Reauthorizing Teachers: The Central Driver of Spiritually-Supportive School Culture

Introduction

While there is an understanding that success and well-being require a “whole-child” approach to education, often this does not include support for the child’s innate capacity for spirituality (Chapman et al., 2021). Spirituality is a foundational capacity for awareness and interconnection (Miller, 2015, 2021). Further, research indicates that having a strong spiritual core provides protective mental health benefits (Barkin, Miller, & Luthar, 2015; Wu, Wang, & Jia, 2015). Because spirituality is an innate capacity (Button et al., 2011; Kendler, Gardner, & Prescott, 1997; Koenig, McGue, & Iacono, 2008), it cannot be taught; rather, it must be cultivated through a spiritually supportive environment, including lived experiences and meaningful relationships. Considering how formative schools are in the lives of young people, we set out to examine how schools nurtured students’ spirituality.

Through a three-year grounded theory study (Charmaz, 2014), we identified how schools intentionally design an awakened school culture which supports students’ innate spirituality. Our research identified 11 drivers of spiritually-supportive schools which are applicable to all schools. As aspects of an intentionally designed, awakened school culture, the drivers are culturally sensitive: they allow schools to use the language and values that are central to them to cultivate their students’ innate spirituality. We know from this initial research that school leadership plays an important role in designing and maintaining spiritually supportive school culture. This research with “awakened schools” provided a blueprint for schools seeking to redesign their cultures to cultivate the spiritual core of each student.

During the 2021-2022 academic year, we shared this blueprint with schools and engaged school leaders and teachers through “The Awakened Schools Institute,” a year-long process of engaging with these drivers to make school-wide cultural change. The educators who participated through The Awakened Schools Institute shared that The Awakened Schools Institute created a spiritual space which gave teachers time, practice, and community to separate from stress and to reconnect with their identity and purpose as an educator. Through modeling spiritually supportive education, and in supporting educators’ own spirituality, teachers articulated to us how lacking this type of nurturing was for the teachers. By supporting teachers’ own spirituality, the Awakened Schools Institute sought to provide teachers with inner resilience.

As the teachers who participated in The Awakened Schools Institute learned about the 11 drivers, and considered how they could be implemented into their classrooms and schools, teachers felt that they were able to reclaim their identities as teachers. As they began to implement these 11 drivers, we recognized that the reauthorization of teachers themselves was the central driver of spiritually supportive school culture. While this will be discussed in greater detail throughout the chapter, In using the term reauthorization, we mean that teachers who began to return to the root of their calling to be teachers and to feel agency in creating a spiritually supportive environment. Teachers experienced a renewal of their vocation and a reaffirmation of their roles as leaders and co-creators of school culture. It was through this reauthorization of teachers that we became acutely aware of the critical role of the teacher as an agent of change and co-creator of school culture.

This chapter presents findings from The Awakened Schools Institute which have led to a revised framework which can be applied by educational leaders and teachers to create a spiritually supportive school culture. Prior to addressing these findings, the chapter presents the science of spirituality and an overview of the initial study which led to the development of a framework for spiritually supportive school culture which became the basis for The Awakened Schools Institute.