If Today Were The Day You Had To Stop Teaching...

Too painful a thought.

I can't write this.

Return

Term has started and I rise each day with the excitement and expectation that teaching brings to my life. Students have returned to campus and it is once again alive, revived from its summer emptiness.

I am already in love with my classes, barely a week into the term. To my great delight, I have in each of them bright, engaged, committed minds who seek to challenge me and each other in the intellectual fencing match that can have no loser.

It is exhilarating to be in the same room with these students, caught up in the vibrant energy stream of their youthful exhuberance, of their existential certainty.

I know I will learn a lot from them and that makes me smile. I can't wait for the little pearls of wisdom my students always leave with me!

Treasures

"Ludus is the politicization of Paidea."

"Narrative is the application of the time dimension to our memories."

These little treasures make me happy.

It's Over

It was a day full of emotion for me, this April 3rd.

Last day of term - shouldn't there be at least a momentary gasp of relief? It was a very long winter, so should I not be feeling a weight lifting from my shoulders?

No feelings of relief, but rather a sweet melancholy that nuzzles my heart, a joyful narrative of triumphs ... in the past tense.

And there is also chest-swelling pride that peeks through at every opportunity. The growth, not only intellectual but also personal, that I was invited to witness in my students was unique, a process that can be seen only from the special vantage point of the classroom.

This is a year that I shall remember long after I have taken my leave of the university.

This was food for the soul.

Illuminating imaginations

"There are two ways of spreading light;
be the candle or the mirror that reflects it"
- Edith Wharton

Being a teacher is the centre of my professional life.

I have adapted theories of learning to my practice, specifically transformative learning and social constructivism, because I believe these processes empower my students.

I have developed courses around theories of learning, specifically inquiry-based learning, because I trust that, given the appropriate environment and encouragement, my students will take control of their own learning.

But above all, I have tried in my practice to be a model for my students, a model of the academic ideals I endeavour to convey to them, because I will not ask of my students anything that I would not demand of myself.

Do not perform as a teacher.

Be a teacher.

If, indeed, I as teacher have been a mirror in the classroom, the light from the imaginations of my students will illuminate the world.

End is in Sight

My students are running on fumes right now. I can see it in their body language and in their loss of responsiveness in class. And who can blame them?

They are being crushed under the weight of final essays, projects, seminars, assignments. Yes, many of them have procrastinated and time is now catching up to them. But many more are managing two or more jobs while still in school.

University is no longer the primary occupation of post-secondary students, as it was in my undergraduate career. University is now one more timed event that one must fit into a very busy life that is often governed by several part-time jobs.

Courage to share

I recently had the pleasure of witnessing a transformation in one of my classes. Before my very eyes, the students had morphed into a community of scholars, argumentative yet respectful of each other's ideas, engaged with the material yet still open to being persuaded to re-think their own views. They shared arguments they had made in a recent assignment, they referenced readings from a class given last semester, they called on knowledge acquired in related courses.

It was magic. What transformed this group, I believe, was trust -- trust in each other and in the learning space they had created for themselves, trust in the process of a truly student-centered education. Most importantly, I saw students trust themselves enough to take intellectual risks. It is a remarkable little community of scholars that has coalesced out of 24 random enrolments.

I cannot imagine a better way to spend my life than sharing ideas and debating with my students.

I cannot imagine a more powerful moment than when I slip so easily out of the role of teacher into the role of learner as my students share their lives, thoughts and passions with me, and graciously allow me to share mine with them.

Retirement beckons a short five years hence.

And I cannot imagine that first day of retirement ... without my students.

Transformed

It has happened.

Sometime during the weekend, the change crept over me, like dusk sidling up to day. It was never supposed to be like this.

Students often produce their creative projects for me in Mac format, so after at least 25 years of resisting it, I purchased a Macbook on Friday. It was for convenience, so I could read their work, and I could also dabble in the kind of creative process they were using and thus better understand their journey.

It was cute; a little white block and I must admit, I was impressed -- take it out of the box and thwwwzzziipppppppp! it worked. Found the wireless network, was fully charged, needed no multi-disk setup. It worked. And the aesthetics of its design were rather pleasing, from the charger plug with its fold-out cable coiler to the clever little battery button on the bottom. Hmmm, I allowed, well-designed, well thought-out.

Saturday night, I found myself cradling that little Macbook as I fell asleep.

It has happened.

I love my Mac.

Who am I NOW???

A "New" St. Thomas University

The faculty at St. Thomas fight on in their battle with their employer, for a battle it has been declared.

It demands solidarity and determination to walk picket lines in freezing rain and at times, in -18 C. weather.

The faculty are still locked out by the employer. Even if they abandoned the strike that was initiated a week after the lockout, they still could not return to their classrooms, and students would still be unable to resume their second term.

The St. Thomas administration has locked them out.

This is the communication each faculty member received at 4:30 on December 26:

Effective 6:00 p.m. on December 27, 2007, all Full- and Part-time members of FAUST employed by St. Thomas University will be locked-out from employment. No such employees will be permitted on the premises of St. Thomas University without the express written authorization of the University.

Locks were changed on all doors of the university. Faculty are prohibited by law from entering the university.

If I were a St. Thomas student, I would be demanding a tuition refund from the administration that is withholding access to my greatest resource, the professoriate.

A New Year - 2008 -- and We're Back!

So was hätt einmal fast die Welt regiert!
Die Völker wurden seiner Herr, jedoch
Daß keiner uns zu früh da triumphiert --
Der Schoß ist fruchtbar noch, aus dem das kroch!

Bert Brecht, Arturo Ui

"Do not rejoice in his defeat, you men. For though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again ..."


A new year was ushered in last night, an event which gives us pause to reflect on the year past and to look ahead with optimism and hope into the promise of 2008.

Not so in Fredericton, where our colleagues of St. Thomas University have been locked out since December 27! On this New Year's Day, when the rest of the country celebrates with municipal levées or merely nurses a slightly throbbing head, St. Thomas colleagues are opening their LOCK OUT HEADQUARTERS.

Make no mistake -- the Faculty Association of St. Thomas (FAUST) has not yet even called for a strike vote from its membership! They were bargaining in good faith against this administration when they were served with a notice of lockout on Boxing Day!

This is a first in Canadian university history, faculty locked out before they have even considered a strike. It is a sad and sorry precedent set by STU's President and Board of Governors. Imagine the message it is sending to its students -- "We have no interest in your term nor in your educational welfare. We intend to crush this union and train this faculty once and for all to obey their administration, and unfortunately you students merely got in the way."

A New Year ... and a new bully on the block.

St. Thomas students return to campus on January 9, but they return to classrooms that are empty because the President of St. Thomas and its Board of Governors have taken the utterly irresponsible action of locking out its professors. Make no mistake -- the Board of Governors has taken the tuition of these students and is now denying them what they have paid for in good faith.

Shame, President Higgins!
Shame, Governors!

The Final Post

 

 

Well, it has been one hell of a roller coaster ride, hasn't it? From October 18 until today, December 7, we have shared this space emotionally, viscerally: 7 weeks, 35 posts. Today it ends. I am going to pick up the unraveled threads of my work and finish my marking before grades are due. I can now turn my thoughts to a more deliberate celebration of the Christmas Feast than I had thought would be possible. And I will spend many, many moments over the holidays, lost in my thoughts over a mug of coffee or a pot of tea, trying to ascertain what I take with me from this experience. Some things are already clear to me:

• I have learned that I am first and foremost a teacher, for whom the thought of leaving my students for the picket line is the source of tremendous emotional distress.

• I have learned that open and honest communication with my students, with all students is vital for my university.

• I have learned how to better interpret the lexicon of negotiating. It is a language hitherto outlandish to most of us at Brock, but we are now ruefully more fluent in its Byzantine twists.

• I have watched my Faculty Association come of age. BUFA has been tempered in the crucible of robust challenge and has emerged the stronger for the tempering.

To the students who left comments, both laudatory and critical, I congratulate you on taking the time to express your views and to make a difference. To all those students who participated by sitting in, by writing letters and e-mails, by stopping to discuss the issues at the information pickets, by asking tough questions at the BUFA Info Session, by drawing editorial cartoons, by wearing a BUFA button (or a BUFA button that had been crossed out!) and also by discussing the strike issues with your friends and professors, I applaud your engagement. Time for me to take my dog for a walk. Good night and good bye.

Entspannen = literally "de-tense" or "de-tighten"

 

I have been home for a while now, and the news of no strike is just starting to register with me. At last, I may unclench all that I have been clenching! I sit in the recliner with a mug of hot, sweet tea, and as I mentally decompress, my body reacts with surprising swiftness. My biceps ache and when I reach to rub the decrepit muscle, it is alarmingly sore. Didn't realize that I externalized my tension to that degree. Just before I left the office, I took down three volumes from my bookshelf to bring home with me. 

 

The first, by Gerhart Hauptmann, is Die Weber, a social drama of Naturalism that chronicles the Silesian weavers' bitter uprising against exploitative bosses in 1848.

 The second is Germinal, Emile Zola's Naturalist novel of 1885 that is a fictional account of French miners whose need for social justice overcomes their personal fears and leads them to strike against the oppressive capitalist mine owners. 

 The last book is The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life by Parker Palmer, an "educational activist" who captured my heart in his introduction:

"This book is for teachers who have good days and bad—and whose bad days bring the suffering that comes only from something one loves. It is for teachers who refuse to harden their hearts, because they love learners, learning, and the teaching life."

Background reading for the next Collective Agreement in two years ...

Tentative Agreement!!

Yes, I am a bit late with this -- had an e-mail from my friend Roger Moore in New Brunswick telling me that he had already heard a tentative agreement had been reached. And students have been sending comments to report the same .

What a wonderful wonderful piece of news. Students will still find it hard to go back to studying after all the anxiety, but what a relief for all of us in the trenches, students and faculty alike!

Still, there is a dark corner of my mind that keeps nagging at me: "Could we not have settled this two weeks ago without putting the most important stakeholders, our students, through this night of hell?"

Oh, shut up Barry!! Push those dark thoughts aside, it's time to celebrate!

Students

Look at the comments from the Waiting post. I am so sick at heart I could hurl. I am terribly embarrassed that students thank me for maintaining this blog, when I am poised to take a step that will impede thelearning of my students, of every student at Brock. 

 

It is an act that is contrary in every way to my credo as a teacher and learner. It is an act into which I have been forced by an administration that seems to be imposing a corporate, top-down labour matrix on the university. And it is an act that I must (not gladly) see through. Through it all, students -- the ones so deeply affected, yet the least consulted -- are keeping this vigil with me. And I am humbled by their faith and their courage in this ordeal. During this ennervating strike process, I have been encouraged and inspired by students and their reactions.

• I recall the week-long sit in at the Tower elevators, the petition, the declaration of intent to return to bargaining signed by the BUFA negotiating team.
• I think of the letters to the Brock Press that I read. And I think of the many letters to the administration that went unanswered.
• I think of the editorial cartoons in the Press yesterday.
• I remember the e-mails from my current and former students, offering strength and moral reinforcement. And the e-mails from students I have never met have just stunned me!

If I may appropriate Shakespeare for this circumstance:

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee,--and then my state (Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate

Thank you. You deserve so much more than this. But thank you. As this day indeed breaks, and there is still no news, the students of Brock nevertheless raise my spirit.

As always.

Waiting ...

I wear my anxiety like a cold shroud, wrapped around my body, pulled tightly into the corners of my mouth and knotted hard in the small of my back.

This is the day of mediation between BUFA and the administration, the day on which so much hinges --for students, first of all. I hope they get to finish their semester without interruption. How will they enjoy a much deserved holiday if they have to continue to study?

Then for BUFA and me ... will I be on a picket line? Can I go 3 hours in sub-zero temperature without my back seizing up?

I draw my anxiety more tightly to my body, trying not to let it flap wildly for all to notice. I must attempt to get through the rest of the day.

When I get home, I get a phone call from my friend and colleague, Roger Moore (007) at St. Thomas University in Fredericton. Roger was in my 3M Teaching Fellowship cohort and we met at the Montebello Retreat in 2000.

He has been such a support, phoning regularly to boost my spirits, to lend me his ear so I can vent and to offer the wisdom of his experience with the CAUT Defence Fund. Roger was a flying picket at UPEI last year and has volunteered to come to Brock. His health will not permit him to join us this week, should we go out, but perhaps next week. He has been prescribed happy pills, as he calls them, for his back. I ask him to save me some.

Roger makes me laugh, which rends some of the anxiety that envelopes me.

As always, Roger's phone call has been therapeutic and I barely notice that my anxiety has almost slipped from my shoulders.

I grab it by the corner and drag it up the stairs behind me, tossing it in the corner of my study as I prepare to wait out the long night for news of the mediation.

No sleep tonight, old man.

Technology and the over 50's

I am 57 years old, hurtling towards 58. I ache a lot and I am beginning to forget things. I repeat myself constantly, without realizing it. I now laugh at the same silly things my parents used to find amusing. I repeat myself constantly, without realizing it. This is not a pretty transformation. I should have young people monitor me whenever I use digital technologies. Yes, I need surveillance at all times, something like an "Avoid Stupidity Panopticon." I had been wondering why no one had left comments, save for a few early on. I assumed that no one was really reading, so I continued on my merry way, posting and reflecting. Last night, I switched to the new version of Blogger and when I did, a screen popped up that read: You have twenty unpublished comments: Do you want to migrate them to Beta Blogger? 

 

 

 

 Imagine, if you will, the ease with which "Oooops!" slid from my lips! I had made this a moderated blog and expected to be e-mailed whenever a comment was posted -- but I had inserted my e-mail in the wrong box, the Comment Notification Address box. Meanwhile, the box for my e-mail under the Moderate Posts radio button was left blank. Hence, all these comments sat unseen and therefore unpublished. And I continued to post and reflect, oblivious to what must have been glaringly obvious to young users of this technology. I apologize to all who commented but never saw their remarks appear. It must have seemed odd indeed that there were no comments at all. So, to those who assumed that I was not publishing comments in order to suppress views not congruent with my own, sorry --I was not being devious, just dumb. All comments, brickbats and otherwise, are now published. One more time, for the record, this caveat:

• The posts to this blog represent my personal journal of the events leading up to the strike.
• I acknowledge the innate subjectivity publicly. That is why I chose to blog.
• That is why I have talked about my own anguish, my own frustrations, my own anxieties.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa This blog IS NOT the "Brock Faculty Strike" Wikipedia entry.

And one more time, I encourage you:

• Re-read the November 23 post
• Seek out dissenting opinions
• Read the blogs of those BUFA members who do not agree with strike action
• Make up your own mind after weighing up the evidence
• Do not rely on my views as the sole source of commentary on the strike

No Update for Students?

What is going on??

Why hasn't the Brock webpage been changed all weekend?

Why haven't students been informed of the postponement of mediation and hence postponement of the strike?

I am sure this is an unfortunate oversight that has not been corrected because it happened just before the weekend.

However, I do hope that the students I contacted, and those who read this blog have spread the word to as many as they can.

STRIKE POSTPONED

My stomach is still doing flip flops! I got the e-mail from BUFA President Barry Grant last night at 8:15 to announce that the strike date has been pushed back.

Unfortunately, there has been a death in the immediate family of the mediator and as a result, he cannot attend for the planned full day of mediation on Sunday December 3rd. Instead, the full 24 hours of mediation will now take place on Tuesday December 5, the Negotiating Team will report back to the BUFA Executive on Wednesday December 6, and any strike action necessary will take place on Thursday December 7 at the earliest.

Check out the details on the BUFA website at: http://bufaweb.com

This means, of course, that all exams scheduled for December 5th, and 6th will now go ahead as scheduled, as well as those that were already running on the 4th.

What a relief for those students who were on pins and needles, wondering whether they would sit their exam or not on those days!

Walking the Dog

I finally get a chance to smile, in the midst of the anxiety and stomach churning.

>

In an earlier post, I mentioned taking my dog for a walk in the wee hours of the morning. As the GMM was breaking up yesterday, Carol Sales asked me what kind of dog I had.

The therapeutic effect of writing this blog all at once took a back seat to my having opened the door to my personal life just the tiniest bit. My readings of Habermas and the public and private sphere had suddenly been reified in a very intimate way.

Let me introduce Zeus, a 9-year old Bichon Frisé.

Lately, as we two walk the empty sidewalks in the early morning silence, I find myself smiling and my stomach doesn't ache for a little while. It's a nice change.

Gathering in Solidarity

I took picket captain training yesterday at BUFA Strike HQ. It was a long afternoon of instruction in how to apply common sense to a sometimes difficult, potentially volatile situation. The repeated mantra of "Safety, safety, safety!" drove home the reality of the course upon which we may have to embark. This will be an unpleasant, uncomfortable, by necessity adversarial exercise.

I often do a mental run-through of the chronology of the negotiations that have taken place in the last 8 months and I always reach a point where it seems logical to me that this job action could have been averted. BUFA offered to consider arbitration on monetary issues if the non-monetary items could be settled through negotiation. This was BUFA's olive branch, our way of saying that WE WANT AN AGREEMENT, NOT A STRIKE.

The administration refused arbitration, even though the decision on salaries could have been to their advantage.

For some reason, I can't shake the feeling that faculty members have been forced deliberately and cynically onto the road to a strike, with all the tension, frustration, despair, and plummeting morale that comes with a strike.

And I can't help feeling that this behaviour is intended to influence not only the agreement that is on the table now, but also to set the tone for the next agreement to be negotiated 2-3 years from now.

If this is the case, I think the administration has badly misread the membership.

At the General Membership Meeting following the training for picket captains, the turnout was heavy and the mood was grim.

Each of us there knew only too well that the veil of change had fallen over Brock. With this pall hanging over the gathering, the new president's calls to collegiality, as late as the e-mail of November 29, seemed sterile and empty to most seated in the Brock Ballroom of the Four Points Sheraton .

As I circulated the room with my coffee, colleague after colleague volunteered comments on the distinct change and observed that the administration's behaviour towards negotiations was anything but collegial. This was an emergent leitmotif so strong that it was like reading Thomas Mann.

The meeting got underway and the cohesive spirit in the room was palpable. The membership had closed ranks and it was remarkable. Dignified determination fueled by the hurt of betrayal is the best way that I can verbalize what I felt coursing through the meeting.

We have fine, fine leadership in Barry Grant and the Executive.
Thank you.

We have a determined, patient, and dedicated Negotiating Team in Terry Carroll, Chief Negotiator, Don Dworet, Tom Jenkyns, Linda Lowry, Carol Sales, and Kimberly Benoit.
Thank you.

We have an active, organized Strike Action Committee chaired by Miriam Richards.
Thank you.

We have a united, committed Membership.
I am happy to be counted among your ranks.

As a young man, I was taught by my Chinese-Canadian father to avoid fighting at school, to use words as my defence.

"If they call you Chink, ask them if being born in Canada means you are not Canadian like them"

"If they call you egghead, ask them if that is worse than being ignorant."

But my father also warned me that sometimes talking just doesn't work.

Sometimes you just have to stand your ground and fight.