do then I have not challenged myself to grow,
develop, change. It is entirely too easy to take the safe way out, to do
what I know what will work. But if I do this, I will soon find out it
will not always work, for as each student is different and so is each
gathering of students. If I am afraid to take a risk, then I will never
have the opportunity to find out what I can do for both each student and
myself. We can get so doggone cluttered up trying to be perfect.
There is no greater joy than giving to worthy causes. I can't
think of a worthier cause than a student. I can't think of doing anything
more beautiful for life and the future.
I have found that familiarity and the expected can subltly inflict
a paralysis of the body, a stifling of the spirit, and a deadening of the
soul. How do you say something new about that which is all-too-familiar;
how do you do something new with that which you do routinely; how do you
see something new in which you see the expected; how to you get excited
about something that is old hat? No, teaching each day should be like the
birth of a new unfamiliar child, the taking of an unfamiliar route, the
unexpected sights of unknown scenery. It's the unfamiliar and unexpected
that innoculates me from the ravages of getting flacid, dull, stale, old;
it's the unfamiliar and unexpected that keeps me fresh, alert, excited,
and alive.
Above all, I've learned that all of these lessons are first of all
an affiar of the heart, not simply a matter of behaviour modification. As
any AA member will tell you, the core of change is emotional. It's
primarily spiritual because we are a spiritual being, not intellectually
driven. When people tell their stories, whether they are conscious of it
or not, whether they admit it or not, they always start with the heart
story, not the mind story. There is room for partnership of the heart in
academic life, for academic life is not divorce from life. This
partnership is a necessity if we are to be truly educated and to truly
educate. But as the heart struggles to change, we have to understand the
depths of that struggle; we have to welcome that struggle; we have to
offer support and encouragement; we have to provide community and comfort;
we have to provide remedial training and education.
Now that I look back on what I have learned this past year, none of them
are lessons in ease or safty or comfort, but they are wondrous
instructions in personal growth, reward, fulfillment, meaningfulness, joy,
and beauty. And if I have truly learned these lessons, the year that was
will continue to be.
What have you learned during this year?
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