(Helen Purcell served as director of Living Wisdom School for more than 30 years. She retired in 2024.)

Q: What does Living Wisdom School offer children that other schools do not?

A: Most parents who inquire about the school are worried about two things. They want a personalized education for their children, but they also want rigorous academics. Often, they feel that if you have one, you can’t have the other. At Living Wisdom School, we’ve shown that you can provide both, with excellence.

Q: Do the children receive individualized attention?

A: Our small size allows the children to move through their education fluidly, with attention to their individual needs. Our student-teacher ratio is approximately one to eight.

If a child is ahead of grade level, that’s not a problem here, and if a child is behind, that’s also accommodated. I have a boy in my eighth-grade class who’s doing high school senior level math. He has the ability to become a world-class mathematician, and we’re helping him learn at a pace that’s appropriate to his abilities.

We’re small enough that if a child has any kind of an issue, the entire faculty knows about it and can help the child. Nothing is compartmentalized, and nobody falls through the cracks.

We also have a fabulous parent community. The parents are highly interested in their children’s well-being, and it isn’t unusual for a parent to share his or her special expertise in the classroom. One mother who’s a scientist taught science here for two years. It was a marvelous experience for the children, and for her. Another parent taught a unit on marketing and computers, in which he showed the children how to create a PowerPoint presentation, complete with text, charts, and slides.

Q: You emphasize “spiritual” education. Are you a parochial school?

A: We are not a parochial school, even though the main school building is located next to church grounds, and two of our classrooms are in the church office building.

Our belief is that each religion, in its essence, encompasses the universal truths embodied by our school rules. Thus, for example, Rule Number One is: “Enjoy yourself!” As we interpret it for the children, it means that if you really want to enjoy yourself, you must be concerned for the happiness of others, and for the single, deeper Self of which all religions speak.

When we speak of “spirituality,” we aren’t talking about blind belief or intellectual abstractions. We’re talking about some very down-to-earth, practical principles. For example, spirituality is what happens in math and science classes where we teach the children about the unity of all living things.

In fact, that’s an excellent illustration of a spiritual principle that has profound implications for learning. Brain researchers have discovered that when children are given opportunities to make associations between their separate school subjects, they become better learners, because associative thinking creates new dendritic connections in the brain.

Thus, if a child can understand a math concept simply by looking at the printed page, that’s certainly all well and good. But if you can connect the math concept in the child’s mind with science, poetry, and music (which we do all the time), the child becomes a better learner.

We are extremely sensitive to the need to create these connections, and it’s one of the reasons why there’s a great deal of thematic integration in our curriculum.

Q: Are your teachers well prepared in math and science?

A: Over the years, we have developed a math program with depth and breadth that excites even those children who may not be especially gifted in math.

At our year-end ceremonies, the younger kids get to stand up and tell what they like about the school. And over and over, they say “I love math!” Our math and science teachers communicate the love that talented mathematicians and scientists feels for their subject. Their classes combine lecture, lab, and projects.

Q: You emphasize the performing arts. Why is that?

A: We place a tremendous emphasis on the arts, though by no means to the detriment of science and math.

Many of our parents are Silicon Valley scientists, engineers, and computer professionals, and they tend to be a skeptical initially when we talk about the arts program. But we’re very balanced. And, in fact, some of our best student-scientists and mathematicians are also our best violinists, artists, singers, and dancers. We want to educate the head and the heart.

We’re very clear about this, and the performing arts program is a glowing example. Each year, we challenge the students to participate in a play that has the sophistication of a very advanced high school production. We then support them in stretching their minds, hearts, and wills to rise to the challenge of performing.

The play is an enormous stage for exercising and developing skills that help them tremendously in their academic development and progress: they learn to be completely focused on the subject at hand, they learn to “think on their feet” and to express themselves clearly, and they develop a passionate fire for learning.

The play is an excellent expression of our interdisciplinary curriculum, as well as how we educate the children’s hearts and minds.

One year our theater production was Jesus of Nazareth. As the children prepared, they became little biblical scholars. At the same time, they were studying Greek and Roman history and mythology, in order to better understand the historical background of the play.

When we produced a play about Kuan Yin, the Chinese goddess of compassion, we studied Chinese literature, history, and philosophy, and the children learned about Chinese art, music, and dance.

Year after year, as the children produce these plays, they internalize the great stories of the world. Thus, they receive priceless keys for deciphering great literature. But they’re not only studying related academic subjects; they’re learning to be poised and graceful, to concentrate, cooperate, and receive direction and feedback.

Q: Do they enter into the experience willingly, or do you have to push them?

A: They are so excited! And it’s their enthusiasm that motivates them to master the challenges.

For example, the vocabulary of the play is always far beyond the third-grade level. So the third-grade teacher simply makes it part of the children’s vocabulary lessons.

They learn to use the dictionary, and they master the big words until they’re able to listen to the play and understand the meaning of the lines. The children also pick up vast stretches of each other’s parts, so it isn’t as if they’re learning only their own parts in isolation. They become verbally very sophisticated, because as they say the words with understanding, and those words become a permanent and meaningful part of their verbal repertoire.

Q: You seem to be saying that the arts stimulate learning of all kinds.

A: Exactly. And the children not only learn a great deal about intellectual subjects, as well as social and character development; but they’re receiving non-denominational spiritual instruction by acting out the lives of great teachers in all spiritual paths and traditions.

By performing these great epic stories, they learn about the play of light against darkness. In the context of the life of a great soul, whether it’s Buddha, Jesus, Krishna, Moses, St. Francis, or Joan of Arc, they are offered the possibility that they can confront evil and win. Year after year, they’re acquiring a repertoire of heroes against whom they can measure their own efforts to lead a good life. And they know what it means to love God and “love your neighbor” through participating in the lives of these great examples.

Q: Do those lessons rub off in the classroom?

A: Yes, emphatically, they do. And they also rub off on the playground. On the playground, you find out how well you’re doing, or not doing as a person. These are just normal children, and they do get into conflicts. We don’t pretend that they won’t. But when they do, we have a conflict resolution program in place from kindergarten through eighth grade. And the lessons they learn from putting on these plays transfer to the playground as models for how good behavior yields the highest happiness.

The father of a little girl in our school reported that his child has become the neighborhood referee, so that when the other children have a conflict, she faces them off and says, “Okay, you stand here, and you stand here. Look in each others’ eyes. You listen; you talk. Then you listen, and you talk.” And she encourages the children to come to their own resolution.

With the younger ones, the teachers need to provide the language. But with the older ones, the teachers can simply monitor the students’ energy, because the children are familiar with the process. “I didn’t like it when you did this to me.” And the other child knows he must acknowledge what the first child has said. Thus, through respectful dialogue, children can learn to reach harmony. In many schools, these issues of conflict and feeling are seldom addressed. And they are critically important for creating a harmonious, safe learning environment in which the students feel supported.

Q: How do the teachers earn the students’ respect?

A: Certainly by being real with them. We do not look away from anything. We face things head on, and we draw the parents in as needed.

One child began suffering from separation anxiety from her mother. She would get all the way to the door of the school, but she couldn’t come in. I was in contact with the mother, and we worked to help the child. Meanwhile, I shared with the other children that this little girl was having trouble coming to school. I said, “First of all, we’ll pray for her.” So we did healing prayers–which the children love. They pray for everything – pet rats, hamsters, parents, siblings, all in the same breath.

A few days later, they were out on their morning run, and they came around the corner just as she was getting back in the car. They went over and literally “loved her” out of the car – they tugged at her and said, “We want you to come!” And she came back into the classroom. Shortly thereafter, she had to decide whether she would go on a major field trip across the country. We bought her a ticket, and the day of the trip she came to the airport, but she was holding onto her mother’s hand with an iron grip. I thought, “I don’t know if she’ll be able to do it.” But at the last minute she got on the plane, and she sailed happily through the trip.

If you bring children into the reality of what’s going on, you have no trouble. But if you rely on unnatural authority, they know it’s fake, and they don’t respect it. That’s true in any school, but we have a student-teacher ratio that allows for a kind of personal attention that enables the children to develop a respect for the teacher, the school environment, and each other..

Q: Many people believe that time spent addressing feelings is just time that’s lost for learning.

A: Some parents say, “I’m going to let my child attend this magical school, and after three years I’ll take him out and put him in a real school.” But I tell them, “The children who’ve gone all the way through Living Wisdom School have done extremely well not only in public high schools but in highly rated academically focused college prep schools. They thrive not only academically but personally.”

Q: Does the children’s enthusiasm for academic subjects affect how they feel about the teachers?

A: When you have a vibrant curriculum that draws out the children’s enthusiasm, it truly does help cement the relationship between the child and the teacher.

The children aren’t afraid of us. They feel perfectly fine about coming up and asking how we are. They treat us with the greatest respect, but there aren’t the usual barriers, because the children feel the teachers’ authenticity, and that what we’re doing here is real. And it helps us be much more effective as teachers and counselors.

One little boy misses his dad who has to travel for business and is away a lot. So his teacher trained the child to take a running start and leap into his arms and give him a big hug. It’s in these small vignettes where you can see the relationship between the teachers and students, and the quality of attention the children are receiving.

 

What do you want for your child?

What are your hopes and dreams for your child? Not just for kindergarten, but for the whole of his or her life?

Financial security? A good job? A nice home?

Material goals are necessary and worthwhile. But many intangibles are surely also worth considering, such as happiness, character, and peace of mind.

We all want our children to acquire positive values and ideals, as well as a deep understanding of the meaning of life. What role will your child’s school play in helping him or her to become an inwardly strong and secure person? No influence outside the home has a greater impact than the child’s school.

Education Reflects Parents’ Goals

Little attention is paid in schools nowadays to developing children’s values. But values are the road map that helps children understand where true happiness lies. And what if your dreams for your child extend beyond material fulfillment? Will educating your child for a good job be enough?

Intellectual training is essential; it’s difficult to succeed in our culture without it. But life teaches us that success and happiness depend to a great extent on human skills such as knowing how to get along with others, how to persevere in achieving our goals, how to focus our attention, how to cooperate, and how to be a loyal friend.

At Living Wisdom School, we feel that children should benefit from the storehouse of wisdom that humanity has gathered through the ages concerning the best ways to achieve a happy, fulfilled life. We feel it is our God-given duty to teach children these essential life skills, staring at a young age. An education that gives children the tools they need to achieve both inner and external success is a useful education, indeed!

For more than forty years, we have seen that children who are taught how to have a happy life are more likely to achieve academic success as well. (Please don’t take our word for it. See What Parents Say.)

At LWS, children learn the life skills they need to be balanced, mature, effective, happy, and harmonious human beings. We call this art “Education for Life,” because we continually relate the children’s classroom lessons to life as a whole. At LWS, we study not only the great things that people have done, but the human qualities that enabled them to attain those achievements.

Secrets of Success

Before we can be happy and inwardly secure, we must know a great deal about the world around us. We need to learn to interact appropriately with the people and circumstances in our lives, because life doesn’t always mold itself to our personal expectations.

We must be ready to adjust to realities outside our own. We must learn practical skills, and we must master academic knowledge. Education for Life helps children prepare for maturity on every level: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.

More Than Natural Talent

At Living Wisdom School, we guide children in developing the five “tools of maturity”: body, feelings, will, mind, and soul. With health and high energy, expansive feelings, dynamic will, and mental clarity, each child can experience a gradual increase of awareness that provides them with a solid inner sense of meaning and joy.

We gauge our students’ success not only by their academic results but by the quality of each child’s attitudes, effort, and interactions with others. In an Education for Life, the children practice dealing successfully with whatever life may bring.

True Teaching is Individual

Children reveal a broader range of individual traits than adults, who may have learned to mask their individuality in order to fit in. Rather than force the child to conform to strictly standardized learning methods, we feel it makes better sense to discover the child’s essential strengths and encourage them. When children’s individual strengths are continually and consistently encouraged and reinforced, they develop self-confidence and enthusiasm for learning.

Our classes are kept small, so that the teachers can work closely with each child. The teachers are trained to assess each child’s physical, mental, and emotional development and guide the child accordingly. The teachers relate to the children much as their parents do, from the perspective of the child’s ever-changing needs. We respect and encourage individuality.

Joy in the Classroom

We feel that we have a responsibility to help the early years of each child’s life be a joyful experience, while laying the foundation for a happy adulthood.

In a Living Wisdom classroom, the atmosphere is relaxed and family-like, while at the same time there is order, discipline, and a clear sense that the teacher is in charge. Living Wisdom School teachers win the children’s respect by skillfully guiding their enthusiasm and energy into the tasks at hand. The children learn that they are expected to behave with consideration and respect, and that they can approach the teacher for individual guidance.

Creating a positive learning environment isn’t, by itself, sufficient to transform the children into angels. At LWS, the same issues, interactions, and challenging transitions occur that we would expect to see in any classroom. What’s different is that the children are given opportunities to learn effective, enlightened ways of dealing with situations as they arise.

The Inner Life

At Living Wisdom School, the children’s natural spirituality is acknowledged and encouraged. Each classroom has a universal altar, with symbols from the world’s religions. The classroom may be decorated with objects that the children consider personally sacred and spiritually meaningful.

At Living Wisdom School, spirituality isn’t defined as a particular dogma or creed. Thus, it isn’t “religious instruction” in the traditional sense. Rather, the focus is on the child’s personal, direct experience of universal spiritual truths such as kindness, compassion, empathy, loyalty, honesty, and courage. The key is Self-realization – the individual realization that happiness increases as we expand our awareness to embrace ever-broader realities.

Every morning, and occasionally during the day, we set aside time for chanting, singing, quiet meditation, affirmations, prayer, yoga postures, and other uplifting activities. Through these forms of worship, the children experience for themselves what it feels like to be in harmony with a higher level of consciousness.

When it’s appropriate, we hold discussions and answer the children’s questions about spiritual truths. The children discover that expansive feelings, thoughts, and actions increase their own sense of well-being, whereas contractive feelings and actions take that happiness away. “Right and wrong” thus become first-hand experiences of the consequences of personal behaviors, rather than a fixed set of abstract rules.

The children become deeply interested in changing their behavior when they realize that it is an effective way to increase their inner sense of joy. At LWS, children talk as readily and naturally about God, angels, saints, and the spiritual side of life as other children talk about sports or TV.

The Importance of Good Teachers

“Who you are speaks so loudly, I can’t hear what you’re saying!” This adage is especially true when it comes to selecting teachers. Living examples can inspire children much more effectively than rules. A teacher who deeply understands his or her subject is better able to awaken a similar love and commitment in the children. LWS is built around our teachers’ open-hearted sensitivity to the children in their charge. It is essential, therefore, that in his/her life, the teacher expresses the positive attitudes, spiritual and moral values, and maturity that we seek to impart to the children.

Our teachers participate in Education for Life as a lifelong process. Each teacher is deeply involved in personal development, and the teachers receive ongoing support and training to stay fresh, enthusiastic, and expansive.

 

A conversation with Living Wisdom School director emeritus Helen Purcell

(Helen Purcell served as director of Living Wisdom School for more than 30 years. She retired in 2024.)

Q: Living Wisdom School nurtures children’s sense of life’s joyous possibilities. How do you counteract the widespread belief today that life is meaningless?

Helen: In our school, we feel that the relationship between child and teacher needs to be based on an authentic commitment to live life consciously, in alignment with high principles.

We have teachers who are “heart people.” They teach from the heart, and it can be very effective, because if the children sense that your heart is closed or judgmental, they’ll shut you out. True learning begins when you encourage children to have an open heart that is willing to embrace ever-wider realities. You can best do that when they feel safe, and children feel safe when they’re supported, and when they’re given a strong, clear sense of life’s positive meaning.

Our philosophy is so central to the children’s experience in our classrooms that it’s impossible to talk about how we approach the “crisis of meaning” without mentioning it.

I’m thinking of two separate examples that happened in the last two days. A little boy in our school had cousins visiting from India. One of the cousins spent a day in our first-grade class, and the other cousin visited my class.

After school, they told their parents that they really wanted to come back to our school the following day. The boy’s mother told me later, “We had offered to take them anywhere in the Bay Area, and we told them they could do anything they liked. But they said they really had to come back to your school.”

So they spent their vacation in school with us, because they couldn’t believe the feeling of it.

They told their mother, “The teachers are kind and the children are friendly.” And it’s not simply that the children in our school are taught good manners, or that they memorize a set of rules that they have to follow for getting along. It’s the result of something that runs much deeper in our school, and that supports the children by giving them a sense of meaning. It’s a culture that’s embedded in the school, based on our deep commitment to living life consciously.

Let me explain. I’m tempted to say that it’s all about joy. And, yes, that’s part of it, because children have tremendous energy and a natural wakefulness and presence in the moment. And if we can guide that enthusiasm rightly, they’ll experience a deep sense of security and happiness. So the children’s natural energy and awareness is something we treasure and nurture in them, because it’s the foundation for helping them find a lifelong sense of meaning, including a deep love of learning.

But we also find that when we nurture children’s natural ability to be present in the moment, tremendous learning can occur, so long as you’re presenting the curriculum in a way that brings out their natural eagerness and enthusiasm.

It means that as teachers we aren’t just imparting a fixed curriculum, plodding through the book. We’re noticing how each child is responding – where their awareness is at each moment, and how we can guide them through the curriculum in a way that builds on their native enthusiasm.

Naturally, the teacher is the center of the energy in the classroom. And this is especially important for the younger children. Because the teacher notices what’s going on in their lives and their hearts and minds, then with a little guidance you can help them feel very, very happy and secure in the classroom, and they can go happily from activity to activity.

And here’s the second story that I want to share. Yesterday, a little girl visited our school because she wants to enter next year. At our first meeting, her mother said, “If we enroll her, I’ll have to come to the classroom and stay with her because she’s so shy, and she can’t possibly come in by herself.”

I said, “That’s actually not a good idea. She needs to come visit us, and we’ll give her an experience of the school.”

But the mother wasn’t convinced. So I said, “You can come in for a few minutes, but then you’ll really need to leave.”

The girl was eleven, and she was literally hiding behind her mother when we met her, the way a kindergartner might behave on the first day of school. But after five minutes she had completely forgotten that her mother was there, because the students understood how to open their hearts, and they drew her in.

Later, when she got in the car to go home, her mother said, “How did it go?”

She said, “Mom, I want to start tomorrow!”

It was a huge transformation for her. And that’s the power of a culture that celebrates the positives and makes people feel safe and included.

Q: You’re creating a special atmosphere in the classroom?

Helen: I wouldn’t exactly call it an atmosphere, which suggests a mood that can change from one day to the next. It’s a culture that is deeply engrained in how we think and feel and behave. And it expresses in many ways. And because it’s very attractive to the kids, they internalize and duplicate it, so it grows.

Q: Creating a culture of meaning, purpose, and hope for the children – what does that require?

Helen: Of course, there’s a large amount of direct classroom instruction. But in an intimate setting such as ours, and with our favorable teacher-student ratio, there’s a tremendous amount of individualization.

Q: Is it based on noticing each child’s unique needs?

Helen: Yes. In our school, it would be impossible not to. Gary McSweeney, our middle school teacher, and I often laugh, because we both went to Catholic schools where there were fifty children in a classroom, ten in a row, all lined up with the nun in front.

And, well, it wasn’t all that bad at my school. But certainly there was no individualization, because it just wasn’t possible. But it would be almost impossible in our school not to individualize the curriculum, since we’re so accessible to the children, and because we’re always relating to each other one-on-one.

When I taught in a public high school, I had an interesting experience. At the end of the year I praised each student’s good qualities. And do you know what they said? “That can’t possibly be true, because you haven’t said a single negative thing about anybody!”

I said, “Of course, it’s true.” (laughs) So, you see, it’s a question of where you’re coming from. Are you only focused on ensuring that the children complete the state-mandated curriculum? Or are you concerned wholly and entirely with the success of each individual child?

Q: In her book, The Argument Culture, Barbara Tannen describes how in our culture we put every issue, whether it’s politics, religion, or education, in the context of an argument. For every pro, there has to be a con! And if you don’t bring out the negative and dwell on it in loving detail, people are programmed to think that you’re hiding something.

Helen: They think you’re “looking at life through rose-colored glasses.” But it’s a wholly false view to think that the negative defines us. Certainly, there’s negativity in the world, but our own happiness comes by expanding the positive aspects of our nature – and that’s a firmly engrained feature of our school’s culture.

This morning in our circle time with the children, we sang a chant, “Oh life is sweet, and death is only a dream, when Thy song flows through me.” Afterward, one of the girls said, “That isn’t true. Death isn’t a dream – death is real!”

So we talked about it. We talked about the life of the spirit, and how when you’re aware of spirit, the physical plane that we’re so familiar with is clearly seen to be less real, and that’s why the chant says that death is a dream. Because, as the saints of all times and cultures have told us, in our soul nature we never die.

I told them the story of Saint Francis, and how he was on his deathbed and singing joyously because he was so filled with God’s bliss. One of Francis’ fellow monks, Brother Elias, was concerned with the proprieties – he felt that a person should be very sad and grave when they die. So he scolded Francis. (laughs) And Francis said, “Oh, Brother Elias, but everything is so beautiful!” – even though he was blind and couldn’t actually see.

The children understood the story. But then a little boy said, “Do you mean that when I go to my mother’s funeral, I have to be joyful?”

I said, “Absolutely not!” And we talked about the human heart, and how our feelings, too, are very real to us.

And the point is, children will demand that degree of thoroughness when you teach them. And if you don’t give it to them, they’ll feel poorly served and they’ll tune out. In our classrooms, we make time to address these questions and not gloss over them because we’re hell-bent on keeping up with some fixed-in-stone government-mandated curriculum schedule.

So we make a point of pursuing those conversations. And it can be challenging to explain to parents and educators why it’s so terribly important. But it comes down to our basic philosophy, which says that if you can support and engage the whole child in the learning process, heart and soul and mind, you can create tremendous enthusiasm for learning. And we’ve found that being authentic in this way contributes tremendously to the children’s academic success, which is naturally a major concern of our parents.

Q: Reading the latest news about high school students who’ve become alienated and shot up their schools, one suspects that their rose-colored glasses have been ripped away. They weren’t taught to nurture their dreams and deal with life’s big questions.

Helen: A classroom is as complex as the most complex relationship, multiplied by however many kids there are in the class. And because we aren’t simply “delivering a curriculum,” we’re always addressing a very individual person. And there absolutely has to be a rapport that’s carefully developed between the teacher and the child. And when you consider that there are many individual learning styles, and learning disabilities, and differences in temperament and intelligence, you can see that it’s a multi-layered process.

The science of teaching is about knowing how to explain the various components of knowledge. But the art of teaching is about knowing how to do it in a very individual, detailed, and creatively choreographed way. If a teacher with little experience were to walk into one of our classrooms, they wouldn’t understand what they were seeing.

I walked into a classroom yesterday morning and found a little girl with tears streaming down her face. She tends to cry a lot, so you don’t always want to take it too seriously, but she was upset because she’d gotten braces and they were hurting her. Also, somebody had put yogurt in her lunch, and she hates yogurt, so she was mourning that she didn’t have a good lunch. So she was really crying, and I took one look at her, and I knew that the proper way to help her was to acknowledge her feelings but not get involved in a way that would encourage her to fall deeper into negativity.

So I acknowledged her feelings, and then I said, “Did you know that it’s Gary’s birthday?” Because she loves birthdays. I said, “You’ve been busy making a birthday gift for him, haven’t you? But it’s not finished, right? Why don’t you work on that?”

The tears stopped instantly, and for the rest of the day she was all right. But do you know how much time and energy went into that simple interaction with the student? There were all of the many, many times I had to figure out why she tended to do such-and-such, and why so-and-so worked for her, and so on. And that’s how we develop a deeper intuitive approach to doing what’s will help each child get free from negativity and find a positive sense of engagement and meaning.

It’s very, very complex, and I happened to hit the nail on the head that day. But, some days, you won’t find the “nail” right away because you haven’t known the student for long, and you don’t yet know how to work with them.

Q: You’re dealing with the children as whole people and not just brains to be filled with facts?

Helen: Oh, yes. They’re just as much people as we are, but they aren’t able to hide their feelings as well as adults can. So their feelings tend to be laid out there for you to look at, and then you can figure out how to help them.

Q: Does related to the children individually help them avoid becoming disenchanted?

Helen: Imagine a school that teaches children how to be kind, and to understand that their enjoyment depends on others’ enjoyment, and where no child, to a person, would ever be able to say “Somebody picked on me and nobody helped.”

That’s our culture. It isn’t as if the children in our school are saints. They’re normal kids, and they do get into it with one another. But because our culture is so well-defined and we’re all very clear about our values, these things are addressed immediately, as soon as they happen. If a child says something sarcastic to another child, we don’t dismiss it as a small thing to be brushed aside. “Get over it, Johnny!” We consider it an opportunity for both children to learn: the one child to learn to be more kind, the other perhaps to learn to assert himself.

Q: Are these some of the small things that nurture a child from inside, so that he or she doesn’t feel isolated or lonely?

Helen: Yes. There’s a sense of family that extends from the kernel of the classroom out to the entire school. It doesn’t stop at the classroom door – it plays out on the playground, and between the children and the teachers outside the classroom.

Our children feel comfortable with us. They approach us, not as peers, because there’s a definite level of respect, but they are not uneasy around us. They aren’t put off by our authority or by our roles, because they have a good sense of themselves, and they know that we have their interests at heart.

When the children feel good about themselves, and they feel that the teachers are accessible, you have a situation where almost anything can be worked out. But if there’s a group of kids that feel closed off, alienated and marginalized, that’s where you get the problems with depression, rejection, and meaningless.

Q: ABCNEWS.com on April 1, 2001 reported a nationwide survey of more than 15,000 teenagers conducted by the California-based Institute of Ethics. Of those teenagers, 21 percent of the high-school boys and 15 percent of the middle-school boys had taken a weapon to school at least once in the past year. Sixty percent of the high school boys and 31 percent of the middle-school boys said they could get a gun if they wanted one. And 16 percent of the high school students admitted to having been drunk at school. It’s amazing, the number of kids who have violence in their backgrounds, and it seems the kids who end up acting-out and shooting up their schools are just the tip of the iceberg. There’s a huge consciousness of violence in the schools.

Helen: There’s also a culture of exclusion, and it’s at the heart of the problem. In middle and high schools, belonging to an in-group is assumed to be important, and no one is combating this false consciousness. But it’s tremendously harmful to children, to have all this fear and anxiety around superficial things like status, and whether you’re a jock or a geek or a rich kid or a druggie. Only in a culture where there’s a generosity of heart can children bloom. And you’re extremely unlikely to find it in any kind of structure that is hierarchical and compartmentalized.

To a surprising extent, you even find it among the school teachers and administrators. I’ve heard the high school faculty lounge called “the snake pit.”

Someone told me they’re creating state and federal grants and funds to combat bullies in school. He said the governor of Colorado, acting through the state department of education, has outlawed the game of tag.

Q: Hurrah for hyper-rationalism!

Helen: Really, the solutions will never come by legislating them, or thinking about them in lofty isolation. Because they’re a matter of the heart. In our school, we assume that every child is perfect in his or her soul, and that the children need our help to manifest that perfection in the way their individual soul wants to. And that kind of progress isn’t something you can measure with numbers. But if you can do it, the rewards are great. When you nurture children individually, you create human racehorses who’ll be confident and competent in academics, relationships, and life.

We look for the beauty of the individual child, even the most difficult. We’re with them constantly, so we’re able to see the glimmers of light behind the mask. You know it’s there, and it’s a question of bringing it out.

Q: It seems you have a unified understanding of what children should get out of school. If there’s a keynote of the school, what would you say it is?

Helen: Again, my first impulse is to say “Joy.” But joy comes when you decide to take some very real practical steps, and you work hard at them. For example, according to one of our school rules, joy happens when we “choose happiness and practice kindness.”

Now this is a highly practical statement, because it’s very easy to verify it in our lives. We all know how it feels to choose to be happy and to treat others with kindness. It’s a simple, practical principle that the wise people of all ages have taught. But they never said it would be easy!

We’re very real in the way we guide the students. Maybe things aren’t going well in your life all the time. So you have to choose to come at your life from a point of inner joy. That’s the essence of our teachings.

Again, it’s working with the human reality and the inner reality both, because they aren’t separate. “We are our aspirations,” but we need to build our dreams on a realistic foundation. A child can feel overwhelmed by a mood, but they’ll be lifted by the other students who are managing to stay centered in those attitudes of kindness, compassion, and happiness that are a central part of the school culture.

We’ve had a cascade of kids who’ve gotten braces recently, complete with the full range of side effects, from braces that cut the gums, to headaches, to being unable to think, and not wanting to be at school.

They want to be good, but they don’t feel well. And do you know what the class does? The class prays for everybody who has braces. In the morning we do healing prayers for them, and you can honestly see the impact it has on those kids. Even if it doesn’t take the pain away, they have this incredibly powerful sense of friendship and support from their classmates, and it transforms their experience.

The other day, a little boy said to me, “Helen, can we say a prayer for my sister Heather? She’s coming in on the plane.” So we stopped in the middle of the lesson and we said a prayer, because it was okay.

It’s just one little thing, but when you multiply it by all the other little positive things that happen, it adds up. A child can’t figure out how to double-space on the computer, and someone will walk over and say, “I know how.” They don’t have to ask the teacher, because they know it’s okay to help each other.

Q: Helping each other with schoolwork is encouraged and accepted?

Helen: It’s accepted, and we give them freedom to act it out. When everybody’s operating from that point of origin – “I want to choose happiness, I want to be kind.” – nobody has to be in control in a rigid way that stifles their individual differences.