This book shares insights drawn from the diverse voices of public school teachers, community outreach education workers, professors, writers, poets, artists, and musicians on suffering in school and the classroom. Teachers speak about their own encounters with and perceptions from suffering using critical-analytic textual works, as well as first-hand personally reflective accounts. By sharing their stories and reflections, the editors and contributors shed light upon the dark areas that often are not addressed in Teacher Training Programs, and that generally remain unaddressed and unacknowledged even as teachers become well-established as professionals in the field of education.

Provokes and deepens reader engagement with central concerns and experiences related to suffering in the teaching life Explores insights teachers have gleaned from dealing with social-political factors that have rendered educational tasks problematic Examines questions about the meaning and nature of suffering in relation to the teaching life, the sources of suffering, and the meaning of suffering in relation to the contemplative awareness of goodness, truth, and beauty in teaching life

Autorentext
Sean Steel is former Lecturer and Sessional Instructor at the University of Calgary, Canada, Ambrose University College, Canada, and Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, Canada. He currently teaches public school.

Amber Homeniuk is an expressive arts therapist. Her writing appears in The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, Numéro Cinq, and Windsor Review's tribute to Alice Munro.

Inhalt

1. Elemental, Keith Inman.- 2. Introduction: In Light and In Darkness, Sean Steel and Amber Homeniuk.- 3. Plato Killed a Moth in My Dream, Daniela Elza.- 4. Suffering and the Contemplative Gave, Sean Steel.- 5. On the Two Meanings of Suffering, James V. Schall.- 6. Oh, my dark companion..., John B. Lee.- 7. ode to the critic (or what was I trying to say?), Daniela Elza.- 8. Suffering and the Blues, Harry Manx.- 9. it: attempts at definition, Daniela Elza.- 10. What the Buddha Never Taught Me, Tim Ward.- 11. Giving back of the Giving, Kelley Aitken.- 12. Teaching Tiny Tim from my Tiny Tim Closet, Dorothy Ellen Palmer.- 13. Making Space: It's Okay to Clear Time for Yourself, Jenna Butler.- 14. Importance, Keith Inman.- 15. A Teacher's Night Song, Sean Steel.- 16. a shoreline to stand on, Daniela Elza.- 17. Living in the Shadow of what I Teach or rather, Learning from our Needs, Stefan Gillow Reynolds.- 18. beauty is embarassing, Daniela Elza.- 19. Never Quite Enough, Tom Flanagan.- 20. Why Students Don't Suffer, Lee Trepanier.- 21. The Drawing Lesson, Kelley Aitken.- 22. A Time to Weep and a Time to Laugh, Or, the Necessity of Suffering even as we live Happily Ever After, Dorothy Warner.- 23. Once in a Blue Moon, Christina Alise McDermott.