The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life

The knowledge I am talking about is not intellectual and analytical but integrative and of the heart, and the choices that lead to wholeness are not pragmatic and calculated, intended to achieve some goal, but simply and profoundly expressive of personal truth.

we ourselves, driven by fear, too often betray true self to gain the approval of others.

First, I had been trained as an intellectual not only to think—an activity I greatly value—but also to live largely in my head, the place in the human body farthest from the ground.

The capacity of this approach to push things into an uncomfortable range is another feature of its competence in facilitating learning below the neck. It does, however, create tension between two characteristics of an effective learning environment: safety and challenge. Parker Palmer has eloquently argued for the practice of “creating a hospitable