Smart & Good High Schools - The Flippen Group

CHAPTER 5: Fostering the 8 Strengths of Character—Outcome 8the past several years she has been asking K-12 educatorshow they personally understand spirituality and how theirbeliefs impact their teaching. 4From this research, Johnson has identified eight distinctways of understanding and fostering spirituality in education.“These perspectives,” she writes, “can be seen asintertwining. While some educators embrace just one,others hold most or all.” 5 To Johnson’s eight we addanother, “spirituality as the quest for connectedness.” Thebox below offers a brief description of these nine distinctbut complementary ways of defining spirituality.These various categories of spirituality help educatorsavoid non-productive debates stemming from the unclearuse of language. They enable us to articulate to ourselves,and communicate to students, colleagues, and parents,what we mean when we say that we wish to help studentsdevelop as “spiritual persons.”In our conception of Outcome 8, we emphasize spiritualityas meaning-making and self-reflection, both central tocrafting a life of noble purpose and pursuing authentichappiness. Some of the nine categories of spirituality wehave already dealt with under other developmental out-1. Spirituality as meaning-making. Seeking the meaningof life is a human activity that spans cultures and history,as well as stages of life. Teachers can invite studentsto ask profound questions about themselves, thenature and meaning of life, and the world aroundthem.2. Spirituality as self-reflection. Teachers can help studentsbecome more self-reflective persons by engagingthem in thinking about the purpose and directionof their own lives, in making significant choicesabout their learning, and in setting and pursuinglife goals.3. Spirituality as mystical knowing. Spirit is understood asa real unseen energy or power, not fully recognized byscience but known to mystics throughout history andacross religions. Mystical knowing is based on a deepform of self-reflection, a meditative mode of thinking.Mystical knowing has also been called “spiritual intelligence,”referring to the capacity of the mind that isthe basis of all other intelligences.4. Spirituality as emotion. This approach recognizes therole that deep human feelings play in the lives ofhuman beings. These include positive emotions such aslove, joy, and awe but also negative emotions such asanger, sorrow, and despair. Educators can use great literatureto teach wise and powerful lessons about emotion.They can ground learning in each student’s emotionally-basedinterests and recognize the critical roleof the teacher’s emotional relationship both with subjectmatter and with students.5. Spirituality as morality. Morality is understood as abasis of spirituality in that it governs how humanbeings should relate to each other and the world. Educationalapproaches to developing morality include the9 WAYS OF UNDERSTANDING SPIRITUALITYstudy of heroic moral figures and movements, the discussionof ethical problems, the development of democraticcommunities, and student service.6. Spirituality as creativity. This understanding emphasizesthe human capacity, often seen as divinely given, tocreate. Teachers nurture spirituality as creativity byencouraging each student’s unique creative gifts.Avenues for doing this include drama, dance, music,and the visual arts but also the creative process thatunderlies discovery in all disciplines.7. Spirituality as ecology. Spirituality in this sense is havinga deep appreciation of the holistic interdependenceof all living systems. Educational approaches emphasizewhole-systems thinking and our responsibilities towardthe complex web of life.8. Spirituality as religion. One religious approach basesspirituality in a particular religion, seeking immersion inone’s faith tradition and bringing all the fruits of thatto bear—silently, if one is in a public school; explicitly,if one is in a private religious school. A secondapproach, which can complement the first, has the goalof understanding the history, values, and significance ofthe various world religions—including the study of religioustexts and the lives of religious leaders. 69. Spirituality as the quest for connectedness. This understandingof spirituality asserts that human beingsdesire a sense of connection, to other people, theirwider community, nature, history, enduring truths, ahigher power—something larger than themselves. Contemporarywriters such as Parker Palmer, RachaelKessler, and others have written about spirituality inthis sense and have pointed out that every academicdiscipline offers opportunities to meet this need forconnectedness.194Smart & Good High Schools