Two years ago, while in my 10th year as the Director of Teaching and Learning at a Jewish community high school in San Francisco, I became a fellow in the Mandel Educational Leadership Program. As part of the program, we would learn about different “Visions for the Field” of Jewish education. In our first seminar, we dove deep into a vision that focused on “emotional, spiritual and ethical growth.” We learned from Michal Fox Smart, who was then Chief Program Officer at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, and explored Jewish mindfulness practices and tikkun middot (a Jewish approach to strengthening character traits). We also learned from Dr. Lisa Miller who shared her research-based perspective on spirituality, mental health and Jewish education.
I hadn’t before thought deeply about the ways learning and spirituality intersected, and to be honest – I had never been fully comfortable talking about spirituality in educational settings. Shortly after this seminar, however, I accepted the position of Associate Head of School of a modern Orthodox day school in Oakland, CA. And for some reason, the first act I took in this position was to suggest that the entire faculty read Dr. Miller’s book, The Awakened Brain. I was walking into a school that begins from the assumption that cultivating spirituality in students is one of the highest responsibilities of a Jewish day school, and that a strong spiritual core is crucial to their Jewish and social-emotional wellbeing. While often, spirituality is focused on the individual, I have come to see that it is an incredibly powerful orientation that anchors students and teachers into the community. In this article, I will share my observations around how effective and meaningful spiritual education needs to be grounded in: 1) the instilling of practices rather than content; 2) attention to the ethos and school ecosystem as a whole; and 3) partnership and collaboration with families.
“While often, spirituality is focused on the individual, I have come to see that it is an incredibly powerful orientation that anchors students and teachers into the community.”
Two years ago, the school developed eight guiding principles that contribute to fulfilling our vision of “Thriving Students. Thriving School”: sensitivity to holiness, inner calm, joyful inquiry, connective relationships, aware and active bodies, creativity, care for the wider world, and confident academic readiness. These principles function as a guide in all decision-making processes and serve as our compass of “What Matters Most.” The word “spirituality,” interestingly, is not present—rather, these principles reflect core practices necessary for developing and cultivating spirituality in students.
Spiritual practices cannot be effectively embraced by students if only isolated to specific classes or single teachers. It is precisely the reinforcement from multiple directions that creates the fertile ground needed for cultivating spirituality with students, teachers, and families. As Dr. Miller describes in The Awakened Brain, the brain has the ability for learning how to think spiritually, and the language we use, the way we speak to each other, and the questions we ask each other are all tools that enhance our ability to engage in the world spiritually. Discussions around the idea of spirituality need to be more akin to something like “how do we develop a growth mindset.”
While the way we speak about spirituality is intricately connected to the success we have in teaching spirituality, the structures and systems in place to support specific practices are equally invaluable. For example, as part of our middle school advisory program, our students engage in a bi-weekly havurah called Lev Hashavua. Lev Hashavua is a practice of learning and sharing developed by Lifnai v’Lifnim, which grew out of the collaborative work of educators and psychological practitioners engaged in Hasidic education. In Lev Hashavua, the students sit in a circle, learn together, and engage in authentic conversations where they can be present and speak openly to each other. In each session, one student shares about themselves, and the other students practice the art of reflective listening. The goal is to create genuine connections and build a shared language. Lev Hashavua is also held twice a month for a group of twelve teachers. The more our teachers can experience space and holiness in their own work, the more this spiritual language can filter down to the students both directly and indirectly.
“The more our teachers can experience space and holiness in their own work, the more this spiritual language can filter down to the students both directly and indirectly.”
While it is not uncommon to encounter in students resistance or cynicism about the work in spiritual practice, consistency and commitment to the practices are important in setting the stage for meaningful moments. Tefillah, for example, which holds rich potential for spiritual cultivation, is often a space of resistance, and you’d be hard pressed to find a middle school teacher who would use the word “spiritual” to describe their prayer experience. The regularity of the practice (which sometimes dulls the spiritual impact), however, helps students build resilience, commitment to practice, and the possibility for those meaningful spiritual moments. For example, the requirement for middle school boys to wrap tefillin may not feel spiritually important or meaningful on a daily basis; however, the muscle memory and the fluency of practice creates a framework for moments to happen when they are ready for it to be a spiritual experience. To maintain clarity around this ultimate goal, it is vital that open discussions and articulations of these complexities of practice are discussed with students.
Once spirituality education is more firmly established as being about regular practices rather than transitory experiences or content learning, it becomes easier to bring spirituality into the domain of communal responsibility. Once a week we offer our middle schoolers tefillah electives which include more overtly “spiritual” options like mindfulness and meditation. The most desired option, however, is the tefillah leadership one, where the older students get to spend their tefillah time being mentors in younger grades. Here they can fully embrace their own capacity to feel purpose beyond themselves, enhancing their ability to understand that helping to facilitate a spiritual experience for others is itself a meaningful spiritual practice.
Spiritual development—whether in kids or adults—can be hard work. In a school setting, it requires faith and belief that the children are able to do the work, that it is ultimately worthwhile, and that it’s okay for students to not feel excited about the work all the time. We recently conducted a survey of our 4th – 8th graders focusing on the students’ social-emotional experience, in which nearly half of the students affirmatively identified themselves as being a “spiritual person.” The day after the survey was administered, a 4th grader in a “rose-thorn-bud” go-around during class said, “I want to become a more spiritual person.” Simply asking the students whether they saw themselves as a spiritual person had unlocked something—it had planted the possibility that she could be a spiritual person.
“Protecting and prioritizing the components that allow for spiritual engagement provides the fertile soil for cultivating innate sacred qualities.”
This year we launched our first parent Lev Hashavua learning night to give parents a taste of what we do. The goal wasn’t to tell the parents about the practices we were doing with the students, but rather to bring parents into the circle of cultivating a spiritual core with their children, and we are exploring ways of bringing parents more fully into a partnership around this.
We do not see spiritual education as optional; it is core to our educational vision. Spiritual education needs to be part of the rhythm of the school, and reinforced by the many adults in their lives, both in what those adults say and how they model it in their own practices and interactions. Protecting and prioritizing the components that allow for spiritual engagement provides the fertile soil for cultivating innate sacred qualities. Finally, spirituality is not itself an end goal, but a disposition towards holiness, inner calm, awareness, joy, curiosity, connection, care, and learning.
