I am back from a two week hiatus which really did me well all over. I even spent some time with aunts, uncles, and cousins whom I haven't seen in years up in the Manassas, Virginia area.
When I'm with certain family members, a good feeling tends to wash over me. I am reminded of how we are always growing, always changing. Recently, I have been reading up on the social, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual process involved in our development and how schools (for better or worse) are a place where a lot of this growth takes place. While most teacher education programs focus on the outer life of a child, shouldn’t educators be focusing just as much on a child’s inner life? Hmmmm....
What if school curriculums looked beyond transmitting information and cognitive skill training? What if children were taught how to pay attention to their breathing, their eating and sleep habits, to their world around them, to their emotions and those of others? What if we studied the way our minds work in terms of how we solve problems as well as how we deal with stress and anxiety? If schools want to be a place of tremendous discovery, then they must tap into all aspects of body, mind, and spirit, no?
Contemplative Studies
Fostering this sense of body, mind, and spirit is often referred to as contemplative education. While there is still debate concerning what contemplative education should entail, researchers at Garrison Institute have initially defined it to include classroom practices that foster attention training, secular meditation, and yoga. Reported outcomes (pdf) associated with these practices include increased self-awareness, mindfulness, self-reflection, and enhanced social and emotional intelligence. 
The report (2005) goes on to state that "contemplative programs share a common set of outcomes consistent with those of mainstream education. The main short-term or immediate outcomes include enhancing students’ learning and academic performance, improving the school’s social climate as well as promoting emotional balance and pro-social behaviors. These programs also share common long-term or ultimate outcomes including the development of noble qualities such as peacefulness, internal calm, compassion, empathy, forgiveness, patience, generosity and love" (p.5).
While the notion of “contemplative” studies may sound a bit arcane, consider the current socio-historical context surrounding public schools. Tobin Hart, author of the book The Secret Spiritual Life of Children, defines contemplative as “a third way of knowing that complements the rational and the sensory.” In this sense, contemplative techniques are really a form of metacognition – a way of thinking about our thinking – with an additional element that includes thinking about our feelings and what our “spidey” senses are telling us.
In an interview featured in Shambhala Sun (Boyce 2007) magazine, Linda Wallace, an elementary school teacher in Colorado notes that “contemplative practices help them [students] to stop and get a different perspective, and then make a choice. Rather than imposing any belief on them, as some people might believe these practices do, it is quite the opposite. It asks them what their beliefs are and teaches students how to access them” (p.70).
Similarly, Linda Lantieri, an education activist who founded the post 9/11 school program Project Renewal: Building Resiliency from the Inside Out aimed at supporting students in lower Manhattan, notes that academic performance is always important; however, it should incorporate a broader definition of what it means to be educated: “A child who doesn’t have a sense of meaning and purpose, a child who is fearful and anxiety-ridden, is a child who can’t learn…. A bigger vision of education includes a wide range of skills that people need to be successful as they grow up and integrate into society. They will not only need to be academically intelligent but also emotionally, socially, and spiritually intelligent” (pp. 70-71).
Next step: Starting with ourselves
When I first read this article, I was struck with the notion of how this same type of contemplative education is needed by those working with children. When our schools’ teachers and administrators are fearful and anxiety-ridden, when lack a sense of meaning and purpose in their lives, can we really expect much from our educational system?
While many teachers are caring and altruistic, they can get stuck in a rut professionally and quickly burn out. Professional development that focused on contemplative techniques would work well if it was clearly defined and supported by practitioners. While most professional development is well meaning, what many teachers hear is that they are doing a poor job. Thus, there is a right and wrong way to communicate with teachers, and getting it right, whether teaching how to use delicious or how to concentrate on your breathing, can make all the difference. Selling contemplative studies might be easier in that what you’re teaching educators is how to incorporate mind, body, and spirit into one’s practice, to put their wisdom and insight to work through creative, supportive, and effective action.
Given that many of the issues facing our world are deeply spiritual, i.e., they deal with our identity as human beings, educators should not be frightened of this dimension and learn to engage themselves and their students in techniques that will make these internal processes more transparent.
Besides, what's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?
References:
For more information on Awareness and Concentration for Learning, please visit the Garrison Institute website: www.garrisoninstitute.org.
Boyce, B. (2007). Please help me learn who I am. Shambhala Sun, 15(3): 66-73; 119-120.
Garrison Institute. (2005). Contemplation and Education: A Survey of Programs Using Contemplative Techniques in K-12 Educational Settings: A Mapping Report. Retrieved on 02 January 2007 from http://www.garrisoninstitute.org/programs/Mapping_Report.pdf.
Google Scholar links for teaching, learning and meditation.
Hart, T. (2002). Opening the contemplative mind in the classroom. Journal of Transformative Education, 2(1):28-46.
Photo credits:
Zippy Kid and Funicular II from kodama (on the road)
Prayer flags (for peace) by t_a_i_s
Artwork:
Pete White. Spidey Sense (1999). Woodcut. 9" x 12".
Keywords: body, cognition, compassion, contemplative education, contemplative studies, creativity, development, discovery, emotional intelligence, emotions, empathy, feelings, Garrison Institute, generosity, inner, intellect, learning, love, meditation, metacognition, mind, mindfulness, outer, patience, personal development, professional development, reflection, school, self, society, spirit, spirituality, teacher professional development, teaching, Tobin Hart, yoga
Comments
I like that you talk about contemplative education for younger students. In my life, that wasn't any sort of reality until I got older--and my parents tried hard to find places for me. From fourth grade through my senior year of high school I was enrolled at "alternative" high school, and while these schools had higher emphasis on the arts and self-direction, there was no real focus on the inner world. My experience with transformative education really didn't come until my second year of college, with a program called LEAPNow.
LEAPNow runs a program called (funnily enough) LEAPYear that's intended as a first or second year of college--a year of college that gets you out of the country, into the world, and more importantly into yourself. I traveled to India with a small group of students, and though we definitely studied Buddhism and Hinduism and yogic practice, the real emphasis was on personal awareness, emotional literacy, enriching our lives, all that fun stuff. I traveled again on my own to Taiwan in the spring, and found that the practices learned there were amazing when dealing with life in a foreign country by myself. I only wish they had started sooner for me.
My parents were way into spiritual practice and inner work--and if they could not find a place for me to practice that in school as a child, what hope has the parent who has never heard of these things?
So the chance must start in the schools and in the hearts of the parents and students who yearn for it. An intention made, grows strong, change happens.
(To anyone who is curious, the website for LEAPNow is www.leapnow.org/ .)
Jesse,
It sounds like the LEAP project really inspired you. I wish I could have participated in something similar.
Early in my youth, my parents enrolled me in a Waldorf school. It was absolutely wonderful and contemplative wherein we spent our days singing, painting, taking walks through the forest, studying the tadpoles and crayfish in the creeks, building cutting boards and book shelves, and putting on plays for each other. It was the total antithesis of what I experienced the following year in public school.
There was a Waldorf school here in Gainesville that we tried to get involved in, but it ultimately closed before my kids could participate.
I agree that we need to make changes in the schools, making them more contemplative. I also like how you say the "chance must start... in the hearts of the parents and students who yearn for it." I feel there are many parents who yearn for this yet don't know where to begin.
However it is introduced, contemplative studies needs to be free of any sense of mysticism to gain acceptance. This is unfortunate, but given the relatively conservative social nature of many parents that I meet, anything that smacks of Eastern religious values will scare many away.
I feel a change is coming. It will take a few years; however, one of my goals is to introduce spirituality into teacher education programs in a non-threatening way that builds upon the idea of self-reflection, social justice, and school reform.
Thank you for your comments. I will definitely check the LEAP site out.