Introduction to Honoring the Teacher's Heart

Sam M. Intrator

Introduction from Stories of the COURAGE TO TEACH®: Honoring the Teacher's Heart,
by Sam Intrator, Foreward by Parker J. Palmer, Jossey-Bass Publishers, © 2002.
To order, click here.

I am the son of two recently retired New York City Board of Education public school teachers. Combined, they racked up sixty-five years of service. We once sat down and figured out that between them, they had taught more than sixty thousand classes and five thousand students. They were lifers, as were most of their friends. I grew up with grade books, Delaney books, student papers, and the United Federation of Teachers newspaper on the kitchen table.

Though chalk may not course through my veins, teaching is in my blood. It is in some ways the family business. So when I came home one day and told my parents that I had just applied for a provisional teaching license at the New York City Board of Education headquarters at 65 Court Street, I didn't anticipate their reaction. "What? Why did you do that? You should look at other options," my father said, clearly dismayed at my decision. "You don't know what you're getting into," my mother said quite ominously.

From the vantage point of a son, teaching had been good to my parents. We traveled every summer as a family, and in the eyes of a freshly graduated college student, returning as a teacher to the schools of my youth seemed a virtuous channel to direct my brimming-over-the-top idealism. Curious about my parents' disappointment and chagrin but blithely undaunted, I quit my job as an editorial assistant in a plush Manhattan high rise and began itinerant day-to-day subbing in New York City schools.

Sixteen years later, I better understand their response. In fact, most teachers I know have told me something similar. "Maybe I would do this job again, but I hope my son or daughter does something different." It's not a question I've ever heard asked in a survey about teachers' job satisfaction, but if you ask teachers, you'll be surprised at how many will answer something similar. As my dad told me, "This job can wear you down. There's a lot of gratuitous clucking about how we must value and support teachers. Then you get in there and it's pretty lonely and tough. You wish your son might find something easier-find something that has more prestige, status, and honor."

When I asked him years later why he felt so strongly about my decision to teach, he answered like the middle school social studies teacher he is. "Throughout history, sons followed in their fathers' occupational footsteps. Sons of carpenters became carpenters. Sons of tailors became tailors. Sons of artists became artists. There was honor in passing the family trade across generations. The father was honored to have the son follow in his stride because society cherished the work of the father. But our society and the system I worked in offers only lip-service honor-false honor. There's not a lot of honor in the way schools work and the way society treats and compensates teachers…. What's sad is that you come to the job eager to do wonderful things, but it's hard to sustain your heart. If a teacher doesn't have energy and if a teacher's heart is not in his work, everybody loses and nothing will get better."

After thirty-three years, my dad will tell you about cherished moments and wounds still raw. He'll tell you about the ethereal days when he believed he left an enduring impact on the world. My dad will also tell you that there were days when he could barely heft the chalk to the board and describe classes so demanding that they reduced his knees to quaking knick-knocks. If you ask, he'll tell you about how even after teaching the Gettysburg Address 150 times, watching Lincoln's words settle in young minds would still bring a tear to his eye. If you ask, he'll also tell you about how, midway through his more than three decades in the classroom, resentment and anger with the system left him in the doldrums and he could barely summon the strength to come back one September. But most of all, he'll tell you that the best teachers he knew-the colleagues in the trenches he most admired-had heart, soul, energy, and a special effervescence that allowed them to "reach kids." I'd pick him up at after school some days, and we'd pass one of his colleagues and he'd turn to me and nod: "She's good," he'd say. "She reaches kids."

My dad has more to say, as do so many of our veteran teachers long accustomed to being left out of the conversations, on what it takes to improve schools. Once you've given thirty-plus years of your life to something as absorbing as teaching, you come to know it well. If you ask my dad over a beer what he thinks should happen, he'll tell you bluntly, "We'd better figure out how to get good people into our classrooms and then figure out how to keep them fresh and alive. We don't recognize how hard teaching is on the spirit. We think it's about little techniques and tricks, but techniques only take you so far. We need teachers who care about kids, who care about what they teach, and who can connect with their students. On top of that, they need to have faith in the importance of their work. Keeping that faith over time hasn't been easy for me."

I share these snippets of my father's commentary-his thoughts and feelings on the "teacher's heart," because they represent to me the backdrop for this book. For some fathers and sons, the source of strength in a relationship can be baseball. For others, it might be the anatomy of a carburetor or the habits of a steelhead trout. For my dad and me over the past seventeen years, it's been, more often than not, the state of education and the role of the teacher in America.

Our conversations roam broadly, but there's a touchstone idea, a principle that calls us back no matter where the discussion wanders. It came to us one day while we were listening to some political pundits talk about President Bill Clinton's first campaign for the White House. They described how Clinton's advisers hung up a placard to remind them of the key and most critical issue of their campaign and to help them retain clarity in their deliberations. The placard read: "It's the economy, stupid." We laughed when we heard it and quickly turned to talking about how educational reformers, politicians, parents, philanthropists, and others concerned with improving schools should etch in granite or hang in gaudy, flashing neon from the White House a placard that reads: "It's the teachers, stupid!"

In other words, if schools are to be places that promote academic, social, and personal development for students, everything hinges on the presence of intelligent, passionate, caring teachers working day after day in our nation's classrooms. Teachers have a colossal influence on what happens in our schools, because day after day, they are the ultimate decision makers and tone setters. They shape the world of the classroom by the activities they plan, the focus they attend to, and the relationships they nurture.

If we want to attract and retain intelligent, passionate, caring teachers, we had better figure out what will sustain their vitality and faith in teaching. Education depends on what teachers do in their classrooms, and what teachers do in their classrooms is shaped by who they are, what they believe, and how vital and alive they are when they step before their students.

Before you turn to the essays in this book, I'd like to share one other exchange my father and I had after he read an earlier draft of this manuscript. In the draft, I concluded this section of the book by describing a memory of clutching tight to my father's shoulders as he walked the picket line during the 1968 strike by New York City teachers. I used this poignant memory as evidence of how, in the last three decades, through hard work and determined activism, teachers have successfully raised their professional status and improved their working conditions. After reading this draft, he paused and then replied with an edge to his voice. "Listen, I know you're writing a book about renewal, revitalization, and rejuvenation of the spirit, but we need remuneration too. We need our spirit, but we need to make a fair living. This society pays rainmakers-it pays the people who generate money. Teachers don't generate money. You can't forget this truth. It's hard for teachers to feel valued and honored in this society, when your worth is often measured in what you're paid. Paying teachers what they're worth to society is a way to honor the teacher's heart. You can't forget that."

My dad's point here is that teachers get mixed and disturbing messages about what they're worth to the communities they serve. Even amid the tremendous prosperity of the 1990s, many teachers saw their incomes stagnate, school building improvement plans denied, and proposals for providing more professional development time demeaned as crafty plots by teachers to work less. Honoring the teacher's heart must mean more than flowers, cards, and cookies, no matter how well intentioned and well meaning. Honor implies being accorded respect and distinction. Even as we become caught up in questions of meaning, my dad rightfully reminds us that "paying teachers what they're worth to society is a way to honor the teacher's heart."

But there are other ways, too. If we believe in the touchstone idea that teachers are the heart of the work-or more crudely, "It's the teachers, stupid!"-we must ask several questions: Why should we care about the heart of our teachers? What undermines the energy and vitality of our teachers? How can we care for the teacher's heart?

WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT THE HEART OF A TEACHER?

"One of the first things I learned when I started college was which teachers to take and which to avoid," a student of mine, Helen Lee, told me. "There are two lists that students circulate to each other: teachers with heart and teachers without. Teachers with heart are passionate, caring, alive, present, inspiring, and real. I am drawn to these teachers because they possess a love for what they are teaching and for their students. Teachers without heart are simply going through the motions and appear disinterested and bored with what they are teaching and with their students. There is no meaningful connection with the material or with us…. Relationships are important to me, and so I am drawn to teachers who are open, who are not afraid to be themselves, and who will treat me as an individual and pay attention to who I am."

Over the past few years, a spate of high-profile blue-ribbon reports have lifted up an elemental truism intuitively known by every parent who has trundled off a child to school and by every student who, like Helen, has spent time in the classroom: the teacher is the pivot on which all else turns in education.

Showcasing recent research on how the quality of the teacher dramatically affects student achievement, the report "What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future" asserts, "What teachers know and can do is the most important influence on what students learn."1 The American Council on Education synthesizes a slew of research to arrive at a similar conclusion in its report "To Touch the Future": "The success of the student depends most of all on the quality of the teacher. We know from empirical data what our intuition has always told us: Teachers make a difference. We now know that teachers make the difference."2

The evidence is compelling. Teachers represent the dominant factor in the educational equation. The quality of the teacher is the most important in-school factor for improving student achievement. In other words, both good and bad teaching leaves a legacy. Lee Shulman, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, writes, "The teacher must remain the key…. Debates over educational policy are moot, if the primary agents of instruction are incapable of performing their functions well. No microcomputer will replace them, no scripted lesson will direct and control them, no voucher system will bypass them."3

The prominence of these findings, combined with concerns over teacher shortages, have stirred educational policy officials, school district leaders, principals, and other influential figures to respond by funneling resources into a series of initiatives focused on improving the quality of the teaching corp. On the surface this should be good news for teachers. Yet teachers are wary. Historical precedent has taught teachers that when politicians and "civic-minded" captains of industry start waving around blue-ribbon reports calling for improvements in education, they will experience a series of mandates that attempt to narrow their discretion and constrain their autonomy.

The most recent calls for educational reform represent the fourth crisis in American education in the past century. The first occurred during the mid-1910s during the second Industrial Revolution and in the midst of a period of mass immigration to America. The second came during the depths of the Cold War in the 1950s when the Soviet Union beat us to space, and the third in the 1980s when our economy was listing. The present crisis coincides with the onset of the technological and information revolution.

Each of these events follows a generally familiar pattern in how they unfold. First, the crisis comes to public attention during times of unrest and anxiety about America's future. When there is uncertainty about the course of our collective destiny, we look at our schools with careful attention. Second, the scrutiny of education typically leads to a high-profile indictment that "the schools are failing," which subsequently erodes public confidence in education. Third, when there is a crisis of public confidence, calls for reform lead to implementing policies that seek to clarify objectives, engineer processes, and more closely monitor the performance of the people involved. The approach is very rational.

In education, the roots of rationalized policymaking and management can be traced to the 1910s, when educators became enchanted with the notion of scientific management as championed by Frederick Taylor, a forerunner of today's industrial consultants. Taylor's approach was to break down the production process into detailed and discrete steps. Ultimate efficiency was pursued by identifying unambiguous objectives and then prescribing standardized methods for achieving those outcomes. Individual creativity and personal discretion were viewed as sources of potential error and inefficiency in the production process.

Educational leaders focused on explicitly articulating curriculum objectives, mandating textbooks, developing batteries of tests aligned with curriculum objectives, mandating scripted pedagogical methods for teachers to use, and developing administrative systems that evaluated teachers based on objectified standards and methods.

Calls to improve education generally result in an array of efforts to control teachers. Working under the premise that teachers are defective, educational change efforts attempt to fix teachers, standardize their methods, employ programs that seek to hold them more explicitly accountable, and subject them to step-by-step programs designed to train them in methods that limit their professional and creative discretion. It is for these reasons that teachers are often wary of blue-ribbon reports and claims of investment in education.

This view of teaching discounts how so much of what is done in the classroom is what Arlie Hochschild describes as "emotional labor,"4 where success and failure ride less on the specific methods adopted and more on the humanity of the connection teachers can weave in their face-to-face, voice-to-voice, and heart-to-heart interactions among themselves, their students, and the subjects they teach.

Teachers need technique, and they need subject matter expertise, but these matter little without the presence of heart and inspiration. The dictionary tells us that to do something "with heart" means to inspire with confidence, to embolden, to encourage, and to animate. To teach with heart means to be a genuine human presence in the lives of students. A teacher whose heart has not been engaged or has been extinguished is there only as a hazy, smothered presence: a cardboard cutout, a stiff, flat character playing the role of the teacher.

The reclamation of the teacher's heart as a legitimate subject for dialogue on what constitutes good teaching is the idea that galvanized the spirit and imagination of readers of Parker J. Palmer's book The COURAGE TO TEACH®: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life. Palmer's premise in the book unfolds from a simple insight: "Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher."5

For Palmer, teachers who ignite learning and growth in students ply their craft through myriad forms. The mode of pedagogy and technique matters less than the capacity to be fully present and engaged with students and subject. He explains, "In every class I teach, my ability to connect with my students and to connect them with the subject depends less on the method I use than on the degree to which I know and trust my own selfhood-and am willing to make it available and vulnerable in the service of learning."6

He likens teachers to weavers whose shuttle fervidly flies back and forth, threading together a fabric of student, teacher, and subject matter. "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 the ancient sense, as the place where intellect and emotion and spirit will converge in the human self."7

Palmer's words, forged and burnished on the poet's anvil, affirm my father's own more straightforward observation hammered clear on the scuffed, gum-pocked junior high school teacher's desk: "We think it's about little techniques and tricks, but techniques only take you so far. We need teachers who care about kids, who care about what they teach, and who can communicate with kids. We, real-live teachers, are what make methods come alive. On top of that, we need to have faith in the importance of our work."

Together these two wise men point out a profound and elemental truth: methods, techniques, educational philosophies, and competencies are important, but even the most creative and imaginative teaching concept will drift along inertly until it becomes vitalized by the presence of a living, breathing, energized teacher.

Longtime teacher and literacy researcher Mem Fox amplifies this point:

The plain fact of the matter is that teacher and children have heart, and those hearts play an enormous part in the teaching-learning process.

Although I am a passionate advocate of whole language, I believe it perfectly possible for whole language to fail in the hands of a rude, thoroughly nasty teacher who hates children. Similarly, although I believe the teaching of phonics outside meaningful texts is the least efficient way to teach reading, I believe absolutely that a joyful, enthusiastic, experienced teacher who uses phonics and only phonics will nevertheless have a large measure of success in teaching his or her students to read.8

For years, I've asked students of all ages to talk and write about their teachers as part of classroom assignments, discussions, and formal research projects. Invariably, I hear about teachers whose pedagogy and practice defy any classification system. They talk about Mr. Smith as being funny and interesting or Ms. Gomez as being eccentric and creative or Mrs. James as being a confidant and a good listener.

Though disparate in some ways, several strands in particular run through these reflections. In fact, if you mine your own memories of good teachers, those individuals who left an enduring mark on your own growth and development, you'll probably discern similar themes.

First, students talk about teachers who recognized their special gifts, talents, and aptitudes. They describe teachers who encouraged them. As one student said, "I remember the day Mr. X. handed back a composition and he stopped next to me and bent over. He said, 'Bill you've got a real flair for describing things.' Nobody had ever said that to me. I can't tell you how much I still remember that moment." Second, students talk about teachers who made subject matter come alive. Very often these testimonials begin: "Mrs. X. awakened in me a love for English/history/ math/science." Third, students talk about teachers who listened to them with deep respect. "Mr. Y. was interested not only in me but in all of us. He wanted us to share our struggles, our triumphs, our stories, and we yearned to tell him." Fourth, students talk about teachers who truly enjoyed teaching. They talk about a teacher's energy, zest, enthusiasm, and aliveness. They note that some teachers loved what they were doing so much that this love was infectious. "Ms. B.'s passion for Shakespeare was like the flu. You can't hang around her for very long without catching it," said a student about her eleventh-grade English teacher.

It's worth reviewing the common themes twining through the reflections by Palmer, my father, Fox, and the students when they talk about teaching: joy, passion, caring, heart, exuberance, energy, vitality, aliveness, and spirit. There's something ineffable and even "touchy-feely" about these words. This can be an issue for some educators who believe that characterizing teaching as work of the heart diminishes its gravitas. Others are uncomfortable with the idea of teaching being connected with inwardness because many of us in the profession have become accustomed to heaping blame only on external forces. Embracing the idea that teaching is an expression of our own selfhood means we must shoulder an important responsibility for our own successes and failures. There are many bitter teachers, long worn down by the real indignities of the job, who have a difficult time attributing success and failure to anything other than "those kids," "that bastard in the principal's office," "that damn test," or "that hellish certification office."

Being open to a view of teaching that includes the teacher's heart and energy as an authentic subject of conversation poses a profound challenge to the profession. Simply put, we can't dictate heart, we can't legislate genuine caring, and we can't hand out a teacher's manual that scripts vitality. But even if we can't inject teachers with passion or jolt their hearts with electroshocks of enthusiasm, the good news is that most teachers come to the profession with ample supplies of idealism, passion, and commitment. If we learn to protect this essential resource and support teachers who want to reclaim and sustain their vocational integrity, we're making progress.

I vividly remember walking out the door after my first day as a teacher at Sheepshead Bay High School in Brooklyn. I was twenty-one years old, and as I walked down the street, passing children playing ball, high schoolers waiting for the bus, and seniors lugging groceries home, I felt so worthy and important. I was a teacher, and this was important work-important in the manner that philosopher Robert Nozick describes as an elemental human need to "count in the world and make a difference to it."9 It was electrifying, and I'll not soon forget the raw jolt of earnestness and responsibility that came with the realization that I had my own classroom and that 180 young people would look to me for direction, support, and guidance.

My idealism matches what we know of most teachers. In survey after survey of teachers, we find that people come to teaching to make a significant contribution to society and to experience the satisfaction of helping people grow and develop. A recent survey of new teachers conducted by the public policy organization Public Agenda found that when teachers were asked to rate the most important attributes of teaching for them, "their responses indicate an idealistic personnel corps looking do work out of love more than money."10 Other studies of teachers confirm this finding: teachers are called to the profession because they believe that they can play a thoughtful, caring, and influential role in the lives of young people.

Most teachers feel drawn to the classroom for reasons of the heart. We heed the call to teach for reasons of ideals and virtue: we desire to connect with children, convey our passion for a subject, or hope to inspire a love for learning and goodness. Bill Ayers calls teaching "world-changing work" and then goes on to say:

People are called to teaching because they love children and youth, or because they love being with them, watching them open up and grow and become more able, more competent, more powerful in the world. They may love what happens to themselves when they are with children, the ways in which they become their best selves. Or they become teachers because they love the world or some piece of the world enough that they want to show that love to others. In either case, people teach as an act of construction and reconstruction and as a gift of oneself to others. I teach in the hope of making the world a better place.11

Ayers's words evoke the best hopes and aspirations of almost every teacher I have ever known. Teachers choose teaching for reasons of the heart. They see their work as a form of public service that has vital social value. The wellspring of motivation and energy for many of our teachers is their belief that teaching is more than a job and more than merely doing routine work-that teaching is a vocation to which they were summoned because they have something worthy and important to contribute to the world. This earnest passion to make a difference, this zeal to contribute, this desire to share the richness of learning with students is what animates our teaching-yet the demands of teaching are intense.

WHAT UNDERMINES THE ENERGY AND VITALITY OF OUR TEACHERS?

As I listen to my parents, my colleagues, and other teachers whom I have come to know in my research, I am moved by the honesty, poignancy, and profundity in their voices. Their reflections on their teaching lives reveal a powerful ambivalence with their choice of profession. On the one hand, they celebrate the power and promise of their work: teachers believe in the enduring possibilities of teaching. On the other hand, they lament the demands and impositions that deplete their vitality and resent the lack of honor accorded teachers in our culture. A sampling of voices from teachers that I've spoken to or worked with over the years evokes the current crisis in the profession:

I am at a decision-making point. I truly enjoy teaching, but I feel buffeted by the public assault on teachers; the strain of dealing with especially needy students; the day-in, day-out structure of teaching; and my own personal development issues. At times I feel drained, uninspired, and just plain tired. I've considered leaving teaching and in fact have taken classes in preparation for a change in career.

I want to love this job, and there are times that I do. But I'm getting jaded, and I'm losing my vim and vigor fast. I came to teaching to be there for students, but every memo and missive that comes through my mailbox tells me to prep for the test or remind students about how important their scores are. Important for whom? Important for the institution, maybe.

I came to teach students, but that's feeling harder and harder to do.

As these voices indicate, there's something awry in our schools that's exacting an emotional, physical, and spiritual toll on teachers. In fact, there is a growing body of evidence that suggests the teaching profession is in peril. Teachers are leaving in droves. Those that leave cite the difficult working conditions, the excessive demands on a teacher's time, the cumulative toll of working for an institution that fails to honor the commitment of teachers, and the frustration of working for a society that refuses to respect and fairly compensate the profession. As noted earlier, at least half of all new teachers leave the profession by the time they reach their fifth year of teaching. Others slog on, feeling demoralized and sapped of the energy and idealism that sparked their original choice of profession.

The depletion of the teacher's heart and energy has dire consequences for education. As we explored in the prior section, the real triumphs in education are won in the connections among students, subject matter, and an alive and present teacher. We need teachers who can connect in the face-to-face, voice-to-voice, and heart-to-heart interactions of the classroom. Yet the evidence suggests that teachers are struggling to maintain the psychic and emotional energy essential to their work. Why? What forces have brought on this situation?

WE FEEL UNDERAPPRECIATED

Although teaching can yield enduring rewards that come from working with students, many teachers report feeling frustrated, disappointed, and underappreciated. Teachers believe in the elemental worth of their work. They believe that what they do is vital to families, children, and communities, but they also believe that society doesn't reward them in ways commensurate with the importance of their work.

As one of my colleagues said, "I believe in what I do. I know that my work with kids is valuable. I teach them to write; I help them clarify their goals; I help them figure out who they want to be and how to get there. What can be more important than this kind of contribution? I chose this work knowing I wouldn't get rich, but there's a difference between being rich and being comfortable. I'm struggling to just get by. Sometimes I'm furious and sad."

The annual salary survey conducted by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) affirms this point.12 The teachers' annual salary, adjusted by the cost-of-living index, is at its lowest point in forty years, and of bitter irony to many teachers who have listened to all sorts of rhetoric regarding the precipitous shortage of teachers is that the average annual salary increase in 2000 was among the lowest in forty years. As one teacher said, "The hypocrites! They wring their hands about the teacher shortage, and yet they pay us less real money than ever. What does this say about the regard for teachers? This society measures respect in money; how can I feel appreciated? I feel abused. They're taking advantage of me and my colleagues."

The bottom line, as AFT president Sandra Feldman puts it, is this: "Low salaries are preventing quality people from both entering and staying in the profession."13 The average teacher salary (which turns out to be for someone with about sixteen years of experience) is $40,574, according to the AFT report. This compares to average figures of $68,294 for engineers, $66,782 for computer systems analysts, and $49,247 for accountants. For many teachers, the low salaries are not as tough to swallow in the early stages of their career, but when faced with mortgage costs, college tuition, and other expenses later in life, the frustrations of compensation intensify, particularly when they compare their salaries against those professions that require a similar level of education but pay significantly more.14

Aside from the frustration and resentment many teachers feel about the low salaries, teachers also feel that their work is underappreciated in other ways. Many teachers work in subpar facilities and have to spend their own out-of-pocket money for supplies. Lack of necessities such as phones, computers, and up-to-date textbooks also are seen as symptoms of society's disrespect for the profession. As a friend said after the town had just voted down a bond issue to renovate the school, "What do the people in this community want? They expect us to care for their children, but they won't pay for it. It's dispiriting, it's demeaning, and it's abhorrent. Do they expect an extra effort from me now? Do they expect me to head off to work all smiles and eager?"

WE FEEL UNDERMINED

We act with integrity when the source of our actions flow from our deepest beliefs and principles. When our actions align with what we care about and emanate from the source of our moral commitments, we act with integrity. When we are compelled to act in ways contrary to our principles, our sense of integrity is deformed and diminished. Many of the present reforms and mandates in education have proved to be incommensurate with the belief system of many teachers.

There are a multitude of examples. Some school districts have become so narrowly focused on test scores and test preparation that teachers have been forced to jettison successful curriculum units of long standing because they don't explicitly connect to the exam. In a Massachusetts district close to where I live, the superintendent has put together teams of administrators to trawl through schools in search of teachers not adhering to the test prep curriculum.

A good friend who teaches in a community that he describes as being "obsessed with standardized test scores" laments how the fixation with scores and rankings has insidiously infected the way he, his colleagues, and his administrators have come to view their students:

I've always believed that my mission as a teacher has been to take a child from where he or she is at and to cajole, support, and inspire growth. It has been important to understand a child's ability and skill level so that I can orchestrate learning experiences that nudge them ahead. But in the current climate of test mania, I find myself looking at children and wondering how they'll impact the average score of my class. I sometimes find myself doing calculations where my students are not learners but assets and liabilities toward the class average on a standardized exam.

These situations are deeply felt by teachers. Teachers believe in the moral imperative of teaching. When they are forced to be complicit in work that they believe undermines their beliefs and principles, the toll is substantial.

The current preoccupation with standards and high-stakes exams has intensified our feeling that our integrity is being undermined by forces outside our control. Teachers experience the testing mania in a range of ways that debilitate their morale and spirit. When you speak with teachers about what testing is doing to their sense of self and to their practice, the tales are chilling. Some teachers see the tests as transparent forms of surveillance that will allow technocrats to track, rank, and evaluate their performance. Others resent the focus on narrow cognitive skills. Others feel the press to teach to the test limits their ability to be creative and spontaneous in the classroom. A sampling of responses by teachers illustrates the pressure that teachers feel to teach to the test and focus their curriculum on limited testable objectives:

• In Virginia, a teacher described in the Washington Post by parents and colleagues as "superb" quits, saying, "Every day you go to work and everything is geared to getting these test scores up, how we raise those test scores. The exams dominated conversation in the math department office, in staff meetings, in professional development seminars…. It was SOL [Standards of Learning] this, SOL that…. It was not about 'How are you doing today?' or 'Let's learn something exciting.'… It was just not a healthy environment."15
• In New York City, the strains of administering the high-stakes state tests has driven off veteran fourth-grade teachers. They describe the pressure as oppressive and the single-minded focus on the exams as destructive for children. In a New York Times article, a fourth-grade teacher is quoted as saying, "The whole school is looking at how our kids are going to do, so the pressure is enormous. The test-prep books have basically become our curriculum." The pressure the teachers talk about has to do with multiple factors. The fourth-grade scores affect whether principals stay in their schools and whether they receive merit bonuses. One teacher leaving his fourth-grade position said, "I need to not feel that intense pressure that if kids don't improve, our school will be closed down. I need a break so I can recover my strength."16
• In Tennessee, teachers are both punished and rewarded on the basis of students' achievement on the standardized exams. One teacher says, "All this rewards business is reinforcing one of the greatest things that's wrong with our society: greed…. I try to teach well because it's the right thing to do. I've got a young kid's mind in my hands…. I don't give a hoot if somebody is going to pay me $3,600…. That money isn't going to make the school better…. You can't deal with [schools] as a business and have rewards and sanctions and stuff like that…. They forget the personal side that's attached-that you want these students to learn and that you care about them."17

WE FEEL OVERWHELMED

All indicators suggest that teaching conditions have deteriorated over the past few years. There is too much to do, too little time, and too few resources.

In an article titled "Teacher Time (or Rather, the Lack of It)," Marty Schollenberger Swaim, a teacher, and her husband, Stephen Swaim, an economist, analyze the workload problem teachers face and conclude that teachers are caught in a pulverizing time bind that forces them to choose between preserving their energy and adequately preparing for class and reviewing student work. They conclude that the average high school teacher with 125 students would need to spend seventy hours per week on teaching if he or she wanted to spend fifteen minutes planning for each class and thirteen minutes per week on reviewing the work of each student. When you combine the time required for that kind of commitment with the other average responsibilities of a teacher, the hours quickly pile up.18

The level of intensity that teaching requires wears people out or forces them to make debilitating compromises on the way they approach the job. Marty Swain captures this dilemma well:

Teaching is wonderful, fascinating, and… never dull; [it is] one of those professions in which you can really say, "I change lives." At the same time, although I love teaching, I could leave it tomorrow. The personal price that I have to pay to work as a teacher is very high. I have to work far more than 40 hours per week because, like other teachers in America, almost all of my official work time is committed to the classroom instruction of students. As a result, most of the necessary planning, preparation, and grading must be regularly done at night or on weekends. And just as important, I have little or no time for individual students.19

The welter of things to do takes its toll on teachers' energy and vitality. It leaves them fatigued and frustrated. As Stephen Swaim says, "Sometimes I get depressed about the consequences for my personal life; I could not travel to Pittsburgh to see my mother-in-law when she was ill. We had fewer people over for dinner [once my wife started teaching], and we did fewer things with our children because one day of each weekend was always obligated to school."20

The fear of becoming ground down by teaching weighs deeply on the hearts of new teachers in particular. As one of my former students said after finishing her first year of teaching, "I don't think people have any idea of how hard teachers work. I don't have time to date, work out, hang out, or play. And all my nonteacher friends tell me that once I get some experience, the workload will abate. But I'm not so sure. I see all the more experienced teachers as busy as I am, but in a different way. They may have planning and preparation down, but they get roped in to this committee and that project. Besides, the teachers whom I aspire to be like seem to always be planning something new and novel."

When the pace and quantity of work become so demanding, the quality of our work is diminished, the tenor of our relationships is eroded, the ability to innovate is deflated, and our capacity to be present and connected with our students is undermined.

WE FEEL ISOLATED

Prior to my first teaching job, I worked briefly at a publishing company. I worked in a cubicle in a small city of cubicles. When I started, I had a stream of visitors who came by to show me a trick, offer some advice, and check in on how I was doing. With the support and counsel of my colleagues and supervisors, I quickly learned the ropes. My job was to file, do a little background research, and keep the expense accounts.

When I started teaching, I was there a full semester before I had a sit-down chat about teaching and lesson planning with any of my colleagues. While this says something about the induction process, it also says something about our habits of privatism and the organizational ethic of isolationism that pervades most school cultures. Susan Rosenholtz notes that the individualistic culture of teaching results in isolation among colleagues that resembles commuters waiting briefly in a train station. Each commuter is headed toward the same destination but is standing alone, ensconced in his or her own thoughts, newspapers, and private space.21

The isolation teachers feel depletes their heart and energy. We know that people thrive in communities that include mutual praise, collaborative problem solving, shared values, and respectful relationships. These practices help people function at their best, but the structure of the school day and teachers' schedules deter genuine collaborative effort.

As I mentioned, my father and I calculated that he had taught approximately thirty thousand classes. That's an astonishing number, but it's true: 180 school days a year, five classes a day, for thirty-three years. As we talked, I asked him about the specific classes that left a durable, enduring imprint. He had no shortage of stories, but what became oddly apparent was that every class episode that he described had a common strand: every memorable class and activity he reflected on was one where he had been observed by another adult.

When I asked him why, he paused and said, "Every day, you work by yourself and it's just you and your students. There's nobody's there to witness your work. You do your thing without recognition, appreciation, or witness. I guess having somebody there to recognize my work made it feel more important."

There's an irony to teaching: we ply our craft in densely crowded rooms, but teaching can be psychologically lonely for teachers. Ms. M., a world history teacher from Soldotna High School in Alaska, captures this odd tension with powerful eloquence:

I love it [teaching]. It's stimulating. It's rewarding.

But teaching as a whole is very, very, very lonely. You're in a classroom alone with a lot of kids, but you don't have much contact with adults. There's rarely an adult that really understands what you're doing. Other teachers rarely come into my classroom, and I don't have time to go to theirs. We're too busy. In other jobs, people see what you do, and they understand. But in teaching, you can have everybody do really well on a test [and] nobody knows about it. Or you had a great discussion of the difference between the Romans and Greeks, and you were just absolutely ecstatic. But nobody ever knows about that.

It's a very lonely profession. You're in there every day doing it and having a wonderful, time, but [there's] not much recog-nition. Except that you know you're doing a good job.22

These feelings of isolation, of toiling behind closed doors, can leave teachers feeling insecure and unsure about their impact. As my dad and Ms. M. note, we do our work without witness, without support, without constructive critique, and without reinforcement. The cost of this isolation exacts its toll and often gives teachers a distorted view of their own efficacy and of their sense of themselves as adults. These distortions become amplified because of the fragile, uncertain rewards that teachers derive from their work.

WE FEEL VULNERABLE

Summoned to teaching by my inner conviction that my work was to make a contribution to the lives of my students, I quickly realized that figuring out success and failure was a baffling experience. I could quiz my students on whether they knew the plot to The Great Gatsby. I could have them write essays and be able to discern whether they were mustering evidentiary warrant for their arguments, but that feedback didn't get at my true hopes for myself as a teacher. What counts as success? Was it teaching them to write, engaging them in a conversation about police brutality, or getting some of my truant students to come to English class five days in a row?

Although I'm not sure what should count as triumph and what should count as failure, I do know that I was hungry to believe that I was making a difference in the lives of my students. Like most teachers, according to Dan Lortie's study of teachers,23 I pursued the psychic rewards of exerting moral influence, evoking a love of learning in students, and creating opportunities for students to encounter new experiences that alter their consciousness-lofty goals, but too elusive to ever count or quantify with any certainty. Not knowing whether we've achieved success leaves us feeling vulnerable. In an essay titled "The Uncertainties of Teaching," Phil Jackson captures the elusive nature of our goals:

Teachers sometimes have a hard time proving their worth, even to themselves. Why this should be so is easy enough to understand. It derives in large measure from the fact that teaching, unlike masonry or brain surgery or even garbage collecting, has no visible product, no concrete physical object to make or repair or call its own. Consequently, unlike workers in the forenamed and many other occupations, teachers suffer a distinct disadvantage. When their work is finished they have nothing tangible to show off as a fruit of their labor; no sturdy brick wall, no tumor-free brain, no smoothly purring engine, not even a clean back alley to point to with pride as evidence of a job well done.24

There's a lot of faith, hope, and optimism in teaching, and when we lose it, our spirit wavers and deflates. Russell Clarke, an English administrator, describes the experience well: "You have to believe, in this business, that you are making things better and moving things on. If that particular spark is not there-if something happens that makes you think things are going the opposite way-it can be a very destroying occupation."25

The uncertainty of truly knowing whether we've improved the lot of our students leaves us with questions that worm their way into our psyche. As a veteran teacher told me one day early in my career, "What makes this job really tough is that you don't make enough money to rationalize doing it for the money. What we do get is priceless. Those moments of realizing that we've shaped a world or inspired a young person. Too bad those moments don't come more often or come in ways that we can discern their presence." In the face of constantly pumping out energy and heart, the lack of feedback leaves many teachers bowed.

The factors inventoried here diminish the dignity, honor, morale, and energy of the people to whom we assign the responsibility of tending and educating our young. Who can blame teachers for saying, "Maybe, just maybe, I would do this again, but I'm not thrilled with the idea that my son or daughter would do this"? The blunt reality facing the American public and the educational system is that we have an alarming exodus from the profession at a time when the demand for teachers is spiraling upward. Demographic analysts forecast a need for two million new teachers in the next decade. This need will be due to increases in student enrollment, the graying and anticipated retirement of significant numbers of veteran teachers, and the high rate of attrition among young teachers.

The upshot for policymakers and educational leaders is that we must find ways to recruit promising teachers and then provide conditions that allow them to develop and flourish in their professional roles. We won't attract, sustain, retain, and prepare teachers who respect and care for the hearts, souls, and minds of children unless we provide conditions where our teachers feel respected, cared for, stimulated, and appreciated.

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

What can be done for teachers so they can go forth and do their best and most inspiring work? The essays that make up the core of this book describe teachers working to reclaim their commitment to teaching, to education, to colleagues, and to students. The stories they tell are not inspirational triumphs or tales of mystical reclamation of the spirit. Nor do the essays offer a recipe of get-inspired-quick ideas or easy-to-follow techniques that will illuminate the path to more rewarding and productive teaching while ameliorating the suffering we sometimes endure as teachers.

What this book does do is share, in the words of teachers, their efforts to reclaim and sustain their hearts so that when they are present in the classroom, they can serve their students faithfully, cultivate their own well-being, work toward a common purpose with their colleagues, and despite the many obstacles they face, work to bring, as Parker J. Palmer writes, "more light and life into the world."26 In their effort to keep heart, rejuvenate their spirit, and resist the deforming force of stagnant, uninspiring environments and despairing loneliness, these teachers have documented three approaches.

The essays in Part One, "Turning Inward: Sustaining Our Own Hearts," describe teachers who turn inward to find the strength to reclaim and sustain the original source and passion that called them to teaching. The essays in this part document teachers fighting back against what Daniel P. Liston calls the "enveloping darkness"27 by pursuing self-discovery and the process of discerning an answer to the questions, Who am I? Why do I teach? And to what extent is there integrity between what I believe and what I do in the classroom?

In the essays in Part Two, "Reaching Out: Forging Relationships That Sustain Our Hearts," teachers tell of resisting the tendency to fall into the cellular, isolating patterns that are endemic to many teachers' lives. Rather than be driven into working alone, these teachers describe their efforts to weave connections with one another, with administrators, with students, and with parents. These stories describe teachers who have found ways to deepen their participation in the lives of their schools, students, and colleagues. They find power, sustenance, and strength in joining with others.

The essays in Part Three, "Making Change: Reforms That Honor the Teacher's Heart," shares stories of teachers and educational leaders who have shifted their efforts away from viewing themselves and their colleagues as deformed and deficient and in need of fixing. Instead, they look toward their institutions and ask, How do we reconstitute the practices of our organization to better support the whole person? The stories document educators who have engaged their institutions and the powers that hold sway in the service of change. The narratives describe a diverse range of initiatives to create institutions sympathetic to the overarching and operative principle that the human heart is the source of good teaching.

Part Four introduces a detailed description of the COURAGE TO TEACH® (CTT) program founded by Parker J. Palmer. The fundamental mission of the program is to support the personal and professional renewal of public school teachers and administrators. The CTT program uses an approach called "teacher formation," and the logic of the approach is based on the following premise: "We become teachers for reasons of the heart. But many of us lose heart as time goes by. How can we take heart, alone and together, so we can give heart to our students and our world, which is what good teachers do?" The single chapter in this part describes the theory and methods used by the program to advance its goal of restoring the heart and hope of America's teachers.

As this book moves to press, our country is still reeling in sorrow and confusion in the aftermath of the tragedy of September 11, 2001. We feel vulnerable and insecure. We feel frightened and fragile. Beset by often conflicting emotions, the adults I know press ahead with their daily routines. As lawyers, accountants, truck drivers, and cashiers return to work, they huddle with colleagues and friends talking through their fears, anxieties, and bewilderment.

As difficult as this is for the grown-ups, our children experi-ence the uncertainty of our times with even more intensity. They return to schools often racked with emotion and confused about how to respond. Waiting for them, as they are every day, are the teachers-men and women who are devoted to helping children grow, learn, and become contributing members of our civic community.

In times of despair and complexity, we all need caring, committed people in our lives to help us feel connected and to guide our thinking so that we can engage with complicated events in careful ways. The overwhelming number of teachers I know desire to fulfill that role in the lives of our children. This is not easy work. It demands intelligence, courage, resiliency, flexibility, and passion. The stories in this volume honor teachers who work, often against punishing odds, to keep heart so they can give heart to their students.

NOTES

1 National Commission on Teaching and America's Future. "What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future." (Report.) New York: National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, Sept. 1996, p. 10.

2 American Council on Education. "To Touch the Future: Transforming the Way Teachers Are Taught. An Action Agenda for College and University Professors." 1999, p. 5. [http://www.acenet.edu/resources/presnet/]

3 Shulman, L. S. "Autonomy and Obligation." In L. S. Shulman and G. Sykes (eds.), Handbook of Teaching and Policy. New York: Longman, 1983, p. 504.

4 Hochschild, A. R. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.

5 Palmer, P. J. The COURAGE TO TEACH®: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998, p. 10.

6 Palmer (1998), p. 11.

7 Palmer (1998), p. 11.

8 Fox, M. "Like Fireworks, Not Mud: The Role of Passion in the Development of Literacy." Reading and Writing Quarterly, 1996, 12, 251-264.

9 Nozick, R. Examined Life. New York: Touchstone, 1989, p. 170.

10 Farkas, S., Johnson, J., and Foleno, T. A Sense of Calling: Who Teaches and Why. New York City: Public Agenda, 2000, p. 10.

11 Ayers, W. To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher. New York: Teachers College Press, 1993, p. 8.

12 Nelson, F. H., Drown, R., and Gould, J. C. Survey and Analysis of Teacher Salary Trends, 2000. Washington, D.C.: American Federation of Teachers, 2001.

13 Gursky, D. "The Teacher Shortage: How Bad Is It? What's Being Done About It?" American Teacher, Dec. 2000-Jan. 2001. [http://www.aft.org/publications/american_teacher/dec00_jan01/supply.html]. Aug. 20, 2001.

14 Johnson, S. Teachers at Work: Achieving Success in Our Schools. New York: Basic Books, 1990.

15 Seymour, L. "SOL Tests Create New Dropouts." Washington Post, July 17, 2001, p. A1.

16 Goodnough, A. "High Stakes of Fourth-Grade Tests Are Driving Off Veteran Teachers." New York Times, June 14, 2001, p. A1.

17 Kannapel, P. J., and others. "Teacher Responses to Reward and Sanctions: Effects of and Reactions to Kentucky's High-Stakes Accountability Program." In B. L. Whitford and K. Jones (eds.), Accountability, Assessment, and Teacher Commitment: Lessons from Kentucky's Reform Effort. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000.

18 Swaim, M. S., and Swaim, S. C. "Teacher Time (or Rather, the Lack of It)." American Educator, 1999, 23(3), 1-6. [http://www.aft.org/publications/american_educator/fall99/swaim.pdf]

19 Swaim and Swaim (1999), pp. 1-2.

20 Swaim and Swaim (1999), p. 2.

21 Rosenholtz, S. Teachers' Workplace: The Social Organization of Schools. New York: Teachers College Press, 1989.

22 Marquis, D. M., and Sachs, R. I Am a Teacher: A Tribute to America's Teachers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990, p. 59.

23 Lortie, D. C. Schoolteacher: A Sociological Study. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975.

24 Jackson, P. W. "The Uncertainties of Teaching." In The Practice of Teaching. New York: Teachers College Press, 1986, p. 55.

25 Haigh, G. "To Be Handled with Care." Times Educational Supplement, Feb. 10, 1995, pp. 3-4.

26 Palmer (1998), p. 7.

27 Liston, D. P. "Love and Despair in Teaching." Educational Theory, 2000, 50, 81-102.