Palmers The Courage to Teach:

A Personal Reflection
Jean K. Morales

Author note
Jean K. Morales, Department of Adult Education and Training, Colorado State
University
Contact: jeankungmorales@gmail.com

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Last month, I recall looking from my podium to a smattering of vacant stares, semisilent snorers, and scrunched-up angry eyes. As I proceeded to present my content, I felt
a small feeling of desperation to connect, to wake up, to make peace with those whose
time I seemed to be wasting. I came away from that teaching experience dejected,
questioning my efficacy, and bordering the desire to never step up to the podium again.
Might it have been better if this was only a minority of the group? (It was not.) Might it
have been better if I could blame my gender and the subconscious sexism of the group?
(My mentor claims this, but I have trouble believing it since women have taught in this
context before [including myself] and had positive outcomes.) Might it have been better
if I could say that my knowledge that day was over their heads and that the audience was
too dense to understand? (I doubt it, as over 90% of the group is college educated.)
Regardless of the ways that I want to dismiss that day by casting the finger of blame at
others or knit-picking my technique to explain why it was an off day, I am challenged by
Palmers The Courage to Teach to look inward and understand what was spilling out from
within.
Palmer states, Teaching, like any truly human activity, emerges from ones
inwardness, for better or worse. As I teach, I project the condition of my soul onto my
students, my subject, and our way of being together. (p. 2) In The Courage to Teach,
Palmer presents an alternative approach to refining and mastering the art of teaching
first, by cultivating a connected inner life and second, by fostering communities of truth.

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Palmers theories propel me to examine the teachers hubris, and more importantly my
own, because hubris is the breeding ground for desolating teaching experiences like the
one above. Hubris is both nature and nurture. Born vulnerable, humans innately bend
toward a desire for control of our lives as a means to protect ourselves. This is hubris
because it fails to acknowledge human limitations and instead fights bitterly to maintain
this false sense of control. Hubris is also bred, because though the academy claims to
value multiple modes of knowing, it honors only onean objective way of knowing that
takes us into the real world by taking us out of ourselves (Palmer, 2007, p. 18). We
allow ourselves to believe that we can be elevated above or distant from the subject.
Mastering the art of teaching requires surrendering hubris to produce a more genuine
and connected teacher. Hubris makes the teacher fraudulent. And it destroys awe,
curiosity, and community all facets of healthy learning. The following paragraphs are
explorations on the destructive aspects of hubris based upon Palmers assertions and also
a reflection on my own personal journey and struggle to surrender my own ego in
teaching.
My teaching last month was to help a community of faith explore the concept of
spiritual valleys, or in other words, when a person lacks faith or stops believing the thing
that s/he believed in before. This is a topic that many practitioners shy away from because
in teaching it, we need to acknowledge that faith can be in flux. Additionally, there is an
unspoken fear that to bring to light such unsavory aspects of spiritual journeying can

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overly validate it and bring hopelessness.

In reflecting on my negative teaching

experience last month, a couple of things stood out to me. One, my intent in the teaching
was to take a risk and share from my own spiritual valley, a vulnerable and relatively raw
place: new motherhood. And two, upon experiencing the initial cold reception, my
response was to not go all the way in my vulnerability but rather to pull back and be
protected by a veil of distance. The distance I am referring to includes my technical
analysis of scripture, my over-practiced speaking cadence, and my compositional
techniques. Identity lies in the intersection of the diverse forces that make up my life,
and integrity lies in relating to those forces in ways that bring me wholeness and life rather
than fragmentation and death (Palmer, 2007, p. 14). Currently the diverse forces
making up my life include mothering twin boys under two years old this is who I am, a
part of my identity. Integrity then would look like approaching the subject of spiritual
valleys, with who I am in mind. My initial plan to interweave my own experience with an
analysis of the scripture was a step toward wholeness. But I was taken aback by the fear
that also accompanied me in this step. Fear that as a woman and a teacher in this field, I
am not valid (it is still heavily debated in Christendom whether a woman can teach
scripture to adults). Fear that if I share personally, somehow this compromises my
analytical ability. Fear that this very real struggle will weaken my platform to speak on
faith. Driven by fear that my backstage ineptitude will be exposed, I strive to make my
on-stage performance slicker and smootherand in the process, make it less and less

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likely that my students will learn anything other than how to cover up and show off
(Palmer, 2007, p. 30). Somewhere along the way my teaching became less about the
subject and more about me, and the result was a shoddy performance. Whats sad about
this experience to me is that in choosing performance, I opted away from integrity and
became fraudulent. I failed to be confident in the fact that teaching from a position of
wholeness would be more powerful than teaching from a position of preparednessthat
somehow my script would be stronger than my heart. Palmer calls this a self-protective
split of personhood from practice, (p. 18) living into the lie that personal truth is not to
be trusted. In reflecting upon this incident, I wonder if part of my future preparation
needs to include accepting my identity, my perspective, and my personal experience as I
approach the subject. My ego inflates fear and throws me into a cycle of self-protection
and fragmentation. It takes humility to allow teaching to reflect our identity; we are
opened up to rejection, not only of our subject but of ourselves. But despite the risk, we
become yet another canvas for the subject to paint on. This type of surrender to the
subject allows it to come more into frame and focus and gives the learner an opportunity
for true interaction.
Palmer calls this opportunity for true interaction establishing communities of truth
(p. 97). The philosophy breathing life into these communities is that reality is a web of
communal relationships, and we can know reality only by being in community with it
(Palmer, 2007, p. 97). In other words, the relationship between learner and the aspect of

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reality to be known cannot be understood merely at a distance. Hubris, removes this

relationship. It says that humanity is outside of reality. Reality can be bottled up, caged,
analyzed, manipulated and mastered, or reality is reduced to nothing more than
machinations of our minds (Palmer, 2007, p. 111). This intellectual arrogance ensconced
with delusion flirts with disrespect. Awe and curiosity are replaced by self-gain and selfpromotion. But in communities of truth, humility colors reality. Humanity is a part of
reality, not apart, and therefore such a classroom honors one of the most vital needs our
students have: to be introduced to a world larger than their own experiences and egos, a
world that expands their personal boundaries and enlarges their sense of community
(Palmer, 2007, p. 222). I have, unknowingly, been a part of such a community, just a couple
weeks ago. Teachers preparing to teach scripture to a large audience in December came
together to learn. The approach was simple: place the Biblical scripture at the center,
observe and ask honest, agenda-less questions, and listen attentively for the answers. As
we studied together, in many ways the scripture came alive to us.

Answering our

questions within its own texts, producing curiosity and awe and even reaching out and
challenging us to change. As I write this, there is a part of me that feels silly, that I am
anthropomorphizing an age-old text. I suppose that this is the part of me that still wants
to approach a subject from higher ground, keeping the reality to be known as an object.
But even as I argue against myself, I cannot argue away the joy that I felt in connecting
with scripture in new and beautiful ways. Truly, I agree with Palmer when he writes about

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encountering reality as sacred the word points to an ineffable immensity beyond concept
and definitionthe numinous energy at the heart of reality. On the other hand, sacred
means, quite simply, worthy of respect (Palmer, 2007, p. 114). One cannot encounter
the sacred if shrouded in hubris. I dont believe I couldve experienced the joy of learning
if I believed that scripture held no relationship with me, or that it was a mere text for me
to digest, extract truth from, and simply toss away when Id mastered it. I believe my
joy stemmed from the interaction, the relationship with the scripture. It surprised me, it
struck personal chords, and it remains mysterious, beckoning me to know more.
As I reflect on these two incidences of knowing in my life, I am invited to give
space to acknowledge ways hubris has compromised my teaching and deadened my
learning. Where have I let pride, status, and the need to be liked overshadow the
subject, and more accurately, the sacredness of the subject? Where am I selfprotecting and sensitive? It is my prayer that in those places I can find myself again,
that I can weave my identity together with my practice no matter how paradoxical it
may seem. Where have I let pride prevent the establishment of communities of truth?
Where have I forced myself to be the medium through which reality must be viewed by
my learners rather than introducing them to reality and stepping back? Where am I too
afraid to let reality speak for itself? How can I approach teaching not from how much
information I can convey efficiently and effectively, but rather what piece of my subject
gives a good snapshot of the critical concepts to spark curiosity, interaction, and awe?

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These questions continue to press me out of my conventional understanding of

teaching. I find Palmers approach to teaching without fear and with more heart
encouraging and applicable. My invitation to change from reading The Courage To
Teach is both simple and difficult. The concept of laying down hubris is simple but the
actual doing of it will, I suspect, require a lifetime of intentionality.

References
Palmer, P. J. (2007). The Courage to Teach. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.