The following excerpts of David’s upcoming book, Teaching to Learn, Learning to Teach: Reflections on Education as Transformation through Dialogue (Fall 2013 ), are used by permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers.

To a person, my elementary, middle, and high school teachers in the small western Pennsylvania town of Hollidaysburg were conscientious and cared about us.

Depressurizing Students

I recall one typifying moment in which I went to a ninth grade history teacher, saying that I was afraid I might be having a nervous breakdown—going to school, doing homework, working 25 hours a week in a barber shop as an apprentice, being in the school band, and practicing for a school play at night. What Miss Ruck said to me (words I clearly recall) was unbelievably liberating and healing…