Palmer's Courage to Teach

July 5, 2011

Blog: What do I want to take away from Palmer’s: The Courage to Teach? by Geri Hagler

1) listen better – focus on listening rather than fixing

2) learn great ideas from my colleagues

3) do more subject centered instruction

4) bring back the love of learning, learning for the sake of learning, not just disseminating information

5) think about the reasons I respond a certain way

                Palmer explained that when people are venting about their troubles with their students, or with their class, if the response is advice, or a story, such as, “In my class, I…..”, they feel invalidated.  They feel that you are not really listening because instead of making it about them, you make it about yourself.   His suggestion was to really listen, to give your full attention to that person, and take in all they have to say.  Give them wait time, so that can continue.  People who are expressing their concerns and problems aren’t looking to be ‘fixed’, rather they are looking for validation.  I want to apply this, not only with my colleagues, but also with the rest of the people in my life.

                One of the aspects about teaching is that we are autonomous.  We don’t have witnesses to what we are doing in our classroom.  We don’t know what are colleagues are doing and they don’t know what we are doing.  Teachers would benefit from each other, and be better teachers, if they could observe their peers, learn from their peers and take the best practices back to their own classrooms.

                When information is just disseminated by the teacher, instruction becomes more about the teacher. How the students respond or react to the information causes instruction to become more about the students.  Palmer says that if we move away from instruction centered, teacher centered and student centered instruction, and move more toward subject centered lessons, then it’s more about learning, and teaching should be more about learning, for the love of learning, for the joy of learning, for the sake of learning. His thinking is that if the instruction is subject centered, then the focus is on the subject not on the process.  A subject centered environment focuses on exploration, thinking, pondering and real learning rather than just memorizing how to do something.

                Because we are human, we bring with us our ego, our culture, our history, our upbringing, our education, our strengths and our weaknesses.  If we are balanced in our lives, happy in our lives, we will be better teachers.  This requires a level of reflection and awareness about the reasons we do what we do.  Why do some students push my buttons the wrong way?  Instead of just reacting, I need to process my feelings and reconcile who I am with what is happening in my classroom.  Sometimes the best approach is not my first reaction.  If I pause, stop and think my feelings through, I could turn a potential problem into a solution.

                These five topics struck a chord with me, and I feel that I will be able to utilize what I learned.