Spirituality Has an Essential Role in the Classroom

By Lyn Jerde

Group prayer or teaching of religious doctrine have no place in a public school. But spirituality most definitely has a place in schools - a central place.

So said Parker Palmer, a Madison-based author and speaker who has written seven books (three of them focusing on the spiritual aspects of education) and founded a retreat program for teachers.

"Of course we shouldn't be teaching Methodist doctrine or Catholic doctrine in public schools," said Palmer, who is a member of the Society of Friends, or Quakers. "But we do need to address spiritual issues."

Spiritual issues, according to Palmer, can be boiled down to two basic questions: "Who am I?" - which deals with personal identity - and "Whose am I?" - which deals with one's place in community with others.

"Every subject in the curriculum deals, in one way or another, with these questions," Palmer said.

Palmer said his brand of spirituality comes not from a "California hot tub," or from other so-called spiritual things such as crystals and candles.

It comes, he said, from working with people who live with injustice - a group which he believes includes public school teachers, because the culture tends to malign and underpay them.

"For some people," he said, "the only power they have is their personal answers to the questions 'Who am I?' and 'Whose am I?' "

Teachers can explore those questions with other teachers in a retreat program operated through the Center for Teacher Formation, which Palmer helped initiate.

In the retreat program, 25 kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers from the same geographic area come together for a series of eight retreats, each three to four days long, held over the course of two years. The retreats, led by facilitators trained by the Center for Teacher Formation, focus on the inner lives of the teachers.

At the end of the two years, Palmer said, the teachers in the retreat group still have each other available for support, and to help continue their spiritual growth.

One group of Wisconsin teachers from the state's southwest corner is participating in this program, holding retreats at Sinsinawa Mound Center in Grant County.

As with other Center for Teacher Formation retreat groups, not all of the participants work in the same school or district, though two or more of them may teach at the same school.

Starting this program was Palmer's first close encounter with the lives of K-12 teachers, after a career of teaching at the college level.

The Fetzer Institute, based in Kalamazoo, Michigan, asked him to think and write about the spirituality of K-12 teachers - the result of which was his 1998 book "The Courage to Teach" and its accompanying study guide, published a year later.

The first retreat involved Michigan teachers. The national center in Seattle was established in 1998. Now the program has 40 to 50 trained facilitators.

The Center for Teacher Formation wants to make the program available free to teachers, or at low cost, so that lack of money will not prevent any teacher from participating.

Teachers who have experienced these retreats bring back what they've learned to the classroom in "the most imaginative ways," Palmer said.

For example, many teachers discerned, in the process of the retreats, that they were afraid of their students.

Sometimes, it was a fear of physical violence. But usually, it was a fear of losing control of the classroom, and falling short when the students (inevitably) tested their boundaries with the teacher.

In-depth exploration of the teachers' personal answers to the questions "Who am I?" and "Whose am I?" helped the teachers deal with their fears from a position of quiet, confident strength.

"Through the program, they found new ground on which to stand, which gave them new authority in the classroom - authority that didn't involve handcuffs, but standing their ground so that the kids respected them."

Other teachers, he said, came to realize that there is more to them than meets the eye - that their "Who am I?" is not answered solely by the image they project in the way they dress, speak and act.

A corollary insight: The same is true of their pupils.

This made the purple-haired kids with multiple body piercings less intimidating, Palmer said - because the teachers realized that their pupils, like them, wear "masks" that obscure their real selves.

"Teachers could look at kids and say, 'I know this image is not the whole of what you are,' " Palmer said. Teachers who have a strong sense of "Who am I?" and "Whose am I?" can help their pupils explore those questions, Palmer said.

This, he said, is not necessarily done through "character education" - at least not the kind of program that focuses on "right" responses to specific ethical situations.

Nor is it done by focusing education primarily on preparing students for the workplace.

High schools tend to look like factories because, in their first inception, that's what they were, Palmer said. They were seen as places where pupils who had completed the 8th grade could start learning a trade - usually related to local industries.

"I don't think that makes for good citizens or fulfilled lives," he said. "I don't even think it makes for good employees. Most good employees can think on their feet, and deal with a question whose answer can't be found in the back of the book. If you don't have people capable of thinking for themselves, then you won't meet the bottom line."

In helping to prepare their students to enter the adult world, Palmer said, teachers need not only to teach them academic skills, but also guide them as they begin their lifelong process of discerning their answers to "Who am I?" and "Whose am I?"