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The Teacher's Way: Teaching and the Contemplative Life
In The Teacher's Way, award-winning scholar, educator and author Maria Lichtmann connects the monastic practice of lectio divina to the heart of the teaching experience. New teachers just beginning their careers will find deep and welcomed guidance in this book. Veteran educators who need a fresh dose of inspiration will celebrate. The Teacher's Way is an oasis for connecting education with the life of the spirit. Lectio divina is a Benedictine practice that involves four elements of "sacred reading." They Lectio―reading/attention Meditatio―reflection Oratio―prayer/receptivity Contemplatio―contemplation/transformation The Teacher's Way masterfully translates these practices into classroom applications that create hospitable and safe spaces for learning. Maria Lichtmann writes, "Nothing is more crucial to teaching as spiritual practice than replenishing the underground springs of a teacher's own inner life." Some of the topics the author focuses on the crisis in education; monks and teaching; concrete proposals for reflection and attention; hospitable teaching and transformed teaching. This book will provide food for thought for teachers just beginning their careers, those still in school, veteran educators who need refreshment, and professional development facilitators. The Teacher's Way is designed to benefit educators from kindergarten through 12th grade, as well as college and graduate school instructors. †
- GenresEducation
176 pages, Paperback
First published March 11, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 2, 2021
I found this book at a used book store, looking for something to find as relevant to education so I could use it as a book report for one of my classes. I am pleasantly surprised at how eye-opening and powerful this book is! It teaches about contemplation from a Judeo-Christian perspective, referencing many scholars and saints. Maria Lichtmann is incredibly smart. She works at Appalachian State University as a religious studies professor. She does talk about interreligous discussion, which she has encouraged on her campus.
This book teaches us that we are sharing the fruits of our contemplation with our students, in hopes it will inspire them to have faith and hope in the world. Highly recommend this book for any teachers, especially young and comfortable with the Judeo-Christian theme.
This book teaches us that we are sharing the fruits of our contemplation with our students, in hopes it will inspire them to have faith and hope in the world. Highly recommend this book for any teachers, especially young and comfortable with the Judeo-Christian theme.
January 2, 2013
As a former high school teacher who often wondered how in the world to get a room full of teenagers to believe that it’s actually worthwhile to figure out how a spectroscope works, I thought that perhaps Maria Litchmann’s The Teacher’s Way: Teaching and the Contemplative Life, an attempt to integrate contemplative spirituality and teaching, might be something worthwhile to investigate. It isn’t a combination that you see terribly often and one that might be a bit more difficult to accomplish when you’re looking at science and math classes as opposed to literature, religion, or other sorts. The short review is that her meditation begins well, but it seems to unravel the further she goes.
She starts by doing two things: First, she analyzes the state of education in general, suggesting that education has fallen into the trap of fixing through new and better technique and constant motion and activity. Her suggestion, not surprising giving the subtitle of the book, is that technique and activity are unhelpful and symptomatic of a loss of a contemplative mentality in life on the whole. Now, I’ve never been fond of educational theory, which seems to me to fall into the exact trap she mentions and takes into almost no consideration the wider cultural influences that are affecting teachers, students, parents, and society overall, which I think are just as if not far more important than techniques (not to entirely disparage technique). Once finished with this, she begins an analysis of contemplative spirituality, using lectio divina as a model, examining the meditative reading pattern’s origins and structure. She rethinks the four phases of lectio divina (reading, meditation, prayer, and contemplation) in a teaching setting as attention, reflection, receptivity, and transformation.
From this point, she takes individual chapters on each phase. The first two of these phases are well thought out and are readily integrate-able into a classroom of any sort. Her ideas on attention, while perhaps a little fuzzy, and the use of silence and space seem a healthy counter to the sometimes frantic activity of students’ (and teachers!) lives. Reflection is something that many teachers already attempt to work into their curriculum, but she expounds on it in a contemplative fashion that gives it a different flavor than the usual. In these two chapters, she ever speaks a bit into how her ideas are applicable to math and science classes, something that rarely happens in educational books and theories. In discussing the last two phases, however, I felt as if she descended into a great deal of unclear thinking or at least unclear communication. The ideas I gained from receptivity could have been expounded in a much more concrete manner with less mystical terminology and phraseology. As for transformation, it felt as if she were discussing her ideals without providing any means of making such ideals reality. She specifically admitted that she shied away from too many specific techniques, but for those who are dealing with students who are not interested in transformation or subjects that do not lend themselves that way easily, there was little to aid them. In the end, the book provides an interesting integration of ideas, and her first few chapters are worthwhile, particularly as examinations of how educators’ typical attempts to “fix” things are missing the point. In the later chapters, however, it felt as if her model broke down and dissolved into mystical meandering.
She starts by doing two things: First, she analyzes the state of education in general, suggesting that education has fallen into the trap of fixing through new and better technique and constant motion and activity. Her suggestion, not surprising giving the subtitle of the book, is that technique and activity are unhelpful and symptomatic of a loss of a contemplative mentality in life on the whole. Now, I’ve never been fond of educational theory, which seems to me to fall into the exact trap she mentions and takes into almost no consideration the wider cultural influences that are affecting teachers, students, parents, and society overall, which I think are just as if not far more important than techniques (not to entirely disparage technique). Once finished with this, she begins an analysis of contemplative spirituality, using lectio divina as a model, examining the meditative reading pattern’s origins and structure. She rethinks the four phases of lectio divina (reading, meditation, prayer, and contemplation) in a teaching setting as attention, reflection, receptivity, and transformation.
From this point, she takes individual chapters on each phase. The first two of these phases are well thought out and are readily integrate-able into a classroom of any sort. Her ideas on attention, while perhaps a little fuzzy, and the use of silence and space seem a healthy counter to the sometimes frantic activity of students’ (and teachers!) lives. Reflection is something that many teachers already attempt to work into their curriculum, but she expounds on it in a contemplative fashion that gives it a different flavor than the usual. In these two chapters, she ever speaks a bit into how her ideas are applicable to math and science classes, something that rarely happens in educational books and theories. In discussing the last two phases, however, I felt as if she descended into a great deal of unclear thinking or at least unclear communication. The ideas I gained from receptivity could have been expounded in a much more concrete manner with less mystical terminology and phraseology. As for transformation, it felt as if she were discussing her ideals without providing any means of making such ideals reality. She specifically admitted that she shied away from too many specific techniques, but for those who are dealing with students who are not interested in transformation or subjects that do not lend themselves that way easily, there was little to aid them. In the end, the book provides an interesting integration of ideas, and her first few chapters are worthwhile, particularly as examinations of how educators’ typical attempts to “fix” things are missing the point. In the later chapters, however, it felt as if her model broke down and dissolved into mystical meandering.
December 18, 2013
An interesting book and one I think I will have to re-read to really have a chance at understanding. It isn't that Lichtmann's ideas are hard, but this is a book which should be read meditatively. That is fitting, of course, because Lichtmann bases her suggestions about teaching on the four stages of lectio divina- reading, reflection, meditation and contemplation. The results take the reader deeper into their own heart in order to open up that hospitable place where good teaching occurs. This makes this book counter-culture in the educational culture of North America. It doesn't follow the social science based approach which is so dominant in discussions about pedagogy and I tend to count that a good thing. While social science approaches can be a good thing, they do have the unfortunate impact of rendering the human being into a subject. Lichtmann's book forces us to encounter the person underneath our students and to seek out how to nurture them.
August 29, 2015
Every summer I read some kind of book about teaching. This one suited me very well at this pint in my career. I have read the books on classroom management, teaching styles, forms of questioning. Finally- a way to integrate my search for spiritual meaning with my work. A great author- who integrates Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr in an informative way as well. Thank you.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews