Fostering Community, Heart, and Spirit in Adolescent Education Rachael Kessler

Passages: Fostering Community, Heart, and Spirit

in Adolescent Education

by Rachael Kessler

I feel like I'm on a road at a huge intersection with thousand of streets yet I'm at a loss. There is no one to tell me the way, no "911" in the real world. You can't just call up and say, "Hey, I need a destination, I need a place to go." Even if someone did tell me where to go, I wouldn't listen. Sometimes I feel like I'm going nowhere. Sure I'm on the Santa Monica freeway, but where am I going in life?"
-- High School Senior

From all quarters, we hear a new way of looking at the world and a new set of values that inform our understanding of how learning works and what the goals of education must be. From scientists, political theorists, business consultants, spiritual teachers and educators, there is increasing agreement about the capacities human beings need to develop to thrive personally and to create a sustainable future for the planet. Often referred to as "the new paradigm," this framework includes both a perceptual shift and a reordering of values. Through this lens, life is seen and understood in more holistic and systemic terms, seeing living systems (both social and ecological) as an integrated whole whose functioning can't be understood by reducing it to its parts.

The new paradigm represents not only a shift of perception but also a shift of values. We are moving toward greater appreciation of intuitive, systemic, nonlinear ways of knowing, and the values of cooperation, quality, integration, partnership, and conservation. This new way of thinking has had a profound impact on how we see the task of preparing youth for the social and economic conditions of the 21st century.
Even mainstream analyses reflect this change. As early as 1989, a report from the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development emphasized that our schools must devise ways to build community and foster flexibility and creativity in all students. "The young adolescent is moving from dependency to interdependency," they wrote, "with parents, as well as with friends, relatives and other persons outside the home." 1
Developmental theorists used to speak of adulthood as a time of independence and autonomy, not interdependence. This matter-of-fact reference to the need for interdependency among adults in today's world paved the way for recommendations which placed community building as a core responsibility of schools today.
From the business community, the skills and capacities named by employers as key to success go far beyond the three R's once emphasized as the goal of education. In Workplace Basics: The Skills Employers Want (1988), the US Department of Labor identified the following criteria for employees they would consider prepared for the contemporary workplace:

learning to learn,
listening and communication skills,
competence in reading, writing and computation,
adaptability (creative thinking and problem-solving)
personal management (self-esteem, goal setting, motivation)
group effective (interpersonal skills, negotiation and teamwork
organizational effectiveness and leadership.

With the exception of "competence in reading, writing and computation," these skills can be identified as primarily social and emotional competencies, now being integrated systematically into education through the field of social and emotional learning.
This essay will discuss this new educational field which has been shown to promote the capacities for learning, responsibility and caring that are essential for competence, health and well-being for the world in which today's teenagers will come of age. Then I will look more closely at one program in this field -- the Passages Program-- which cultivates not only the social and emotional capacities, but spiritual development in adolescence as well.
Social and Emotional Learning
A growing number of educators are recognizing that the pursuit of an exclusively academic education leaves students ill-prepared for future challenges both as individuals and as members of society. Academic performance itself, as well as self-esteem, character, and human relationships, suffer when the education of the whole person is neglected. A new field -- social and emotional learning -- has emerged from new understandings of the nature of intelligence, learning and success. In the 1980's, Howard Gardner introduced the concept of multiple intelligence, and soon educators began to see that they could respond to and cultivate not only cognitive intelligence, but a broad range of human capacities including interpersonal (social) and intrapersonal (emotional) intelligences (Frames of Mind, 1983) More recently, Daniel Goleman documented that emotional intelligence is a greater predictor of academic and life success than IQ. His concept of "emotional literacy" refers to the discovery that the emotional and social skills of children can be cultivated as part of the school curriculum and that doing so enhances cognitive learning and personal resiliency in the face of change and challenge. (Emotional Intelligence, 1995) In the same year, Robert Sylwester's work made accessible to a wide variety of educators the implications of brain theory and research for schooling. "Emotion is very important to the educative process," wrote Sylwester, "because it drives attention, which drives learning and memory." Because of the importance of emotion in engaging students in learning, Sylwester suggested that "emotion-laden classroom activities...can provide the important contextual memory prompts that a student may need in order to recall the information...in the world outside the school." (A Celebration of Neurons: an Educators Guide to the Human Brain, 1995)
These new theories about the learning process, combined with several decades of experience and research with a series of school-based prevention programs, have given rise to a broad variety of high quality programs designed to teach a core of social and emotional capacities. Passages is one of those programs.
Passages refers to the series of transformative transitions which characterize the adolescent journey. In this culture, teenagers experience not one, but several "passages:"

the major transformation at puberty when they are awakened from childhood into adolescence,
a challenging transition as they enter high school, and
the "senior passage"-- when students step over the threshold into adulthood.

Each of these transitions is a crucial time for support and guidance. They are times of enormous transition -- not only for the student, but also for family and faculty. On the threshold of the unknown, students during these transitions must say good-bye to not only relationships with others, but also to a childhood self and an adolescent identity that will no longer serve them in the life that awaits them.
We have long known that adolescence is a time of searching for an identity: clarifying and identifying a self that can be separate and independent from one's immediate family, and strong enough to find a place in a larger world. But in times past, social and religious traditions could help teenagers to make this transition by providing a larger social and spiritual framework and sense of meaning in which to embed this new, separate identity. In today's period of global uncertainty and change, this supportive context and sense of meaning is often absent.
Education for Human Needs
Passages brings together adults -- both teachers and parents-- with adolescents to build communities in which support, meaning and guidance can be restored. The roots of Passages can be found in the Mysteries Program-- a human development curriculum for adolescents originally developed at the Crossroads School in Santa Monica, California. 2 In recent years, Passages has also incorporated practices with demonstrated success from the broader field of social and emotional learning. 3
The Mysteries Program was named for the personal "mysteries" of teenagers today--their feelings, fears, musings, wonder, and wisdoms. These fundamental concerns have had little place in our schools, in which our traditional curricula begin with the voices of the elders and the words from the past. The Passages approach begins with the students; it listens and responds to the voices from the "other side of the report card." After several weeks of building community in the classroom, students are asked anonymously to write their "mysteries" about themselves, others and nature. It is this student-centered process that refines the Passages curriculum to suit the needs of each particular group.

I'm scared of growing up too fast. One night I cried about it and I was uncertain about the seventh grade. My parents love me a lot and I am happy, but I'm scared. What can I do?
-- 7th grade

How far with self-confidence and contentment can I go before I reach selfishness? I always want to be better than everyone else, and I know that's wrong. I never want to be average and I like to believe everyone else is. That's bad. Can I be a special person and be happy and still not think I'm above everyone else?
-- 10th grade

Will a bullet come in my window and kill me?
Will I ever find someone to love?
Do I believe in anything?
Who am I, really?
What is my purpose in life?
Am I "normal"?
-- 12th grade

In Passages, the asking and the witnessing of these questions are at least as important as answers.
In an era of pervasive alienation among adolescents, Passages gives students the tools and the experience to overcome the root causes of self-destructive behavior: low self-esteem, stress, isolation, and poor decision-making skills. Passages returns to the original meaning of education-- "to draw forth" by creating a safe container for the wonder, worry, joy, and wisdom within each child to emerge and engage in the learning process.
In Passages, the young adolescent is eased and supported through the transition from childhood into adolescence, and is provided with the information, ethical framework, and decision-making skills to face the many risks of the teenage years. Older adolescents are provided a rite of passage from adolescence to adulthood--a safe but challenging opportunity to seek a new perspective, to learn to say good-bye, and to experience from their community acknowledgment for their accomplishments.
What distinguishes Passages from many of the other programs in social and emotional learning is that it also recognizes spiritual development in the adolescent. Passages provides an opportunity for students to explore meaning or purpose in life, to experience stillness, silence and solitude, to express their yearning for transcendence, joy and creativity, and to experience a deep connection to themselves, others and the wholeness of life. Thus, "health education" is returned to the original meaning of health: "to make whole." Health from this perspective is defined as the integration of mind, body, community, spirit, and heart.
Elements of Passages

Teachers from all grade levels, all subject areas, all regions of the country have come to study the Passages approach. Some use the methods and curriculum to build health, human development or social and emotional learning courses designed exclusively for this purpose. Others integrate elements into their lesson plans for English, science or social studies courses.
When schools commit to a comprehensive implementation of the Passages curriculum over several grade levels during middle and high school, this approach works in the following ten areas that help to ease the transition through the adolescent passage and encourage students to develop a sense of personal responsibility and efficacy in managing their lives.

Identity definition and self-esteem.
Defining and strengthening identity is a central task of adolescence and is the crucial building block that permits effective communication, stress management, and decision making. Through writing, group sharing, and focusing exercises, Passages encourages students to clarify and express their values, goals, and needs. Needs are defined broadly to include physical, emotional, social, and spiritual needs, as well as intellectual needs. Students learn techniques for sharpening awareness and acceptance of this range of human needs.

Communication skills.
Passages uses a variety of exercises to teach listening skills and increase students' ability to express themselves more effectively, fully, and authentically. Pairing and small-group exercises are used, discussion and dialogue may occur, but the main emphasis is on speaking one by one in a circle. The Council Process 4, at the core of Passages, builds skills which address two concerns central to teachers today: pervasive listening deficits and poor impulse control.
Giving each student an opportunity to speak with a guarantee of no interruptions or immediate reactions creates both safety and disciplined listening. Safety is further insured by respecting the choice of the individual either to speak or be silent when it is his or her turn.
Deep listening, a skill fostered by Council, is a central teaching of Passages. Deep listening to others means listening to the other person with complete attention, unimpeded by quick judgments and reactions. It means listening between the lines -- hearing the feelings and intentions as well as the words. It requires tremendous discipline and provides students with a crucial skill that helps them in learning as well as in relationships. Deep listening breaks the habit of reactiveness, the tendency to interrupt with defensiveness, judgment, and hostility before one has taken the time to listen to and process completely what the speaker is saying. When this listener finally speaks, he or she can respond, not reaction, with a more constructive and self-generated communication.
Deep listening to oneself is another skill fostered by Council. Students learn to listen to their intuition, imagination, and body as well as to their rational thoughts. Council is a setting in which these new discoveries can be expressed communally and validated by the group.
Disciplined to speak briefly and from the heart, students learn the power of speaking clearly and to the point. Routine, dependable opportunities such as this for expressing feelings and concerns allow students to gradually develop or strengthen their abilities to contain their feelings until there is an appropriate time and way to express them.
Council and other techniques that enhance communication skills help students to develop respect for human differences, and they facilitate a greater sense of human connection at the deepest level. Often attributed to Native American traditions, Council is a ceremonial form found in cultures around the world. In ancient Africa, Hawaii and Greece, 5 as well as among Native American tribes, people sat close to the ground in a circle around a fire, to express themselves in ways that honored the wisdom of each individual and cultivated the strength of the community.
Techniques such as psychodrama or role playing teach assertiveness skills. While identity definition helps students to discover what they want and need, assertiveness skills help them to satisfy those needs, which further enhances self-esteem and is an essential ingredient in stress management.

Stress management.
Managing stress is highly related to a sense of personal responsibility -- to believing that one has some control over one's life and to possessing the tools for exercising this control. An adolescent's failure to manage stress results in illness, both physical and emotional, and in a variety of self-destructive behaviors including substance abuse, premature sexual activity, social isolation, and breakdown of school performance.
Stress management involves learning how to both manage one's life to minimize stress and relieve the negative impact of stress that can't be avoided. Prevention is based on the skills discussed above: clarifying and accepting one's identity and making decisions and communications to express and accommodate one's identity.
The following set of questions simplifies the learning sequence in stress management that forms another core dimension of Passages:

Who am I?
What are my needs, values, and goals?
Given the limitations of time, energy, and space, which of my priorities reflect the above?
Can I accept my needs, limitations, and priorities?
How do I make decisions according to my priorities in order to minimize pressure in my life?
How do I read the signals of stress, overload, and misdirection in my life?
How can I cope with the inevitable and often unwanted change in my life in a way that promotes my growth and healing?
What are the techniques for relieving the tension and confusion that accompany the stress I do have?

Emotional education and mind-body health. To help students attune to the more subtle messages of their bodies and minds and to find relief from tension, confusion, and blockage, Passages teaches physical relaxation, focusing skills, and exercises which engage the imagination and sensory thinking. These techniques help students gain knowledge of and greater control over their bodies, emotions, and minds. They facilitate stress reduction and foster personal integration, which lead to greater self-knowledge and self-worth. Learning how to access and strengthen imagination and sensory learning fosters not only stress management, but creativity as well. This heightened creativity helps students to manage their personal lives and be more productive in their work. Centering and focusing skills teach students a level of discipline and concentration that provides not only serenity and calmness, but also performance excellence in athletics, academics, and artistic expression. Developing the capacity to quiet and focus the mind and body is crucial to academic success and stamina as well as to providing our students with an opportunity to become more satisfied and humane in their personal lives.

Preventative health education.
In addition to the indirect approach to prevention described above and below, which works with the commonly recognized root causes of self-destructive behavior in adolescents (low self-esteem, stress isolation, and poor decision-making skills), Passages also takes a direct approach at certain key periods by providing information in the areas of substance abuse and sexuality. Information is provided through a combination of teacher, outside expert and student presentations. Students do research in cooperative learning groups and presentations are offered by peers, both from the students within the class and from older students invited to be guest speakers. Role playing, group problem-solving methods, and Council are also used to help students practice and process what they are learning in didactic lessons.

Playfulness and joy.
Passages recognizes the importance of these qualities to the development and maintenance of healthy, resilient, and creative individuals and communities and to the process of effective learning. Playfulness has been eroded for many children and youth by the pressures and dangers they live with on a daily basis. Passages fosters playfulness specifically through the use of games, such as theater games and new games, and more generally through creating an atmosphere that welcomes spontaneity, laughter, and even silliness and outrageousness. Students learn to distinguish laughter and playfulness from disrespect or rudeness. They learn how to balance and integrate seriousness with playfulness, rather than regarding them as contradictory. And they appreciate that serious lessons can be learned in a manner that is playful and fun.
Except for the moments of victory on the playing field, our culture in and out of our schools today tends more toward complaint, criticism, and suffering than toward celebration and joy. Students have been raised to feel far more at risk--more vulnerable and reluctant--in sharing their successes and strengths than in admitting their flaws. Also it seems that intimacy is associated with sharing deep, dark secrets. Coming from this culture, students tend to see the intimacy of Passages, and particularly of Council, as a place to share problems. As teachers, we find ways to remind them continually that we are here to share our highs as well as our lows and to create opportunities for students to express and experience joy. Sometimes this comes from sharing and bearing witness to joyful events and experiences outside the classroom. The deepest joy in Passages come in the moments of heartfelt connection with the group or someone in it, or with the personal exhilaration and pride that comes to the individual who takes a new risk or breaks through a perceived limitation or barrier within.

Celebrating human diversity.
I believe that the greatest contribution of our program is in fostering in each student a sense of safety, tolerance, respect, and eventually love for the diversity of human experience and expression. Students come to understand the dangers of cliques, stereotyping, and prejudice of all kinds. They learn approaches to (and actually experience) overcoming the sense of separation or hostility while celebrating the differences. Humans seem to be threatened profoundly by diversity and by change. Before they can be genuinely respectful, they must feel safe in knowing that they are accepted and can maintain their own integrity when they open to change and diversity. Our programs foster the self-acceptance and self-worth that are preconditions for accepting others. They teach students how to create a climate in which people feel safe to express their unique individuality. In this climate where people "speak from the heart" (i.e., express themselves spontaneously with full sincerity, integrity, and vulnerability), students experience themselves accepting, respecting, and often even loving someone whom they were convinced was fundamentally alien to them. This startling experience is, I believe, the core of a capacity for the openness and tolerance needed for community, full individual expression, and peace.

Accommodating and validating different learning styles.
Passages teachers demonstrate remarkable flexibility and creativity in using a variety of techniques to reach different students and to enable each student to use the several avenues of learning available to them. Teachers use a variety of visual art forms, writing, drama, relaxation, movement and physical awareness, storytelling, play, video, lecture, open discussion, and highly structured verbal sharing. There is a deep understanding and appreciation of styles of learning, and an attempt to teach students how and when to access each. Beyond technique, the atmosphere created in Passages facilitates respect and appreciation of our differences as individuals, and supports the uniqueness of what each student brings to the group. Students are allowed to move at their own pace. In the process of self-exploration, students may learn that they have personal strengths and weaknesses, and they may learn to accept these in both themselves and others.

Personal and social responsibility.
Passages teaches responsibility not as a burden or obligation, but as a sense of connection and empowerment. Students discover the compassion that makes humans want to alleviate the suffering of others and experience that choice and change are possible. They also learn the tools to take charge of their own lives and to contribute to their community. These tools include social and moral understanding, leadership and cooperative problem-solving skills, and methods for enhancing creativity. Inherent in its teaching style, Passages offers a new model for leadership: the teacher as guide who empowers students to contribute freely to a collaborative decision-making style, including the direction of the course itself.

Spiritual development6
Many of today's teenagers suffer from a sense of emptiness inside, a sense of meaninglessness that comes when social and religious traditions no longer provide a sense of meaning, continuity, and participation in a larger whole. Just as the adolescent develops socially, emotionally, intellectually, and physically, he or she develops spiritually as well. The void of spiritual guidance and opportunity in the lives of so many teenagers at this time is one more factor contributing to high risk behaviors, which can be both a search for connection, transcendence, meaning and initiation, as well as an escape from the pain of not having a genuine source of spiritual fulfillment.

Passages has developed a framework for nurturing spiritual development that respects and honors private religious or philosophical beliefs, yet provides experiences which may be cultivated without violating First Amendment protections. The Passages curriculum is designed to create a forum for students to explore the following needs:

the yearning for deep connection
the search for meaning and purpose,
the longing for silence,
the urge for transcendence,
the hunger for joy and delight,
the creative drive, and
the need for Rites of Passage.7

Conclusion

Teachers and students alike discover in Passages a place to "be themselves" -- to bring more and more of their whole selves into the public life of the school. Both individual health and school climate are enhanced by this increased sense of authentic community.
A generation of young people is yearning for adults and elders who are willing to give as much importance and care to their hearts and souls as their academic success and athletic prowess. While it is not always easy to incorporate such courses into schools, it is deeply rewarding to do so. I believe that the health of future generations, as well as the health of our democracy depends on a new commitment to our young as they strive to join us as adults -- a commitment to listen, to learn and to teach what we have learned about the journey to personal wholeness and caring community.

About Rachael Kessler
Called by Daniel Goleman in the New York Times a "leader in a new movement for emotional literacy," Rachael Kessler currently directs the Institute for Social and Emotional Learning. She provides workshops for educators and consults to schools around the country to develop curricula for strengthening emotional and social capacities, as well as "rites of passage" programs. As first chair of the Department of Human Development at Crossroads School in Santa Monica, CA, Kessler led a team in pioneering one of the first curricula to integrate emotional, social and spiritual capacities with academic learning. Author/editor of The Mysteries Sourcebook and producer of the video Honoring Young Voices, Kessler is an active member of CASEL -- the Collaborative for the Advancement of Social and Emotional Learning, based at the Yale Child Study Center. She lives in Boulder with her husband Mark Gerzon and the youngest of their three sons.
For further information on workshops, consultation and materials, please contact:
The Institute for Social and Emotional Learning
3833 North 57th Street
Boulder CO 80301
SELRachael@aol.com

Notes

1. Turning Points: Preparing American Youth for the 21st Century. Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development. 1989
2. From 1985-1991, the author was Chair of the Department of Human Development at the Crossroads School in Santa Monica, California, where she led a team in developing "the Mysteries Program" one of the first curricula to integrate emotional, social and spiritual capacities with academic learning. Originated by Jack Zimmerman, this approach was refined and expanded by Kessler in collaboration with Ruthann Saphier, Maureen Murdock, Peggy O'Brien and others.
3. The author has worked extensively with the Collaborative for the Advancement of Social and Emotional Learning, and is coauthor, along with seven researchers in the field, of their upcoming book, Fostering Knowledgeable, Responsible, and Caring Students: Social and Emotional Education Strategies. (ASCD, 1997)
4. See Zimmerman & Coyle, The Way of Council, Bramble Books for a thorough introduction to the council process.
5. In the opening chapter of the Iliad, Akhilleus refers to the talking staff used in council: "But here is what I say: my oath upon it by this great staff: look: leaf or shoot it cannot sprout again, once lopped away from the log it left behind in the timbered hills; it cannot flower, peeled of bark and leaves; instead, Akhaian officers in council take it in hand by turns, when they observe by the will of Zeus due order in debate." p. 19.
6. The author has described these domains in great detail along with a discussion of the distinction between religious education and cultivating spiritual development in a work in progress called "The Soul of Education: Nourishing Spiritual Development in Secular Schools."
7. see Kessler, Shelley, "The 'Senior Passage' Course," in Mahdi, Christopher & Meade, Crossroads: The Quest for Contemporary Rites of Passage.

Copyright © March 1997 New Horizons for Learning
http://www.newhorizons.org
E-mail: info@newhorizons.org
For permission to redistribute, please go to:
New Horizons for Learning Copyright and Permission Information