The Need for a Learning Improvement that Starts with the Teacher - Literature review Example

Parker Palmer’s Book Introduction Teachers choose their profession for some reasons: the need to share their passion with others, concern in understanding the human intellect, the love of a subject or care for young children. But the teaching demands lead many teachers to be discouraged which lead them to lose heart. Is it likely to stay in this challenging career without losing heart? In the book “The Courage to Teach,” Parker Palmer takes teachers on a private voyage toward reconnecting their profession and their students in addition to recuperating their enthusiasm and passion for one of the most complicated and significant of social activities. This book is based on a simple principle: good teaching cannot be condensed to process; good teaching comes from the teacher’s integrity and identity. Discussion In the chapters, Palmer investigates the inner sphere of integrity and identity (p.13). He identifies that this is not a simple program; though, he pleads to teachers to go on board upon this path, to get to know their inner selves. He advocates the reader to organize and prepare the “inner grounding” that will permit us to clinch rather than evade our fears, to acknowledge our vulnerabilities as prospects rather than as aggravations, to bond with our inner teacher and make unity with ourselves. From this logic of completeness, a community will grow and extend naturally extend outside to the classroom. Palmer observes that the “subject-centered classroom” (“the microcosm”) is at the pillar and the heart of a society of truth. In this case, the students are guaranteed learning “space” to realize and understand the connection of the entire subject. In a learning community, both the students and teacher are focused on a subject (Parker 1). The subject the axis of interest. Here teachers give students an incentive for learning, and they considerately discover the “the subjects.” For instance, in plant biology lesson where students are learning and studying the plant’s structure by examining one part at a time. In the course, they start to learn the natural world of the whole plant. Palmer also explores the disconnectedness that we encounter and go through, which leads to a process of teaching and learning that is motivated by fear. In the book, Palmer points out that when we reflect on teaching, we frequently begin with what subjects shall we teach? When we probe deeper, we ask, what are the techniques to teach well? Then, we ask, for what reason do we teach. He observes that efficient teaching comes in different forms but fine teachers appear to share a significant trait: The teachers ‘are able to entwine a complex web of connections between themselves, ‘they are present in the classroom, sincerely engaged in their subjects, so that students can discover and learn how to intertwine their world.’ Palmer talks about his own teacher and teacher, who seemed to break every good teaching rule. He observes that his teacher lectured non-stop, with little room for comments and questions, he was a poor student listener because he was eager to share his own understanding of the subject (p.23). Yet he was an effective teacher. Later on, in his teaching profession, Palmer tried to imitate his professor’s teaching methods but failed. He states, “As we discover more about ourselves, we can find out techniques that expose rather than hide the personhood from which efficient teaching comes (p.24). Palmer learned that dialogue was more essential to his being than non-stop lecturing, a technique that was consistent with his mentor. A teaching method gets its value mainly from its incorporation with the teacher who utilizes it In the second chapter of the book, Palmer devotes the part education in a community. He observes that teaching is a communal occupation that is practiced privately. Surgeons work in the company of other doctors; lawyers argue their cases during the public views, so why do teachers search for a closed classroom? Palmer reminds us that: If we desire to mature in our teaching practice, we have to go the inner ground from the community of colleague teachers from which we can discover more on ourselves and our skill and from where teaching comes. What, next, is the natural environment of a community that can sustain the teacher’s mission to learn an essential way to teach? Palmer writes of ‘community of truth’ whose characteristic is that it maintains that: reality is a web of communal interactions, and we can recognize reality only by being in community with it (p.17. Based on what I have learned regarding how to be an effective teacher, palmer’s ideas are different because porter’s story has no spiritual language. But I believe it is a story concerning spirituality in public education. "Spirituality" is an intangible word with a diversity of definitions some convincing, some totally dangerous. The meaning I have discovered to be most practical is simply this; spirituality is the endless human desire to be connected with something superior to our own egos. That description does not answer the multifaceted problems connected with the spiritual desire: people get connected with things that deal in death rather than life giving. But it plays a key role of any good meaning by providing us a position from which to initiate an exploration. And if my own practice as a teacher is any measure it also offers us some approach into Porters spiritual life. Porter, like most teachers, must have experienced the pressure to be conventional to the expectations that arose from his training, his part, his employer, his society, or from the school governing policies in his place and time. Falling into line with such exterior expectations and standards and constantly entices the human ego, with its nonstop need to look good in the eyes of other people. How simple it would have been for Porter to do no more than teach math, evading the dangers concerned in truly teaching a child. I connected with many of Palmer’s ideas because by ‘great things,’ Palmer means the subjects around which the sphere of seekers has for all time gathered, not the texts that talk about them, not the disciplines that study these subjects, not the theories that clarify them, but the things themselves. He means that, the ecosystems and genes of biology, the shapes and colors of art and music, the history patterns, the engineering materials, the philosophy symbols, the rigour of mathematics, the degree of human affairs and the anonymity of how things have come to be. In addition, Palmer portrays how a community of truth would encourage diversity, ambiguity (we appreciate the insufficiency of our perceptions to clinch the immensity of great things); honesty (to lie on what we have seen would be to deceive the truth of great things);creative conflict (conflict is necessary to correct our prejudice and injustice about great things); humility (humility is the only mirror through which great things can be seen and once we have seen them, humbleness is the only position possible); and freedom (oppression in any structure can be conquered only by calling upon the beauty of great things). Palmer talks of six paradoxes that he is sensitive of while creating a classroom session: 1. The space should be open and bounded. The requirement for space for questions and comments but the discussion needs boundaries or limitations to prevent meandering. 2. The space should be welcoming. A free space needs to be hospitable so it is not unwelcoming; however it also needs to be tough and challenging. 3. The space should attract and encourage the both the voice of the individual and group. 4. The space should respect both the ‘big’ and ‘little’ stories of the students and the stories of the subjects and tradition. 5. The space should support privacy, and enclose it with the community’s resources. 6. The space should accept both speech and silence. For a friend or colleague who has not read this book, I would describe to him/her how the book takes teachers on a personal inner journey in the direction of reconnecting their profession and their students as well as recuperating their passion for one of the difficult and significant of human accomplishments. Also, I would explain how good teaching cannot be condensed to skill; that efficient teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher. I would further elaborate how the book explains how the capability for teachers to connect with students depends less on the methods they employ than on the level to which they know and trust themselves and are ready to make it accessible and susceptible in the service of learning. Conclusion Palmer’s language is easy, clear and available. The book is written at diverse levels. It provides details on guidelines for effective teaching. The book provides the reader a discovery of his/her own inside background. It describes the need for a learning improvement that starts with the teacher, who becomes an ingredient of a community of truth that develops into a society that can confront and amend the educational view at large. This, in turn, notifies the practice of the teacher. With the examples quoted in the book, it is simple to sketch parallels to one’s confined reality. Works cited Parker, J. Palmer. The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life. Jossey-Bass Publishing. 2007. Print Read More