We Teach Who We Are - lessons from Parker Palmer

As I was clearing my desk area yesterday, I found a little green book tucked between some of my old files. It is entitled " The Heart of a Teacher" by Parker Palmer. He is well-known among the education fraternity; and his works on issues of education, community and social change are often widely quoted.  This essay that I found is an extract from his book "The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life".

Maybe there is a reason as to why this book suddenly appeared....for the last time I read it was almost four years ago.  I had slipped it into my bag, and since the Sup was late for the interview yesterday, I had a chance to re-read Palmer's work yesterday.  Maybe...maybe it gave me the answer that I was looking for inside.

"Teaching, like any truly human activity, emerges from one's inwardness, for btter or worse.  As I teach, I project the condition of my soul, my subject, and our way of being together.  The entanglements I experience in the classroom are often nor more or less than the convolutions of my inner life...viewed from this angle, teaching holds a mirror to the soul...

...to know good teaching, we need to look into the inner landscapes of a teacher's life... - the intellectual, emotional and spiritual...None can be ignored.

Reduce teaching to intellect and it becomes a cold abstraction;
Reduce it to emotions, and it becomes narcissistic;
Reduce it to spiritual, and it loses its anchor to the world...."

"Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher."

I think I have lost myself somewhere along the way for the past few years.  In the pragmatic, competitive environment, there is a heavy price that I have paid...that the flames that once burnt bright within, has somehow diminished in intensity...it flickers, wavers...and even came close to being extinguished.

There are days when I do not 'teach as I am'...
It is always easy to blame others, or even circumstances for this...
But what about myself?
Why have I allowed this to happen?
Where is the engagement...and the connection?

That was my reflection for that 20 minutes or so that I was there...to think, and reflect.
I want to find myself again...and,
I hope...that was the message that was sent, and received during the interview yesterday.