NURTURING YOUR SPIRIT  Stages of Growth and the Special Educator
Conference for the staff of Catholic
Special Schools
Tuesday
27 April 2004 Jeanie Heininger s.g.s. I'd like to start by
acknowledging the original owners of this beautiful land on which Mater Dei now
stands. I take this opportunity to
honour the Elders of the Indigenous community who
lived here for so many centuries and who understood about NURTURING THE SPIRIT. As
a preamble I'd like to take a closer look at a few concepts in the title. Firstly the concept of spirit. I love that word. It's rich in nuance and seems to be a very 21st
Century word. The word 'spirit' figured
prominently in media reports in the past months. The name was chosen by NASA for one of the space
rovers sent to probe the Mars terrain in an attempt to discover if there is any
evidence of life on the planet. So today
it could well be a mantra as we begin to explore our own inner landscape in an
effort to discover our growth as special educators. It's
also an ancient word. In the first book of the bible - thousands of years ago
we read that spirit means breath, so I understand it
to mean our essence, our truest self, our awareness of a force surrounding
us. You could understand it to mean spirituality,
inner dynamic, our capacity for meaning. What
about the concept of nurturing? Our spirit needs nurturing. It needs tender care, it needs nourishment, otherwise it can freeze up, or grow tired or wither. Now
against the backdrop of nurturing your spirit, I want to offer to you some
stages of growth that your spirit or your inner self or spirituality moves
through. So
I'm saying your spirit is not a static reality but rather a dynamic reality
which can be creative, full of energy.
It can also plateau for a while or get stuck in a rut or vacillate or
even lurch from crisis to crisis but has the capacity to grow and develop and
be liberated. So our spirits are
extraordinary gifts that make us unique, can motivate us / empower us to
sustain all the challenges in special education. But they need nurturing. You need time to be still. You need time to step aside for a while just
like you are doing today. So just relax
and open yourselves to the next hour. The
words special educator mean all staff ie
teachers, therapists, teachers' aides, residential staff (Social Educators),
admin staff, social workers, counsellors because you are all educators in the
broadest sense of the word. I
intend using the generic term of students with disabilities throughout this presentation including such areas as
sensory impairment, physical and intellectual disability, social and mental
health needs. I hope that’s satisfactory
to everyone. COMMUNITIES
that liberate
The great strength of school communities is
the unique spirit of each member. The
more each person engages their spirit, the stronger the community and the
richer the relationships in that community.
People are liberated if and when they draw on their spirit. People are imprisoned when they are out of
touch with their spirit. Special schools are communities with great potential
to challenge and threaten the spirit of staff and students. There are stories here at Mater Dei of staff
only lasting half a day and 3 weeks. So special schools can indeed break a person's spirit. It is TOUGH.
In a special school community we not only need to nurture our own spirit
but each other's as well. The Australian
Bishops wrote in 1997: The cry for a
supportive community by people with disabilities, and their families, should
not be denied in our churches, our schools, our neighbourhoods. Neither the written words of parliamentary
law nor the written words of the Gospel, are finally
capable of enabling people with disabilities and celebrating with them. Only supportive communities can do this. 4 In
thinking about teaching children with a disability, we need to ask some
questions: How is this school community liberating for all members? §
How does everyone contribute? §
How do you build relationships in your school community? All
of the Catholic Special Schools represented here today have rich traditions
that grew out of the particular SPIRIT of their Religious Orders eg the
Dominican Sisters, the Christian Brothers, the Salesians, the Marist Brothers
and the Sisters of the Good Samaritan.
They all are founded upon Catholic Social Teaching which encourages us
to explore further the practical dimensions of our spirituality to affirm the
dignity of the human person. A reality
we all share is our vulnerability and our need for support through our
life’s journey. The
writings of Albert Nolan (a Dominican) and his study of ‘Spiritual Growth and
Service of the Poor’, are very helpful in coming to an
understanding of the growth that takes place within special education staff. Nolan describes four stages of growth. STAGE I: COMPASSIONNolan
says that the first stage of our commitment is characterised by
compassion. We have all been moved
personally by what we have seen or heard of suffering. Our experience of compassion has been our
starting point. But it is only a
starting point and it needs to develop and grow. In
order to develop our compassion is a willingness to allow it to happen. We do have a way of allowing our compassion
to develop. We have a way of nourishing
our natural feelings of compassion. When
we experience compassion we are sharing God’s compassion. We are sharing what God feels about the world
today. Moreover, our faith enables us to
sharpen and deepen our compassion by enabling us to see the face of Christ in
those who are suffering and to remember that whatever we do to the least of his
brothers and sisters we do to him. I remember when I first arrived
here at Mater Dei and I was all of 24 and I used to sleep in a room off the 3
dormitories where 62 boarders were dropping off to sleep. Late at night, I'd walk past each bed and
whisper 'goodnight ' if they were awake or check that they were covered and
comfortable if they were asleep. I
listened to their breath coming in slow, easy rhythms. Despite their frustrations, rejections and
failures during the day, at night their faces held expressions of peace and
acceptance of who they were. Some nights
I wouldn't want to step away and wouldn't want the world to spin onward and the
rough consequences of life to follow them. We
all have moments like this don't we? It's
important to nurture these moments of compassion because the'll get you through those times when you are at
your wits' end. I need to take time to be still and simply listen to my inner
voice. Other times I need to get out
into the wide, open spaces and do some physical exercise. Sometimes I need to draw on my close
relationships and talk to people whom I love and trust and who love and trust
me. Sometimes I need to read good books
that can expand my spirit. I discovered
the writings of Jean Vanier a long while ago and this is something he says
about compassion: “Religions
that afford compassion a place allow for an important human experience. Through relationship with the powerless
person, compassion and goodness are awakened, and a new inner unity is
established between body and spirit. It
is as if the tension between the intelligence and the body finds a mysterious
resolution in the experience of being present.
Compassion engages the body and it is through the body that we draw
nearer to others. We discover that the
fragile person can help us to accept ourselves with our own frailties and we
undergo an inner transformation. We
become more human, more welcoming, and more open to others.” Buzz Time
Share
with the person beside you an experience of when you feel great compassion for
your students. How do you nurture your
spirit when that sense of compassion can overwhelm you? STAGE II: DISCOVERING OUR OWN ANGER.The
second stage begins with the gradual discovery that the people we serve are
generally exploited. Their situations
can be the direct result of institutionalisation or political and economic
policies of governments and individuals who perpetuate structures that are
oppressive. This discovery that the
people we serve are exploited by unjust structures and policies can lead to
feelings of indignation and anger. Albert
Nolan says that our Christian upbringing makes us feel somewhat uncomfortable
with anger. We might feel guilty when we
get angry. Should we not be forgiving
the politicians - seventy times seven times?
Should we not overlook oppressive behaviours because powerful people are
often philanthropers?
The
way forward and beyond this crisis is bound up with the discovery of the
spiritual reality of God’s anger. We all
know that there is a great deal about God’s anger in the bible. We tend to find stories of God's wrath and
Christ’s anger rather difficult to understand.
One of the many projects I tend
to get involved in is a 6 week program entitled CONVERSATIONS FOR Nurturing When
our hearts go out in compassion towards those who suffer, we cannot help
feeling angry with those who make them suffer.
The deeper our compassion for disadvantaged people,
the stronger our anger at those who cause or perpetuate the disadvantage. The two emotions go together as two sides of
the same coin. In fact, we cannot
experience the one without the other. While
we are grappling with the structures and systems that create oppression and
while we are learning to share God’s anger about them, our actions will be
somewhat different from the actions that simply flowed out of our
compassion. We will want to change the
system. We will want to engage in
certain activities that are calculated to bring about social and political
change. “Charity” is a reaction to
symptoms rather than causes. It is often
described as a ‘band-aid’ as opposed to preventive medicine. What is the point of trying to relieve
suffering while the structures that perpetuate the suffering are left untouched? Preventative action is political action. And so we find ourselves participating in
social actions, supporting campaigns against governments and institutions. This has its own tensions and constraints.
Anger on its own may lead to burn-out.
So if you're angry more often than not … if you're shouting at the kids
and feeling the tension too keenly … if you're not happy in the job take some
steps to remedy it. There are
professional standards for Church workers that protect the people we work with
and one standard is self care. However, when our anger is supported by the
knowledge of the history and spirit of the congregations whom you work for, the
struggle for justice will persevere for the ‘long haul’. Your story … is part of … a much bigger
story. Well,
speaking of traditions of religious congregations, Mater Dei Special School
will be having its 50th birthday in 2007. It was converted from an
Orphanage to a When I was first studying, I did a prac in an enormous institution and was looking for fresh blankets because one of the women had urinated on her's. One of the staff told me not to bother because "when you've been working here as long as I have you get used to it." That made me angry. There and then I vowed that I would never let myself "get used to indignity". Buzz Time
You
all must have 100's of stories of your own.
With the person beside you, share an experience in Special Education
that has made you feel angry. Tell each
other what you do in order to cope. STAGE
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