Fostering Spiritual and Ethical Identities Through Civic Engagement and Nature in a K–8 School

• In Event: Spirituality in Education: Becoming an Awakened School

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to present a case study of how one school worked to concurrently develop ethical and spiritual practices in its students through civic engagement and experiences in nature. As the head of a school at a K-8 Jewish day school, I have many opportunities to talk with people about their Jewish and spiritual identities. In considering a Jewish education, and especially in the secular and intersectional context of our region —parents wonder whether their children will have enough diversity in their social networks, or space enough in their spiritual practice to include a non-Jewish branch of their family. This presentation will share how we support interfaith spiritual growth by engaging students in civic and ecological activities.

Perspectives

As a school, we made the decision in our strategic plan to explicitly connect ethics and spirituality, and to foreground that element of our work. We applied these three beliefs to our planning and practices as a school, stating that “Ethics and spirituality are good for our children and for our world. We believe that the challenges of this century will require ethically-fluent and spiritually-grounded leaders. Grounded in the school’s core values of chesed (kindness), ometz lev (integrity), and tikkun olam (service), [our] students explore and learn from the diversity of Jewish thought and life, developing an authentic spiritual identity that is unique to each of them.”

Modes of Inquiry & Data Sources

As part of a collaborative research team, we conducted a case study (Yin, 2014) on how our school supports students in developing an ethical practice in conversation with a spiritual one. We collected our data through observations and interviews with faculty and students. This is in recognition of the tradition in Jewish practice of orienting toward deeds, the work one does in the world, and also in recognizing that what families seek in a spiritually grounded community is a moral compass for their children.

Warrants for Arguments

We found that each needs to be authentically rooted in that child’s own life experience and background. Our research showed that authenticity, in particular, is critical in preparing our students to be those ethically-fluent and spiritually-grounded leaders we aspire for them to be (Authors, 2020; Authors, 2021). What we have found is that students and families find meaningful, authentic space to develop their own spiritual identity and ethical practice in two concrete areas: civic engagement through service work, and prayer practice in natural settings. We will share specific examples from this work that have been transformative for our students and families, which can be taken and adapted for a variety of educational settings, both faith-based and secular.

Scholarly Significance

The scholarly significance of this work is to provide one example of how a school can work to simultaneously support students’ spiritual and ethical identities through civic engagement and experiences in nature. Our work shows how the development of ethical, spiritual, civic, and ecological identities are mutually-supportive, and thus may provide a blueprint for supporting the development of each.

Author

• Daniel Glass, Brandeis School of San Francisco