Category: Search for Spirituality (Winter 2007)
Rachael Kessler, founder and director of the PassageWays Institute, facilitates and conducts professional and curriculum development for educators. She is the author of The Soul of Education: Helping Students Find Connection, Compassion, and Character at School (ASCD, 2000). For further information on opportunities for professional development, practical guidelines and additional articles, visit www.passageways.org .
Classrooms That Welcome Soul
When soul is present in education, attention shifts. We listen with great care not only to what is spoken but also to the messages between the words—tones, gestures, the flicker of feeling across the face. We concentrate on what has heart and meaning. The yearning, wonder, wisdom, fear, and confusion of students become central to the curriculum. Questions become as important as answers.
When soul enters the classroom, masks drop away. Students dare to share the joy and talents they have feared would provoke jealousy in even their best friends. They risk exposing the pain or shame that might be judged as weakness. Seeing deeply into the perspective of others, accepting what has felt unworthy in themselves, students discover compassion and begin to learn about forgiveness.
For almost 20 years, I have worked with teams of educators around the country in both private and public schools to create curriculum, methodology, and teacher development that can feed the awakening spirit of young people as part of school life. I call this approach the PassageWays Program, a set of principles and practices for working with adolescents that integrates heart, spirit, and community with strong academics. This curriculum of the heart is a response to the usually unspoken questions and concerns of teenagers.
Most adolescents grapple with the profound questions of loss, love, and letting go. Of meaning, purpose, and service. Of self-reliance and community, and of choice and surrender. How they respond to these questions—whether with love and empowerment, denial, or even violence—can be profoundly influenced by the community of the classroom. When students work together to create an authentic community, they learn that they can meet any challenge—even wrenching conflict, prejudice, profound gratitude, or death—with grace, love, and power. Creating authentic community is the first step in the soul of education.
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It is the time in our Senior Passage course when we celebrate and honor childhood before the challenge of letting it go. We ask the students to sift and sort as they stand on the threshold to adulthood: What do you want to take with you and what do you want to leave behind because it no longer serves you?
Each student is invited to share something precious from their childhood that they want always to take with them. Nostalgia wafts through the room as we all scan our memories for these precious moments, people, and places from childhood. A glow like the color of twilight seems to surround us as the stories are shared:
I would take with me the innocence of childhood, when I didn’t even know that other people were different from me.
I would take my friend who I shared so much of my childhood with—so many good moments, and even bad ones.
I would take my village in the Sudan—my language, culture, all those things that everyone thinks I have forgotten, but I have not.
I would take the moonlight, and the truth of my imagination.
I would take my dress-up box and all the times I spent trying on so many ways of being.
I would take the song of the meadowlark and the smell of grass and the wet earth in the greenbelt behind my house where I spent so much of my childhood.
Poised on the brink of huge decisions, departures, loss, confusion, and emergence, these sophisticated 18 year-olds are basking now in the sweetness of childhood that they have brought into the room. We have created together a space that is safe enough for tenderness.
Minutes later, we tell them it is time to come into the present, to explore in anonymous writing what they are wondering about, worried about, curious and afraid of. We give them paper and pencils to write their “personal mysteries”: the thoughts they have when they lay awake at night. The moment they take hold of the pencils, the atmosphere in the room shifts. A flood has been unleashed. They turn their chairs every which way to separate from each other and begin to pour out onto the page for 20 minutes. I rest in the silence in the room, the soft sounds of lead on paper. I feel transported to a sense of deep trust. We have created together an atmosphere that is safe enough for the soul to speak.
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How Can Teachers Invite Soul?
Safety in the classroom is the essential first step in creating the conditions for spiritual formation and in helping students make the choices that build and sustain a life of compassion and integrity. Students need to feel safe:
- to feel and know what they feel
- to tolerate confusion and uncertainty
- to express what they feel and think
- to ask questions that feel dumb or have no answers
- to take risks, make mistakes, and grow and forgive
- to wrestle with the demons inside that lead us to harm.
To achieve this safety and openness, students and teachers in a classroom work together carefully for weeks and months to build the healthy relationships that lead to authentic community. The first step is collaboratively creating agreements— conditions that students name as essential for speaking about what matters most to them. In classroom after classroom, across the country and the age span, students call for essentially the same qualities of behavior: respect, honesty, caring, listening, fairness, openness, and commitment.
Play helps students focus, relax, and become a team through laughter and cooperation. In addition to strengthening community and helping students become fully present, theatre games or initiatives from experiential education and the expressive arts engage students in moving their bodies—essential for the unwinding of the nervous system which can help students deal with overstimulation and stress. Play and the arts provide opportunities for young people to express the creative drive that is one essential avenue to nurturing the spirit of students.
At the beginning of class, silence can help students to settle; to digest what they have been learning; to honor for a moment what is distracting them; to rest, daydream, or pray so that they come refreshed and fully present to this new subject. Students learn to make friends with silence. Eighth-grade English teacher Colleen Conrad, who has integrated practices for community building and increasing focusing abilities, calls this five- to ten-minute period a “solo time.” Her students have responded with immense gratitude. “Why are your students so much more focused than mine?” asked a colleague in her department. A new math teacher reported that in the middle of a very difficult class in which students were frustrated and stumped, one student raised his hand and said, “What we need to solve this problem is a solo time.”
Teachers who integrate the PassageWays model spend weeks providing practice in the art of deep listening and authentic speaking, first in pairs and then in the larger circle. Students learn to let go of their own agenda and simply bear witness to what the other is saying. When speaking, they learn to look to themselves for what they want to say and not depend on cues from others.
Using Symbols
Symbols that students create or bring into class allow teenagers to speak indirectly about feelings and thoughts that are awkward to address head on.
Symbols are a powerful way to help students move quickly and deeply into their feelings. “Take some time this week to think about what is really important to you in your life right now,” we ask high school seniors in a course designed to be a rite of passage from adolescence to adulthood. “Then find an object which can symbolize what you realize is so important to you now.”
This raggedy old doll belonged to my mother. I have been cut off from my mother during most of high school. We just couldn’t get along. But now that we know I’m going to leave soon, we have suddenly discovered each other again. I love her so much. My relationship to my mother is what is really important to me now.
A principal in Canada shared a story from her days of teaching a first- and second-grade class where she also worked with symbols:
I talked with my students about life being like a journey. As little as they were, they seemed to understand. They drew pictures about their journey. We talked about their journeys. Then I asked them to look for an object in nature that reminded them of themselves and of their journey.
A second-grade boy brought in two jars filled with shells. “I call these brain shells, he said pointing to the first jar. “They remind me of me because I’m very smart.” Then he held up the jar in which the same shells were crushed. “These crushed shells remind me of me too. They remind me of how hard I am on myself when I don’t do things just right.”
While symbols are particularly important for adolescents because they allow an indirectness of expression at a time when young people need to create a separate sense of self, we can see that even for young children symbols lead to profound self-awareness. Self-awareness—what Daniel Goleman considers the foundation skill of emotional intelligence—is essential to deep connection to the self and to meaningful communication that allows deep connection with others.
Symbols can also be used as a private exercise in self-awareness. “Draw or sculpt a symbol of what you are feeling right now. You don’t need to show it to anyone else. It’s just for you.” Or, “Write a metaphor about what friendship means to you. You can share it with the group or keep it for yourself, putting it in your folder to look at when the semester ends.”
Asking Questions
Questions of wonder or mysteries questions are another tool for encouraging students to discover what is in their hearts. Once trust and respect is established in the classroom, we give students the opportunity to write anonymously the questions they think about when they can’t sleep at night or when they’re alone or daydreaming in class.
Why am I here? Does my life have a purpose? How do I find it?
I have been hurt so many times, I wonder if there is God.
How does one trust oneself or believe in oneself?
How can I not be cynical?
Why this emptiness in this world, in my heart? How does this emptiness get there, go away, and then come back again?
Why am I so alone? Why do I feel like the burden of the world is on my shoulders?
These are some of thousands of questions I have gathered from teenagers over the past 20 years. When students hear the collective mysteries of their classroom community read back to them in an honoring voice by their teachers, there is always one student who says, “I can’t believe I’m not alone anymore.” And then another will say, “I can’t believe you people wrote those questions.” “That lesson was awesome!” said one honors student to her advisory teacher in a large diverse public high school after hearing pages of personal “mysteries questions” written anonymously by her classmates. “I do not think of myself as a judgmental person, but I would never have believed that those other students had the same questions that I do.” Sharing their deep concerns, their curiosity, wonder and wisdom, students begin to discover a deep interest in their peers—even the ones they have always judged to be unworthy of their attention and respect. The capacity for empathy has been stirred. And the search for meaning, so essential to spiritual formation, is validated and stimulated.
The Council Process
Into this profound interest in their peers we introduce the practice of Council, the core of the PassageWays Model and of several other programs as well (see Jack Zimmerman and Virginia Coyle’s The Way of Council, Bramble Books). With everyone sitting in a circle where all can see and be seen, the Council allows each person to speak without interruption or immediate response. Students learn to listen deeply and discover how it feels to be truly heard. As students reflect on the same theme or tell stories from their lives that illustrate how they currently think or feel about the theme, those who listen deeply find themselves “walking in another person’s shoes.” This structured practice for multiple perspective-taking provides a skill and an experience that leads to critical and creative thinking and also to the development of empathy and compassion. In Council, students also experience stillness and silent reflection practiced in the company of others. Silence becomes a comfortable ally as we pause to digest one story and wait for another to form or when teachers call for moments of reflection or when the room fills with feeling at the end of a class.
“I remember you guys, and I bet you remember me,” said Richard, his voice quavering as he said his good-byes to the students in his Senior Passage course:
I was the guy you threw food at in the lunchroom. I was the kid you hurled insults at—like geek and dork. Well, you know what? I’m still a geek. I know that and so do you. But I also know something else. In the weeks and months of listening to your stories, and you listening to mine, I’ve seen that even the most beautiful girls in this class—the most beautiful girls in the world—have suffered with how they look or how others see them. I’ve shared your pain and you’ve shared mine. You guys have really taken me in. You’ve accepted me and respected me. I love you guys, and I know you love me.
“Apprehending the other’s reality, feeling what he feels as nearly as possible,” says Nel Noddings in Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics & Moral Education, “is the essential part of caring from the view of the one caring. For if I take on the other’s reality as possibility and begin to feel its reality, I feel also that I must act accordingly.” (1984 p. 16) In Richard’s story, we can see clearly the possibilities for compassion and caring that arise when students have the opportunity to meet as a group in ways that go beyond civility, beyond cooperation, to discover a genuine communing heart to heart, soul to soul. Even students who are estranged or alienated or who see themselves as enemies experience the joy of transcending mistrust, stereotypes, and prejudice that once felt like permanent barriers.
Gateways to the Souls of Students
Listening to the stories of students over the years, reading thousands of “mysteries questions,” I began to see a pattern of what nourishes the inner life of young people. This map, the Seven Gateways to Soul the of Students, comes not from any religious or philosophical tradition, but from the voices of the students themselves. As we seek ways to foster spiritual formation in our students, these “gateways” provide clues to the opportunities we can create or invite students to share in the classroom.
1. The search for meaning and purpose concerns the exploration of existential questions that burst forth in adolescence.
Why am I here?
Does my life have a purpose?
How do I find out what it is?
What does my future hold?
Is there life after death?
Is there a God?
2. The longing for silence and solitude can lead to identity formation and goal setting, to learning readiness and inner peace. For adolescents, this domain is often ambivalent—fraught with both fear and urgent need. As a respite from the tyranny of busyness and noise that afflicts even our young children, silence may be a realm of reflection, calm, or fertile chaos—an avenue of stillness and rest for some, prayer or contemplation for others. A student wrote:
I like to take time to go within myself sometimes. And when I do that, I try to take an emptiness inside there. I think that everyone struggles to find their own way with their spirit and it’s in the struggle that our spirit comes forth.
3. The urge for transcendence describes the desire of young people to go beyond their perceived limits. “How far can I be stretched, how much adversity can I stand?” writes one student. “Is there a greater force at work? Can humans tap into that force, and bring it into their daily lives?” writes another. Transcendence includes not only the mystical realm, but also extraordinary experiences in the arts, athletics, academics, or human relations. By naming this human need that spans all cultures, educators can help students constructively channel this urge and challenge themselves in ways that reach for this peak experience.
4. The hunger for joy and delight can be satisfied through experiences of great simplicity, such as play, celebration, or gratitude. “I want to move many and take joy in every person, every little thing.” writes one student. Another asks: “Do all people have the same capacity to feel joy and sorrow?” Educators can help students express the exaltation they feel when encountering beauty, power, grace, brilliance, love, or the sheer joy of being alive.
5. The creative drive is perhaps the most familiar domain for nourishing the spirit of students. In opportunities for acts of creation, people often encounter their participation in a process infused with depth, meaning, and mystery.
6. The call for initiation refers to a hunger the ancients met through rites of passage for their young. As educators, we can create programs that guide adolescents to become conscious of the irrevocable transition from childhood to adulthood, give them tools for making transitions and separations, challenge them to discover the capacities for their next step and create ceremonies with parents and other faculty that acknowledge and welcome them into the community of adults.
Students who have had the opportunity to experience the support of a school program designed to be a rite of passage learn that they can move on to their next step with strength and grace. “A senior in high school must make colossal decisions whether he or she is ready or not,” writes Carlos, describing the impact of the program on his life. “This class allows me to clear my head, slow down, and make healthy choices.”
7. Deep connection is the common thread. As my students tell stories about each of these domains, I hear a common thread: the experience of deep connection. This seventh domain describes a quality of relationship that is profoundly caring, resounds with meaning, and involves feelings of belonging and of being truly seen or known.
Through deep connection to the self, students encounter a strength and richness within that is the basis for developing the autonomy central to the adolescent journey, to discovering purpose and unlocking creativity. Teachers can nourish this form of deep connection by giving students time for solitary reflection.
Connecting deeply to another person or to a meaningful group, they discover the balm of belonging that soothes the profound alienation that fractures the identity of our youth and prevents them from contributing to our communities. Students feel a sense of belonging when they are part of an authentic community in the classroom—a community in which students feel seen and heard for who they really are. Many teachers create this opportunity through morning meetings, advisory groups, weekly councils, or sharing circles offered in a context of ground rules that make it safe to be vulnerable.
Some students connect deeply to nature: “When I get depressed,” revealed Keisha to her group in a school in Manhattan, “I go to this park near my house where there is an absolutely enormous tree. I go and sit down with it because it feels so strong to me.”
And some students discover solace in their relationship to God or to a religious practice. When students know there is a time in school life where they may give voice to the great comfort and joy they find in their relationship to God or to nature, this freedom of expression itself nourishes their spirits. Students who feel deeply connected don’t need danger to feel fully alive. They don’t need guns to feel powerful. They don’t want to hurt others or themselves. Out of connection grows compassion and passion—passion for people, for students’ goals and dreams, for life itself.
Teachers Who Welcome Soul
Since “we teach who we are,” teachers who invite heart and soul into the classroom also find it essential to nurture their own spiritual development. This may mean personal practices to cultivate awareness, serenity, and compassion, as well as collaborative efforts with other teachers to give and receive support for the challenges and joys of entering this terrain with their students.
We can have the best curricula and train teachers in technique and theory, but our students will be unsafe and our programs hollow if we do not provide opportunities for teachers to cultivate their own spiritual formation and their own emotional intelligence. Students are reluctant to open their hearts unless they feel their teachers are on the journey themselves—working on personal, as well as curriculum integration. Here I will briefly summarize “the willingness to care” – one dimension of what, in PassageWays, we call “The Teaching Presence.”[1]
The capacity of the teacher to care deeply for students is the foundation of all of the classroom practices described above. When students don’t trust adults—a common phenomenon in today’s society—they are not motivated to learn from us. And they will certainly not embrace our values or ethical beliefs. “The bonds that transmit basic human values from elders to the young are unraveling,” write Brendtro, Van Bockern & Clementson (“Adult-wary and Angry: Restoring Social Bonds,” Holistic Education Review, March, 1995) as they describe why so many youth are wary of adults. “If the social bond between adult and child is absent, conscience fails to develop and the transmission of values is distorted or aborted.”
In a pluralistic society, educators can provide a forum that honors the ways individual students nourish their spirits. We can offer activities that allow them to experience deep connection. In the search itself, in loving the questions, in the deep yearning they let themselves feel, young people will discover what is sacred in life, what is sacred in their own lives, and what allows them to bring their most sacred gifts to nourish the world.
[1] Please see the PassageWays website for the most updated version of “The Teaching Presence.”