By Dennis Sparks
Journal of Staff Development, Summer 2003 (Vol. 24,
No. 3)
Copyright, National Staff Development Council, 2003. All rights reserved.
JSD: In The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life, you wrote, "(R)eform will never be achieved by renewing appropriations, restructuring schools, rewriting curricula, and revising texts if we continue to demean and dishearten the human resource called the teacher, on whom so much depends. ... (N)one of that will transform education if we fail to cherish--and challenge--the human heart that is the source of good teaching." I'm curious about why you think the human heart is a neglected element in school reform.
Palmer: I use the term "heart" not in its limited contemporary sense as the seat of the emotions but in its ancient meaning as the core place within ourselves where all of our faculties converge--will, intellect, intuition, and feelings. I know from experience that when my heart doesn't feel honored, I don't do my best work.
Policies and practices that dishonor the heart lead to high rates of burnout and attrition. Half of the people who enter public school teaching leave it within the first five years. They go into teaching with hope, but many find that they are not honored at the core.
Tony Bryk and Barbara Schneider provide another way of looking at it (see www.russellsage.org/publications/titles/trustschools.htm). They found that Chicago schools that were low-performing in the early 1990s in basic language and mathematical skills, but that had improved by the late 1990s, had higher levels of what they called relational trust than schools that failed to improve. Surely relational trust is based on a sense that one's heart is being honored! So an institution has a responsibility, I believe, to think deeply about ways it can nurture the hearts of those who do its work if it wants to do that work well.
The teacher within
JSD: In your book you suggest that educators can evoke the voice of "the teacher within" through solitude and silence, meditative reading, walking in the woods, keeping a journal, and finding a friend who will listen. Those experiences seem to be in short supply these days for everyone, not just for teachers. How can educational leaders nurture those opportunities for teachers and principals?
Palmer: Well, let's begin with ourselves. The frenzy and noise in our lives is in no small measure a result of personal choices. I know lots of people who simply can't sit in a room or get into their cars without turning on the radio or television. We have enough opportunities in our lives for solitude and silence to practice the disciplines I suggested. But first we have to take responsibility for our own choices.
A teacher who teaches from a heart of noise and frenzy, which often means a heart filled with fear, is not one who is going to connect powerfully with all those students who already have noise and frenzy in their own hearts. Good teachers create a centered and trustworthy space around themselves in which students can find the relational trust that Bryk and Schneider describe, a space that's important not only among teachers and between teachers and administrators, but also between teachers and their students as well.
As far as institutions go, schools can begin by thinking about what they do with their professional learning time. They can use some of this time to sit around the campfire, metaphorically speaking, to talk with one another in an open, nonjudgmental, receptive way about what is really going on within and among them.
In our Courage to Teach program, which is now at work with more than a thousand teachers and administrators in 30 cities across the country, teachers learn how to be with one another in a receptive and nonjudgmental way. The focus is not on technique or curriculum, but on the heart of the teacher and on telling the truth. Not only do these teachers find personal healing and encouragement, but they also take these practices back to their schools and infuse them into faculty meetings and classrooms.
Talk about teaching
JSD: NSDC is very interested in how school leaders create conditions of the kind you've mentioned so that all teachers can benefit from such practices. In your book you point out that talk about teaching can take many forms and involve many partners, that "... it can transform teaching and learning. But it will happen only if leaders expect it, invite it, and provide hospitable space for the conversation to occur."
Palmer: The kind of community we create in the Courage to Teach program is one in which we learn to neither invade nor evade each other. Unfortunately, our society teaches us to try to fix each other, to judge, and to find fault. If you come to me with a problem, I'll listen to you for about three minutes and then give you my advice. I'll tell you what I would do if I were in your shoes--which I am not!--or suggest that you read a particular book or attend some workshop. This way of relating to each other is deeply ingrained in us. But what the human heart really wants is not to be fixed, but to be heard and received. A good listener gives me the gift of hearing me into speech, into my deeper truth.
Consequently, one of the things we work on very hard in the Courage to Teach program is the habit of being together without fixing, saving, advising, or setting each other straight. When we tell teachers on the first night of a Courage to Teach series--which involves eight three-day retreats over two years--about our basic ground rules, someone almost always says, "Well, then, what in heaven's name are we going to do? You've just taken away the only ways we know how to relate to each other!"
So we ask people in these programs to cultivate a capacity for deep listening--and to learn to respond to each other by asking honest, open questions, which is a very hard thing for most of us to do. Many of our questions are really advice in disguise. "Have you thought about seeing a therapist?" is not an open, honest question. But I might ask you, for example, "Has anything like this ever happened to you before?" and, "If so, what did you learn from that experience that might be helpful to you now?" Those are honest, open questions because I can't possibly be sitting there thinking, "I know the right answer to this question, and I sure hope you give it to me."
When we ask such questions consistently we discover an amazing thing: People have inside themselves the resources necessary to deal with their own problems--if we can be present to them in a patient and tenacious way and create a safe space for them to hear what their inner teaching is trying to tell them. It's not that we don't ever benefit from a piece of information or counsel from another person, but we certainly require a lot less of it than we normally get.
Now, we cannot create this kind of community for others until we have first experienced it for ourselves. Principals and other leaders need to have an experiential understanding of the kind of relationships into which they are trying to lead people. If we haven't had the experience, for example, of sitting for 45 minutes with four or five people who are doing nothing but asking us open, honest questions about our dilemma, I have no idea how we are going to offer that experience to other people. A recent piece of evaluation research done with a group of principals and superintendents we worked with in Seattle indicates that the kinds of experiences they had in that group led them to do things differently back home. Now they do more to draw out the resources within the people they work with, individually and in groups, than they ever did before.
Myth of "truth"
JSD: The No Child Left Behind Act requires that schools base their improvement efforts on a particular way of knowing that the legislation terms "scientifically based research." One U.S. Department of Education document says that such research "involves the application of rigorous, systematic, and objective procedures to obtain reliable and valid knowledge." You've written about another way of knowing and take exception to what you call the "objectivist myth," which holds that "truth flows from the top down, from experts who are qualified to know truth ... to amateurs who are qualified only to receive truth."
Instead, you view truth "as the passionate and disciplined process of inquiry and dialogue itself, as the dynamic conversation of a community that keeps testing old conclusions and coming into new ones. ... To be in truth, we must know how to observe and reflect and speak and listen, with passion and discipline. ... As far as I can tell, the only 'objective' knowledge we possess is the knowledge that comes from a community of people looking at a subject and debating their observations within a consensual framework of procedural rules."
Palmer: There is a vary large gap between the social-scientific way of knowing practiced in universities and the kind of knowing practiced by teachers in schools. The latter form of knowing doesn't exclude the scientific, but it is richer and deeper and much more subtle. There's a kind of knowledge that plays well in academic journals that doesn't really carry the freight when you are in practical, on-the-ground situations in schools.
I am not being disrespectful of academic research here. I am grateful, for instance, to Bryk and Schneider for a very careful study that tells that us that relational trust is important in organizational change. But that particular finding is still an example of what I call "Well, duh!" science, which means that it's something we know intuitively if we've ever worked with other people. We just know that if people don't trust each other, all the money and policy and slick technique and rearrangement of curriculum are not going to be worth a whit. I'm glad for science that confirms what we already know so we can be more persuasive about what we really need - and the Bryk and Schneider study is going to help a lot of people in that way. But we also have a desperate need to honor the richer and deeper ways of knowing that teachers themselves have.
I have yet to see an academic discipline whose knowledge isn't the result of a complex communal process over space and time. Our problem is that community has broken down so badly in the midst of professional life that we don't come together to share and generate new knowledge. Instead, we sit isolated from one another, and the people who want us to know something simply lob information at us. We don't replicate the communal process out of which real knowing comes.
When we do come together in schools, we do so filled with the fear of being judged because we are in the business of fixing, saving, advising, and setting each other straight. So we find ourselves in these false forms of community in which the things we need to do to generate knowledge together simply aren't done. They are too risky in school settings where there is so much fear that we don't tell each other the truth. Instead, we posture or play roles or withdraw into silence in order to stay safe. If we want to create viable alternatives to researchers lobbing information at us we have to come together in community to engage in difficult forms of discourse out of which shared knowledge is generated.
Social movements
JSD: I'd like to turn to the role that social movements might play in school reform. "Is it possible to embody our best insights about teaching and learning in a social movement that might revitalize education?" you ask in The Courage to Teach. "Grant, for the moment, that institutions are as powerful and resistant as the pessimists say they are. The question then becomes, 'Has significant social change ever been achieved in the face of massive institutional opposition?' The answer seems clear: Only in the face of such opposition has significant social change been achieved." That is a very large claim, one that may leave us feeling overwhelmed by what it asks of us.
Palmer: When I think about significant social change, I think of the African-American liberation movement, the women's movement, and movements for freedom in South America, Eastern Europe, and South Africa. In every one of those cases, efforts at change were met with extraordinary resistance from established institutions. Significant change, by definition, takes place against institutional opposition. The lesson of these movements is that institutions do not sponsor the movement that overthrows them.
I'm not surprised, and I'm not sure why anyone would be, that many of the federal government's educational reform initiatives will give more of the same. Institutions don't sponsor initiatives that undermine their power. Movements for social justice gather their initial energy and then grow their momentum outside of institutional frameworks. They are sparked by people who make a fundamental decision, which I call the decision to "live divided no more," to no longer act outwardly in a way that is contrary to some deep truth they hold on the inside.
Are there such people in the public schools today poised to spark a movement? My answer is, you bet your boots! There are teachers and administrators around this country who feel externally compelled to conform to high-stakes testing norms while inwardly knowing that in doing so they are not serving the neediest children in their classes. In fact, some of them feel they aren't serving any of the children at all because they are more and more teaching to the test and creating a conformist curriculum in which the intent is for everyone to look the same.
Internal integrity
JSD: So at some point people realize that they can no longer violate their own integrity.
Palmer: Movements start when people decide they are not going to live any longer in this great gap between their own integrity and the outer words and actions of their lives. I call this the Rosa Parks decision because she represents the power of an ordinary person acting to bring attention to a very basic problem in our society. It's also important to remember that Rosa Parks was embedded in a community of people who helped make her initial act possible and its aftermath unfold.
I see the need and the opportunity for people who care deeply about public education to "sit at the front of the bus." It will not be a single act that will spark this movement, but I do see teachers and administrators around the country who are standing up to the most distorting aspects of high-stakes standardized testing. A lot of the policy mandates that come down on schools are driven by a community of political discourse that excludes the people who know the most about the problem. Conditions are always ripe for a movement when you have such a great discrepancy between human integrity and institutional pressures that are pushing people in the opposite direction.
Co-create the world
JSD: "The courage to live divided no more, and to face the punishment that may follow," you wrote, "comes from this simple insight: No punishment anyone lays on you could possibly be worse than the punishment you lay on yourself by conspiring in your own diminishment. With that insight comes the ability to open cell doors that were never locked in the first place and to walk into new possibilities that honor the claims of one's heart." You also describe the "ongoing possibility that no matter our age, we can help co-create the world." I'd like to learn more about your views regarding possibility and the power of co-creation.
Palmer: As far as I can tell, we are co-creating the world every day, in everything we do--for better or for worse. If I walk into a classroom to teach from a place of fear or resentment, I am helping to co-create a world of fear and resentment. If I walk in with hope and a vision of possibility, I am helping to co-create quite a different reality. So this is a power that we exercise all the time simply by being who we are, as we are, in relation to others. What's needed is that we become more self-aware and self-critical about what kind of inner reality we are bringing to our relationships and to the work we do.
A different place to stand
JSD: You've written about a yearning we feel for "a different place to stand." I assume that to some extent that yearning is the basis of your own work.
Palmer: My work comes from a journey that has gone on for many years. I'm 64 years old, and I've sought for a long time to stand on firmer ground than that provided by some of the white, male, middle-class and even academic values I grew up with that turned out to be misguided and deforming. Teachers in our Courage to Teach groups around the country are taking their own journey toward integrity and are finding new ground on which to stand. Throughout history, I think, the people who have led or joined in the transforming movements of history are people who found--or were in the process of finding--that same inner ground of truth in their own hearts. It's a journey that never ends, a journey that can only be taken, I believe, in community.
PARKER J. PALMER
Position: Parker J. Palmer is a writer, teacher, and activist who works independently on issues in education, community, leadership, spirituality, and social change. He serves as senior associate of the American Association of Higher Education, senior adviser to the Fetzer Institute, and founder of the Courage to Teach Program for K-12 teachers across the country.
Education: Palmer received his bachelor's degree in philosophy and sociology from Carleton College, and his master's and doctoral degrees in sociology from the University of California at Berkeley.
Professional history: Palmer has held a variety of positions in education, religion, and social change, including teaching at Berea College, Georgetown University, Beloit College, Pacific School of Religion, George Washington University, and the Union Institute Graduate School. He designed the Fetzer Institute's Teacher Formation Program for K-12 teachers in the public schools. He also has been director of national action research projects on education, religion, and urban society for the Danforth Foundation and the National Council of Churches and consultant to the Danforth Foundation, Eli Lilly Co., Fetzer Institute, Ford Motor Co., Herman Miller Co., Kellogg Foundation, Kettering Foundation, and the Lilly Endowment.
Publications: His publications include 10 poems, more than 100 essays, and books:
- Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (Jossey-Bass, 1999);
- The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life (Jossey-Bass, 1997);
- The Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity, and Caring (Jossey-Bass, 1990);
- To Know As We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey (HarperSanFrancisco,
1983, 1993);
- The Company of Strangers: Christians and the Renewal of America's Public Life (Crossroad, 1981, 1991);
- The Promise of Paradox: A Celebration of Contradictions in Christian Life (Servant Leadership Press, 1979).
Accomplishments: In 1998, the Leadership Project, a national survey of 10,000 administrators and faculty, named Palmer one of the 30 most influential senior leaders in higher education and one of 10 key agenda-setters of the past decade. In 2002, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) created the Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach Award to be given annually over the next decade to 10 exemplary medical residency programs in the United States. Palmer's work has also been recognized with six honorary doctorates, two Distinguished Achievement Awards from the National Educational Press Association, an Award of Excellence from the Associated Church Press, and major grants from the Danforth Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, and the Fetzer Institute.
Personal: Palmer was born and raised in the Chicago area. He is married to Sharon L. Palmer and is a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quaker).
To continue this conversation with Parker Palmer, contact him at P.O. Box 55063, Madison, WI 53705, (608) 238-9992, e-mail: pjp39@aol.com. For more information, also see www.teacherformation.org, the site of the Center for Teacher Formation.
About the author
DENNIS SPARKS is executive director of the National Staff Development Council.
