I have experienced 25 years immersed in bureaucratic, union based, government funded, non- profit, community college, workplace institution. Bringing out my deepest vocational purpose calling from within me, along with much intellectual knowledge and trade skills to the table.
Mustering all the hope for depths of commitment between myself and the organization. Along with my personal integrity and courage. Growing a larger capacity for connectedness for everyone involved in the process. My tender, vulnerable and growing heart became filled with joy and pride when I saw one of my students find their way on their own personal life’s journey. The same heart was broken and shattered into pieces many times when I revealed my true self, speaking from a place of personal and professional integrity.
During these years of bringing my passion for teaching, I’ve had to integrate the many parts of my own fragmented and broken kind of life. Call it the combining of all my personal souls work, identity and selfhood… with my professional, intellectual, spiritual lives. All from within my own deep personal quandaries and healing processes. People who know me have seen me through some dark times in my life. A kind of darkness that someone experiences when they don’t know why life is worth living. At some point I was turned on to Parker Palmer who described “The Hidden Wholeness” in all this division and darkness. An integration needed to take place for me. To find a place of grounding and wholeness. Eventually, becoming less divided, merging together many of my life’s experiences to be of service to others lives as well.
It’s been a great honor to have been given the faith and trust by American society to be placed in front of a group of students. At the same time experiencing the same public society, politicians, parents, and the media beat up the teachers for all their faults. When I finally travelled to other parts of the world, I was able to experience the elevated social status that teachers do not experience here in the USA. People who dedicated themselves to teaching have the bravery to commit courageous acts every day they venture into the classroom to care for the children, young adult students and are more often criticized than acclaimed.
Effective Teaching Is…
When I first began teaching, I wanted to learn all the tips, tricks, techniques, and technological wizardry. Thinking, by learning all of that, it would make me a good teacher. Which was only partially true. Teaching cannot be reduced to techniques, test results or course evaluations. It’s the teacher who has their whole being invested in the entire teaching process that makes an effective teacher. Someone who is bridging the gap between the student-teacher hierarchy. Building the bridge to connect the student to the subject. So, the students can face into their own personal fear and the fears in the subject matter. It’s the teacher with the fearless and hospitable heart, fully invested, who builds that relational heart to heart bridge. It is this quest for individual authenticity and engaging in genuine inquiry that makes the learning and growth process work. Not in a classroom in which students keep their heads down, take notes, and feed it back on a test.
My idea of what I thought effective teaching was supposed to look like had changed. I knew I had to bring more of my own true identity and integrity as a human into the classroom. For many years I was able to isolate myself in my scholarly solitude of the kitchen classroom. Deceptively thinking I put the past behind me. The idea of my separate and scholarly solitude in the inner classroom was asking to become integrated with my outer personal practices I was doing in my own life.
As I learned more about my own true self, I began to connect more deeply with the true selves of my students. I wanted to become more skilled at arousing my students’ authentic selves, cultivating their unique gifts, to draw out their own fullness, their unique self, and their own agency. My teaching needed to include both disciplinary knowledge and methods, while always trying to make the connection between who the exceptional human is in front of me, and the knowledge the student needs to take the next steps on their vocational journey. I recognized that my teaching was becoming more fundamentally aware of the pursuit of our humanness, and that became more interesting to me. My students needed to be able to perform a role with knowledge and skill AND be able to enter a deeply human exchange with others having a passion in the same professional practice.
Darkness Reveals the Light
My marriage ended and I entered a period of darkness. I was able to focus on my own personal healing and growth. My experience of darkness was an essential part of coming into my true self and emerging into the light. I realized that we all dissent into dark times of our lives. We as elders do the younger generations a disservice when we withhold the shadowy parts of our lives. My experience was that there were very few elders willing to talk about their darkness; most of them pretended that success was all they had ever known. In my darkness I thought I had developed my own unique and terminal case of failure. I did not realize that I had merely embarked on a journey toward joining the human race even more fully.
After a while, I became aware that I was living more of a divided life than I wanted to. I was not bringing the learnings and teachings from my personal life and my truest self into my teaching and vocation. As I continued to grow personally, I became comfortable taking more risks in my personal life. I realized I was living my life by the expectations from the outside world and not from my inside out. I was embracing a “noble” way to live my life that was not my own. A life spent doing what others and society determined my success instead of listening to my heart. I was violating my true self and it cost me greatly by holding me back and not honoring the truth of who I am. I learned how to listen to the voice of my life and loosen my grip to being the person others and my job wanted me to be. Before I can determine what I wanted to do with my life, I must listen for the truths and values at the heart of my own identity, not the outside standards by which I must live.
Out From the Solitude
As I made my way out from the solitude of the inner classroom, I had to gain the courage to stand up and speak against the powers that be. To join into the political processes around the educational system and confront the various quick fix initiatives to reclaim the humanness of teaching. Politicians and college administrators were gauging a successful institution by high testing grades, and high retention / graduation rates, finding extra money, creating up to date curriculum, and implementing state of the art technologies and techniques.
I was subconsciously ignoring the failing transparency, power struggles and lack of communication between the administration and the teachers. There was a lack of trust between teacher-to-teacher and teacher-to-administrator. How is it possible to have good program learning outcomes for students when there was a low level of trust between constituents? It was heartbreaking to see all the outside forces trying to determine models of determining success… what made a successful teacher, what factors made a successful student and what constituted a good academic institution.
True Self & Identity
I was becoming more attuned to my true self and my own identity. The intrinsic gifts within my own true nature came more naturally to the surface. I was becoming more of myself. Which meant that I was able to give my gifts more fully because they were integral to my own true reality. I began to give more of myself that was growing from within me without my soul being depleted. I was more whole in my being.
A new beginning started. My teaching shifted. I was no longer teaching to the test, or blamed myself when a student failed out or decided this was not the vocation for them. I brought more of my own humanity into the classroom. Unafraid to confront my students when they did not do their homework, when they came dressed in a dirty uniform and had no idea of the lesson plans for the day. In fact, after a student was spoken to several times and demonstrated they were not performing as expected which would leave them fired from a job, I asked them to take the day off and do some self-reflection. I was veering from the hierarchical teacher/student relationship and operating more from a human level with my students. Unfortunately, not everyone saw that as the case. I found myself at odds with the institution and was punished for it.
A Violation of Ethics?
There were many times I felt like was violating the educational institution’s ethical standards. I was participating in my students’ personal growth and learning without much of an interest whether they got good grades or returned for the next semester or even graduated. My perspective changed. To say that all students who have earned degrees have developed the skills they need to be ready for a job in the workforce isn’t usually the case. Obtaining a degree from an academic institution shows that someone was able to finish something that they started. A valuable life skill. Requiring students to develop a resilient mindset, retain focus, and not give in to distractions.
Challenging the institution with this perspective certainly seemed like a breach of my contract and a way I could get myself dismissed. Perpetuating my scholarly solitude and isolation in the classroom. I could not locate anyone to share my perspective and my broken heart. My heartbreak continued in isolation. While I thrived in the kitchen classroom offering the gifts of my heart to the students and my ongoing and emerging process. I wished I had a group of other people where we could share some of these common values, beliefs, and goals, leading to a sense of congruence and bond within the academic community. I still dream of such a group where there is alignment between personal values and the values upheld by the community.
Culture of Fear
We are living in a culture of fear that is not only inside institutions and organizations, but within society itself. The culture of fear does not support someone really following their personal integrity, morals, and values within an organization. It promotes silence and non-confrontational behavior, because if you did speak up, you will most likely be ridiculed, shamed for doing so, and left embarrassed with your tail between your legs. I was pushed aside, reassigned, silenced, and treated like the enemy.
Institutions are only interested in self-preservation and self-protecting their political and administrative initiatives such as ”no child left behind”, and “guided pathways” before they are interested in being of service to the people. Fear continues to be the mechanism to keep the free thinkers and challengers at bay. Keeping people disempowered, so they remain too fearful of their own fates and to discourage a challenge to the perceived authority.
The Futile Fight Against Reality
As much as I try, accepting things in life as they are can be difficult. I know I am not alone in this struggle. Being peaceful and allo
wing life to be as it is, is one of the most common struggles of human existence. As cliche as it may sound to me. I’ve been able to flow within the institution and the process for a quarter century. Not completely perfect all the time. I’ve definitely made mistakes. It’s gotten to a place where I cannot fight against the status quo and how things work in academia anymore. Being told, “don’t be dismayed that we are not aware of the problems, we are just choosing to deal with them in this way”. The way being, not to address the problems head on, but to move me out because I was not happy. Without realizing that my unhappiness was the administration’s failure to address the problems head on. Turning me into the scapegoat and the enemy.
As you can imagine, there are many contracts and rules in this state funded, government run, union based, community college. There is a political institutional dance that needs to happen between people which will determine your success or not. I have not been all that successful in the political aspect of my job. I wear my heart on my sleeve, am a sensitive man, and speak my truth when I see wrongdoings. I have sent angry emails I should not have and told people what I think about how well (or not) they are doing their job. I continue to be jaw droppingly amazed at the absurd processes big bureaucracy needs to perform and some of the decisions that are made in complete disregard to the humanness of the people.
Not So Subtle Ending
I have lived my own epic story during this course of a quarter century as a college professor. Being of service to my heart’s purpose, to my student’s growth, and to the institution in which I work within. I have grown considerably and made many personal and professional achievements. I have stumbled and fallen because I made mistakes, got back up to face another day, to humbly ask for forgiveness and try again. I can hold both sides of the equation and the argument. Being grateful to have had this opportunity to grow, have an influence on students’ lives, with the stories I can tell. At the same time, being exhausted from the bureaucratic, political, and institutional dance that I no longer have the energy for.
May I be released from this job of a quarter century with dignity, grace, and respect.