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This essay argues that only by sharing our mistakes and uncertainty can we fully reflect on our own process as teachers, only by understanding our process can we begin to identify the many factors that contribute to classroom messes in the first place, and only by acknowledging the perpetual messiness of our practice can we fully engage in the scholarship of teaching and learning.

As a young teacher, I yearned for the day when I would know my craft so well, be so competent, so experienced, and so powerful that I could walk into any classroom without feeling afraid. But now, in my late fifties, I know that day will never come.

-Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach

College faculty should have no difficulty identifying with Parker Palmer's humble admission in his classic text, The Courage to Teach. Teaching at LaGuardia Community College in New York, for instance, we-Heidi Johnsen, Michelle Pacht, Phyllis van Slyck, and Ting Man Tsao-are frontline workers struggling to meet the needs of a diverse student body, who "by any statistical category such as race, ethnicity, lack of academic preparedness, poverty, [family obligations], or immigration status are not only the hardest-to-serve, but the least likely to succeed" (Mellow 8). In helping our students master critical thinking, reading, and writing skills, we face numerous problems, few of which can be entirely overcome: we misjudge students' abilities and backgrounds; we try out promising but untested pedagogies and materials; we get overwhelmed by large class sizes, heavy workloads, and insufficient resources; we lose the balance between maintaining high expectations and being flexible with students.

Yet, whether we teach in junior or senior colleges, we appear less humble than Palmer in workshops, conferences, and journals. We more often than not represent our teaching in the best possible light, leaving little room for missteps-for the acknowledgment and discussion of uncertainty or errors. Indeed, it seems the only acceptable way to discuss a setback is as part of a larger narrative, one where a "failure," if we dare use the word, is simply a precursor to success, a way of highlighting a challenge overcome. In our narratives, we gloss over our teaching messes, mentioning them only in passing rather than fully representing them. We eschew the...

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