Parker J. Palmer’s most recent book, Healing the Heart of Democracy: The Courage to Create a Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit,  eloquently delineates five “habits of the heart”—a phrase first used by Alexis de Tocqueville—that are needed in our society today to sustain democracy in life-giving ways.

In his prelude, Parker explains, “In this book the word heart reclaims its original meaning. ‘Heart’ comes from the Latin cor and points not merely to our emotions but to the core of the self, the center place where all our ways of knowing converge—intellectual, emotional, sensory, intuitive, imaginative, experimental, relational, and bodily, among others. The heart is where we integrate what we know in our minds with what we know in our bones, the place where our knowledge can become more fully human” (page 6).

Parker’s book has gotten me thinking a lot about educational standards and “what we know in our bones.” Teachers have long followed instructional standards for assessing student growth in relationship to the grade-level curriculum they’re required to impart to their students. Teachers have treated these standards as expectations that become habitual for students through daily practice, eventually forming lifelong habits that optimize growth and competence.

Years ago, in my book, Time to Teach, Time to Learn: Changing the Pace of School, I shared a set of personal standards informing practices I considered central to my teaching. Recently, when revisiting these in the light of Parker Palmer’s “habits of the heart,” I found that most were, in fact, habits of my own heart and mind that had provided a compass for me and my students over many years.

I noted then, some fourteen years ago, that “perhaps the most important outcomes of the standards movement at the state and federal level will be not only the actual manuals of standards created and distributed, tested and assessed, but also the opportunities provided for teachers and administrators to honestly examine the standards they hold essential to teaching. By comparing your own teaching and learning standards with state requirements, you can help define what is most important for the children, for you, and for your time together in school” (p. 290).

Over the next few weeks, I will revisit a number of my personal standards in this space in relation to the current needs of teachers and students, in the light of the Common Core. My hope is that by sharing the ideas and ideals that have guided me through my years as an educator, I might support you in deepening your own set of “cor” personal standards for the classroom.