Powerful Conversations about the spiritual and soulful aspects of the whole child

1. The Holistic Learning and Spirituality in Education Professional Interest Communities of ASCDpresents Powerful Conversations about the spiritual and soulful aspects of the whole child

2. Gary BabiukCo-facilitator of PIC • Assistant Professor • Faculty of Education • University of Manitoba • Winnipeg, Manitoba

3. Presentation Plan • Introductions • Sharing successes and challenges • What is holistic learning? • What is spirit and soul in education, the inner life of students? • How can we nurture these in our classrooms? • Examples • Sharing Ideas / Discussion / Questions / Share Resources

4. Introduction to the Group • Name / Position / School / Location • Why did you choose this session? Try to keep it to under a minute

5. Pair and Share 1. What are you currently doing that seems to be bringing the essence of spirituality / soulfulness into the classroom / school? 2. What challenges / issues /questions / concerns do you have?

6. In March 2007, during the annual conference in Anaheim, California the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) launched a new initiative committed to improving the education of The Whole Child.It also outlined a The Learning Compact that stated, “The prevailing question is not about what children need to succeed. The research is clear. They need supportive environments that nurture their social, emotional, physical, ethical, civic, creative, and cognitive development.

7. The question becomes: Who bears responsibility for creating this environment? The answer is: The whole community” (2007, p. 10). • For further information or to find The Whole Child Report online visit www.ascd.org/ and choose from the Initiative and Programs Menu on the left side of the page The Whole Child.

8. This initiative and compact certainly moved beyond the narrow academic achievement focus of children’s intellectual levels as measured by standardized tests, under the influence of the No Child Left Behind policies. It’s measure of success, academic achievement, is a short-term goal, a point in time, measurable and sometimes fleeting.

9. On the other hand a focus on the significance of what is being learned and its relationship to the whole child is a long-term goal and harder to measure. Both are needed as measures of success. The focus on academic success over the last few years has left education unbalanced.

10. We have sacrificed the long-term goals that are significant for students such as their dreams, their gifts to the world, for short term learning success, higher test scores. The ASCD initiative did turn the focus toward the needs of the whole child, an attempt to balance our success goals, but there seems to be an aspect of the inner life of the child, the spiritual or soulful, that is absent from this wider focus.

11. It is interesting that ASCD had focused on spirituality in education in its 1998/1999 edition of Educational Leadership entitled “The Spirit of Education”. In that issue a number of authors explored spirituality and religion in education. One of the contributors to that issue, Rachel Kessler (2000), indicates that although “the fears of integrating a spiritual dimension into the classroom have not gone away

12. … the editors [of Educational Leadership] received a windfall of unsolicited manuscripts of outstanding quality and won a Bronze Excel Award from the Society for National Association Publication for the issue. This journal has begun a long-overdue conversation that we can no longer postpone-a rare open moment in our field and in our culture to speak what has been unspeakable for decades. (p. xiii)

13. It seems that ASCD has missed this opportunity to continue the dialogue about the “unspeakable”, the spiritual nature of children in The Whole Child initiative.

14. Although there is a focus on the emotional aspect in the ASCD initiative, which according to Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, is a crucial component of determining how well children learn, and creativity is mentioned, a more expansive view, which would include the spiritual or “inner” life of the child is ignored.

15. For many this area has not been included in educational discussions because it is seen as synonymous with religion, which in the case of the United States is not allowed through the separation of church and state in their constitution.

16. So how can we fill the gap left in the ASCD Whole Child initiative? • How can we help educators and parents see that dealing with spirituality and inner life in schools and classrooms does not have to religious? • Before we look how we can develop classrooms and schools that create space for students to connect to their inner life / spirit. • Lets look at few definitions of what it might mean to be holistic, spiritual and soulful in our teaching.

17. Principles Holistic Education • Balance • Inclusion • Connection From “The Holistic Curriculum” by John P. Miller

18. Balance • Interdependent / Independent • Environment / Economy • Sacred / Material • Inner / Outer • Global / Region / Nation

19. Balance continued • Female / Male • Process / content • Imagination / Knowledge • Intuitive / Rational • Quality / Quantity

20. Inclusiveness • Transmission Curriculum ------------------------- Student • Transaction Curriculum <------------------------- Student • Transformation Curriculum intersects with Student

21. Connection • Linear Thinking - Intuition • Relationship between Mind and Body • Relationship among domains of knowledge • Relationship between self and community • Relationship to the earth • Relationship to the soul (inner life)

22. Description of Soul and Spirit “There was a time when people reflected deeply in the nature of the “interior life,” as they called it, and the meaning of the cosmos. Today we surrender most of this reflection to scientists. Not having thought much about their inner lives, people are often confused when faced with the traditional distinction between the soul and the spirit, but distinguishing these two dimensions of experience can be helpful.”

23. “We might notice, for instance, how much we are motivated by the spirit in our concentration on the future, on understanding, and on achievement. We might then see how we neglect the soul, which has complementary but very different values, such as slowness, the past, inaction, feeling, mystery, and imagination.”

24. “To suggest a distinction between soul and spirit is not to advocate a separation of the two. In the contrary, it seems best to arrive at a place where in effect the two work together, as in a marriage or partnership.” From Thomas Moore’s Care of the Soul(p32)

25. From Carl Jung“Without soul, spirit is as dead as matter, because both are artificial abstractions; whereas man [humans] originally regarded spirit as a volatile body, and matter as not lacking in soul.” From Thomas Moore’s Care of the Soul (p33)

26. From the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet“Soul is at home in the deep, shaded valleys. Heavy torpid flowers saturated with black grow there. The rivers flow like warm syrup. They empty into huge oceans of soul.Spirit is land of high, white peaks and glittering jewel-like lakes and flowers. Life is sparse and sounds travel great distances….Desolation is of the depths, as is brooding. At these heights, spirit leaves soul far behind.” (p34)

27. From James Moffett’s Chapter on Spirituality and Education in The Universal SchoolhouseMeaning of Spirituality: • Secular meaning …the sense of moral or benevolent. In common parlance, spirited people are simply full of life and of themselves.” • Team spirit or “esprit de core”  

28. James Moffett continued • ‘witty’ or ‘lively’ as well as ‘scared’  • Society has secularized over the centuries, the sense of spirit and its cognates has also become more material and metaphorical. • We drink spirits and eat ‘soul’ food

29. Sacred meaning-“The common denominator might be of morality and mind, energy and essence. Even these material meanings converge on the immaterial. Morality comes from mores and or customs and therefore does not depend on religion. Nor do vitality and energy, mind and wit. The essence of something is abstract and may perfectly well be understood as purely a mental or psychological category.”

30. “Morality contrasts with materialism in the sense of selfishness and meanness. Mind commonly contrasts with matter, as does energy in the scientific sense. Philosophers contrast essence with existence. So a concept of immateriality underlies even with secular, material meanings.” James Moffett’s The Universal Schoolhouse (p.18-19)

31. Even were we not to accept any metaphysical meanings of spirituality, this convergence of secular meanings alone warrants spiritualizing education.It is intended to include everyone- it brings out our daily efforts to improve our life and not just think of our own wellbeing

32. - it energizes these efforts with a life force common to everything- it validates the inner life and sense of personal well-being- it calls us back from surfaces to essences- it invites us to seek commonalities beneath commonplaces, for the sake of mindas well as morality- it’s a toast to wits with spirit

33. “Even in its most sacred sense, spirituality does not depend on religion. Spirituality may be what all religions share… “ (p22)Spirituality as attention and perception of yourself and the world around you.

34. In Montgomery Halford (1998) the author outlines a interview with NelNoddings, she states,“Spirituality is an attitude or a way of life that recognizes something we mightcall spirit. Religion is a specific way of exercising that spirituality and usually requires an institutional affiliation. Spirituality does not require an institutional connection. (p. 29)

35. In his book The Element, Sir Ken Robinson (2009)describes another aspect of the inner life, what he calls “the element”. It is more expansive than just creativity as he defines it as ”… the meeting point between natural aptitude and personal passion” (p. 21).

36. He also states that “the element” is more than just happiness or enjoyment but is when people“… connect with something fundamental to their sense of identity, purpose, and well-being. Being there provides a sense of self-revelation, of defining who they really are and what they’re really meant to be doing with their lives” (p. 21).

37. Why is it so important to include the spiritual, inner life of the whole child in classroom and schools?

38. Parker Palmer (1998) indicates that “spirituality – the human quest for connectedness-is not something that needs to be ‘brought into’ or ‘added onto’ the curriculum. It is at the heart of every subject we teach, where it waits to be brought forth” (p. 8).

39. Douglas Sloan (2005) suggests that“ … our modern educational assumptions and practices imply images of the child and of the adult as essentially other than human - merely an animal to be socialized, a computer to be programmed, a unit of production to be harnessed and utilized, a consumer to be won…”(p. 27).

40. He advocates that we can still turn this modern trend around and assist our students to develop“… a being of body, soul, and spirit; a being of interwoven intelligence, emotion, intention, and perception, all capable of infinite growth and development.

41. This, our full human being, contains within itself the resources for countering and transforming all the forces that would reduce the human to nonhuman”. (pp. 43-44)

42. All of these authors are considering our inner life. This is the place that we think, dream, and try to understand our place in the world and universe. These aspects of the human condition are not always addressed in schools, as there is a fear of bringing religion into a secular public school. But no matter what we do, our children bring this inner life with them into our classrooms, just as they bring their emotions, thoughts, and physical needs.

43. How can we nurture soulfulness and spirituality? What can we do in our schools and classrooms to provide space for students to connect their inner lives with their educational lives?

44. From Parker J. Palmer’sTo Know As We Are Known. Education as a Spiritual Journey (p. 71-75, 1993) A learning space has three major characteristics, three essential dimensions:

45. Openness - It is more than the commonsense meaning of space. To create space is to remove the impediments to learning that we find around and within us, to set aside the barriers behind which we hide so that truth cannot seek us out. So creating a learning space means resisting our own tendency to clutter up our consciousness and our classrooms.

46. Boundaries – The openness of a space is created by the firmness of its boundaries. The teacher that wants to create an open learning space must define and defend its boundaries with care. Not only will this keep the space open, it will also keep the students from fleeing that space.

47. Hospitality -means receiving each other, our struggles, our newborn ideas, with openness and care. It means creating an ethos in which the community of troth can form, the pain of truth’s transformations be borne.

48. How do we create a learning space with these qualities?- physical arrangement such as a discussion circle with the teacher in the circle (or Circle of Voices)- Conceptual space through assigned readings and lecturing to set the stage for critical discussion and the need for student attention and critical questioning, drama, silence, and making space for feelings.

49. From John P. Miller’s Education and the soul. Toward a Spiritual Curriculum (2000) A soulful curriculum recognizes and gives priority to the inner life. It seeks a balance and connection between our inner and outer lives. Traditionally, schools have ignored the child’s inner life: in fact, our whole culture tends to ignore the inner life.

50. Elements: - Visualization / Guided Imagery - Creative Writing / Poetry - Storytelling- Autobiography / Journal Writing - Visual Arts - Drama / Improvisation - Music / Dance- Integrating subjects through the Arts