Authentically Learning YOU = Valued Critical Thinkers 

Authentically being YOU comes from within. You develop who you are from within and that impacts how you teach! Parker Palmer, author of The Courage to Teach, refers to this as an “inward turn” – learning yourself and dealing with the things in your life in order to learn who you are in turn being able to teach your students in an authentic way. This turn is an opportunity for one to reflect on his or her own positionality as well as the social context in which they have lived. As each teacher engages in this inward turn stronger immediacy is built with their students, allowing the students to feel a connectedness in which Palmer believes is essential in the classroom.

“Teaching, like any truly human activity, emerges from one’s inwardness, for better or worse” (page 2).

Parker Palmer as well as the perspective of “authentically learning you” allows for an atmosphere of teaching who you are. Therefore, the importance of reflexivity is highly important among teachers as one must understand the perspective their students are innately hearing as you are teaching.

I watched a video on YouTube of Parker Palmer giving a speech in regards to this book and his perspectives. In the video, Palmer gives a description of students within the medical field and how their teachers teach to them. He shared how typically within the health / medical field you have teachers pouring an abundance of crucial information into the students which is obviously needed. However, the students are not being taught the interpersonal, verbal and nonverbal cues needed for such an intimate field of work. They are not taught the connectedness which Palmer states as foundational to relationships in general whether in or out of the classroom.

As fluffy and rainbows and butterflies as this is, this must be presented in conjunction with the lovely bell hooks who brings us back to reality. hooks believes in valuing each voice with the classroom by empowering everyone collectively just as Palmer would; however hooks brings more to the table. hooks fully believes in critically thinking about social issues and each person’s experience with these issues, allowing the classroom to be an environment to be a safe climate in order for students to share.

hooks takes us on a journey to enable our students to understand the agency in which we live under and the powers we allow to influence our lives without even realizing it. She invites this dialogue within the classroom as she firmly believes the classroom is a simple extension of the student’s real lives. hooks believes in order to transform our lives we must start with the way we think. We must take time to engage in critical dialogue about the issues facing us each day. This broadens our perspective of not only the issue, but also the lives of each person we are surrounded by!

In my experience teaching, I have come to enjoy helping my students think outside their own box – helping them see things through a different perspective. However, I have found it particularly difficult to actually challenge why they believe something to be truth. This is something I am definitely still learning. I sometimes stay in the perspective of Palmer where everyone feels valued (rainbows and butterflies), yet not challenged beyond the knowledge they walked into the classroom with. However, in true hooks fashion, I am fully committed to understanding this process of teaching within the classroom more effectively than ever. Meanwhile, I am also discovering why it is that I stay under one perspective instead of activating the knowledge I have. I am self-reflexing on which situations caused me to stay in the mentality I have had for so long… and this is a journey.

With hopes of a brighter future, I will learn to embody hooks perspective in order to bring about positive change within my classroom. I think we can all develop our own identity by understanding the powers that are influencing us on a daily basis and allowing this understanding to transform the way we teach. I will empower my students to think beyond themselves and to think critically about the issues they face in order to transform the way in which they live life. We can do this, colleagues. We are stronger than we think! 

#authenticallylearningyou