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 xiForeword: Listening to Teachers xviiParker J. PalmerIntroduction: Honoring the Teacher’s Heart xxvSam M. IntratorI Turning Inward: Sustaining Our Own Hearts 1Speaking from the Heart 6Amy SymonsThis Is Where Teaching Gets Real 12Jim BurkeTeaching Had Become an Ordinary Job 18John RockneAn Experiment with Truth: One Teacher’s Path 28Leslie YoungDoing Small Things with Great Love 34Mary Alice ScottDespair and Love in Teaching 42Daniel P. ListonSam Scheer: Coming to Terms with a Lifetime of Teaching 54Rosetta Marantz CohenAdult Conversations About Unasked Questions: Teaching for Educational Justice 64Sonia Nieto and Stephen GordonII Reaching Out: Forging Relationships That Sustain Our Hearts 79The Meaning of Life Assignment 84Robert KunzmanReclaiming Identity: Sharing a Teacher’s Truth 94Kirstin TonningsenOf Aliens and Space 100Elizabeth Keats FloresYou’re the One I Expected to Meet 108Mary Rose O’Reilley Arriving Where I Started: Rediscovering the Newness 116Susan EtheredgeFeeling, Thinking, and Acting for Change 126Catalina RiosFinding the Courage to Be Seventeen in Forty-Four-Year-Old Skin 132Lori FultonAdversity as Ally 140Rachael KesslerIII Making Change: Reforms That Honor the Teacher’s Heart 153So Sweet It Made Me Jingled: Offering My Own Truth Within the System 158Clayton StrombergerThe Risk of Teaching and Learning Differently 178Katherine Kennedy Lift Every Voice 192Chip WoodTeaching Excellence and the Inner Life of a Faculty 202Robert G. Kraft Journey into the Wilderness: A Teacher-Researcher Group’s Retreat 218Kelly Chandler-OlcottTeachers-to-Be Learning from Students-Who-Are: Reconfiguring Undergraduate Teacher Preparation 230Alison Cook-SatherHonor the People; It’s the Leader’s Work 242David HagstromFrom Charity to Justice: Toward a Theology of Urban School Reform 254Linda C. PowellToward a Leadership of Peace for the Twenty-First-Century Academy 268Diana Chapman WalshIV Rejuvenating Heart: The Courage to Teach Program 279Courage to Teach: A Retreat Program of Personal and Professional Renewal for Educators 282Marcy Jackson and Rick JacksonAfterword: What I Heard Them Say 309Parker J. PalmerResources That Honor and Sustain the Teacher’s Heart 319Compiled by Helen LeeThe Editor 323Center for Courage & Renewal 325Index 327