Curriculum designed to change classroom culture

BOULDER – To Rachael Kessler, there is a clear and unmistaken “void of spiritual guidance” among children today. And she says the Columbine tragedy was proof that the inner life of students needs nurturing.

“Youth violence experts began for the first time to name the spiritual void as a critical variable in the self-destructive and violent behaviors of students,” Kessler says.

But she was in the fight long before those experts began their speculations. In 1985 she began to develop a model that nurtured the inner life of students. Later she tested it, refined it and distributed it through teacher training and writing.

However, it was then taboo to use the words “inner life” in the same sentence with “students” or “schools.”

But in 2000, when the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development – a nonprofit that represents 175,000 educators in 135 countries – published Kessler’s book called “The Soul of Education,” a door opened. “The book was endorsed across the spectrum of political and religious belief, (so) it appeared that there was now a platform of legitimacy on which an organization could stand to bring this approach to a broad cross section of schools,” she says.

What does Kessler want to accomplish? According to her Web site, her goal is to “transform the culture of classes, schools, school districts so that the inner life of students and teachers is safe, nurtured and welcomed.” To do that she created a nonprofit in 2001, the PassageWays Institute in Boulder, to develop curricula for schools.

Her first step was to demonstrate that such curricula can work in typical public schools. PassageWays is used in a Fort Collins high school and a rural elementary school in Missouri. Kessler says PassageWays also has programming in “a growing number of public and private schools” in California, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York, Oregon and Washington.

This void of spiritual guidance happened in part, she says, because the U. S. excluded a spiritual dimension from public education on the “mistaken belief that this is required by the separation of church and state.”

The First Amendment “protects the rights of our children to freely express their own beliefs. Many teachers have tried to be so vigilant about keeping religion out of the classroom that they have unknowingly violated the rights of their students. It has become common practice for teachers to suppress student expression or exploration of their own beliefs, longings or search for a spiritually meaningful experience.”

She admits in the book that, “We do need to be careful. If we define spirituality in terms of beliefs that one group holds and others do not, we violate the First Amendment by imposing such beliefs through curriculums in public schools. It is true that for many adults, spirituality is inextricably linked with their particular faith and doctrines.”

However, listening to students for many years has shown her that young people have experiences that “nourish their spiritual development and yet are not directly related to worldview or religious dogma.”

She writes, “We can honor the First Amendment without abandoning our children’s spiritual development.”

As for Passageways’ financial development, Kessler reports her book “continues to sell well” and that more than 10,000 copies have been sold. According to PassageWays’ documents, it expects income of $394,500 this year, with expenses at $365,993.

Curriculum offers seven ways to nurture students including creativity, connection

1. Deep connection: fostering a quality of relationship in classrooms that is profoundly caring, resonant with meaning, involves feelings of belonging and of being truly seen and known.

2. Silence and solitude: helping students focus, concentrate, reflect and refresh themselves for learning, self-discovery and creativity.

3. Meaning and purpose: providing students with writing and discussion opportunities to reflect deeply on their own goals and dreams, to discover meaning through service, and to safely explore the big questions, such as why am I here? Does my life have a purpose? How do I find out what it is?

4. Joy and delight: providing experiences of play, celebration and gratitude, and encouraging students to reflect on what is precious in their lives.

5. Creativity: activating the creative process for developing new ideas, artistic expression, problem-solving and discovering entirely new perspectives on people and life.

6. Transcendence: constructively channeling the powerful urges of young people to go beyond their perceived limits in the arts, athletics, academics and human relations without courting dangerous risk.

7. Initiation: providing a structured sequence of experiences and life skills to help students navigate critical transitions, and claim adulthood without the violent or self-destructive initiations rising among teenagers today.

Source: PassageWays Institute, www.passageways.org.

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