Vital Schools, New York, NY (2026)

09/23/2022

Over the last few years, I've been increasingly interested in the relationship between education, cognitive science, and spirituality. I've been fortunate to have connected with Columbia University's Dr Lisa Miller, Amy Chapman, and the Collaboration for Spirituality in Education (spiritualityineducation.org). And I'm looking forward to participating in the Convening on Awakened Schools on October 22 and 23, and the opportunity to facilitate a conversation and working session about spirituality in public schools on Sunday, October 23.

If you're also curious, I hope you'll check out website and their work on the science of spirituality, consider registering for the free convening, and join me for my session entitled "Spirituality in Public Schools: Building Coherence in Pedagogy, Administration, and Accountability".

You can also read some explorations I've posted previously on Vital School's page.

If you're really interested, please reach out to me before the session, or follow up with me afterwards.

I look forward to connecting, learning together, and working to create more effective schools, more spiritually aware children and young adults.

04/06/2021

"This process of the good life is not, I am convinced, a life for the faint-hearted. It involves the stretching and growing of becoming more and more of one's potentialities. It involves the courage to be. It means launching oneself fully into the stream of life." Rogers 1961

In college, I volunteered and then helped coordinate The University of Chicago's Hotline. This was back in the day before Google. People would call and ask questions about library hours or movie times or when restaurants closed or random trivia questions. But often their initial call was just a cover or test of sorts, and they'd want to talk about deeper issues, their emotional states, some crisis, or thoughts of su***de. We Hotline staffers were trained to use reflective listening strategies, helping people clarify and reflect on their situation, to listen with patience and empathy. I was amazed how Carl Rogers' thin guide to reflective practice helped us navigate sometimes intense interactions, and how those calls helped people navigate the stress of their lives. I was amazed how the listening and reflective practices in which we were quickly trained helped us help people understand their experience and behaviors from the internal frame of reference of the individual. Only much more recently did I come to understand Carl Rogers as a theorist, psychologist, and educator, and his description of "person centered therapy" and "student centered education" in the context of other modes of therapy and education.

Underlying Rogers' work in psychology and education is a set of nineteen propositions. They explain how we individuals experience and make sense of phenomenon; develop a sense of ourselves based on our experience; internalize experiences in unique ways; and how our behaviors reflect our experiences, the way they have been internalized, and our individual drive to survive.

As a psychologist, Rogers explored the conditions that allow a therapist to engage with and help a patient. In his 1957 paper, "The Necessary and Sufficient Conditions of Therapeutic Personality Change", he described three core conditions. He said that the therapist must exhibit empathy, congruence, and unconditional positive regard. The therapist needs empathy to understand the thoughts and feelings of the patient, from the patient's point of view. The therapist needs to be genuine to the patient and the process, and be 'real'. And the therapist needs to treat and demonstrate the patient with unconditional positive regard - even as they try to understand the person, and reserve judgement of the patient's behaviors. Unconditional positive regard is described as necessary for the patient to open up and share as honestly as they can be honest with themselves, without fear of being judged by the therapist.

In education, Rogers explored the same propositions and conditions. In 1969 he wrote "Freedom to Learn". First, he pushes educators to recognize that they are not able to teach children directly. Students learn because of their unique experiences. Therefore, teachers must focus on and fashion the experiences they create in which children will learn. Second, he pushes educators to recognize that students will only learn if the experience is somehow relevant to them, if they help to maintain or "enhance" the child's sense of themselves. He notes that threats cause people to be more rigid and boundaried, less likely to make productive use of experiences. Therefore, he writes, teachers need to be thoughtful about the environment in which they are creating experiences, and thoughtful about how open the individual students will be to the experience.

Perhaps Roger's propositions provide a more structured way of understanding what John Dewey wrote about experience and education. Perhaps, too, he presages the work of cognitive scientists who have used different methods to understand the plasticity of the brain, the way experience grow neurons and synapses, the way experience triggers chemical that then trigger or quell fight-flight-or-freeze responses, who understand how stress and trauma impede learning.

Perhaps also Rogers' propositions provide a way of understanding the spirit. Rogers begin with the physical, phenomenal world that is external to any one organism, and the individual organism which strives not only to survive but to integrate experience and make sense of its world. His propositions describe not only a physical, biological world and an organism that is a body and a brain, but also an organism with uniqueness and drive. He describes the individual as being driven by more than the biological urge to survive. He describes life and learning as a process of "stretching and growing", of "becoming more and more of one's potentialities". Maybe it's that unique combination of experiences with the phenomenal world, that unique differentiation and distillation of the self, and that drive to fulfill one's potentialities that is the soul?

Interestingly, Rogers had his own path through life and relationship with spirit and soul. He was raised Catholic and was an alter boy. As an undergrad, he studied history and religion. He traveled to China for a Christian conference, but was inspired to question his religious beliefs. Still, upon graduating college, he matriculated at Union Theological Seminary before enrolling instead at Teachers College. At different times in his life, he described himself as atheist and agnostic. But later in life, his colleague Brian Thorne describes, Rogers' "openness to experience compelled him to acknowledge the existence of a dimension to which he attached such adjectives as mystical, spiritual, and transcendental.”^ Thorne says Rogers concluded that there is a realm "beyond" scientific psychology, a realm which he came to prize as "the indescribable, the spiritual."^^

^Thorne, Brian. Carl Rogers. Sage, 2003, pg IX
^^ Kramer, Robert. "The Birth of Client-Centered Therapy: Carl Rogers, Otto Rank, and" The Beyond"." Journal of Humanistic Psychology 35.4 (1995): 54-110.

05/24/2020

THIS CAN NOT BE!
What tone do you read into the phrase? Shock? Disbelief? Resolve that things must change?

I’m sure you’ve processed through all these emotions since the pandemic hit and schools moved to distance learning. Perhaps we’re clear about the end of this school year, and the fact that there’s no going back to the way things were when we return in the fall.

What do we do now?

It’s critical we take the stance of a learner, reflect on what’s happened, integrate this learning in our plans for the next few weeks, and think critically about next year. Perhaps we’ll see patterns emerge, and develop an advocacy agenda, to inform whatever the City and the State disseminate as directives.

Join us for one of these collaborative sessions. We’ll reflect, share with colleagues, and explore frameworks and resources to help us make sense and make plans.

The corona virus has been brutal. We’ve lost so much. It’s incumbent upon us to prepare, and use the time and resources we have to provide for our students and families, our staffs, and our community.

Use the link below to RSVP.

▫ Monday, May 18 noon
▫ Tuesday, May 26 4 pm
▫ Thursday, May 28 4pm

Hope you and your colleagues will be able to join.
https://lnkd.in/eWMgBp9

03/17/2020

Here's my first lesson -

If I had a classroom and I had to engage student who were now learning from home, the first task I'd ask of students in this new reality is simple: "Take 20 minutes to tell me about where you are - where you are as you read this assignment, and where you'll be when it's time for you to focus on school work over the next few weeks. You can write me an email. You can draw. You can snap pictures with your phone or iPad and send them along. You can create a map. You can write a poem. You can describe the space mathematically. You can write a sci fi, fictionalized account of it all. Or you can find other ways to communicate with me about where you are for your learning."

I might follow up by asking students to review what they shared or what others have shared, to take stock of who else is sharing the space my students are in. Are their family members, siblings, cousins, parents, grandparents? I might follow up by asking students to describe who they are connected to in this space, and who these people are connected to, or who else they are connected to just beyond that space: who do they interact with outside their homes, who do they interact with in the park, or on the street.

Why, pedagogically?

First, I want to reinforce that relationships matter. I want to know where my students will be sitting when they do the other tasks and assignments I give them. I want to know if they are alone, with a few others for support, or if it's complete chaos. I want to know if they are feeling alone or connected. And I want them to know that I want to know, and that I care.

Second, learning and teaching is most effective when I know my students. And knowing where they are for school as we now know it will help me think about the subsequent tasks that I assign, and the work they share, and the supports I need to offer to ensure that they're successful. When they sat in my classroom, I might have assumed I knew them and what they needed, but as they all sit in their own homes away from me, how else would I get to know my students if I don't ask them?

Third, learning and teaching is most effective when learners set goals. And the context and reality of where they're sitting now will help to understand what goals are realistic, engaging them in productive struggle, and supportive of their learning.

Fourth, it would be an awesome assessment of their facility with the technology that connects us to see what they choose to do and share. And it would help me identify the strengths that some might share with others. And at the same time, it's an activity with which all students can be successful, providing a foundation of success on which each student can build.

Why, in this time?

Because with an open ended assignment I will learn so much more
about the individual students than any close ended response. And as we weather this storm with all it's logistical, academic, social, emotional, and physical challenges, there doesn't seem to be anything more important than getting to know the students at this moment.

And because this task ties to the ideas, concepts, and essential understandings that are going to be most important to helping us all through this uncertainty. We are individuals, each in our own seclusion. Yet we are connected in communities of support, perhaps families, perhaps concentric circles, perhaps webs. We will all be better off if we can draw support and contribute support to in our circles or webs. We can isolate out of fear. Or we can hunker down but act out of a sense of connection and responsibility for those to whom we are connected. And this task will help us help students recognize that they are connected, and that we are connecting with them.

The worst thing we could do is to turn back to our curriculum. If, in the context of this pandemic, we just return to schooling as we knew it, and hand out readings or worksheets or whatever, we will simply be reinforcing the idea that the system of education, the school, and we as teachers do not care about them at all.

Instead, I think the first task we ask students to do should reinforce that we care about their experience, their reality, their connections, and their success. And maybe we can be a positive part of the circles or webs of community and support.

But that's just me, and my thinking at this point. All fairly theoretical since I don't have a class.

What are you distributing as your first task?

03/05/2020

The statistics are stark. More than 80 percent of teachers are white, yet only 15 percent of the students are white. Fewer than 20 percent of the teachers are people of color, yet more than 80 percent of the students are. There's an enormous racial gap between teachers and the children in their schools.

Does it matter? Why are the race gap and cultural gaps so important?

While the soul is that part of us that primarily connects us, with the potential to connect us to individuals, and to that which is universal, it's hard for most people to see through the physical body that presents itself to our senses, and see the soul of the person before us.

We are all affected by biases, implicit and explicit. They are veils, shrouds, or layers that keep us from seeing the person before us. We judge others based not on who they are, but how we see them. For example, we might judge a person's skills or competencies based on their weight, or the attractiveness we read from the symmetry of their face. Even more so, when we judge the ability of someone to see us, to empathize with us, and make that soulful connection, we often do so based on the similarity to ours of their complexion and the color of their skin.

These biases are taught and reinforced by the society around us. We adults might have learned well enough to recognize and check our biases. We might have learned that someone who wears the same boring clothes day after day may still be incredibly creative (a la Steve Jobs) or someone who looks different than us can still connect with us in deep and important ways. We learn to see beyond the superficial. But this is a lot to expect of school age children.

Too many children are students in schools where there are no teachers who look like them. Often, the only people who do look like them are the assistants in the classroom or on the custodians, or the kitchen staff. Too many more children are students in schools where the teacher who looks like them is also the dean, who deals with bad behavior and the troubled kids.

Even the children who see diversity in their teachers rarely get to see those different teachers interact. We want children to see adults who look like them. But we also want children to see that people who look different can care about them, too. And we want children to see that adults who look different from each other can bond professionally and personally, work together, and soulfully connect. But teachers so often work in isolation, and when they do collaborate it is behind closed doors that children rarely see.

Recognizing the significant racial and cultural gap between teachers and students is not only important politically, and an issue of social justice. It's also important to address if we want our public schools to be effective. If we want our investment to pay off, if we want schools to engage, educate, and elevate children, if we want to prepare the next generation for life's responsibilities, challenges, and opportunities, then we need to be able to present adults to work with children who look like them, who can more easily engage their spirits or souls.

If we do not work to ensure students are in schools with teachers who look like them [and speak like them], then we are demanding that children find within themselves the capacity and for them to do the hard work of looking beyond differences, through layers, and figure out how to connect with their teachers. Children can, despite the lack of opportunity we create, learn to connect with people who are different from them. But this is a lot to expect of school age children.

Therefore, it's incumbent upon us to educate, recruit, hire, on-board, and support a teaching force that is diverse. It's incumbent upon us also to support the collaboration of teachers in a school and to make that collaboration transparent, and visible to students.

02/25/2020

David Brooks wrote about the success of Nordic countries, looks for the source of this success, and points to the development in the late 1800s of an educational system and a pedagogy or approach they called "bildung".

Brooks writes about the book "The Nordic Secret" by Lene Rachel Andersen and Tomas Bjorkman. Brooks argues that the Nordic success is not based on their cultural homogeneity, or their free market openness. He explains that the inflection point for the Nordic countries came in the 1870s, after they established their a system of education, that fostered personal and cultural maturation, along dimensions intellectual, emotional, moral, and civic.

Brooks writes, "The 19th-century Nordic elites did something we haven’t been able to do in this country recently. They realized that if their countries were to prosper they had to create truly successful “folk schools” for the least educated among them. They realized that they were going to have to make lifelong learning a part of the natural fabric of society." They developed an approach attending to "the way that the individual matures and takes upon him or herself even bigger personal responsibility towards family, friends, fellow citizens, society, humanity, our globe, and the global heritage of our species, while enjoying even bigger personal, moral, and existential freedoms."

I'm curious how their understanding of bildung resonates with idea that the whole child includes the child's mind and body and spirit. I'm curious how the understanding of bildung resonates with the idea that education should aim to develop not only academic minds, with skills necessary for children to get a job, but also understandings and habits that they can live healthy lives, and also souls that engage them in civic society, and spirits that help them to lead fulfilled, meaningful, and purposeful, generous lives.

If the soul is understood to be the part of each of us that is unique, aspirational, and connecting, then maybe it can be cultivated to take on responsibilities for others, in increasingly widening circles of family and friends, schools and communities, nations and communities around the world. Education could be seen more expansively to target not just the mind and body, but also the spirit and soul.

I think this idea of the spirit and soul and the attention it deserves as a target of education has potential for broad support. Conservatives could appreciate the appeal to individual, community, and national values; personal agency; a global connection; expanded freedoms; and the development of strong individuals. Progressives could appreciate the expanded view of the child and success; appreciation of the individual and community identity; mutual responsibility and morality; and the development of nurturing and connected individuals.

Our current realities call us to act. We must transform the American system of education. Perhaps one way to do so is to learn from the Nordic country's success. We can identify current practices at home, and learn from successes in the Nordic countries that could be effective in our context. We might have to start individually, and work school by school, to develop a shared understanding and culture that supports the development of the whole child: mind, body, and spirit. We need to push on policies and accountability systems, advocate, and create opportunities for this work to be valued, for experimentation to be supported, evaluated, and documented, and for successful practices to take root.

Perhaps then we, too, can have an system of education that the children in the United States of America truly deserve, about which we can be proud.

www.nytimes.com 2020/02/13 Opinion

11/26/2019

I want to share some of the latest from last week's NeuroLeadership Summit 2019. The NeuroLeadership Institute is the home of Dr. David Rock, a cognitive scientist who applies the latest learning about the brain to the workplace and learning.

FROM EXPERIENCE, we know that being an educational leader is hard. Superintendents and principals oversee complex organizations, need to meet students' academic, social, emotional, physical, and creative needs, while attending to pedagogy, accountability, and a host of legal issues. They do this work in communities that may be demanding, historically underserved, changing, or all three. They have responsibility for large teams of adults and hundreds and hundreds of 'clients' - the students and their families, all of whom demand the leader's time. Then there are all the directives from above, priorities that change, and new initiatives.

Sometimes it feels impossible to focus on the educator’s core work, supporting children's learning. Vital Schools supports educators to synthesize the range of demands, and to build coherence.

We focus on what’s central- supporting children's learning.

We develop an 'Instructional Philosophy', a simple statement of beliefs about how children learn best: "We believe children learn best when learning is ___."

We choose a limited number of adjectives to complete that sentence. We've shared these 'elements' of the Instructional Philosophy, to get people's feedback, to ensure it makes sense, and that the elements are high leverage.

We focus on the behaviors or practices that align with that statement of belief, and to support leaders throughout the district and in the classroom to exhibit these behaviors, more and more regularly, and consistently over time. We use this Instructional Philosophy to direct and integrate efforts, and to see new challenges and opportunities through the lens of what we already know and do.

NOW THE SCIENCE SHOWRS THAT THESE ARE PRECISELY THE THINGS LEADERS SHOULD DO!

Cognitive scientists know that our brains are the product of human evolution. As human's evolved in social animals, in families and clans, our brains evolved to respond to the social dynamic of our experience and learning. Our brains became complex, structurally and chemically, tying together our thinking and emotions. Our brains became capacious - able to make sense of a range of inputs, sort them, and filter our short term memories to determine what’s important to make it into our long term memories. But our brains are also limited, since it was evolutionarily better for is to be able to synthesize information, pair away what's not necessary, and focus on fewer things.

Based on this, cognitive scientists stress that we learn in community, and recognize the power of other people to affect what we attend to, what we learn, and what we store in long-term memory. They emphasize synthesizing information we want others to understand and be able to act on. They underscore how important it is for us to prioritize and continue to tie new information, demands, and work back to the synthesis we've provided.

Cognitive scientists’ learning is applicable not just in the schools, of course. Pamela Puryear, Ph.D. is a Senior VP and Chief Human Resources Officer at Zimmer Biomet and has worked with the NeuroLeadership Institute to develop her leadership practice. She described the efforts she led to develop and disseminate a "leadership model", a statement of beliefs that would guide the work of leaders and managers throughout the 18,000 employee organization. She said that it was effective when this was: sticky; meaningful; and coherent.

She explained that it was sticky if it was simple language that people remember. She said she knew that if she couldn't be simple, she could forget about whether it was effective because she knew people would stop listening. She said it was meaningful if it motivates action, if it ties to people's cares, helps solve problems, and answers questions. She explained it as coherent if it ties things together, and helps middle managers and workers make sense of an otherwise overwhelming range of measures, rubrics, and expectations.

She went on to explain that a clear statement of beliefs helped build the capacity of others to lead in their domains, and to develop a positive and consistent culture. She said, "Leadership is a set of behaviors anyone can exhibit. … So let's set up one set of behaviors that everyone is able to exhibit. This creates a coherent culture within the organization, where everyone can lead in their practice."

THE GOOD NEWS is that Vital Schools helps educational leaders reflect on their beliefs, synthesize their ideas to identify essential elements, and to list behaviors - based on brain science and proven best practices - that will guide their community' work.

Please reach out if you're interested in learning more about this work.

11/05/2019

Vital Schools is happy to support districts and schools to articulate their instructional philosophy, their beliefs about how children learn best. Smart and well intended teachers might have different beliefs about learning and teaching, and a diversity of experiences may be good for children. At the same time, when schools and districts take time to articulate their beliefs and align practices, then students can be better supported, teachers can be more effective in their communities, and schools can be more coherent.

We were happy to spend time in October at a principals conference, supporting a Superintendent’s efforts to bring coherence to the district, and to spend Election day with a middle school in the Bronx where the administration and teachers leaders have given real thought to their Instructional Philosophy, and today we began to share the Instructional Philosophy with the staff. They believe that scholars learn best when learning and teaching is goal oriented, engages students in productive struggle, and is reflective. Over time, the staff will work to norm around these elements of the school’s instructional philosophy, and improve practices collaboratively.

If you might be interested in doing similar work in your school or district, please be in touch!

09/24/2019

"The secret of the care of the patient is in caring for the patient." - Francis Weld Peabody, 1925

Francis Peabody was born in November 1881 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the son of a minister, and was a mediocre student through high school. But he went on to Harvard College and Harvard Medical School, where he distinguished himself as a compassionate physician and graduated with honors. He worked at the most reputable hospitals including Johns Hopkins, Rockefeller, and Peter Bent Brigham Hospital where he was the first chief resident physician. He contributed significantly to understanding pernicious anemia. Students at Harvard Medical School may still join the Francis Weld Peabody Society.

Peabody's most famously known for the ending of one of his lectures in which he said, "The good physician knows his patients through and through, and his knowledge is brought dearly. Time, sympathy, and understanding must be lavishly dispensed, but the reward is to be found in that personal bond which forms the greatest satisfaction of the practice of medicine. One of the essential qualities of the clinician is interest in humanity, for the secret of the care of the patient is in caring for the patient."

Peabody is understood to be calling on physicians to care for the humanity and the totality of the patient. Doctors understand he is reacting to the too common practice of attending just to a patient's data - the data that can be collected about their height, weight, vitals, and clinical history, that allows them to be compared to other patients' data and what's determined to be 'normal'. Peabody is calling on doctors to remember the individual who is more than the collection of data, is calling on doctors to invest time in getting to know the individuals, and to develop relationships with them. Doctors also understand that Peabody is reacting to the habit of doctors to treat illness instead of the patient who is alive, who presents with their illness.

Educators have a lot to learn from Peabody. Too often, teachers, schools, and systems look at data as if that's all that matters. Of course it matters. But it matters in the context of the individuals and their humanity, the families and communities from which they come, and the society in which we are preparing students to take on responsibilities, challenges, and opportunities. It matters that teachers get to know students as individuals - not just as the sum of their reading and math scores, but as readers, writers, thinkers, wonderers; not just academically, but physically and spiritually, too. Teachers need not just administer assessments, but need to invest in sympathy and understanding, in building real bonds with their students and their families. Teachers need to know students experiences, strengths, and aspirations - not just their weaknesses or deficits or the Standards they haven't yet mastered.

Peabody is clear that the time invested in getting to know patients isn't wasted or at the expense of treating the patient. Instead he makes the case that it is necessary and a precondition to the proper treatment of the patient. In 2002, H.M. Adler built on this idea. "The emotional investment required to construct a caring doctor-patient relationship can be justified on humane grounds. Can it also be justified as a direct physiologic intervention?" Yes. Adler points to the direct chemical-physiological response of the patient who is being cared for this way, and makes the case that the investment in knowing a patient leads to better outcomes.

Teachers can learn from this, can invest in getting to know their students fully, and can ensure better outcomes it they treat the students by attending to the students.

There's one other part of this story that's compelling. When Peabody delivered this lecture in 1925, he was already diagnosed with cancer. He was a patient with what amounted to a death sentence. Still, or maybe because of this, facing his humanity, he spoke of the importance of seeing patients not statistically or in their illness, but in all their humanity. Teachers too, might reflect with humility on their own learning, strengths and struggles, and see their students academically, physically, and spiritually, in all their humanity.

Sources:
Taylor, Rober B. On the Shoulders of Medicine's Giants: What Today's Clinicians Can Learn From Yesterday's Wisdom. (Springer: 2014) p.69
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Weld_Peabody

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