Stories of the Courage to Teach

The son of two retired New York City teachers, Sam M. Intrator began teaching at Smith College in 1999 after more than a decade of teaching and administrative service in public schools in Brooklyn, Vermont, and California. Intrator teaches courses on Urban Education, Teenagers in American Culture, and the Teaching of Writing. He also founded the Smith College Urban Education Initiative—an educational outreach program that seeks to deepen students’ understanding of the theoretical, practical, and human issues facing urban educators by engaging them in intensive service learning experience in urban school settings. Intrator’s books and research inquire into what it takes for teachers and students to co-create intellectually vibrant and genuinely meaningful experiences in the classroom. He has written or edited five books, including Tuned in and Fired Up: How Teaching Can Inspire Real Learning in the Classroom (Yale University Press, 2003), which was a finalist for the prestigious Grawemeyer Award in Education. Intrator has received a number of awards for his teaching and public service, including a Kellogg National Leadership Fellowship, an Ella Baker Fellowship, and the Distinguished Teacher Award from the White House Commission of Presidential Scholars. His latest effort is the co-development of Project Coach—an after-school program that prepares high school students from underserved communities to be youth sport coaches. These youth coaches then run neighborhood sport leagues in their home neighborhoods. Intrator holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University and an MA degree from the Bread Loaf School of English.

Gratitudes xi

Foreword: Listening to Teachers xvii
Parker J. Palmer

Introduction: Honoring the Teacher’s Heart xxv
Sam M. Intrator

I Turning Inward: Sustaining Our Own Hearts 1

Speaking from the Heart 6
Amy Symons

This Is Where Teaching Gets Real 12
Jim Burke

Teaching Had Become an Ordinary Job 18
John Rockne

An Experiment with Truth: One Teacher’s Path 28
Leslie Young

Doing Small Things with Great Love 34
Mary Alice Scott

Despair and Love in Teaching 42
Daniel P. Liston

Sam Scheer: Coming to Terms with a Lifetime of Teaching 54
Rosetta Marantz Cohen

Adult Conversations About Unasked Questions: Teaching for Educational Justice 64
Sonia Nieto and Stephen Gordon

II Reaching Out: Forging Relationships That Sustain Our Hearts 79

The Meaning of Life Assignment 84
Robert Kunzman

Reclaiming Identity: Sharing a Teacher’s Truth 94
Kirstin Tonningsen

Of Aliens and Space 100
Elizabeth Keats Flores

You’re the One I Expected to Meet 108
Mary Rose O’Reilley

Arriving Where I Started: Rediscovering the Newness 116
Susan Etheredge

Feeling, Thinking, and Acting for Change 126
Catalina Rios

Finding the Courage to Be Seventeen in Forty-Four-Year-Old Skin 132
Lori Fulton

Adversity as Ally 140
Rachael Kessler

III Making Change: Reforms That Honor the Teacher’s Heart 153

So Sweet It Made Me Jingled: Offering My Own Truth Within the System 158
Clayton Stromberger

The Risk of Teaching and Learning Differently 178
Katherine Kennedy

Lift Every Voice 192
Chip Wood

Teaching Excellence and the Inner Life of a Faculty 202
Robert G. Kraft

Journey into the Wilderness: A Teacher-Researcher Group’s Retreat 218
Kelly Chandler-Olcott

Teachers-to-Be Learning from Students-Who-Are: Reconfiguring Undergraduate Teacher Preparation 230
Alison Cook-Sather

Honor the People; It’s the Leader’s Work 242
David Hagstrom

From Charity to Justice: Toward a Theology of Urban School Reform 254
Linda C. Powell

Toward a Leadership of Peace for the Twenty-First-Century Academy 268
Diana Chapman Walsh

IV Rejuvenating Heart: The Courage to Teach Program 279

Courage to Teach: A Retreat Program of Personal and Professional Renewal for Educators 282
Marcy Jackson and Rick Jackson

Afterword: What I Heard Them Say 309
Parker J. Palmer

Resources That Honor and Sustain the Teacher’s Heart 319
Compiled by Helen Lee

The Editor 323

Center for Courage & Renewal 325

Index 327