*Instead of writing new posts for June, July and August I will revisit past posts, share the essence of the original post, reflect on its relevance for today and offer new insights and perspectives. I’ve been writing IN:SIGHT since September of 2016, so I will have plenty of material to draw from. I invite you to scroll back through the older posts to see what captures your inner eye or energizes the heart of your teaching.
August 10th, 2022—In an August 27th, 2018 post, I invited readers to consider classrooms as more than a place to learn, a place of transformation. I argued that if the goal of education is the full development of students as human beings then educational spaces must include elements of the sacred. By sacred I mean the formation of a relationship with something bigger than self and self-knowing that is worthy of respect and awe. These relationships are often emblematic of the rituals and practices of religion, but not exclusively. The sacred has a universal quality accessible to all. For instance, the intellectual relationship a student forms with content knowledge they respect, appreciate, and commit to. Students can also experience the sacredness of content when they approach learning as a calling or invitation to form a relationship with the ineffable dimensions of knowledge.
I noted that classrooms centered on the sacred,
strive for “moreness” where students and teachers “…go beyond what we were and are and become something different, somehow new” (Dwayne Huebner). In this classroom, knowledge as commodity is abandoned in favor of holistic understandings of wisdom as transcendent, mysterious, and transformational. The language and experiences of spirituality replace the technocratic, product, and procedural definitions of learning. Learning as “moreness” favors a trajectory toward newness for teacher, student, and text. The classroom is alive with the possibility of change and growth for all.
I then offered three strategies for fostering classrooms that are attentive to the spiritual and sacred dimensions of education.
One of the early stages of sacred space formation is shifting power dynamics away from the dichotomy of me and you (teacher/student) and towards an overt recognition of being in relationship to something greater than either of us. The separation of individual selves becomes unified—not homogenized—around a shared experience of awe, exploration, and reverence. It is an easy leap to envision curriculum as something greater than both the student and teacher, therefore worthy of a kind of relationship characterized by reverence, awe, and mysticism. Parker Palmer invites educators to ask, what is this “great thing” in the curriculum toward which we are willing to dedicate our life-energy in the service of understanding; even while knowing that our knowledge will always be tentative and transient?
The second aspect of classrooms that lean toward sacred space are the forms of pedagogy that invite learners into a transformational relationship with self, others, and the curriculum. There are ways to teach that empower learners to own their intellectual and personal growth. For example, assessments that encourage students to choose the best form of expression to demonstrate mastery of the content as well as reflections on ways that the content has “changed” the learner. Consistent with sacred spaces a good pedagogical question for educators to ponder is, what are the rituals, practices, and traditions in my classroom? Toward what ends does my pedagogy serve, people, power structures, test scores, or external authorities?
When teachers work toward sacred space in their classroom a third quality, mystery, is a helpful guide to instructional choices. Do the rituals, practices, and traditions create more or less opportunity to experience and learn from ambiguity, spontaneity, and the unexpected when the candle of knowledge burns brightly for a student? Learning as transcendence is mysterious. It can be a permanent feature of the classroom when students expect a moment of stillness as they settle in. And at the same time transcendence is illusive, temporary, and can feel mysteriously absent from the learning space. This means that during any instructional moment one student can experience transcendence while another sees only content to master. Structure helps with transcendence, but the spirit of learning is too illusive, mystical, and mercurial to yield to a programed appearance.
Curriculum, pedagogy, and mystery are the hallmarks of classrooms as sacred space. How might you change one of these elements to achieve a greater sense of transcendence in your classroom?