Prologue

Abstract

What informs our identities as teachers? What defines us as educators? What interior realities, fears, and aspirations lie beneath our extrinsic concerns of quantitative assessments and bureaucratic demands? How can the spirit of our intrinsic identity as teachers be accessed when it is so often buried beneath the immediate physical, mental, and emotional demands of our profession? Where is the elusive talisman that can help us educators transcend the finite and measureable external landscape of teaching and learning? How can we educators move past the deterministic landscape and return to the interior realities that inspire, nourish, sustain, and challenge the intangible heart of our lives as educators?