Stories of the Courage to Teach: Honoring the Teacher's Heart - Hardcover

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Sam M. Intrator, assistant professor of education and child study at Smith College, is the son of two public school teachers. For many years, he was a public high school teacher in Brooklyn, New York, Vermont, and California.

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"Though regard for teaching is a lost tradition, teaching, miraculously, is not a lost art. Every day in classrooms across the land, good people are working hard, with competency and compassion, at reweaving the tattered fabric of society on which we all depend." From the Foreword by Parker J. Palmer

Teaching is a calling, a vocation that requires constant renewal of the mind, heart, and spirit. Teachers come to the profession inspired by a passion to help others learn. They are drawn to education by an ethic of service and a mission to make a difference in the world. Good teachers care, and they keep finding ways to connect with students. Despite working in a system that often leaves them feeling exhausted, depleted, and vulnerable, they do not check their hearts at the door.
This book is a collection of essays, written by teachers at every level of practice, that honors the hearts of all teachers who struggle to reconnect with the source of their vocation. These teachers have found ways to serve their students, rekindle their passion for teaching, connect in life-sustaining ways with colleagues, and work towards creating educational institutions that seek to be places that, as Parker J. Palmer writes, "bring more light and life into the world." Their warm, practical, funny, and wise stories will provide inspiration, companionship, and hope to teachers who strive to reclaim the courage to teach.

Stories of the Courage to Teach has its genesis in Parker J. Palmer's The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life. Since its publication in 1997, this book has struck a chord with teachers who felt burned out and weighed down by the educational system in which they work. The Courage to Teach helped them to begin to recover the joy of teaching; in this volume teachers who have been touched by this message take Palmer's words to heart and explore the inner landscape of their lives as educators so that they can once again teach from their hearts.