Parker J. Palmer Quotes About Teachers

Quotes about: Teachers

• Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Teacher, Integrity, Teaching

  Parker J. Palmer, Megan Scribner (2007). “The Courage to Teach Guide for Reflection and Renewal”, p.104, John Wiley & Sons

• If we want to grow as teachers -- we must do something alien to academic culture: we must talk to each other about our inner lives -- risky stuff in a profession that fears the personal and seeks safety in the technical, the distant, the abstract.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Teacher, Safety, Culture

  Parker J. Palmer (2017). “The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life”, p.48, John Wiley & Sons

• 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.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Education, Teacher, Kids

• I now understand what Nelle Morton meant when she said that one of the great tasks in our time is to "hear people to speech." Behind their fearful silence, our students want to find their voices, speak their voices, have their voices heard. A good teacher is one who can listen to those voices even before they are spoken-so that someday they can speak with truth and confidence.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Teacher, Teaching, Voice

  Parker J. Palmer (2012). “The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life”, p.47, John Wiley & Sons

• The kind of teaching that transforms people does not happen if the student’s inward teacher is ignored… we can speak to the teacher within our students only when we are on speaking terms with the teacher within ourselves.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Teacher, Teaching, People

  Parker J. Palmer (2012). “The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life”, p.32, John Wiley & Sons

• In every story I have heard, good teachers share one trait: a strong sense of personal identity infuses their work.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Teacher, Strong, Teaching

  Parker J. Palmer, Megan Scribner (2007). “The Courage to Teach Guide for Reflection and Renewal”, p.104, John Wiley & Sons

• Mentoring is a mutuality that requires more than meeting the right teacher: the teacher must meet the right student.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Teacher, Teaching, Mentoring

  Parker J. Palmer (2012). “The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life”, p.22, John Wiley & Sons

• ... circles of trust ... are a rare form of community - one that supports rather than supplants the individual quest for integrity - that is rooted in two basic beliefs. First, we all have an inner teacher whose guidance is more reliable than anything we can get from a doctrine, ideology, collective belief system, institution, or leader. Second, we all need other people to invite, amplify, and help us discern the inner teacher's voice.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Teacher, Integrity, Circles

• In classical understanding, education is the attempt to "lead out" from within the self a core of wisdom that has the power to resist falsehood and live in the light of truth, not by external norms but by reasoned and reflective self-determination. The inward teacher is the living core of our lives that is addressed and evoked by any education worthy of the name.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Education, Teacher, Determination

  Parker J. Palmer (2012). “The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life”, p.32, John Wiley & Sons

• Every good teacher and every good parent has somehow learned to negotiate the paradox of freedom and discipline. We want our children and our students to become people who think and live freely, yet at the same time we know that helping them become free requires us to restrict their freedom in certain situations.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Teacher, Children, Freedom

  Parker J. Palmer (2012). “The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life”, p.87, John Wiley & Sons

• In a culture of technique, we often confuse authority with power, but the two are not the same. Power works from the outside in, but authority works from the inside out. . . . I am painfully aware of the times in my own teaching when I lose touch with my inner teacher and therefore with my own authority. In those times I try to gain power by barricading myself behind the podium and my status while wielding the threat of grades. . . . Authority comes as I reclaim my identity and integrity, remembering my selfhood and my sense of vocation.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Teacher, Integrity, Teaching

• The teachers who have had the most impact on me and on most learners I know are teachers whose "selfhoods" have been deeply invested in what they are doing.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Teacher, Impact, Learners

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.

• Students want to know, "Are you painting by the numbers, or are you really present as a human being to what you are doing; and is it coming from inside of you?" So I would ask teachers this question: "Do you have a wellgrounded personal experience and conviction concerning whatever it is you are trying to teach?"

  Parker J. Palmer

  Teacher, Numbers, Trying

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.

• People are always asking, "Is this person in front of me the same on the inside as he or she appears to be on the outside? Is there congruence between what's within that person and the words and actions I'm viewing and hearing externally?" Children ask that about their parents; students ask it about their teachers; parishioners ask it about their pastors and priests; employees ask it about their bosses; and in a democracy, citizens ask it about their political leaders.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Teacher, Children, People

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.

• Good teachers join self and subject and students in the fabric of life.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Teacher, Self, Fabric Of Life

  Parker J. Palmer (2017). “The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life”, p.47, John Wiley & Sons

• I have to say that I have been blessed with significant teachers at every stage of my life.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Teacher, Blessed, Significant

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.

• I'm 67 years old now. I've had a lot of good teachers over the years; and they have been very, very different from one another. They all had passion for what they were doing, but their styles were unique to them as individuals.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Teacher, Passion, Unique

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.

• At its deepest level, I think teaching is about bringing people into communion with each other, with yourself as the teacher, and with the subject you are teaching.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Teacher, Teaching, Thinking

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.

• You don't become a good teacher by applying techniques; you don't become a good teacher by using the latest hot methodologies that are being promoted in this or that handbook.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Teacher, Technique, Hot

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.

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