The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life » (REV)

Parker J. Palmer is a highly respected writer who works indepandently on issues in education, community, spirituality, and social change; he offers lectures, workshops, and retreats across the country. In 1998, The Leadership Project, a survey of 11,000 educators, named Dr. Palmer as one of the thirty most influential senior leaders in higher education and one of ten key 'aganda-setters' of the past decade: He has inspired a generation of teachers and reformers with evocative visions of community, knowing, and spiritual wholeness. Dr. Palmer is senior associate of the American Association for Higher Education and senior advisor to the Fetzer Institute, for whom he designed the Teacher Formation Program for K-12 teachers. Author of such widely-praised books as The Company of Strangers, The Active Life, and To Know As We Are Known, he holds a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

A look at the inner life of the dedicated teacher: what it means to teach, what it takes to truly connect with students, and the importance of self-realization.

Publishers Weekly

Spiritual nurturing has been at the heart of both of Palmer's previous books, The Active Life and To Know as We Are Known. A teacher, speaker and writer who contends that teaching is an integral part of all his work, Palmer now explores the spirituality of teaching. He contends that the task of teaching is filled with joy and fear, success and failure, but, he says, "good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher." For Palmer, such integrity comes from the inner self of the teacher, and he argues that the courage to teach involves probing the heart to find the "heart's longing to be connected with the largeness of lifea longing that animates love and work." Palmer begins by arguing that many current teaching strategies, like the traditional lecture-hall setting where the teacher dispassionately dispenses knowledge, promote disconnectedness among students and teachers. He goes on to contend that teaching from a spiritually introspective position promotes a community of learning in which the teachers and students are connected in the learning process. Palmer lays bare his own struggles in engaging prose, and his book is sure to inspire the educational community to think in new ways about its tasks. (Jan.)

Gratitudes xv
Introduction: Teaching from Within 1
I The Heart of a Teacher: Identity and Integrity in Teaching 9
II A Culture of Fear: Education and the Disconnected Life 35
III The Hidden Wholeness: Paradox in Teaching and Learning 61
IV Knowing in Community: Joined by the Grace of Great Things 89
V Teaching in Community: A Subject-Centered Education 115
VI Learning in Community: The Conversation of Colleagues 141
VII Divided No More: Teaching from a Heart 163
of Hope Notes 185
The Author 191
Index 193