By Lauretta Frederking, from a forthcoming collection of essays by University faculty about how they are not primarily professors of their subjects, but of something else altogether, to be edited by Shannon Mayer and Jacquie Van Hoomissen.
My richest learning and teaching haven’t happened in the classroom, or in the formal places of intellectual exchange. What I really teach has happened at those in-between places, the falling down moments, when I purposely shed my expertise. What I really teach seems to have happened when I am not teaching at all, just living a relationship of communion with students.
A few years ago I was introduced to the word ‘sophrosyne’. There is no precise translation of the Greek word into English. Really it can be explained only by a run of complexities, a balance of contraries: success and failure are equal imposters; everything matters for who we may be becoming and simultaneously nothing matters in terms of who we are. When pressed, it can be described with simplicity as “temperance” or “wisdom” though neither fully captures its essence. Sophrosyne is what I teach students during those in-between places and falling down moments. Things are often not as they appear on the surface or in the moment. Be cautious with good news because it may not be what you hoped for and be open to bad news because it may be the first carving out of a path of self-discovery.
I remember the long arc back to my college years when life appeared in binary terms — success/failure, acceptance/rejection, love/loss — and I vividly remember the stings and ecstasies of both. I see that similar disposition in students. A ‘C’ grade ruins them, a heartbreak destroys all future possibilities of happiness, and then on the other track an ‘A’ grade glorifies them, and a triumph affirms their superstardom destiny; and again and again, I try to be the sandpaper that reminds them an ‘A’ is a challenge, just as a ‘C/D/F’ may be an opportunity. Success and failure are equal imposters.
Most often, this teaching happens outside the classroom. One of my students came to me in the process of, and then in the final stage of, being dismissed from the university. He was devastated and also entirely to blame for the actions that led to his dismissal. I assured him that this might be the most defining moment of his life, not at all because of failure but because of its opportunity. “This could be the moment when you discover who you want to be and not be. Seize it. Wallow in it. But don’t ever forget that life is long enough and grace is powerful enough that this horrible moment may be your great opportunity.”
I have caught more than one student in the midst of cheating on a quiz, a test, an assignment. Certainly the University has a protocol for cheating. However, more important to me than the administrative steps, I ask a student if he or she is a cheater. Almost always, they respond no, no way, this was an accident, a mistake, etc. My response is simple and always the same: ‘If you cheat, you become a cheater. If you aren’t a cheater, don’t cheat, not even once. This is your time to figure out who you are. Let me know when you have figured it out.’ Often I see the outcome. He or she declares the turnaround to never cheat again, and they don’t. I believe them. Sometimes there is silence, or the student drops out of the class. While troubling, maybe those students have figured out who they are as well. I trust that our students’ roads extend beyond their time here on The Bluff, and each student carries the experiences and conversations and moments of reflection with them. Grace rarely happens in an expected way.
The University of Portland invites students and professors into relationship. I accept that a lot of my job is sharing information and expertise; but after 13 years here I realize there have been students who, for whatever reason or spiritual mystery, reach out in a way that invites me into being part of their life journey, figuring out who they are. We can keep it clean and transactional — you give me a paper and I give you a grade — or we can open it up to be a potentially meaningful place of growth. In so many ways, our students come to us socially hard-wired to think like strategic calculators when it comes to teachers and academic environments, and I want to tear down that assumption. We are different here, where teaching is more than being the most learned person in the room. Being there when students are overcoming adversity, and penetrating their authentic purpose, puts us at the center of who they are and what they will bring to the world. I hope our students have many successes and many failures — not to learn how to avoid the latter and win more of the former, but rather to learn that who they are is the same good and growing person regardless of what society gives them. Living from a place of who we are, less driven by illusions or expectations of where we think we need to be going, takes practice. We provide a safe place to figure it out. Sophrosyne.