Intricately Integrating Immediacy

 How to Navigate Parker Palmer's Paradox and Pedagogical Design

In his book The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life (2007), Parker J. Palmer offers six paradoxical tensions that he, personally, strives to build into his classroom space. 

Although Palmer simply shares his technique to illustrate how paradoxical tension may be utilized in creating one's own pedagogicial design, the principles that he uses are perfect for exemplifying the importance of teacher immediacy in the classroom. 

The following is a list of his Six Paradoxes with a brief summary of each and how an educator may build his or her immediacy by navigating each one.

1. The space should be bounded and open. (p.77)

• The learning environment should be "bounded" to a certain content/subject matter: question, data, fact. The classroom discussion should always revolve around a certain topic at hand.
• The learning environment should be "open": simply put, there is more than one way to reach the same destination and the teacher should be willing to allow students to find those ways.
• Immediacy Implementation: When using self-disclosure, always make sure that it is tied to the topic at hand and doesn't digress from the ultimate goal of discussion.   

2. The space should be hospitable and "charged." (p.77)

• Hospitable: teachers and students should feel welcome, safe,and free within the learning space. 
• Charged: the learning space should be energized enough that students are awake and engaged (not comfortably bored and falling asleep).
• Immediacy Implementation: Invite students to share their opinions, show support by giving constructive feedback, and use humor to liven the "mood" of the room, and show enthusiasm for subject matter. 

3. The space should invite the voice of the individual and the voice of the group. (p.78)

• Individual voice: students should be able to authentically express their own ideas and opinions in the learning space.
• Group voice: it is the teacher's task to hear the collective voice of the class and amplify it and play it back to the students so that they may learn to seek and speak the truth more thoughtfully.
• Immediacy Implementation: Pay close attention to what students and saying and ask clarifying questions that cause them to support their claims.

4. The space should honor the "little" stories of the students and the "big" stories of the disciplines and tradition. (p.79)

• Little Stories: students should be allowed to share their personal experiences/examples that relate to the subject matter.
• Big Stories: the universal and archetypal stories that relate to the subject matter must also be used to explain, elaborate, and support the subject matter. 
• Immediacy Implementation: Encourage students to share by allowing them the time and opportunity to do so and maintain a supportive classroom climate in which students feel comfortable enough to share by acknowledging all contributions to discussion with equal enthusiasm. 

5. The space should support solitude and surround it with the resources of community. (p.79)

• Solitude: students need time alone to reflect and absorb information.
• Community Resources: classroom dialogue in which students can share ideas, test ideas, and expand knowledge is also necessary for learning.
• Immediacy Implementation: Give students the freedom to share (don't force them) and use inclusive pronouns when speaking to the class so that all students feel as if they are part of the community.

6. The space should welcome both silence and speech. (p.80)

• Silence: silence in the classroom is not always a "bad thing" and should be used to allow time for processing information. During a period of silence students may be digging deeper through their minds to find the correct answers (which is almost always better than quickly speaking the superficial ones).
• Immediacy Implementation: Verbally state that you understand and appreciate the fact that your students take the time to search for and find correct or meaningful answers to share with the class.  

#ImmediacyAndLearning

Resources:

Palmer, P. J. (2007). The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher's life. San Francisco: Wiley & Sons.