Rating: 
Summary: Reading Group Favorite
Review: My professional reading group is currently reading and journaling about The Courage To Teach. We have read many books about teaching and learning together, but Palmer's book brings us to our knees. As we focus on "Who" we are as educators, we are forced to soulfully search our spirits for that which makes us willing to greet each day in the classroom. We unanimously agree that Palmer's book should be required reading for every teacher in America. We are finding ourselves again.
Rating: 
Summary: Asks the Right Questions
Review: Not since "Spitwad Sutras: Classroom Teaching as Sublime Vocation" have a read a book so focused on the spirituality of teaching.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book
Review: Palmer wrote the book called "The Courage to Teach". He argues that technique alone is not enough to become a great teacher. We need to become a great teacher in the depths of our being. In another words, being a teacher and who we are should be one in the same. He shows us how people can be great teachers in this book. I think its great, not only in depth, but also in its novel approach to things in general. I recommend it highly.
Rating: 
Summary: self-congratulatory vapidity
Review: Palmer's ringing prose and mediative approach might well occlude the fact that the author, when you get right down to it, has nothing to say.
This guy's not afraid to put his heart on the page, though; I'll give him that.
Rating:
Summary: Learning as a community
Review: Parker guides us through a learning experience where the teacher learns to become an aid to students. His methods of commuity allow the teacher become a part of an intimate community where every student learns from self discovery. However, he also explains that before we can help other in thier self discovery we must first explore our selves and become solid and firm in how we are... teaching from within.
Rating:
Summary: A Passion For Teaching
Review: Parker Palmer does an oustanding job of capturing the day to day struggles a teacher encounters in a classroom. Teaching requires a passion for the subject we teach, a knowledge of the students psyche in the classroom, and a knowledge of thy self. I feel a good teacher posseses all of these qualities. When one of these qualities has left the classroom it has a definite impact on the students we teach. Many of the examples Palmer uses in his own life come from teaching at the college level. These experiences leave a K-12 teacher wishing one of us could share our experiences at this level.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent. Thoughtful, thought-provoking, and thorough.
Review: Perhaps the most thoughtful and thought-provoking analysis of the inner life of teachers available today. If you teach in any way in your vocation or avocation, know someone who teaches, or are simply interested in teaching, this is a book for your bookshelf. Palmer's perspectives deepen our insight and engage our intellect on every page.
Rating:
Summary: For any teacher, this should be in your library for your use
Review: Recently I have been teaching Middle School Students as Substitute.
I agree with this book's philosophy. I love to teach younster, but get mad when they do not respoect and listen. My heart is there along with my head.
I need to use my heart more.
Rating:
Summary: The intellectual, emotional and spiritual depths of teaching
Review: Remarkable teachers, Palmer believes, are a pragmatic lot who do whatever it takes and often fail. Along the way they may find themselves begging, cajoling, and expressing their own gratitude, fearfulness, and ignorance. All of them eschew mere technique and aspire to make their teaching an intensely spiritual experience: they allow teaching to transform their innermost selves. Palmer's challenge to each educator is to acknowledge that knowing one's students and knowing one's subject requires the deepest self-knowledge. What is required is nothing less than an unflinching commitment to live out in the classroom a painful Socratic examination of one's own life.This indeed requires a courageous willingness to make oneself vulnerable. But what exactly is involved, and what is the payoff? Thankfully, Palmer's analysis avoids the fuzzy metaphors (and half-baked metaphysics) that spoil many contemporary "new age" visions of the role of spirituality in public life. Palmer, who was trained in philosophy, religion, and sociology, provides many specific examples. His most conventional claim is that modelling Socratic examination allows teachers to inspire their students to construct deeply fulfilling lives. He also argues that a Socratic entanglement of a teacher with her subject causes a passionate engagement more helpful than any bureaucrat's assessment instrument. Palmer draws on anecdotes--from kindergarten teachers to medical school professors, from shop teachers to physicists--to make his case. These anecdotes provide constructive solutions to many of the most painful problems teachers face and make plausible Palmer's vision of the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual depths of a life committed to teaching and learning.
Rating:
Summary: Must reading for every teacher!
Review: The Courage to Teach is likely to become a classic because it offers inspiration, constructive ways to think about teaching and ourselves as teachers, guidelines for engaging in professional conversations about teaching, brilliant and novel insights -- all in beautiful prose laced with humor and good stories. If the ideas in this book were embraced by the profession, they would revolutionize the classroom and improve the lives of both students and teachers. Palmer has thought deeply and well about the teaching life and created a book with soul. I plan to reread it.
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