Thoughts on the Foreword of Courage to Teach

As I take over the English department, I am taking a look at the pain I feel when I hear my colleagues cracking like fragile glass, speaking words that hide their own pain, words that sound like "valueless kid" and "jerk boy" and "blind administrator."  I know these words of pain are ways for them to protect themselves, and I know this because I do the same thing myself from time to time, within my own limits of allowable bitching -- never, ever, ever allowing myself to use demeaning words about a child.  

This book is about protecting and supporting "the inner journey at the heart of authentic teaching, learning, and living" (ix). I have always taken time to hear the complaint because I know the words of the complaint are less important than what the content of the complaint are saying about the work load of the teacher, about the hurting heart of the teacher, about the powerlessness of the teacher, about the need for someone to remove distractions for that teacher.  When I read, on page xi the words "the personal can never be divorced from the professional. 'We teach who we are' in times of darkness as well as light'" I heard words my heart already knew.  I took the job of department chair because I am a fighter, a protector of people when they are weak.  Parker's words helped me see that my leadership has to be about the internal life of the teacher, about standing still on the hill as boulders come crashing toward my colleagues and holding up my powerful hand to divert those stones before they land, yet again, on the heads of heroic people who work to reach tough kids.  My job is about building moments where we can all stand under a warm umbrella together and get strong again, so we have the fortitude to become a team of people who can protect each other.

Parker points out that perpetual conversation about the world of testing creates a world where we keep talking about externals where teachers begin to believe that that external world is more important than everything else, more important even than the unmeasurables like: truth, courage, and creativity.  I want my leadership to improve test scores because I think we are too great as individuals to see the scores we are seeing, but I want those test scores to rise because we built a skeleton that can take care of the testing results, so we can talk about meaning, so we can remember the heroic version of ourselves we saw when we sat in our education classes.

I said in my most recent post that I am a good teacher.  One reason I might be able to say this is because I still me myself in the way I saw myself back when I was 21 and bravely choosing this career.  I like to set up the attention to the externals so they take care of themselves, preserving energy from me to move students to a place where they love to read, where they rise to challenge of better writing, and where they can try out new ideas.