Teaching Community College as Spiritual Practice

Many students who attend community college are the first in their family to go to college. Some attend because it is relatively inexpensive to get the two years of required classes completed. They then matriculate to a four year college if they can.

Some are non-traditional students who have started after raising a family or experiencing a job loss.
Some are returning veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

They go to school from disparate backgrounds. Despite their differences they have a need to succeed and be happy. Some will need remedial math and language classes.

Their lives are often personally chaotic-struggling with money issues, juggling family and jobs, trying to maintain the requisite high GPAs needed to get into particular fields of study.

I am so often amazed by the perseverance of these students. I hear their lives- vets with PTSD, students who are survivors of domestic violence, those from neighborhoods of violence. For some they have lost family members to violence: mothers whose sons have died in the wars on the home front and on foreign soil. For some the law of the street teaches them to be tough- or, at least, to pose as tough so as not to be victimized.

The question then is: How do I engage these students? The non-traditional students are usually older and may be a bit more mature.

The younger student, just out of high school, may be street smart yet lack insight into appropriate actions. I have had younger, more immature students walk out of my classroom, slamming the door in the process. Sometimes the issue isn't related to the class.

Students often have smart phones and may receive a text while in class. They then react to the text, often immediately, without thoughtful appraisal of alternatives.

How do I, the instructor, respond? That is the question.

We live in a fast-paced society and, too often, rush to action where a more thoughtful approach might be better.

How do I teach slowing down, being mindful?

Before I go into my classrooms I say to myself:
"May I be filled with loving kindness. May I be well. May I be happy. May I be peaceful. May I be patient."

The first four statements are from metta practice in Buddhism. The last statement is my own. I was finding myself being impatient with my students' questions. I would say, "It's in the syllabus" or something to that effect. What I needed to remember is to slow down and be patient. Some students don't  read the syllabus. It is my job to remind them to check it or they may be unpleasantly surprised when there is a test or a project due.

I, the instructor, can model kindness and patience. For some students I may be the only person in their day who has responded that way.

I, the instructor, can show the students another way to respond to confrontation. I have apologized to a class if I have been less than kind.

I hold myself up to high standards of engagement. I am accountable for my behavior. If I've made a mistake I tell them.

For me, being a "professor" is not a power trip. We share the space in the classroom. I may know a bit about theories of psychology but my students are experts at living their lives.

The Buddha said: Abandon what is unskillful.  And cultivate the good.

At best, I can help them abandon what is not skillful for them, those patterns of reacting that do not help them or keep them stuck.

At least, I can help them cultivate the good, in themselves, in their families, in their neighborhoods and in society. I can help them live a life of integrity, honesty and wholeness.

In our fragmented world with pulls on us in so many directions, feeling whole might be a good place to be- to come home to ourselves.

It has been said "If you really knew who you are, you would treat yourself with dignity." We are all, each and every one of us, an expression of the divine, the sacred.