Teaching with Sacred Intentions - Reclaiming Children and Youth

Teaching with Sacred Intentions
David A. Levine
When a classroom nurtures the soul, teaches soulcraft skills, and offers love to the students who reside
there, everyone has a place, all work together, and altruism is the norm.
Soul Making and Life's Individual
Educational Plan
Michelangelo often spoke of himself as searching to find
the figure concealed in the stone, knocking the surface
away as if seeking a miner buried in fallen rock
(Durant, 1953, p. 469).
Those of us who work with children too often see the emotional
impact current life circumstances have on our students.
The typical "helping response" is to label, test, or
separate in order to manage the unhealthy behaviors
which we encounter. A young person's painful experiences
need not be a way of life, but rather, potentially an
opening to another way of being, with new power amidst
life's possibilities.
Sacred psychologist Jean Houston's view into the human
experience, which sees our existence as part of the greater
whole, allows us to reframe who we are through our connections
with new people in new situations. She speaks of
how "soul making requires that you die to one story to be
reborn to a larger one" (Houston, 1987, p. 104). The entry
point to one's larger "soul story" is through what
Dr. Houston refers to as the Sacred Wound. "The wounding
becomes sacred when we are willing to release our old
stories and to become the vehicles through which the new
story may emerge ... " (Houston, 1987, p. 105).
Within the context of the big curriculum known as Earth
School (Zukav, 1990, p. 35), each individual comes into the
human experience with a life IEP (Individual Educational
Plan), and it is our responsibility to nurture the realization
of this plan by encouraging the unique expression of each
student's life story. As we respond to a child's sacred
wound, we are drawn to certain facets of it, based on our
own life IEP's. This is called "matching pictures," meaning-that
the issues we are drawn to, the student's behaviors
we are most affected by, the ones that really push our
buttons-are reflections of our own issues and our own
work. As we teach, support, nurture, and love our students,
we are doing the same for ourselves. This is the way
of the teacher, and some would say, the way of the healer,
as well.
Sacred Responses
If we as teachers can see our classrooms as filled with great
souls coming to wholeness through the human experience,
then we can help facilitate and nurture the realization of
their life IEPs by way of the types of settings we intentionally
create and the loving messages we deliver. The following
excerpt from the poem The Journey by David
Whyte (In the House of Belonging, 1999, pp. 37-38) so elegantly
speaks to the gift of hope a teacher can present to
a student during stormy and turbulent times, reflecting on
the growth and expansion that occurs when the heart is
broken open:
Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire
has gone out
someone has written
something new
in the ashes
of your life
You are not leaving
you are arriving.
reclaiming children and youth 11:1 spring 2002 If'&. pp. 15-18 15

Soulcraft
We may not always see the immediate results of our efforts
with our students, but somewhere deep within each soul
is a forest with rich fertile soil. This soil is waiting to be
tended, tilled, nurtured, and enlivened with the nutrients
of love and compassion. We call what we teach "life
skills" or "social skills," but another perspective on what
we could teach is offered by vision quest guide Bill Plotkin
(1999), who guides people in the practice of what he calls
Soulcraft. "Soulcraft is a set of experiences, ceremonies,
and processes" (Plotkin, 2002), which help an individual
unearth his or her life purpose by interacting with one's
soul to strengthen the realization of that purpose. Getting
in touch with one's life purpose provides greater depth of
meaning and passion in one's life and often awakens a
person who has been dulled by a lack of meaning in his or
her life.
In the words of Dr. Plotkin, "When the soul wants to
change, it shows up in scary shapes" (Plotkin, 1999). It is
a far better practice to intentionally interact and dialogue
with one's soul, to co-create a life journey, rather than to
wait until something "big" happens by surprise.
Soulcraft in the Classroom
In a classroom setting, the teacher can facilitate the practice
of soulcraft through such things as taking her students
outside and writing poems, songs, or stories; reflecting on
the experience, guiding students in visualizations or imaginative
journeys, journal writing, working or reading in
"contemplative" or sacred silence, establishing classroom
rituals, and by creating ceremonies or celebrations-all
within the context of the school experience.
When a teacher begins each day or week, for example,
with the students sitting in a circle, taking turns sharing
while others listen, asking questions and summarizing
back to the speaker what is being said and felt, an honorable
practice is taking place within the context of a ritual:
the class meeting. When a student sits in a special cozy
chair at the head of a circle and is asked questions by his
or her classmates (practicing honor language), about
something of which he or she is proud, this is a ceremony
of celebration known as the Circle of Honor (Levine, 2000,
p. 26). One of my favorite practices is to have students
write songs about life's joys and successes, struggles and
challenges. We then create original melodies, record the
songs, and share them in a Circle of Honor Ceremony.
Practices like these open students up to the way of the soul
in a safe and nurturing way. When our souls are opened,
the impact, though not always seen in that moment, is
nonetheless profound and everlasting, creating a shift in
the life of that person.
16 If's reclaiming children and youth
The Need for Love
There is a place of emptiness, which lives inside each of
us. It is a longing which comes out of our need for a soulful
experience and is expressed so eloquently by songwriter
Bob Franke (1983) in this excerpt from his song
For Real:
There's a hole in the middle of the prettiest life,
so the lawyers and the prophets say,
Not your father, nor your mother,
nor your lover's gonna ever make it go away,
And there's too much darkness in an endless night
to be afraid of the way we feel,
Let's be kind to each other, not forever, but for real.
Love is the glue, which helps put a broken and shattered
life back together again into new and hopeful shapes. It is
a power unlike any other. It is the friend who checks in on
you when you're feeling down or the unexpected card at
the perfect time. Love is the feeling you get when you
watch your three-day-old child sleeping peacefully in his
cradle or the tears of the mother of that newborn. It is the
momentary flash of inner peace one feels when watching
the sunrise or the sense of inner contentment, which comes
from the silence after a huge snowfall. Love is the truth
which lives in the Swedish proverb: "Shared joy is double
joy. Shared sorrow is half sorrow." (L. Kangas, personal
communication, April, 1991).
Love is what all children need, to be loved is to belong, to
belong is to have a place, and to have a place is to be. To
feel separate from others or unloved is essentially to feel
"dismembered," or cut off from the group. The opposite
of dismember is to remember, and that is why it is critical
to know and understand the life stories of our students
and to respond to these stories in supportive, nurturing,
and nonjudgmental ways. We need to create a reclaiming
environment, or one that reconnects the young person to a
world of safety and trust-to paint a new hopeful picture
of what life can be with the certainty that it will be.
Who Am I
You want to be friendly,
funny and smart
you try to fit in
but where do you start
your friends are all laughing
sharing some news
you join in the laughter
you haven't a clue
Who am I
I really should know
I have so many faces
which one should I show?
(Levine, 1997)

Meeting Their Needs
Human development professor and child psychologist
Emmy E. Werner in her work on resiliency refers to bonding
as a protective factor (Werner, 1989, p. 106). A protective
factor is an "individual or environmental safeguard
that enhances a youngster's ability to resist stressful life
events and promote adaptation and competence leading
towards future success in life" (Garmezy, 1983, as cited in
Bogenschneider, Small, & Riley, 1991, p. 2). Dr. Werner
calls these successful people resilient; despite the presence
of multiple risk factors at an early age, they are able to
demonstrate the attributes of a person with "self-righting
tendencies" (Werner & Smith, 1992, p. 202) with the capacity
to spring back, rebound, successfully adapt in the face
of adversity, and develop social competence, despite exposure
to severe stress (Werner, 1989, pp. 106-111). Her description
of the resilient child portrays someone whose
wound has become sacred, through its vulnerability and
raw state, the psyche has opened up enough to let in the
conscious realization of just how wonderful, beautiful, talented,
and powerful that person is.
Art by Charles R., Age 18,
Lawrence Hall Youth services, Chicago, IL.
Used with permission.
If teachers honor their students by listening to each unique
voice and by intentionally creating emotionally safe settings,
there will be a greater hope for the students to grow
up whole. The word whole meaning "healthy" or "sound,"
comes from the word heal. To be healed or whole indicates
someone who is resilient. Emmy Werner's simple descrip­
tion of a resilient young adult as someone who "loves well,
works well, and plays well" (Werner, 1989, p. 108) is what
we as teachers can help nurture and create. Our role is to
illumine each student to a place of awareness and
understanding, a place where that young person is fully
engaged within each moment.
This comes about by intentionally creating a sacred classroom
space where honor and authenticity are the norm,
and connectedness is the outcome. To be authentic means
to be truly intimate-opening one's heart to others. When
a group's collective heart is open, caring, compassion, and
empathy abound. This magical experience is not often
what happens in groups, much less classrooms, and the
creation of a group experience of this type is one of our
greatest challenges as educators and youth workers.
volume 11, number 1 spring 2002 If'& 17

The Spiral of Life and
Changing Mindsets
So often, people have lamented to me that after all of the
inner work they have done, they find themselves right
back in the same place once more; they have traveled a circle
and are repeating one of their many unhealthy life patterns.
My response to that perception is, "Before, when
you were here, you didn't know what was happening.
Now you do, and that understanding makes a huge difference."
It's not really a circle that we travel, but a spiral
up, for we are forever climbing (J. Kreitzer, personal communication,
January, 1990). As we climb higher up the spiral,
we may come around to familiar or old places, but we
can also change how we choose to experience these
places. This is what educator Val Mihic (personal communication,
November, 2000) calls the ability to change one's
mindset and is something we can consciously provide for
our students-opportunities to change one's way of seeing
the world to elicit a different outcome.
This truth is expressed in the equation E + R = 0: The event
plus your response equals your outcome (R. Barrette, personal
communication, June, 1988). Instead of blaming the
event for our outcomes, we can feel the power of what happens
when we consciously change our responses. This
awareness is part of the work of our soul, as it journeys
through this lifetime on its spiraled, healing path.
As we move up the spiral toward knowledge, truth, and
wisdom, we occasionally meet a mentor along the way
who is on her own path of learning and who is there in
that moment to help us explore our innate gifts and talents-to
change our mindsets perhaps. A mentor is someone
who has traveled further along the spiral with more
experience, and a teacher or other significant adult can
serve the role of mentor for the student. In Emmy
Werner's work on protective factors, she says that these
are people who "foster trust and a sense of coherence or
faith, and 'second chance' opportunities in society at large,
which enable high-risk youths to acquire competence and
confidence" (Werner and Smith, 1992, p. 187).
It takes great effort and commitment and requires the
teacher to have the courage to look into the mirror of the
images his or her students are reflecting back and to see
these images as projections of the self. In the end, it will all
be worth it, for as each soul is deeply touched (including
the teacher's), passion for one's work as a significant adult
in the life of a child will reign, and that is what it means to
be teaching with sacred intention.
18 reclaiming children and youth
David A. Levine, teacher, author, facilitator, and musician, is
the founder and director of In Care of Students, a training, development,
and research group, which is devoted to creating
Schools of Belonging through musical expression, social skills
development, conflict management, leadership training, and
community building initiatives. He is the author of three books
including Building Classroom Communities: Social Skills
and a Culture of Caring and creator of the documentaryj music
video Through the Eyes of Howard Gray. He can be contacted
at: 845.687.8772 or e-mail: David@davidalevine.com
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