INTEGRITY

INTEGRITY IN TEACHERS'S HEART

We teach who we are. Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher. All good teachers share a strong sense of personal identity that infuses their work.

“Good teachers join self, subject, and students in the fabric of

life because they teach from an integral and undivided self; they

manifest in their own lives, and evoke in their students, a

“capacity for connectedness.” They are able to weave a

complex web of connections between themselves, their subjects,

and their students, so that students can learn to weave a world

for themselves. The methods used by these weavers vary

widely: lectures, Socratic dialogues, laboratory experiments,

collaborative problem-solving, creative chaos. The connections

made by good teachers are held not in their methods but in

their hearts meaning heart in its ancient sense, the place where

intellect and emotion and spirit and will converge in the human

self.” Parker Palmer

We should teach with a sense of connection and community. Integrity is whatever wholeness one is able to find as a nexus to forming the pattern of one’s life and a discernment of what is integral to one’s selfhood; and, the ability to choose life-giving ways of relating to the forces that converge within one’s self. Choosing integrity leads to wholeness and the acknowledgment of who I am.

“ As good teachers weave the fabric that joins them with

students and subjects, the heart is the loom on which the

threads are tied: the tension is held, the shuttle flies, and the

fabric is stretched tight. 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.”

Parker Palmer

We became teachers for reasons of the heart...but many of us lose heart as the years of teaching go by. The question becomes: How can we take heart in teaching once more, so we can do what good teachers always do–give heart to our students?

INTEGRITY IS SO IMPORTANT IN A TEACHER'S SOUL AND MIND