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Beyond the Classroom: Nurturing Teacher Relationships for Personal and Professional Growth
“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
When you spend enough time in education, you hear that it can be an isolating profession. It’s wild to think that a job where you spend time with people all day can be isolating, but there is truth behind the idea.
You close the door, you work with students, you have a prep, you have a lunch, you do some other work, you leave for the day. Without time planned to connect with colleagues, you can drift through the day and not really have a meaningful conversation with an adult at all.
While we are there to work with students, there is something to Parker Palmer’s words. Meaningful conversations about who we are helps us find out more about ourselves, and maybe in the process, grow to become closer with the people with whom we work.
