Resources

This Resource section offers works by Rachael Kessler, and other experts in the growing field of educating the inner life of children. Sample chapters are available for free downloads. Also provided are: pdfs, suggested readings, and links to a wealth of helpful information for educators and students.

Publications by Rachael Kessler

Sample Materials to Download

Links

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Publications by Rachael Kessler

  • Books

    The Soul of Education: Helping Students Find Connection, Compassion and Character at School, by Rachael Kessler
    (ASCD, 2000). $24.00 + shipping and handling*

  • Promoting Social and Emotional Learning: Guidelines for Educators Maurice Elias, et al. (Eds.) Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD, 1997).

    The Mysteries Sourcebook, (author/editor) teachers’ manual published by Crossroads School in 1990. A 300 page compendium of essays, curricula and lesson plans. (This book is out of print and is not available through this website.)

  • Chapters

    “ Education for Integrity: Connection, Compassion, and Character” in Riane Eisler and Ron Miller(Eds.), Educating for a Culture of Peace. Portsmith, New Hampshire: heinemann (2004).

    “ Nourishing the Soul of Students” in Mike Seymore (Ed.), Educating for Humanity. London: Paradigm Press (2004).

    “ Grief as a Gateway to Love in Teaching” in Dan Liston and Jim Garrison(Eds.), Teaching, Loving, and Learning. New York: Routledge (2003).

    “ The Heart of the Matter: Social and Emotional Learning as a Foundation for Conflict Resolution Education” in Tricia S. Jones and Randy Compton(Eds.), Kids Working It Out: Stories and Strategies for Making Peace in Our Schools. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass (2003).

    “ Adversity as Ally” in Sam Intrator (Ed.), Forward by Parker Palmer, Stories of the Courage to Teach: Honoring the Teacher’s Heart. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass (2002).

    " Eros and the Erotic Shadow in Teaching and Learning" in Jack P. Miller and Yoshiharu Nakagawa (Eds.), Nurturing Our Wholeness: Perspectives on Spirituality in Education. Brandon, VT: The Foundation for Educational Renewal (2002).

    “ Soul of Students, Soul of Teacher: Welcoming the Inner Life
    to School”     in Linda Lantieri (Ed.), Schools with Spirit: Nurturing the
    Inner Lives of Children and Teachers.     Boston: Beacon Press
    (2001).

    “The 'Senior Passage' Course” in Mahdi, Christopher & Meade (Eds.), Crossroads: The Quest for Contemporary Rites of Passage. Chicago Ill: Open Court Press (1996).

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  • Articles

    “ The Teaching Presence” unpublished manuscript, 2004.

    “ Fostering Connection, Compassion, and Character at School” in Independent School Journal, Winter 2002.

    “ Nurturing Deep Connections” in The School Administrator, September 2002, Number 8, Volume 59.

    “ Nourishing the Soul of Students in Secular Society” in Community Youth Development (CDY) Journal, Spring 2002.

    “ Leadership with Soul: A Missing Piece in School Reform” in The School Administrator, 2002.

    “ Initiation - Saying Good-bye to Childhood” in Educational Leadership, December 1999/January 2000, Volume 57, Number 4.

    “ Nourishing Soul in Adolescents: Integrating Heart, Spirit, and
    Community in Youth Work”     in Community Youth Development
    Journal, Spring 2000, Volume 1, Number 2.

    “ The Teaching Presence” in Virginia Journal of Education,
    November 2000, Volume 94, Number 2.

    “ Nourishing Young Souls in Secular Schools: An Awakening Tool Kit for All Parents” in Spirituality & Health, Summer 2000.

    “ Nourishing Students in Secular Schools” in Educational Leadership, December 1998/January 1999, Volume 56, Number 4.

    " The Teaching Presence" in The Forum (National Institute for Dispute Resolution), June 1998, Number 35.

    " Passages: Fostering Community, Heart and Spirit in Adolescent Education" in New Horizons for Learning's Virtual Building, March 1997; http://www.newhorizons.org

    “ Social and Emotional Learning; An Emerging Field Builds a
    Foundation for Peace”     in Holistic Education Review, Number 4.

    " The Teaching Presence" in Holistic Education Review, Winter,
    1991.

    “The Mysteries Program: Educating Adolescents for Today’s
    World”     in Holistic Education Review, Winter, 1990.

    “Exploring the Mysteries of Life” in Mind/Body/Health Digest,
    Vol. 4, No. 3, 1990.

    “Helping Students Confront a World of Change and Crisis”
    in Curriculum Quarterly, Spring, 1989, Crossroads School.

    “ Teens Talk about Sexuality, Sex and Television” in Television and Children, Fall, 1983.

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Sample Materials to Download (Click the title to download)

“The Teaching Presence” unpublished manuscript. 2004.
Increasing numbers of educators are taking on the challenge of
integrating "emotional intelligence" as a key aspect in the
classroom and throughout school life. Expressing feelings is central to this work. What are the skills and qualities that allow teachers to safely invite students to open their hearts in the classroom and to talk honestly about what matters most to them? Beyond curriculum, methods and theory, a more elusive quality profoundly affect the learning that is possible --the teacher's own way of being with students.

“ Grief as a Gateway to Love in Teaching” in Dan Liston and Jim Garrison(eds), Teaching, Loving, and Learning. New York: Routledge (2003). Adults in traditional American culture have little preparation for dealing with grief. In this paper, I share what inspires me as an educator to strengthen my ability to deal with grief, and then present a model that has been useful in doing so. My primary emphasis throughout this essay is to describe a series of experiences that might enable educators to deal more adequately with this challenging emotion in ourselves and others, and move on to the terrain of love and hope.

“ Nourishing Students in Secular Schools” in Educational Leadership, Devember 1998/January 1999.  How do facilitators make a place for soul in group work? What does a classroom look like in which soul is vital to the enterprise of education or youth development? What are the experiences that nourish spiritual development of adolescents without violating the deeply held beliefs of youth, families, or facilitators?

“ Leadership with Soul: A Missing Piece in School Reform” in The School Administrator, 2002. This article, included in the issue on “Spirituality in Leadership”, was sent to every school district superintendent in the country. The article describes five principles for welcoming soul into school leadership with an emphasis on deep connection to self and others and focuses on building a school community where learning can thrive and teaching can feel, once again, like a calling.

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Guidelines for Personal Disclosure for Teachers
©Rachael Kessler

Social and emotional learning differs from both academic teaching and traditional group therapy in that teachers are encouraged to share their own feelings and experience as part of the teaching process. Appropriate disclosure can enhance the classroom experience. Inappropriate disclosure can be dangerous to teacher and student alike.

WHY PERSONAL DISCLOSURE?

Personal disclosure by teachers of social and emotional learning is designed to promote community, authenticity and appropriate role modeling. This approach comes from a belief that:

  • students need mentors;
  • it is crucial in these times to foster more meaningful community;
  • the school world is a primary community for its members both young and old; and
  • a caring, learning community is fostered when we begin to carefully—slowly and respectfully -- soften the boundaries between private and public life.

One goal of a caring learning community is to create environments in which teachers, as well as students, can be real and authentic in more and more spheres of their lives. This model reflects a shift in the greater society away from a pattern of people moving from role to role in which aspects of the self are hidden or distorted.

We also believe that young people benefit from personal relationships with adults other than their parents. Role models and mentors who are not primarily in an authority relationship to teenagers offer an important perspective. Many of us learn as much from personal stories -- the wisdom gained from mistakes and triumphs in a human life – as from formal discussions about ethics, psychology or sociology. Listening to stories of a teacher’s own trials from early life while witnessing the teacher’s present strength and joy, students can gain a sense of hope and courage as they learn the important lesson that people can and do survive and thrive from the many challenges and even suffering of a lifetime.

The PassageWorks process is designed to foster a strong connection between the individual and the group rather than between the individual and the teacher. The teacher’s disclosure of feelings and ordinary life experience facilitates this process in that he becomes a real person, demystified of idealization. And because he is not a blank screen, she is far less likely to foster a student's projections.

Traditionally, one way that we have maintained a sense of professionalism is to separate the personal from the professional. In encouraging personal disclosure, we are not moving to the opposite pole of sharing anything and everything or trying to establish a peer relationship with students. If teachers have been used to holding back their feelings and experiences to be professional, there may be a danger in just opening the floodgates and letting too much spill out. For the safety of the students as well as the protection and integrity of the teacher, we must have some guidelines for appropriate and inappropriate disclosure.

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BE CONSCIOUS OF THE MODELING ASPECT OF YOUR SHARING.

Personal sharing by the leader in PassageWorks is an important model in regulating the level of group discussion. Early in the semester, it is recommended that a teacher share first in a circle discussion. This lets the group know that he or she is willing to be vulnerable and not just asking them to put themselves on the line. If she wants to encourage a rather light tone to promote safety and ease in the beginning, or during a class after a particularly deep intimate discussion, she can set this tone indirectly by telling a story that is light while still being authentic and meaningful. If he wants to encourage greater depth, he can take a plunge himself and share something more intimate or speak with greater intensity of feeling.

One must be careful not to be arrogant or manipulative in this “regulatory” purpose of personal disclosure. If you try to manipulate the students by selecting a life story for this purpose, it can backfire. They may sense that your heart is not really open, that you are trying to control things, and as a result, the sense of safety will be undermined. Keep in mind that some students may be intimidated by the depth of your feeling or experience. They feel they have to match it somehow and they may not have the access to their feelings, the experience, or the articulateness that the teacher has. If they feel intimidated in this way, they may just give up. Despite a teacher’s verbal assurance that students need not speak eloquently or intimately, students will receive the message inherent in the teacher’s behavior. Words pale beside the message of the model.

Another form of arrogance comes from thinking that if you tell a happy story it will encourage a feeling of happiness or joy in the room. In fact, I have often found that when I am feeling particularly joyful or satisfied and share this with a group, it can magnetize any sadness or disappointment they are feeling. There is often a dialectical response -- hearing how happy one person is makes them realize they are not feeling so happy. They feel the contrast rather than being inspired to see what is good in their life. Other students may feel inspired to see the bright side of their life, so it is quite unpredictable and therefore arrogant for us to try to control the discussion by our disclosures.

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BE SCRUPULOUS ABOUT NOT USING THE STUDENTS AS YOUR SUPPORT GROUP

As you choose your stories, your emphasis is not on taking care of yourself but on sharing what has value for your students and serves the group process. This doesn't mean you can never ask for their support. It can be a empowering for young people to respond effectively to a genuine call for help from an adult--if it is something they can offer with ease and if you are not terribly needy or vulnerable about the issue. When my own children first went through the video games addiction, I asked my students to help me understand what was going on and share their perspectives on video games so I could make better decisions as a parent. In helping me think more clearly about this situation, the students were able to experience making a real contribution, an important aspect of building self-esteem. The video games issue was important to me but did not make me feel vulnerable or burden my students with fear or responsibility. On the other hand, if I were to suspect my child of chemical addiction or other such serious concerns, I would never consult my students for help.

DO NOT SHARE WHAT IS IMMEDIATE, RAW OR HIGHLY PERSONAL IN YOUR LIFE

A teacher must have a safe place outside class and student relationships to share this category of experience. If your feelings are immediate and raw in a story, there is too great a likelihood that you are using your students for your own personal support. The burden of this on children is too great. Too many of our children are in family relationships in which they have been enrolled to “parent the parent.” Our culture is rife with single parents who are isolated and overwhelmed, narcissistic parents who themselves never had models for being close to children without using them as personal confidants, masseurs or support teams, or even addicted parents who require their children to become emotional or physical caretakers.

Sharing anything that is highly personal is also a big risk for a teacher. If you talk about an imminent break-up with your spouse, a betrayal, an addiction in the family, an unwanted pregnancy etc., the drama of your story may be too much for a student to contain. Feelings of fear, confusion or amazement may prompt them to spread your story to friends or family. When you tell such a story, which at times indeed you may feel is appropriate and useful to an issue or circumstance in your group, you must be prepared to hear it come back at you in the halls or from your supervisor.

In my second year of teaching, in a class discussion about death, I told a group of sophomores the story of the death of my first husband--a young doctor who died in the early seventies. There was a boy in the class who virtually never spoke and who had a life threatening illness. He was apparently so disturbed by my story that he went home and told his parents. His parents were furious with me for telling a personal story, which they felt from a “therapeutic” perspective was unprofessional. (They argued that our program was basically like therapy and that therapists follow a code of no self-disclosure.) They reported me to my supervisor and withdrew their child from my class.

At first I felt betrayed by this boy's violation of confidentiality. Yet, it became a great lesson for me in understanding that adolescents often cannot and often should not maintain confidentiality (ul). (See following section on confidentiality.) My supervisor was very sensitive and supportive in handling the case and because this death had occurred fifteen years earlier, I was not terribly vulnerable about having this information shared. I did not regret my decision to tell the story, and have told it many times since without repercussions. But I have looked carefully at how and why I told the story: I believe that in that instance I may have been using it manipulatively to encourage the students to share more deeply. And I learned that I must be fully prepared for leaks and gossip if I speak from a private place.

KNOW THAT YOU ULTIMATELY CANNOT PREDICT OR CONTROL STUDENT RESPONSES TO YOUR DISCLOSURE

In the context of a school setting, a teacher cannot possibly know enough about each student’s personal history to know what seemingly benign comment may trigger something powerful for the student. This is true in all directions -- students’ stories may trigger powerful memories or feelings in other students or in the teacher and vice versa. If we took this too seriously, we could not ever speak from the heart. But if we are simply aware of this possibility, we can be discriminating and alert as well as humble and forgiving about the repercussions and reactions to our personal disclosure as teachers.

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The Dilemma of Confidentiality
©Rachael Kessler

In the early years of developing programs for social and emotional learning, my colleagues and I assumed that absolute confidentiality was an essential ingredient of a class of this nature. When students did break confidentiality, the ensuring uproar and sense of betrayal could lead to long-term damage to the group. In one case where students perceived that a teacher had broken confidentiality, many students in that grade felt disillusioned with the whole program. Their feelings carried over into the beginning of the next year. With years of experience, I have gained a new perspective about the limits to confidentiality. These limits must be understood by the teacher, and communicated early to the students in order to avoid feelings of betrayal in the speaker or an undue burden on a troubled listener.

In the first or second class, we have a brainstorming session with the students in which we list all the ground rules needed to promote safety and trust. Confidentiality is usually mentioned. While I will write this word on the board when a student suggests it, I always flag this one as something we will need to come back to and discuss in greater depth.

LIMITS TO CONFIDENTIALITY FOR THE TEACHER

As teachers, we must communicate the limits to our own confidentiality. Immediate reporting to an administrator followed by an appropriate referral is required for:

  • suicide threats or ideation
  • child abuse
  • drug/alcohol use on campus
    •

This reporting is mandated by state law or school policy. In addition, we tell students that if we feel concerned for their health or well-being, we may feel compelled by our own personal caring to share our concerns with a dean. In both cases, we assure students that if at all possible, we would speak to them first and include them in the process of choosing the appropriate administrator and include them in the visit. However, if we cannot reach the student and there is immediate cause for concern, we must break confidentiality and make our report.

The procedure and policies regarding limits to teacher confidentiality have not changed in the PassageWorks work. But what has changed over the years of experience is our approach to student confidentiality.

LIMITS TO CONFIDENTIALITY FOR THE STUDENT

We realized that for adolescents it is often inappropriate to expect confidentiality. For younger children, it is certainly not an expectation. (Also, parents of children and young adolescents are often extremely opposed to a confidentiality rule at school.) It is often difficult at this age to contain emotionally loaded information. In the following paragraphs, I will describe a process for fostering respect for privacy, while establishing an understanding with the group that (ul) we are making no agreement to hold confidential what is spoken here.

I begin the process with my students by asking them why they think people tell other people’s private thoughts and feelings. We then engage in a dialogue, which helps them become conscious, and therefore less likely to indulge in some of the negative reasons for violating confidentiality. We also explore the legitimate reasons why people feel compelled to tell another's story.

One of the first things students mention is gossip. I ask them why they think people gossip. They acknowledge the power and popularity it can bring. I suggest that we could agree here not to use other people’s stories in this way and they nod their heads. What else? They talk about thoughtlessly blurting out something private because it is interesting or exciting to them. This too, an impulsive and unconscious violation of the privacy of others, we agree is something we will do our best to control.

Then we move into some of the more legitimate concerns that can lead any of us to tell the story of another. We may break confidentiality out of a genuine need to take care of ourselves -- someone else's private disclosure may stir a deep emotional response or concern in the listener, which cannot and should not be kept to oneself. At such times, there is a conflict between the need to take care of the other (maintain confidentiality to protect their privacy) and the need to take care of oneself (to share and get support or clarification for feelings that arise in response to another's sharing). This is an important part of being human and searching for integrity. We need to explain this to our students and brainstorm ways to resolve this conflict in ways that minimize hurt to both sides.

For the speaker

Since confidentiality can't be guaranteed, take care of yourself and only share what you are comfortable sharing. Once you put it out, you can't predict what will happen to it. So be conscious of that when you speak; be discriminating about what you share and when, knowing that it may get out beyond the group.

For the listener

If you feel the need to share something that was spoken by someone in class, ask yourself why you are doing so and how you can do it in a way that takes care of your need while not hurting your classmate. Be sure you don't just blurt it out without thinking or because it seems thrilling to you. If, on the other hand, it is really upsetting to you and you need to talk to someone about it, whom can you talk to?

We brainstorm on this dilemma. Students suggest people they could talk to who would be least likely to violate the privacy of their classmate. Suggestions include: talk to the person who actually spoke about it, talk to your teacher, bring it up in the next class if you can wait a week, talk to your parents, talk to a friend or relative who lives outside this community. As suggestions are made, we often ask students how they would feel about something they said being repeated to a person in the category suggested. I find that students continue to insist that they can be absolutely confidential and that they want others to “swear to secrecy,” but this discussion helps them to appreciate in a realistic and compassionate way that someone may need to break confidentiality. It helps them be more aware about what they share and hopefully, to be better able to forgive if there is a breech of confidentiality.

Parents’ concerns about confidentiality

Some individual parents, as well as organized parent groups today, are deeply suspicious of programs that encourage students to tell personal stories or share feelings. One such program was attacked precisely because confidentiality was encouraged. As teachers and trainers, we must be sensitive, and accountable to, parents’ needs and beliefs in this arena. It is always important to dialogue early with parents when programs that deal with emotions are initiated. We convey that we are not encouraging their children to tell their own or family secrets or probe into private matters. When we encourage students to honor the privacy of others, we are teaching children to respect boundaries -- their own and those of others. Boundaries are weak and unclear for many children and adolescents, especially during the middle school years, and strengthening boundaries is an essential part of developing a healthy identity. Giving parents a chance to express their concerns, questions and suggestions about the content and strategies of our work is an important part of the collaborative process of designing a social and emotional learning program that has integrity and consistency throughout the lives of the students who receive it.

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Links

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