The Courage to Teach Guide for Reflection and Renewal, 20th Anniversary Edition E-Book
Parker J. Palmer
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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Sprache: Englisch
20th ANNIVERSARY EDITION The Courage to Teach Guide for Reflection & Renewal is a helpful companion to Parker J. Palmer's classic work on restoring identity and integrity to professional life. A superb resource for those who wish to extend their exploration of the ideas in The Courage to Teach, as individuals or part of a study group, the Guide provides practical ways to create "safe space" for honest reflection and probing conversations and offers chapter-by-chapter questions and exercises to further explore the many insights in The Courage to Teach. The bonus online content includes a 70-minute interview with Parker Palmer, in which Palmer reflects on a wide range of subjects including the heart of the teacher, the crisis in education, diverse ways of knowing, relationships in teaching and learning, approaches to institutional transformation, and teachers as "culture heroes." Discussion questions related to the topics explored in the interview have been integrated into the Guide, giving individuals and study groups a chance to have "a conversation with the author" as well as an engagement with the text.
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Seitenzahl: 216
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
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CONTENTS
Foreword
Introduction
Part One: Guidelines for Individual and Group Study
Individual Study
Group Study
A Word of Encouragement
Note
Part Two: Questions and Activities for Each Chapter
Chapter I: The Heart of a Teacher: Identity and Integrity in Teaching
Chapter II: A Culture of Fear: Education and the Disconnected Life
Chapter III: The Hidden Wholeness: Paradox in Teaching and Learning
Chapter IV: Knowing in Community: Joined by the Grace of Great Things
Chapter V: Teaching in Community: A Subject-Centered Education
Chapter VI: Learning in Community: The Conversation of Colleagues
Chapter VII: Divided No More: Teaching from a Heart of Hope
Afterword to the Tenth Anniversary Edition: The New Professional: Education for Transformation
Appendixes
Appendix A: Suggestions for Organizing a
Courage to Teach
Book Discussion Group
Sample Invitation Letter for a
Courage to Teach
Book Discussion Group
Sample Follow-Up Letter for a
Courage to Teach
Book Discussion Group
Appendix B: The Heart of a Teacher: Identity and Integrity in Teaching
We Teach Who We Are
Teaching Beyond Technique
Teaching and True Self
When Teachers Lose Heart
Listening to the Teacher Within
Institutions and the Human Heart
Notes
Appendix C: The Clearness Committee: A Communal Approach to Discernment
The Truth Beneath My Fear
Learning to Ask
Gaining Clarity
No One to Fool but Myself
Cause for Celebration
A Bird in the Hand
Notes
Appendix D: About the Center for Courage & Renewal
Appendix E: The Courage to Teach: A Retreat Program for Personal Renewal and Institutional Transformation
The Courage to Teach Program
The Courage to Teach and Institutional Transformation
Notes
Appendix F: Resources for
Courage to Teach
Discussion Groups
Primary Resources
Other Works by Parker J. Palmer
Additional Resources
The Authors
About the Companion Media
EULA
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
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Foreword
When I published The Courage to Teach in 1997, I hoped it would contribute to the growing national conversation about reforming education, especially teaching and learning. Over the past two decades, that hope has been fulfilled to a greater degree than I ever imagined possible. Now, in 2017, with the publication of a 20th anniversary edition of The Courage to Teach, my hope is that the book will continue to contribute to a conversation that has become wider, deeper, and more persuasive as the years have gone by.
That the book has been a best seller is gratifying, of course. But far more important to me are the messages I receive from educators who tell me that The Courage to Teach speaks their truth—and that they are acting on some of its ideas. Today, twenty years after publication, it seems clear that the book has contributed not only to a conversation but to a movement for education reform, animated by research, publications, workshops, and conferences, and sometimes resulting in transformed institutional policies and practices.
The fact that Courage has attracted many readers from worlds other than education—including medicine, ministry, law, politics, philanthropy, and nonprofit leadership—has both gratified and surprised me. And yet, looking back, perhaps I should have expected this. Ever since the book came out, people have asked me, “Why not a book called The Courage to Lead,The Courage to Serve, or The Courage to Heal? So many insights in The Courage to Teach apply to other fields.”
The serving professions attract many people who are animated by imperatives of the heart. Their work is challenging, and frequently housed in dysfunctional institutions. So teachers, physicians, clergy, and the like often suffer from losing heart—and the quality of their work suffers with them. Many of them seek some sort of personal and professional renewal, asking, “How can I take heart again so I can give heart to others—which is what called me to this work in the first place.”
As a writer, I've always wanted to do more than put ideas on the page. I've wanted to “put wheels” on those ideas, creating programmatic “vehicles” that readers can ride toward destinations of their own choosing, including renewal. That's why, in the 1990s, while I was writing The Courage to Teach, I planted the seeds of what became the Center for Courage & Renewal—a nonprofit that's still going strong today, with some 300 well-trained facilitators around the world, who offer retreats and workshops for people in many walks of life. Put simply, the Center helps people “take heart” so they can “give heart” to those they serve—students and patients, parishioners and clients, staff and other stakeholders. (Information about the Center and its programs can be found in Appendix D and at www.CourageRenewal.org.) Please think of this Guide as yet another way of “putting wheels” on the ideas related to The Courage to Teach.
With this edition of the Guide you will find a link to an online series of audio and video interviews with me, and a video tour of a retreat program for personal and professional renewal—also called “The Courage to Teach”—that has developed over the past twenty-five years. (The online contents, as listed in About the Companion Media in this book, are available at http://bit.ly/CTTconv. More information about “The Courage to Teach” program, which is now up and running across the country, will be found in Appendixes D and E and at www.CourageRenewal.org). We hope that the online videos will make it even easier for individuals and groups to be in dialogue with the ideas in the book.
Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” I am grateful to the Jossey-Bass staff for understanding those words, for wanting to help people in many lines of work live into their meaning, and for doing the hard work necessary to create this Guide and get it into the right hands.
Special thanks go to Jossey-Bass editor Kate Bradford, who was instrumental in updating this edition of the Guide. Thanks also to four treasured colleagues who are no longer at Jossey-Bass: my long-time editor Sheryl Fullerton, production editor Joanne Clapp Fullagar, editor Carol Brown, and the late Sarah Polster. Sarah brought me to Jossey-Bass, and I will always cherish her memory. Thanks also to Rachel Livsey, who wrote the first draft of the original Guide and provided a solid framework for it; to Judy Brown, Janis Claflin, Debbie DeWitt, Sally Hare, Marianne Houston, Marcy Jackson, Rick Jackson, and Penny Williamson—my friends and colleagues from the Center for Courage & Renewal—for providing materials from their own work with teachers; and to Marcy Jackson, Rick Jackson, Sharon Palmer, and Sarah Polster for their help in editing the first edition of the Guide. And thanks to David Leo-Nyquist for his thoughtful reflections on how the Guide could help readers understand that the phrase “the courage to teach” now names not only a book but a program for personal and professional renewal and a growing movement for institutional transformation.
Last, but far from least, my heartfelt thanks go to my dear friend and colleague Megan Scribner for helping to create this Guide with her typical skill, speed, and savoir faire. Without Megan's good work, the Guide would not be.
Parker J. Palmer
Madison, Wisconsin May 2017
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.
Those words, from the first page of The Courage to Teach, also describe the kind of teachers for whom we wrote this Guide for Reflection and Renewal. Designed to support both solitary reflection and group dialogue, the Guide offers a variety of approaches to “exploring the inner landscape of a teacher's life.”
Why embark on an inner journey in the first place? Because teaching, like any truly human activity, emerges from one's inwardness, for better or worse. As I teach, I project the condition of my soul onto my students, my subject, and our way of being together. The entanglements I experience in the classroom are often no more or less than the convolutions of my inner life. Viewed from this angle, teaching holds a mirror to the soul. If I am willing to look in that mirror and not run from what I see, I have a chance to gain self-knowledge—and knowing myself is as crucial to good teaching as knowing my students and my subject.
Of course, this focus on the teacher's inner life is not exactly a conventional approach to problem solving in education! We normally try to resolve educational dilemmas by adopting a new technique or changing the curriculum, not by deepening our own sense of identity and integrity. We focus on the “whats” and the “hows” of teaching—“What subjects shall we teach?” and “What methods shall we use?”—questions that are obviously worth asking.
But rarely, if ever, do we ask the equally important “who” question: “Who is the self that teaches? How does the quality of my selfhood form, or deform, the way I relate to my students, my subject, my colleagues, my world? And how can educational institutions help teachers sustain and deepen the selfhood from which good teaching comes?”
This Guide, like the book to which it is kin, invites us to explore the inner landscape of a teacher's life along three distinct but related pathways: intellectual, emotional, and spiritual. By intellectual, I mean the way we think about teaching and learning, about our subjects and our students. By emotional, I mean the way we and our students feel as we teach and learn. By spiritual, I refer to the diverse ways we deal with our eternal longing to be connected with something larger than our own egos.
In The Courage to Teach, I wrote, “Intellect, emotion, and spirit depend on one another for wholeness. They are interwoven in the human self and in education at its best, and I have tried to interweave them in this book as well.” I have also tried to interweave them in this Guide for Reflection and Renewal.
If you are not a teacher, when you find references in this Guide to “teachers” and “teaching” or “learners” and “learning,” replace those words with whatever language applies to your profession. The materials in this Guide—like many of the insights in The Courage to Teach itself—can be translated into any line of work where it is important to connect who you are with what you do, to “rejoin soul and role.”
The Guide raises questions, examines ideas, explores images, and suggests practices that emerge from the insights offered in The Courage to Teach. Because the Guide is focused on the teacher's inner life rather than on techniques specific to certain teaching situations, it can be used by teachers at every level and in every setting: university professors, pre-K–12 teachers, community college faculty, adult educators, corporate trainers. Though our society tends to segregate and even rank teachers by “type,” the underlying dynamics of teaching cut across these differences, giving teachers of all sorts common struggles and joys.
This Guide includes references to companion videos, including a seventy-minute interview I did to explore various themes related to the book called The Courage to Teach and to the retreat program of the same name. You can read more about the program in Appendixes D and E at the back of this Guide and take an audiovisual tour of it in the videos. The videos can be found at http://bit.ly/CTTconv, courtesy of the Center for Courage and Renewal. You may also download all companion media files at booksupport.wiley.com. You can view the videos in order from start to finish, of course, and use them in any way you see fit for personal reflection or with a book study group. But to make their use a bit easier, scattered throughout this Guide are references to particular segments of video that may enhance and enliven your exploration of particular themes from the book. Again, those segments will be found at http://bit.ly/CTTconv.
Part One of this Guide, “Guidelines for Individual and Group Study,” deals with the process of reflecting on The Courage to Teach and with getting ready for that process. Most of the suggestions are about creating “space”—physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual space—that is safe and trustworthy, conducive to honest self-exploration as well as corporate inquiry. Whether you are reflecting in solitude or serving as a group facilitator, these suggestions can help create a hospitable context for the work you want to do.
Part Two, “Questions and Activities for Each Chapter,” follows the flow of topics in the book, lifting up substantive issues about self and colleagues, students and subjects that can help teachers reflect on their vocation. These questions and activities reach across a wide range of possibilities—from conceptual challenges meant to provoke thought to emotional probes meant to evoke feeling to spiritual queries meant to illumine the foundations of one's life and work. We have tried to design this section to give you a wide range of choices as you seek the approaches that are most appropriate to your own needs or those of your group.
At the back of this Guide, we have assembled a variety of resources and background materials that we hope you will find helpful:
Appendixes A and B contain suggestions and materials to help you plan, design, and organize your
Courage to Teach
book discussion group.
Appendix C offers a detailed, in-depth description of a discernment process called the clearness committee, which is described in Part One of this
Guide.
Appendix D describes the work of the Center for Courage & Renewal and its Courage to Teach retreat program.
Appendix E describes the theory of personal and institutional transformation that animates and guides the Courage to Teach program.
Appendix F offers an annotated bibliography for those who want to know more about the many books, articles, and programs related to the book and the Courage to Teach program.
The journey to deepen our understanding of “the teaching self” is long, usually lifelong! Like any journey, it has its difficult passages. But the more familiar we are with our inner terrain, the more sure-footed our teaching—and living—becomes. By taking the inner journey, alone and together, we can contribute to the renewal of our individual vocations, to the reform of education as a whole, and to the well-being of the students we serve.
In the two decades since The Courage to Teach was published, the movement toward taking seriously the “inner landscape of a teacher's life” has gained momentum. Helping that movement along has been the Center for Courage & Renewal, founded in 1997 to administer the Courage to Teach program associated with the book.
Working through a network of nearly one hundred fifty trained facilitators, the Center offers programs in thirty states and fifty cities to help people in many walks of life “reconnect who they are with what they do.” In facilitated retreat groups called “circles of trust,” the Center today works not only with pre-K–12 educators in the public schools but with physicians, lawyers, clergy, foundation executives, politicians, and nonprofit leaders as well. More information about the Center for Courage & Renewal will be found in Appendix D and at the Center's Web site (www.CourageRenewal.org).
This Guide is intended to help you conduct the best possible personal or group exploration of TheCourage to Teach and the accompanying videos. But it is not intended to prepare you to become a facilitator of circles of trust of the sort sponsored by the Center for Courage & Renewal. If you are interested in becoming a facilitator, we suggest that you first read Parker J. Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life (Jossey-Bass, 2004). Then—if you want to experience a circle of trust and learn more about the art and craft of facilitation—please visit the Web site of the Center for Courage & Renewal to get information about its facilitator preparation program.
Part OneGuidelines for Individual and Group Study
Teaching is a vocation that requires constant renewal of mind, heart, and spirit—if we want to avoid burnout, take joy in our work, and grow in our service to students. As we seek renewal, there are two primary sources to which we can turn: the inner teacher who speaks in solitude, and the community of fellow teachers. The guidelines in Part One are intended to make the resources of both solitude and community more accessible to teachers in quest of renewal.
The issues raised by The Courage to Teach require us to practice openness and vulnerability, with ourselves and with each other, virtues that rarely receive their due in professional settings. We need guidelines for reflection and discussion that encourage us to explore our inner landscapes in a deeply respectful way, a way that encourages the soul to come forward and speak its truth.
What follows is not to be read as a manual of techniques for reflection; teaching and learning cannot be reduced to technique. What follows are reminders to walk quietly, remain observant, practice listening, and stay open to discovering the important truths that inhabit the inner landscapes of our lives.
If you are not a teacher, when you find references in this Guide to “teachers” and “teaching” or “learners” and “learning,” replace those words with whatever language applies to your profession. The materials in this Guide—like many of the insights in The Courage to Teach itself—can be translated into any line of work where it is important to connect who you are with what you do, to “rejoin soul and role.”
Individual Study
If you are studying The Courage to Teach solo, you doubtless know how you want to proceed because you know what works for you. But for whatever they may be worth, here are some reminders that may prove useful as you get under way.
Physical space is more important to reflection than we may understand—especially after spending years in educational institutions, which are notoriously insensitive to the impact that physical settings can have on the human spirit!
Try to find a place where you feel comfortable, one that is free from both distractions and interruptions. Some people can go on retreat by closing their office door and turning off the phone. Others need a space where there are no reminders of work to be done. Others need neutral turf where they can “disappear” into anonymity—a public library or a coffee shop. Still others need to be in a natural setting. Find a space that feels hospitable to you, and claim it for yourself.
If you are working through this Guide alone, one of your major challenges will be setting aside a scheduled time for reflection—and then holding to it. You may want to choose a regular day each week when you can protect at least an hour or two to reflect on your life as a teacher. Choose a time of day when you are the least likely to face other distractions—perhaps early in the morning before the pace of the workday quickens or late in the evening when your world has slowed a bit.
Once you have chosen a day and time, put it on your calendar and treat it as responsibly as you would treat any other commitment. If we take seriously our commitments to other people—as we would if we had a faculty meeting on the calendar—why not take our commitments to ourselves with equal seriousness?
Try to use your reflective time for just that—reflection rather than preparation for reflection. Prepare by reading the chapter you will be reflecting on a day or two before the time you have set aside to reflect. It might help to take some notes or make a journal entry about your reading as well. Let the material “steep” in your mind and heart before you explore it more intentionally. By preparing before reflecting, you leave more time for genuine “inner journeying,” for listening openly to what your inner teacher has to say.
Group Study
At the heart of The Courage to Teach is a pivotal image of teaching: “to teach is to create a space in which the community of truth is practiced.” Truth is defined as “an eternal conversation about things that matter, conducted with passion and discipline.” If you are convening and facilitating a group inquiry into the book, your goal is to prepare a space where the “community of truth” can be practiced around the issues in the book itself. (For suggestions and materials for convening a book discussion group, see Appendixes A and B.)
