Teaching in Communities: Developing Professionally with Colleagues; Processing Palmer's Courage to Teach (1998) Part 2/2

Could teachers gather around "teaching and learning" and explore its mysteries in the same manner that any community of learning might explore a literary text or academic subject? (141) This is the essential question of Palmer's final section to his book The Courage to Teach, and it is a crucial supplement to a work whose focus is inward--on the life, mind, and disposition of the individual teacher as the core of good teaching.

While the typically traditional privatization of teaching is risk-averse in its aversion from transparency and regular observation and critique, Palmer argues that educational institutions must learn how to create communities of teachers that foster continued conversations around pedagogy--and even open our classrooms to observations--that are not demoralizing. (144) Of course, for Palmer, the center of the discourse for this teaching community must not be reduced to technique, though technique may very well be a prominent element.

Recall from my last post that for Palmer, teaching cannot--and should not--be reduced to technique. It follows, then, that critical conversations around teaching should highlight what is most ignored--the human issues in teaching. This sort of practice validates teachers and affirms their craft as necessarily reflective and soulful--advancing their pedagogical through the deliberate practice of acknowledging fears and failures.

Here, Palmer reminds us all what he's suggested thus far as underlying the life of such a reflective teacher: that we can talk about, in such a pedagogical community

• the original inspiration to teach from our mentors and subjects; 
• the human conditions of teachers and learners; 
• our classroom paradoxes--highs and lows, gifts and limits; 
• our creation of learning spaces; 
• the ways of knowing and how they shape our teaching.

But he goes further in this final section by suggesting two more topics of conversation: focusing on critical moments in teaching and learning, and using metaphors and images to enrich the sense of self that teaches.

Critical Moments

Palmer recommends creating a timeline for critical moments, learning opportunities for students, over the duration of a course. After teachers identify particular junctures for student resistance and growth--the first challenge to a course's premise, the first graded paper--faculty begin to "talk openly about events that have perplexed and defeated them, as well as those they have managed with ease."

The crucial rule here is that teachers must "not counsel colleagues on what should happen in their classrooms;" they may only "speak about their own classroom experience." The goal here is the sharing of common experience. Young teachers, for instance, who think their struggles are unique "find relief in the revelation that older faculty still struggle with problems like their own." (146)

As the timeline is completed, it turns into a map, with certain moments along the way related to one another. The map can then be clustered into particular types of experiences--conflicts in the classroom; relating theory to practice. Clusters then become small group discussions where each member is asked to speak from his or her own experience but without critique to one another. In so doing, we are also "exploring technique--but in a nonreductionistic manner" (147), as each teacher reflects on her own identity and integrity and notices which techniques work for him or herself--and which don't.


Metaphors and Images of the Teacher's Selfhood

In faculty workshops, Palmer prompts teachers to allow their unconcious to articulate images or metaphors in response to the prompt "When I am teaching at my best, I am like a ______" (148). My own response, just as I read this, was the pilot of a small cruise ship or a subway surfer.

He recommends that we look at the shadows each metaphor suggests, as well as its strengths (sort of like "acknowledging the gifts" practice from a previous chapter). In so doing, we again do not reduce teaching to technique but instead draw on identity and integrity as the source of our deepest guidance. (150).


Ground Rules for Dialogue

What I loved about this section is Palmer's clear acknowledgment of the issues that arise when teachers are prompted to reflect on their practice. The norms of our culture include not seeming weak or vulnerable, as well as not inquiring into someone else's business; the normative "fix-it" response to someone feeling vulnerable is that we feel both guarded and competitive--and so we immediately offer advice and solutions as to how we solved that issue. (151)

Instead, ground rules for dialogue include some version of the following process:

• principle: inner truth is unknowable, and so our role as listeners is to allow each teacher to be heard; 
• method of practice: focus-->clearing committee-->mirroring
• a focused individual articulates a problem in writing: a clear statement of the problem; note son its background and similar experiences; notes on its foreground--why it is being held in view.
• committee offers undivided attention--members are forbidden to speak to the focus person in any way except to ask that person an honest, open question. 
• no advice, no overidentification, no handing off the problem to someone or something else.
• mirroring: not an opportunity to give advice, but to reflect back to the focus person moments that he or she might not have been aware of to draw them further into their own truths. 
• two reminders in closing:
• nothing is solved; real life does not work that way
• confidentiality: everyting remains within the group, and members may not address the topics discussed beyond the group.
• conclusion: teachers can be in dialogue with their inner teachers; this practice deepens each teacher's awareness of their own identity and integrity.

Leadership

These sorts of learning communities demand real leadership--not just as a form of modeling, but as a leader who "opens, rather than occupies space" for teachers to develop teaching and learning by way of their own identity and integrity. "Good talk about good teaching" must be expected and invited, not assumed or, worse, ignored in favor of focus on technique, research, or guilded specialization. 

Becoming such a leader moves both the leader and her teachers "beyond fear and into authentic selfhood, a journey towards respecting otherness and understanding how connected and resourceful we all are. As those inner qualities deepen, the leader becomes better able to open spaces in which people feel invited to create communities of mutual support." (161)

Conclusions and Next Books!

This post was well overdue--I got caught up in reading Salman Khan's One World Schoolhouse (2013) and Joe Sanfelippo's and Tony Sinanis's Hacking Leadership (2016). Both books will be reviewed and discussed in upcoming posts. 

From Palmer, I look forward to enacting the first part of his book in my classroom and the second part in my mentoring and leadership roles. I know that as an English teacher, my classroom discourse and presence, as well as the creation of a space and discourse, matter tremendously--I must acknowledge my fears; embrace and generate the paradoxes of my experience and of the learning space; and cultivate dispositions of knowing in community. 

From the second section--discussed above--I will think carefully about how I engage other professionals. I will hesitate about offering advice, but I will also seek to create spaces in my guidance roles and in conversation with colleagues where they are heard and mirrored. I love the exercises of mapping critical moments and imagining teacher and teaching metaphors as the site for productive, identity/integrity based conversations. 

Up next: Khan's One Room Schoolhouse!