The+Courage+to+Teach

In __The Courage to Teach,__ Palmer opens by telling the reader that the entire book will be based on the assertion that good teaching is not based on the teacher’s technique, but rather that it comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher. Good teachers, through understanding and being aware of their own selfhood--their identities and integrities--are able to connect with their students, and in turn, connect them to the subject being taught. Good teachers do not rely on methods and techniques. Rather, they make themselves available and vulnerable to “the service of learning.” Bad teachers, on the other hand, distance themselves from the subject they are teaching, and by doing this they distance themselves from their students. The first part of the book deals mostly with the idea that a teacher must have a strong sense of self before he can impart his knowledge on students. The teacher must recognize that the people are called to teach by their encounters with mentors. One must be careful not to idealize their mentor so much that they try to teach in the same way, for this usually goes against one’s own integrity. Other people are called to teach by encountering a particular subject matter that appeals to their integrity..........
 * __Summary:.__**

Chapter 2 deals primarily with the different aspects of fear as it relates to students and teaching. Many classrooms are so riddled with fear--fear of embarrassment, fear of bad grades, etc--that students who were born with the love of learning grow to hate the idea of school. Diversity in classrooms sometimes leads to a fear of conflicts that will ensue when divergent truths meet. Other fears can help us survive, or even learn and grow. For example, a teacher’s fear that he is teaching poorly is evidence that he cares about teaching, not a sign of his failure. Palmer talks about a particular “Student From Hell” that he encountered later on in his career and how the student influenced him. The Student From Hell incited great fear in Palmer, a fear that he was not a good enough teacher to be able to inspire this student. However, after talking to the student, he realized the student actually had deep fears of his own, which showed Palmer that although silence, withdrawal, and cynicism are often signs of ignorance, it is equally possible that they are a result of fear. Good teaching, Palmer concludes, is an act of hospitality toward young people, and hospitality in general always benefits the host more than the guest.

In Chapter 3, Palmer concentrates on incorporating the concept of a paradox into education. He states that the majority of people “think the world apart” because we are trained neither to voice both sides of an issue nor listen with both ears. We always try to argue the other side with an “either-or” mentality, rather than connecting them (“thinking the world together”) in a “both-and” mentality. Palmer explains that the poles of a paradox are like the poles of a battery: hold them together and they generate the energy of life; pull them apart, and the current stops flowing. As if breathing in without breathing out, when we seperate //any// of the profound paired truths of our lives, Palmer explains that we become lifeless. With the paradoxes of education in mind, Palmer assembled a list of some strengths of teaching and reflects on some of his weaknesses of teaching. Furthermore, he outlines six paradoxical tensions to add up to a sound pedagogy and to structure the classroom: a space that should be bounded but open, hospitable and "charged", invite the voice of the individual and the voice of the group, honor the students' "little" stories and the "big" stories of disciplines and tradition, support solitude and surround it with the resources of community, and welcome both silence and speech.

Chapter 4 focused on the role of community in teaching and learning. Palmer explores different types of community in education which "enhance and advance the educational mission of knowing, teaching, and learning." The three types of communities of truth that are analyzed in this chapter are the therapeutic, civic, and marketing models. Palmer states that the therapeutic model has a place in education "simply because any loveless enterprise is likely to pathological." On the other hand, conventional applications of the therapeutic model take this idea too far and the intimacy within education goes too far. The civic model of community helps to correct the therapeutic model in which resources are provided to resolve mutual conflicts and problems in a non-intimate way. The civic model has aspects that are vital to teaching and learning in regards to "political correctness" but also contains threats to education's core mission including the conflict between a majority rule and the quest for truth. The marketing model focuses on the ability of bill-paying students and parents to criticize their purchases. Palmer discusses in detail the subject of reality and finding truth through community and the intricate methods of doing so, including: inviting diversity into community, embracing ambiguity for the inadequacy of our understanding of great things, creative conflict to correct our biases about the nature of great things, etc. He concludes these ideas in a discussion of our knowledge of things around us that are great and sacred and explains why we need to come to a fuller understanding of them.

In Chapter 5, Palmer goes on to continue to explain the importance of community in teaching. He also goes on to explain the effectiveness of A subject-centered education. In this type of education, the focus of the class is not revolved around the students or the teaching giving all of their knowledge and making the class all about them, it is concentrated on making the classroom about the subject. In this type of classroom it is encouraged for students to use their own knowledge and contradict the teacher and ask questions. This can be shown by service-learning programs or by means of digital technology. They have the freedom to learn on their own and experience their education in different ways which makes them more interested and engaged in the subject. Palmer states that as teachers, we should not occupy all the space with knowledge but to leave some open space for the students to learn on their own and expand on their thought. He states that as teachers, we cannot cram facts down the students throats or their grasps of the facts will be fleeting. By teaching this way, you serve both the subject and student by feeding them with bits of knowledge and then showing them where the information came from and what it means. He goes on to explain how as teachers to resist feeding the students with all the knowledge they are given and leaving the open space and how asking questions leading to open discussion and learning through dialogue with other students is more effective for the student. Palmer goes on to explain how people question the theory of a learning community because they say it can't exist with the division of power between the student and teacher. Especially where grading and evaluation is concerned, yet Palmer agrues that a teacher can evaluate in a way that emphasizes learning rather than judging such as letting children re-write papers to get better grades. He says that the real struggle is the lack of interdependence in the student teacher relationship. Both student and teacher should rely on eacother to create the ideal community. He concludes this chapter by saying if we learn to become dependant on our students as they are on us then we will move closer toward our goal as a community and learning will happen for everyone in "surprising and life-giving ways."

Chapter 6 is also revolved around the community but begins to go into the faculty community and how we must communicate with eachother to grow and learn as teachers. Palmer states that if we want to grow in the practice of education that we must go to the inner ground from which teaching comes from and to the community of fellow teachers from whom we can learn more about ourselves and our craft. He states how in our profession, we are behind closed doors with no one evaluating us and telling us what we are doing wrong yet when we come out, it is still not discussed. The only was to effectively evaluate a teacher is to be there. He states that because of this privatization, we must encourage conversation with colleagues with three essential elements: new topics of converstaion, ground rules for our dialogue and leaders who expect and invite the conversation. In the new topics, we do not discus methods of education but classroom experiences, influences on our craft, the human condition of teachers and learners as well as many other things while being open and honest and not critisizing or counseling others. The ground rules are to not try to fix everyones problem when in conversation but let the person resolve their issue on their own but be there to listen. Ask questions and give your undivided attention without making it about yourself or giving advise. Finally, we need a leader to intiate this conversation and provide occasions where teachers amoung themselves or with students can discuss their concerns. Palmer finishes by saying that this conversation is nessecary for a teacher to grow and learn about their trade and when we lead and communicate, we all have a chance to heal and lead a new life. Learning together is the best thing for everyone.

In Chapter 7, Palmer identifies the idea of creating movements to transform society. There are four stages that he discusses which is the process for a movement to happen. These stages do not always happen in an order, but can happen simultaneously. In stage 1, due to a situation one may be struggling with, the individual makes a decision to “live divided no more” (166). Stage 2, the individuals form communities of congruence. In stage 3, these communities learn to grow a voice and start going public. In stage 4, “a system of alternative rewards emerges to sustain the movement’s vision and to put pressure for change on the standard institutional reward system” (166). He uses Rosa Parks as an example for this theory. She was a isolated individual who had a vision and did not want to suffer any longer. One day she decided to make a change by sitting in the front seat of a bus. She was aware of repercussions but was tired and more aware that something needed to be done. Next, individuals including Martin Luther King Jr. formed a community of people with like causes and took this movement to the next stage, by going public. The final result was that African Americans were now able to sit in the front of the bus due to segregation being unconstitutional.


 * __Key Passages:__**

“…in every class I teach, my ability to connect with my students, and to connect them with the subject, depends less on the methods I use than on the degree to which I know and trust my selfhood--and am willing to make it available and vulnerable in the service of learning.” (10)

“The more one loves teaching, the more heartbreaking it can be. The courage to teach is the courage to keep one’s heart open in those very moments when the heart is asked to hold more than it is able so that teacher and students and subject can be woven into the fabric of community that learning, and living, require.” (11)

“The self is not infinitely elastic--it has potentials and it has limitations. If we do work that lacks integrity for us, then we, the work, and the people we do it with will suffer.” (16)

“We learn experimentally that we thrive on some connection and wither with others…experimentation is risky…but if we want to deepen our understanding of our own integrity, experiment we must--and then be willing to make choices as we view the experimental results.” (16)

“In a culture that sometimes equates work with suffering, it is revolutionary to suggest that the best inward sign of vocation is deep gladness--revolutionary but true.” (30)

“The teacher within stands guard at the gate of selfhood, warding off whatever insults our integrity and welcoming whatever affirms it.” (31)

"The opposite of a true statement is a false statement, but the opposite of a profound truth can be another profound truth." (62)

"Community- an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace, the flowing of personal identity and integrity into the world of relationships." (90)

"Bill-paying students and parents are often treated by academics with lese majeste: we believe that no one except our peers can adequately judge our work- and we are not entirely sure about them!" (93)

“Our knowledge of the world comes from gathering around great things in a complex and interactive community of truth. But good teachers do more than deliver the news from that community to their students. Good teachers replicate the process of knowing by engaging students in the dynamics of the community of truth.” (115)

“Community, or connectedness, is the principle behind good teaching, but different teachers with different gifts create community in surprisingly diverse ways, using widely divergent methods.” (115)

“Modeled on the community of truth, this classroom in which the teacher and students alike are focused on a great thing, a classroom in which the best features of teacher- and student-centered education are merged and transcended by putting not teacher, not student, but subject at the center of our attention.” (116)

“In a subject-centered classroom, the teacher’s central task is to give the great things an independent voice- capacity to speak its truth quite apart from the teacher’s voice in terms that students can hear and understand. When the great thing speaks for itself, teachers and students are more likely to come to a genuine learning community, a community that does not collapse into the egos of students or teacher but knows itself accountable to the subject at its core.” (118)

“A subject-centered classroom honors one of the most vital needs our students have: to be introduced to a world larger than their own experiences and egos, a world that expands their personal boundaries and enlarges their sense of community” (120)

“A subject-centered classroom also honors one of the most vital needs as teachers: to invigorate those connections between our subjects, our students, and our souls that help make us whole again and again.” (120)

“Facts are far better delivered via texts or electronic formats, where students can do with them what the brain requires: to look at them once, look at them again, and check them once more, than massage them, correlate them, and apply them- in brief but frequent installments.”(121)

“Teaching from the microcosm, we exercise responsibility towards both the subject and our students by refusing merely to send data “bites” down the intellectual food chain but by helping our students understand where the information comes from and what it means.”(123)

“The skill of asking questions goes beyond asking the right kinds of questions to asking them in a manner neither threatening nor demeaning- and receiving answers in the same open and inviting way.” (134)

“….another competence is needed: the ability to turn a question-and-answer session between the teacher and individual student into a complex communal dialogue that bounces all around the room.” (134)

“We can invent ways of using grades that emphasize learning rather than judging and collaboration rather than competition, thus enhancing contributions grades can make on the community.” (138)

“The real threat to the community in the classroom is not power and status differences between teachers and students but the lack of interdependence… When we are not dependant on each other, community will not happen.” (139)

“When we are willing to abandon our self-protective professional autonomy and make ourselves as dependant on our students as they are on us, we move closer to the interdependence that the community of truth requires.” (140)

"If we want to grow in our practice, we have two primary places to go: to the inner ground from which good teaching comes and to the community of fellow teachers from whom we can learn more about ourselves and our craft." (141)

"There is only one honest way to evaluate the many varieties of good teaching with the subtley required: its called being there. We must observe eachother teach, at least occasionally- and we must spend more time talking to eachother about teaching." (143)

"We grow by private trial and error, to be sure- but our willingness to try, to fail as individuals is severely limited when we are not supported by a community that encourages such risks." (144)

"Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique: good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher." (149)

"Undivided attention means letting the focus person, and his or her issue, be at the center if the circle without trying as a committee memeber to put yourself there.... Undivided attention means forgetting about yourself, and for just a couple hours, acting as if you has no other purpose on earth than to care for this human being." (153)

"If we are to have communities of discourse about teaching and learning- communities that are intentional about the topics to be pursued and the ground rules to be practiced- we need leaders who can call people towards that vision." (156)

"If we who lead and we who teach would take that counsel to heart, everyone in education, administrators and teachers and students alike, would have a chance at healing and new life. Learning-- learning together-- is the thing for all of us." (161)

"Organizations represent the principle of order and conservation: they are the vessels in which a society holds hard won treasures from the past." (164)

"Movement represents the principle of flux and change: they are the processes through which a society channels its energies from renewal and transformation." (164)

"There is a “movement mentally” in which resistance is received as the place where everything begins, not ends. In this mentality, not only does change happen in spite of institutional resistance, but resistance helps change happen. The resistance itself points to the need for something new." (165)

"The starting point of a movement…happens when isolated individuals who suffer from a situation that needs changing decide to live “divided no more.” (167)

"The second function of community congruence: to help people develop the language that can represent the movement’s vision giving that language the strength it will need to survive and thrive…People who use such language need a place to practice it, to grow accustomed to it, to have it affirmed by like-minded people before they speak it to a larder audience that may range from skeptical to hostile." (172-173)

"Communities of congruence are vital in educational reform, but creating them is made difficult by the privatization of academic life." (173)

"When a movement goes public, not only does it have a chance to influence others with its values but it also meets challenges that compel it to check and correct its values." (175)

"The “real” world of work is the source of much pedagogical experimentation and change, precisely because convectional top-down teaching doe not prepare students well for the realities of that world." (178-179)

"Not all will subscribe to the central premise of this book that good teaching can not be reduced to technique, for business is even more enamored of technique than education is." (179)

"Movements has the power to alter the logic of organizations because an organization is, at bottom, a system of social sanctions: do this and your will be punished; do that and you will be rewarded. As long as an institution controls the reward system in a given arena of activity---such as teaching---it has the power over the lives of everyone who wants to engage in that activity. But as soon as those people decided that the institution's punishments are irrelevant (which is the key to stage 1) and the movement evolves an alternative system of rewards around the activities people value (which is the key to stage 4), the institution's power starts to decline." (180)


 * __Key Terminology:__**

Identity -an existing nexus where all the forces that constitute your life converge in the mystery of self -these forces include: genetic makeup, nature of your parents, culture you grow up in, the good and harm others have done to you or you have done to others, and experiencing love or suffering.

Integrity -Whatever wholeness you are able to find within that nexus as its vectors form and reform the pattern of your life -Relating the forces of identity in ways that bring you wholeness and life rather than fragmentation and death

Remembering -Requires more than recalling facts -//­Re-membering// involves putting ourselves back together, recovering identity & integrity, reclaiming the wholeness of our lives

Mentoring -Mutuality that requires the student meeting the right teacher and the teacher meeting the right student

The Student From Hell -A universal archetype for a who student who appears lazy and ignorant, but usually is full of fear
 * -**This student exhibits behaviors such as silence, withdrawal, and cynicism in class, which are often also associated with ignorance

Stagnation -A state chosen by teachers who are so threatened by students that they barricade themselves behind their credentials, podiums, status, and research

Generativity -Ongoing possibility that no matter our age, we can help co-create the world

Truth -Emerges from a complex process of mutual inquiry, causing the classroom to look like a resourceful and independent community

Objectivism -The mode of knowing that dominates education -Portrays truth as something we can achieve only by disconnecting ourselves physically and emotionally from the thing we want to know -Creates disconnections between teachers, their subjects, and their students because it is rooted in fear

Paradox- a concept that is essential to 'thinking the world together' - a 'both-and' mentality of joining apparent opposites to embrace a profound truth rather than an empirical fact; an abstract mode of knowing and a lens through which one can learn more about the selfhood from which good teaching comes.

Rosa Park decision- naming and claiming one’s identity and integrity- rather than accusing one’s “enemies” of lacking the same.

Fascist “movement”- refuses to go public-and in that refusal it degenerates from being a movement to being an exercise of coercive power.

Authentic movements- willingly go public and engage in give-and-take, knowing that this public dialogue is a path toward the authority that comes from understanding and persuasion.

In-house “universities”- major corporations have these to help their employees keep pace with rapid change in society, technology, and markets.

Ancien regime- unbrave old world