The Practice of Holistic Education: Local schools share methods for integrating mind, body and spirit in classroom

What do factories and many schools have in common? Bells, specialization into separate subjects and producing batches of children based on their date of manufacture, also known as their year of graduation.

These are similarities Sir Ken Robinson points out in his classic 2010 TED Talk “Changing Education Paradigms.” The system, he says, is the product of an educational system created in the 1800s during the economic context of the Industrial Revolution, when conformity to certain standards was a prioritized cultural value. The problem? We no longer live in a time period in which one correct solution at the expense of other types of creative thinking is what will advance our country. We need students to come alive and integrate their whole selves in the classroom rather than trying to fit them into predetermined boxes that discount their unique inherent interests, Robinson says.

A proposed solution? Holistic education, a way of being in the classroom that addresses not only students’ minds, but also their bodies, spirits and emotions. In practice, it looks like less standardization, forced teacher accountability, and hoops for students and teachers to jump through that take up valuable instruction time, and more student-led projects, critical and creative thinking, and trust in educators, students and parents. In short, it’s the type of education that cultivates the thinkers, leaders and creators who will help our region, country and world continue to move forward, problem-solving into the next generation.

It’s a practice that, according to the American University’s article “What is Holistic Education?: Understanding the history, methods and benefits,” was developed in the 1980s. Today, area schools are putting these ideas into practice in a variety of ways that invite into the classroom joy, frustration and anger; failure that leads to success; and connections with the community.

It’s a way of educating that beckons the student, teacher and community member into the educational process to reawaken the delight of discovery.

Jude Davis, Libby Tlapek and Emery Moore engage in free play on a hillside near their classroom during recess at Prodigy Leadership Academy in Cape Girardeau. The school's co-founder Russell Grammer envisions education as a staircase, on which educators come alongside students to assist their learning.Photo by Aaron Eisenhauer

__The role of the student__

One of the core components of holistic education is student-led initiatives that help students experience the ways skills learned in the classroom apply outside of the classroom. At Saxony Lutheran High School, opportunities for this are built into the start of the day: Twice a week, students lead small groups in which they discuss how faith applies to their lives, pray with each other, and, several times a semester, eat breakfast together. As a freshman, students are put into a homeroom with sophomores, juniors and seniors, as well as their academic advising teacher who will check in with them about their grades and life throughout their four years at the school. Each homeroom — which students describe as more like a family — also plans a chapel service for the whole school once a year. Students say they make some of their closest friends in their small group, which they are with all four years of their time at Saxony.

Students can apply to be a leader or a facilitator of their small group starting their sophomore year. As a leader or facilitator, they are in charge of planning the small group time, including the devotion they will read, the questions they will ask to lead discussion and any games they will play to help students get comfortable with each other. Students say this role helps them with leadership skills and learning how to talk about their faith.

“I definitely think it’s helped me learn how people our age retain information, because, especially when we’re talking about religion stuff, nobody our age is really going to listen if you’re just talking at them and not talking to them,” senior and small group leader Emma Voelker says. “So, it’s really helped me improve that skill, involving them in the conversation, asking them questions, making things more personal instead of just broad stuff that we hear in church.”

Third and fourth grade teacher Iliana Has carries her student Avery Lawrence as they walk across campus at Prodigy Leadership Academy in Cape Girardeau. Teachers, the school's co-founder Russell Grammer says, are treasure hunters who find the gems in each student and show that treasure to them.Photo by Aaron Eisenhauer

__The role of the teacher__

Russell Grammer, co-founder, co-director and teacher at Prodigy Leadership Academy, views the role of a teacher as that of a treasure hunter: Teachers, he says, get the pleasure of helping students find the treasures that are packed inside them. The teacher’s job, he believes, is to come alongside the child as they walk up the staircase of learning, asking big questions that help students imagine and work toward possibilities.

“We’re giving support so that young people can be who they are at their best,” Grammer says. “The best kind of learning happens in the context of a loving relationship. … The teacher is just prompting and encouraging more question, which is nurturing curiosity.”

The teacher, Grammar says, doesn’t need to be the expert on everything; in fact, the teacher’s job is to be the “chief learner” and to give “exposure to more opportunities to connect with inspirational situations.”

Examples of this type of teaching and project-based learning abound at Prodigy Leadership Academy: Students utilize English skills to conduct interviews of potential candidates for employment at the school; they employ teamwork to help build yurts used as classrooms on the school grounds; they use math to create gaga ball pits on the campus for their peers to enjoy. Students read to animals at the Humane Society, ask questions of and listen to people who lived through the Great Depression, and organize trivia nights to raise funds for causes they care about. It all aims to put learning into context.

“When you see children in these kinds of environments with freedom to explore and be imaginative, they are more joyful, they are growing and thriving in all the right ways as a whole person, and then when they’re applying their brain to whatever’s the concept they’re trying to understand, they have a much better potential to grasp it or even to grasp the essence and then go deeper and deeper and deeper,” Grammer says. “We’re not covering the material — we are lingering in things that are important. And because we involve student choice and we involve student interest, they have more ownership, and they realize, ‘This is my journey of learning.’”

That also includes ensuring teachers provide time and space for students to fail and then come alongside them to help them become better from the failure.

“If we want to develop lifelong learners, then we need to show them that learning is both extremely difficult and full of joy,” Grammer says. “You’re doing something new every day, and it’s not just a school thing. You’re learning all the time.”

Real-world projects are also at the foundation of Bri DeWitt’s teaching philosophy. Last year, DeWitt, English and journalism teacher at Central Academy, created a journalism class and the school’s first-ever student-run publication. This year, when students voiced the need for a yearbook and the desire to create one, she made a yearbook class so students could learn about photography and design while creating a real product for their peers to look back on in years to come.

“Education as often as possible should be student-led … and I’m just there to guide their learning,” DeWitt says. “I’m just here to help them succeed at whatever it is, and no matter where they’re going to go, it’s just life skills. It’s learning to be part of a community and love themselves.”

DeWitt says she has seen her students grow in confidence throughout the school year as they have experimented with cameras; much of the learning is trial and error. They are also innovating within the yearbook project; one of her students conceived of and led a fundraiser to help raise money so each student could receive a yearbook at no cost.

In addition to responding to the ideas students have for projects and providing them with the opportunities to make their ideas reality, DeWitt says her job is to create a safe place for students to experience a range of emotions.

“You should be allowed to get upset here or get angry at myself or other teachers or each other; and as teachers, we’re there to facilitate learning about real life, how to get through being mad at me or not liking an assignment or being upset with a grade or not knowing how to do something,” DeWitt says. “And I just want to be there for that.”

Russell Grammer, co-founder of Prodigy Leadership Academy, discusses his teaching philosophy. He helped found Prodigy Leadership Academy after working as an educator in public schools for 11 years.Photo by Aaron Eisenhauer

__The role of the community__

Connecting with the larger community outside of the school is an important component of holistic education, too; through this model, educators invite experts from the community into the school to share their knowledge, and also take the students into the community to learn.

Benjamin Rhodes, headmaster at Lynwood Christian Academy, says he sees the training of children as a partnership between the family, church and school. One example of this is the nature area Lynwood Baptist Church created for students in the woods behind the school, so students could get out of the classroom to work with their body and connect with the natural world. The nature area includes a trail for walking and running, an outdoor classroom for learning, and a ninja obstacle course, slackline, and zipline. Rhodes says it’s part of helping students realize although the culture of social media, Netflix and Amazon tell young people it’s all about them through serving them curated lists of things they might like based on their viewing or shopping history, they are called to a different purpose.

“If you look at our culture today and you look at social media, whether it’s Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, whatever it may be, a lot of times, there can be a lot of selfishness. And I think the idea of serving people has kind of taken a backseat big time,” Rhodes says. “It’s all about me, me, me. And our goal is to say it’s not. ... We want to be a people of service and not just a people of consuming and saying it’s about me.”

Notre Dame Regional High School, too, values the role of service to the community: Students work in the community during a school-wide spring service day, and there are also opportunities for students to go on summer mission trips to Alabama, Texas, Louisiana and Arizona. Throughout the school year, students collect food and toys for members of the wider community. It’s all part of the responsibility students have not only to themselves but also to those around them, says Sarah Strohmeyer, chairperson of the theology department and director of campus ministry.

“We are all connected. Nobody is on their own,” Strohmeyer says. “In our faith here, Catholic faith, we don’t believe that it’s just me and God, we really believe that it’s us and God and that we exist within a community, and we have certain responsibilities as being a part of that community, and one of those responsibilities is to reach out to those who are less fortunate.”

Students also connect with each other on retreats each year, at which they discuss how their faith as high school students intersects with their lives and relationships with God, themselves and others. Each year, the retreats get longer; the freshman retreat is a half-day, and the senior retreat is four days and three nights. At each retreat, there are opportunities for worship and for students to play games and get to know their classmates on a deeper level. The senior retreat is mostly student-led; this, Strohmeyer says, helps students learn about God in a different way than while sitting in a theology classroom, hopefully preparing them to live out their faith and build up the community in the context of however they are called in life.

Through welcoming the mind, body and spirit into the classroom and seeking to help students fully become themselves by giving them a voice in their own education, educating young people holistically has the potential to transform schools, families and societies. As area educators incorporate this type of philosophy into their teaching, the region will reap the benefits of young people who become adults that know how they can uniquely contribute to a community, adults who are equipped to live that purpose out.