The Courage to Teach
Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life
-
- £11.99
-
- £11.99
Publisher Description
"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."
- Parker J. Palmer [from the Introduction]
Teachers choose their vocation for reasons of the heart, because they care deeply about their students and about their subject. But the demands of teaching cause too many educators to lose heart. Is it possible to take heart in teaching once more so that we can continue to do what good teachers always do -- give heart to our students?
In The Courage to Teach, Parker Palmer takes teachers on an inner journey toward reconnecting with their vocation and their students -- and recovering their passion for one of the most difficult and important of human endeavors.
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 life--a 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.
