connecting

jim was reminding me yesterday of a book that really influenced me in my teaching and learning - parker j palmer is one of my mentors and the kind of educator that i aspire to be - to know as we are known is a 'thin' book, for educators who are in that uncomfortable, 'thin' place where they are wrestling to bring some congruency to who they really are as people and how they really teach - i find that it is very easy within a fomal education system to feel out of alignment with who i really am - sometimes that sense of dissonance makes for more creativity, but mostly i find that feeling of loss of integrity disempowering - anyway, parker's book is all about recapturing 'hidden wholeness' and the recovery of community in education - he calls that dissonance 'the pain of disconnection' and describes education as a process where authentic spirituality is nourished through the creation of spaces in which obedience to truth is practiced : we become reconnected through the process of living as a community of truth - that is really hard to do in schools right now - there is no time to connect with children and the school improvement agenda ensures we have no option but to comply with directives that for the most part seem to run counter to any attempt we might make at 'wholeness' - however, this book has always inspired me to keep on trying for those things, so i think it is definitely worth a read for those of you that face the same struggles - (thanks jim for teaching me how to embed a link - you are a mighty fine educator !!)