Friend or Foe? Teachers Resource Guide CD (Choices)

Catapulted from his rural community into an elite private college at age 18, Eric suffered severe culture shock—and never overcame it. He learned to speak and act like an intellectual, but he always felt fraudulent among people who were, in his eyes, to the manor born. Instead, he bullied his way into professional life on the theory that the best defense is a good offense. He made pronouncements rather than probes. He listened for weaknesses rather than strengths in what other people said.

He argued with anyone about anything—and responded with veiled contempt to whatever was said in return. But when Eric went home to his workbench and lost himself in craft, he found himself as well.

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He became warm and welcoming, at home in the world and glad to extend hospitality to others. Reconnected with his roots, centered in his true self, he was able to reclaim a quiet and confident core—which he quickly lost as soon as he returned to campus.

His leap from countryside to campus did not induce culture shock, in part because he attended a land-grant university where many students had backgrounds much like his own. He was not driven to hide his gift, but was able to honor and transform it by turning it toward things academic: Watching Alan teach, you felt that you were watching a craftsman at work—and if you knew his history, you understood that this feeling was more than metaphor.

In his lectures, every move Alan made was informed by attention to detail and respect for the materials at hand; he connected ideas with the precision of dovetail joinery and finished the job with a polished summary. His students knew that Alan would extend himself with great generosity to any of them who wanted to become an apprentice in his field, just as the elders in his own family had extended themselves to help young Alan grow in his original craft. Alan taught from an undivided self—the integral state of being that is central to good teaching. But Eric failed to weave the central strand of his identity into his academic vocation.

His was a self divided, engaged in a civil war. He projected that inner warfare onto the outer world, and his teaching devolved into combat instead of craft. The divided self will always distance itself from others, and may even try to destroy them, to defend its fragile identity. If Eric had not been alienated as an undergraduate—or if his alienation had led to self-reflection instead of self-defense—it is possible that he, like Alan, could have found integrity in his academic vocation, could have woven the major strands of his identity into his work.

But part of the mystery of selfhood is the fact that one size does not fit all: Throughout his life, there were persistent clues that academia was not a life-giving choice for Eric, not a context in which his true self could emerge healthy and whole, not a vocation integral to his unique nature. The self is not infinitely elastic—it has potentials and it has limits. If the work we do lacks integrity for us, then we, the work, and the people we do it with will suffer.

As good teachers weave the fabric that joins them with students and subjects, the heart is the loom on which the threads are tied: Small wonder, then, that teaching tugs at the heart, opens the heart, even breaks the heart—and the more one loves teaching, the more heartbreaking it can be. We became teachers for reasons of the heart, animated by a passion for some subject and for helping people to learn.

But many of us lose heart as the years of teaching go by. How can we take heart in teaching once more, so we can do what good teachers always do—give heart to our students? There are no techniques for reclaiming our hearts, for keeping our hearts open. When we lose heart, we need an understanding of our condition that will liberate us from that condition, a diagnosis that will lead us toward new ways of being in the classroom simply by telling the truth about who, and how, we are. Truth, not technique, is what heals and empowers the heart. We lose heart, in part, because teaching is a daily exercise in vulnerability.

I need not reveal personal secrets to feel naked in front of a class. I need only parse a sentence or work a proof on the board while my students doze off or pass notes. No matter how technical or abstract my subject may be, the things I teach are things I care about—and what I care about helps define my selfhood. Unlike many professions, teaching is always done at the dangerous intersection of personal and public life. A good therapist must work in a personal way, but never publicly: A good trial lawyer must work in a public forum, but unswayed by personal opinion: As we try to connect ourselves and our subjects with our students, we make ourselves, as well as our subjects, vulnerable to indifference, judgment, ridicule.

To reduce our vulnerability, we disconnect from students, from subjects, and even from ourselves. We distance ourselves from students and subject to minimize the danger—forgetting that distance makes life more dangerous still by isolating the self. This self-protective split of personhood from practice is encouraged by an academic culture that distrusts personal truth. In this culture, objective facts are regarded as pure while subjective feelings are suspect and sullied.

In this culture, the self is not a source to be tapped but a danger to be suppressed, not a potential to be fulfilled but an obstacle to be overcome. In this culture, the pathology of speech disconnected from self is regarded, and rewarded, as a virtue. If my sketch of the academic bias against selfhood seems overdone, here is a story from my own teaching experience. I assigned my students a series of brief analytical essays involving themes in the texts we were going to be reading.

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Then I assigned a parallel series of autobiographical sketches, related to those themes, so my students could see connections between the textbook concepts and their own lives. After the first class, a student spoke to me: I did not know whether to laugh or cry—but I knew that my response would have considerable impact on a young man who had just opened himself to ridicule.

Then I asked what had led to his question. In a single stroke, we delude our students into believing that bad prose turns opinions into facts and we alienate them from their own inner lives. They are merely the questions they have been taught to ask, not only by tuition-paying parents who want their children to be employable, but by an academic culture that distrusts and devalues inner reality. Of course our students are cynical about the inner outcomes of education: In our culture, the answer is clear: We are obsessed with manipulating externals because we believe that they will give us some power over reality and win us some freedom from its constraints.

Mesmerized by a technology that seems to do just that, we dismiss the inward world. We turn every question we face into an objective problem to be solved-and we believe that for every objective problem there is some sort of technical fix. That is why our students are cynical about the efficacy of an education that transforms the inner landscape of their lives: The Courage to Teach builds on a simple premise: Good teachers are authentically present in the classroom and are able to weave a complex web of connections between themselves, their subjects, and their students, helping their students weave a world for themselves.

What does that look like? Recovering the heart to teach requires us to reclaim our relationship with the teacher within.

This teacher is one whom we knew when we were children but lost touch with as we grew into adulthood, a teacher who continually invites me to honor my true self—not my ego or expectations or image or role, but the self I am when all the externals are stripped away. In fact, conscience, as it is commonly understood, can get us into deep vocational trouble. But is it my vocation? Am I gifted and called to do it? When I follow only the oughts, I may find myself doing work that is ethically laudable but that is not mine to do. A vocation that is not mine, no matter how externally valued, does violence to the self—in the precise sense that it violates my identity and integrity on behalf of some abstract norm.

When I violate myself, I invariably end up violating the people I work with. How many teachers inflict their own pain on their students—the pain that comes from doing a work that never was, or no longer is, their true work? The teacher within is not the voice of conscience but of identity and integrity. It speaks not of what ought to be, but of what is real for us, of what is true. The voice of the inward teacher reminds me of my potentials and limits as I negotiate the force field of my life.

If there is no such reality in our lives, centuries of Western discourse about the aims of education become so much lip-flapping. The inward teacher is the living core of our lives that is addressed and evoked by any education worthy of the name. Perhaps the idea is unpopular because it compels us to look at two of the most difficult truths about teaching. We can, and do, make education an exclusively outward enterprise, forcing students to memorize and repeat facts without ever appealing to their inner truth—and we get predictable results: The second truth is even more daunting: The student who said that her bad teachers spoke like cartoon characters was describing teachers who have grown deaf to their Inner guide, who have so thoroughly separated inner truth from outer actions that they have lost touch with a sense of self.

How does one attend to the voice of the teacher within? I have no particular methods to suggest, other than the familiar ones: That phrase, of course, is one we normally use to name a symptom of mental imbalance—a clear sign of how our culture regards the idea of an inner voice! But people who learn to talk to themselves may soon delight in the discovery that the teacher within is the sanest conversation partner they have ever had. We need to find every possible way to listen to that voice and take its counsel seriously, not only for the sake of our work, but for the sake of our own health.

If someone in the outer world is trying to tell us something important and we ignore his or her presence, that person either gives up and stops speaking or becomes more and more violent in attempting to get our attention. Similarly, if we do not respond to the voice of the inward teacher, it will either stop speaking or become violent: I am convinced that some forms of depression, of which I have personal experience, are induced by a long-ignored inner teacher trying desperately to get us to listen by threatening to destroy us.

When we honor that voice with simple attention, it responds by speaking more gently and engaging us in a life-giving conversation of the soul. That conversation does not have to reach conclusions in order to be of value: Measuring the value of inner dialogue by its practical outcomes is like measuring the value of a friendship by the number of problems that are solved when friends get together. Conversation among friends has its own rewards: We attend to the inner teacher not to get fixed but to befriend the deeper self, to cultivate a sense of identity and integrity that allows us to feel at home wherever we are.

Listening to the inner teacher also offers an answer to one of the most basic questions teachers face: In a culture of objectification and technique we often confuse authority with power, but the two are not the same. Power works from the outside in, but authority works from the inside out. This view of teaching turns the teacher into the cop on the comer, trying to keep things moving amicably and by consent, but always having recourse to the coercive power of the law. When teachers depend on the coercive powers of law or technique, they have no authority at all.

I am painfully aware of the times in my own teaching when I lose touch with my inner teacher, and therefore with my own authority. In those times I try to gain power by barricading myself behind the podium and my status while wielding the threat of grades. But when my teaching is authorized by the teacher within me, I need neither weapons nor armor to teach. Authority comes as I reclaim my identity and integrity, remembering my selfhood and my sense of vocation.

Then teaching can come from the depths of my own truth—and the truth that is within my students has a chance to respond in kind. I have worked with countless teachers, and many of them have confirmed my own experience: The more familiar we are with our inner terrain, the more sure-footed our teaching—and living—becomes. I have heard that in the training of therapists, which involves much practical technique, there is a saying: Technique is what teachers use until the real teacher arrives, and we need to find as many ways as possible to help that teacher show up.

But if we want to develop the identity and integrity that good teaching requires, we must do something alien to academic culture: The house soon divided along predictable lines. On the other side were the student-centered folks, insisting that the lives of students must always come first even if it means that the subject gets short-changed. The more vigorously these camps promoted their polarized ideas, the more antagonistic they became—and the less they learned about pedagogy or about themselves.

The gap between these views seems unbridgeable—until we understand what creates it. At bottom, these professors were not debating teaching techniques. If we stopped lobbing pedagogical points at each other and spoke about who we are as teachers, a remarkable thing might happen: But telling the truth about ourselves with colleagues in the workplace is an enterprise fraught with danger, against which we have erected formidable taboos.

Did the clown take it? Logan's dream of being the star fades, as many at Carter High believ After finding out that Torie is dating Rae's ex-boyfriend, Chance, Rae makes a plan to pay Torie back. Rae decides to date Brad, a boy that Torie really likes, just to make her jealous. Unfortunately, Rae doesn't count on how her feelings for Brad mi Paris is worried that Max isn't really visiting his grandparents. She thinks he's dating another girl.

Instead of asking Max her real question, Paris takes her cousin's advice and accepts a date with Blake. After all, if Max can date someone behind h Walker High Mysteries -. Jack's love of exhibits gets him into trouble. A fun-filled science class turns sour as Mr. Flint discovers that his expensive Aztec ring is missing.

As Jack was the only person alone with the ring, all eyes focus on him as the thief Drake realizes that the money is missing. Steve's dream of being the star fades, as many at Walker High believ Carl and Todd don't want to go on Mr.

Zane's field trip to the gardens. At first, they seem to be in luck because the permission slips go missing. Then someone calls the bus company on Mr. Zane's behalf -- twice. Is the field trip canceled? Competitiveness becomes something more sinister as Lin and Kris compete for the best grade on their science papers. Did Lin lose her library book or did someone take it? Can Gail help Lin find her library book in time to complete her paper? Since one of Walker High's football players made a small wooden falcon in shop class, the team has won all of its games. Did the falcon bring them good luck?

Would Mark and the other Newton High Carl has to pass Mrs. Scott's history test if he wants to play in the football game. Carl is sure he handed Mrs. Scott realizes Carl's test is missing, Mr. Zane tells her that he saw Carl in her room.

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Did Carl take his t Paige doesn't have a date for the school dance. She fears that no one will ask her.

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Would Steve or Tim ask Paige, or would Brett ask her? Then Paige finds a slip of paper in her science book. It is a note from her secret admirer. Did Steve write it, Can a little white lie get you into trouble? Steve tells Quinn that he likes breaking codes. When Quinn gives Steve a coded message, his story catches up with him. Can Steve break the code before Quinn finds out? Or will Steve te On the day of the science test, Mr. Zane is very late. As the day passes, all of Walker High worries what might have happened to him. Is he late or is he missing? When the students go to Mr.

Zane's house, what will they find? June has learned to control her temper, but has she learned to work with others? When Eve hurts her ankle, Kim is placed on the starting volleyball team. June has to decide whethe

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