Professor Emeritus as Elder?

By John D. Lawry

 

 

While on my fifth sabbatical two years ago, I decided that I did not want to teach full-time (four courses each semester at my institution) anymore. I was 62 and in my 35th year of teaching at the college level. And so I was delighted to read about Cornell University's new phased retirement plan for faculty who qualified in which they could teach half time at half salary for a period of one to five years. At my suggestion, our AAUP union was able to negotiate a similar plan and thus I have just completed my first of four years of phased retirement as I segue into emeritus status. What I did not expect was how much these developments would alter my life.

For one, I had a health scare while on my sabbatical. In the course of preparation for skin cancer surgery, a routine chest x-ray found a suspicious spot on my lung. It took weeks and many diagnostic tests to determine that it was benign and "nothing to worry about." But in the meantime I had to face my own mortality in a way that has never happened before. This was no small matter for someone who had missed one day of class due to illness in

35 years! As Kubler-Ross has said, "Scratch death and find a deeper life," and so I decided then that I wanted to develop a new course on "Death & Dying &endash; Life & Living," and I spent quite a bit of the sabbatical preparing this new course that I intuitively knew would be a learning experience for me as well as my students.

While on sabbatical I also began reflecting on something I had read years ago by a contemporary mystic, Bernadette Roberts, in The Path to No-self : "After two years at the university, I suddenly realized I had not learned a thing. Despite the influx of information, nothing really happened. I was the same person with the same mind--I had not grown at all. If learning could not bring about change, if it was not a way of growth, then the university was a waste of time" (p. 153). I also read Soren Gordhamer's Meeting with Mentors: A Young Adult Interviews Leading Visionaries. In it, Jack Kornfield, the Buddhist meditation teacher who graduated from Dartmouth in the 60s, talks about the quest for meaning and a spiritual longing that most adolescents experience and how higher education doesn't really address it very well. He goes on to say: "You need a mentor, someone who recognizes your gift in you, and who honors and challenges you, and says, 'You got good stuff in there young man or woman. Let me see it. I'm going to turn this whole thing over to you. Let's see how you can do it.' If you don't have a mentor like that, then you get lost and misguided very easily" (p. 34).

I was reminded of what Sharon Parks wrote years ago in The Critical Years: Young Adults and the Search for Meaning, Faith, and Commitment: "Every professor is potentially a spiritual guide and every syllabus a confession of faith" (p. 134). Although I read that book shortly after it was published in 1986, I don't think I really understood what Parks was talking about until recently. Another quote that got my attention was from Clement Mehlman, in an article entitled, "Walden Within." In it, Mehlman writes, "I have come to believe that students experience as curriculum what the teacher is doing inwardly and spiritually" (p. 306). When I read these lines, I felt as if I had been struck by lightening. I immediately thought of the real teachers in my life and realized that who they were was much more important than what, or even how, they taught.

Another source that has had a major influence on my teaching is Daniel Lindley's little known but remarkable reflections on his career in college teaching, This Rough Magic: The Life of Teaching. In a chapter titled, "Calling Spirits," Lindley writes: "The goal of teaching is not to teach 'well' or dramatically, or even superbly. In fact to try to do so is actually a problem, an over-involvement of ego. Teaching too dramatically, too 'effectively,' takes up all the space in the classroom. The teacher would outdo the students, so there would be no joining up" (p. 11). When I first started teaching, I thought the more drama, the more effective, even the more brilliant, the better. Now I am beginning to realize the hazards of what Lindley calls "taking up all the space in the classroom." As my ego needs become smaller, I am creating more space in my classrooms for my students. In fact, in all of my classes now the students and I sit in a circle and I am discovering in that space that my students are much more intelligent and mature than I ever realized!

As a result of this experience and reflections and the extra time available to me, I feel that I have begun to take on the role of mentor and elder with students and colleagues. I see and hear the spiritual longing in my students in ways that I never allowed myself to do before nor had the time to. My students seem to be noticing the shift as well. One student referred to one of my recent courses as "soul therapy;" another called it a "splash of cold water that made me think twice about what I was doing with my life." Another student put it this way, "It's funny, I never expected it, but in some small way I learned how to be okay with just me as a person. This is something I have dealt with all my life; just being able to find that inner strength was a huge accomplishment for me." And in the Life & Death course, a student began her final paper with this announcement: "So many things have happened to me and my concept of life this semester. Including taking this class, but also many others. I have learned that love does exist, that the reality we constantly perceive is not the sole definite reality, and that by learning about death through readings, videos, and stories I have come to appreciate and value my own life and life in general so much more."

And so I feel that something is indeed happening to me and to my teaching that I do not completely understand. I see and hear it in the words and faces of my students. I wonder whether other faculty have noticed similar changes toward the end of their careers. It seems to have something to do with aging and, hopefully, saging. For example, though feeling drawn for a number of years I somehow intuitively knew that I was not ready to teach in the College Bound program at the local women's maximum security prison until recently. Having taught there now for the past four years, I realize that my delaying was fortuitous. I would not have been ready for the challenge that I experienced from these women. My teaching experience at the prison these past four years has been very positive and I am now convinced that my being there at this time rather than at an earlier point in my career is providential. I feel as though I am on a mission, and the responses of my students support that feeling. For example, one inmate wrote at the end of a course on emotional literacy, "I have learnt so much about myself that I don't think this would have been possible had I tried this self-discovery on my own." And another: "I am not the same miserable, hurt and lost soul who was first incarcerated three years ago." Indeed, teaching at the prison has been one of the most satisfying experiences of my 37-year career in higher education.

Another area where I have noticed a change is my relationship with colleagues, especially younger colleagues. I seem to have become a mentor without even realizing it. Having become a carrier of the tradition of the college I am asked all kinds of questions from how to deal with difficult students to how to allocate retirement funds. But it frequently goes beyond the mundane to conversations about avoiding burnout and other more spiritual matters. Just the kinds of things that I imagine Native American "elders" have been doing for millennia.

It's not easy growing old in this culture, even in the ivory tower. But if emeritus status were to acquire the dignity and status of "elder" as in Native American culture then perhaps students and administrators would view the "graying of the faculty" very differently. We senior faculty still have a role to play. Perhaps the most important one of our career.

This, from a final entry in a student's journal in one of my classes last semester: "It felt like Mr. Rogers was leaving the neighborhood. Today was my last Perennial Quest class with Dr. Lawry & pals. Le sigh! When I saw him, smiling, standing at the doorway, one hand waving goodbye and the other carrying a canvas tote filled with our journals, final papers, and a talking stick &endash; I knew that I will never forget this sight. . . . I felt something special, like love in that group." It's going to be hard for "Mr. Rogers" to leave the neighborhood.

 

 

Notes

Gordhamer. S. Meetings With Mentors: A Young Adult Interviews Leading Visionaries. Santa Cruz, CA: Hanford Mead, 1995.

Lindley, D. This Rough Magic: The Life of Teaching. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 1993.

Mehlman, C. "Walden Within." In R. Miller (Ed.), New Directions in Education: Selections from Holistic Education Review. Brandon, VT: Holistic Education Press, 1991.

Parks, S. The Critical Years: Young Adults and the Search for Meaning, Faith, and

Commitment. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1986.

Roberts, B. The Path to No-self. Boston: Shambhala, 1985.

 

John D. Lawry is professor of psychology at Marymount College of Fordham University. He can be reached at lawry@fordham.edu.