Courage to Teach

The specific problems Parker J. Palmer addresses in Courage to Teach are relevant to secondary schools, especially large schools where there is a lack of community, not only universities that he draws from for his examples. At my school it feels like there is no communication and it causes a lot of frustration and resignation by the staff. They feel like they have no say and no idea why they are asked to follow policies that are foreign and, in some circumstances, counterintuitive.

What resonates for me most in Courage to Teach is his conversational tone and ability to admit that although he’s been in education for decades he still messes up. He is still in awe in the profession that is teaching. There is no lack of wonder and variability that comes with every encounter, every moment in a classroom. It seems to me that Parker J. Palmer believes that as soon as you think you know everything there is to know about teaching you stop learning yourself.  You’ll no longer be an effective teacher because you think that you “know all” and it makes me think that is when banking pedagogy that we talked about in Freire starts to take place.

Palmer writes with a consistent reverence for teaching. He approaches every experience as his first time teaching and he is hyper aware of the students and the energy in the classroom.

That is crucial as a new secondary teacher. On average, we see six different classes several times a week. The class that we see first period is very different from the class we see after lunch at 7th period. We need to meet those specific needs of kids based on their personalities and the time of day we see them. Read their energy that day and tailor our lessons accordingly. It feels easy to just push through a lesson that’s not working and make it to the end of class to think about how to readjust for the next day, but what about that class we are in at that moment? What can we do to make sure they find value and interest in that class at that time?

As teachers we are always thinking on our toes, always having to deal with our computers not working or the copier being broken when we need handouts for the next class. We make due. It’s vital that we think on our toes when students are disengaged as well. One thing my teacher does that I really like are brain breaks, like we did with Anthony in our Research and Design class. I feel like I need to be more hyper-aware of when those are a worthwhile exercise to do in a class. I tend to push through a lesson when the kids seem bored to tears. I feel like that comfort to mix things up and the confidence to do a brain break will come when it’s my classroom and I’m not really on someone else's time but I feel more aware now that I need to incorporate that in my class than I was previously. Does anyone have an innovative brain break they’ve done in their class they’d like to share?