 Little
Monks & Nuns
To inspire children, share what makes your own heart beat faster
An interview with Toby Moorhouse
"I always knew I wanted to be a teacher."
It's a January afternoon at Living Wisdom School, at Ananda Village.
The children have skipped down the hill to play after school,
and Toby Moorhouse is resting on the grass near the swings, talking
enthusiastically about education and enjoying the mild winter
sun.
"I remember very clearly walking into
kindergarten my first day and thinking, 'This is what I'm going
to do when I grow up!' In school I was always observing my teachers
and keeping track of their teaching styles, what was good and
what wasn't. When I'd go babysitting, I'd even make up lesson
plans for the kids and play school." When Toby laughs, it's
like a little explosion, a green spring of joy.
Watching Toby Moorhouse teach her 3rd and 4th graders, it's clear
that her irrepressible enthusiasm has won their hearts. Probably
none of the boys, at least, would betray the 7-year-old's code
so far as to admit to liking school; but as you watch them it's
obvious that they enjoy it.
In Toby's classroom, spiritual education means
encouraging all aspects of a child's nature, with happiness as
the ever-present goal. What the children learn in her classroom
is what we're all trying to learn. As she shares her ideas about
teaching, spiritual truths take form as classroom anecdotes and
observations.
Q: Can you think of a story
that illustrates children's spiritual potential?
Toby: There's something that
happened my first year here. I'd been reading books by and about
St. Teresa of Avila, and I was so inspired. I had a 3rd and 4th
grade class at the time, and part of my way of being with the
kids is to share some of the things that are going on in my life.
So one day in our morning satsang, I said, "You guys, I just
have to share this with you!"
St. Teresa had such love for God, and total
surrender to whatever Christ gave her to do, and such love for
anything that came to her in that way. So I was reading to them
about loving God so much and doing everything you can for God,
and how the nuns married Christ in their ordination ceremony.
I told them how the nuns lived in silence
so that they could always be thinking about God. And one of the
little girls in the class said, "I think we could do that."
I said, "Well – how?" So we played with the idea
for a while. I had wanted to be a nun in the worst kind of way!
But I never really felt a calling to it, and yet, oh, it seemed
like such a wonderful thing! So I thought, well, okay [laughs],
this is my chance!
We worked out how we could play nuns and monks.
We decided we would do all our chores in silence, just like the
nuns did, and our chores would be our school assignments. Then
we had someone be the bellringer, and every hour they'd ring the
bell and we'd stop what we were doing and pray.
One of the kids said, "What will we pray
about?" I said, "You know, if you were married to God,
you could talk to Him in the everyday language of your heart.
Maybe you would ask for help, or how you could communicate better
with your mom or your dad or your very best friend. That's how
you would pray."
So we would all stop and say our prayers,
and I didn't rush through, but when I stopped, I was never the
last one praying. There was always at least one child still praying.
And I knew it wasn't acting, because their hands were clenched
tight and you could see their brows furrowed. You could feel the
concentration in them.
The first recess came, and two of the little
girls went and got a bucket and started cleaning the entryway
floor. Well, I had said nothing to them about service.
I said, "Oh, you guys, I have to break
silence, because I have to read this to you!" And I went
and got my book and opened it to the part where St. Teresa talks
about service, and how when you love God with all your heart,
and you love your fellow man as an expression of God, you want
to do things to make their lives better. It's not that you have
to, but you want to do things to help them. And I said, "I
never even read this to you, and look what you're doing. You're
doing exactly what it says." We had never scrubbed the floor
before. [laughs] I mean, they were just out there with their buckets
and rags scrubbing the floor, you know? It was amazing.
So the day went on, and it was so cute, because
the little girls would take their sweaters and button them over
their heads like veils, and the boys were stuffing their arms
in their sleeves like monks' robes. It was a wonderful day, and
everyone was just real inward.
The next day, I thought, "Oh well, that
was wonderful, but it's over now." But at morning satsang,
one of the little boys said, "Can we do that again?"
I said, "Noooo." Because I was feeling you don't want
to run it into the ground and spoil the blessing. So I said, "No,
I think one day was enough." And I had a rebellion on my
hands! "No! No! We want to do it again! We want to do it
again!"
Finally another little boy said, "Look,
I know God helped me with my work yesterday!" And I thought
"Ooookkaaay...." [laughs] Well, we ended up doing it
all week long. We spent the week in silence, and it was a little
hard to teach! [laughs] I mean, trying to figure out how to teach
fractions, you know, without saying anything – you just
have to write it all on the board. But it was wonderful.
We used to have Friday night movies down on
the market lawn, and they were showing "Brother Sun and Sister
Moon" that Friday. So I thought "Uh-oh, here comes all
this St. Francis stuff." And, sure enough, the kids came
back Monday morning saying, "Now we want to be St. Francis!"
I said, “Okay, how can we do it?” Well, the one thing
that they could think of was to beg for food. [laughs] And, as
a first-year teacher, I just didn't know how I could send notes
home to their parents saying, "Please don't send lunches
with your children, because we're going to go down to the market
and beg from people after they've eaten their lunch." [laughs]
So I said no. But, afterwards, I thought,
"What a shame." Because St. Francis' attitude was to
accept what God gave him. If God gave him food, great, and if
God didn't, then God wanted him to be a little hungry, and that
was okay, too. And I thought, what other chance would these kids
have to be hungry and learn to accept it? Now, probably they wouldn't
have been hungry for very long as they walked among their families
and said, "May I have what's left of your sandwich?"
[laughs] I doubt people would have turned them away, but it's
a shame that they didn't have the experience.
I had shared with the kids because I was so
enthused that I just couldn't contain it. I just had to share
with them. And that's what I really learned from the experience.
More than anything I told them about St. Teresa, the kids picked
up on my enthusiasm, and that that's what gave it life. So it
taught me something important about encouraging children in the
spiritual life. Since that time, whenever something really moves
me spiritually – not just ideas, but something that's truly
moving me – I share it with the kids. And, almost without
exception, it's been something that has also touched them. They
felt the vibration of it. And that's so different from when I'm
just talking abstractly about some aspect of the spiritual life.
They feel it!
Q: Does that kind of connection
happen rarely, or is it a regular part of the education that kids
get at Living Wisdom School?
Toby: You have to be open
to it at any moment. You can't just make it happen. If I were
to try to recreate that experiment with the kids living like monks
and nuns, I doubt that it would work. It was a spontaneous thing
that presented itself. I think it can happen at any time, but
it has to come from inside.
Q: As a teacher at Living
Wisdom School, do you have more opportunities to teach spontaneously
than you would in a public school?
Toby: Because we work a great
deal on character development, the children need to be able to
trust us and know inside that we care for them as persons, as
souls. If you put 30 six-year-olds together for six hours a day,
day in and day out, you have to spend an awful lot of time on
classroom management: everyone be quiet, do this, do that. But
when it's just 12 kids, there's more time for learning and being
together.
It does support spontaneity. If the sun comes
out after the rain and there's a beautiful rainbow and the most
wonderful thing is to walk through this beautiful countryside
that we live in, it's nothing to manage it with 12 kids. You just
do it.
Q: Do you balance learning
about the spiritual life with academics?
Toby: Absolutely. We have
to prepare our kids for success in the world. They can't feel
good about themselves if they aren't successful, so we're very
careful with the curriculum, that everything gets covered. And
they're usually ahead of grade level.
Last year a little girl visited our class
from South Carolina, a first grader in an academically oriented
private school where they move kids ahead very fast. She visited
my class for a week, and she did just fine. But we got a call
from her parents after she'd gone home, telling us that her teacher
was very puzzled. This teacher was asking the parents, "What
happened at that school? This girl did not read when she left,
and she came back reading, able to sit down and read a book."
And I wondered what I’d done. In fact, I hadn't done anything
more than what I’d do with the other kids. We just spend
lots of time with books, and we simply sit down and read.
So I couldn't have taught that child to read
in a week. And it occurred to me that in her school there's all
that pressure, whereas at Living Wisdom School we cover a great
deal of academic work, but there's a warm, friendly feeling. And
I daresay what happened is that she simply relaxed and was able
to use the knowledge she already had.
One of the strongest attitudes I see in our
teachers is a very, very deep respect for children. While our
role as leaders is important, we also understand that these are
souls, that they've been here before. They were old, they knew
a lot, and while those past experiences may not be in their conscious
memory now, they're still worthy of our respect and of being treated
in a kind, fair and respectful way. And that attitude leads to
a certain family feeling, a genuine care and affection for the
children.
Q: Has being on the spiritual
path helped you as a teacher?
Toby: I guess one of the
first things that comes to mind is knowing that it doesn't all
ride on me, that I'm not going to make or break these kids. In
class I may come up with something that's intellectually challenging,
but if it doesn't have spirit behind it, there'll be a certain
lack. But if what I give the kids has attunement with the spirit,
then it's meaningful to them.
I remember once when Kriyananda met with the
teachers, he said, "Always look to the consciousness behind
anything that you bring into the classroom. Whether it's music
or an art activity or a game or the way you present history, look
to the consciousness behind it." So we've developed other
sides of the curriculum, beyond the intellectual. In teaching
history, for example, we look at the deep soul development of
people like Washington and Lincoln. In everything we do, we try
to bring out a deeper insight.
When I put my heart and soul into a lesson
and it doesn't come off well, I can ask for inner guidance, because
I don't feel that my brain is the only resource I've got. There's
a much greater resource that I can draw on. I'm not one to sit
down and pray and see flashing lights and hear a voice telling
me what to do, but there's a sense of "Oh, Ah!" An impulse
will come, and sure enough, that impulse will be just what's needed,
in an academic subject or in a social situation with the children.
Q: As our country's schools
seem to be getting increasingly bad, many people are saying that
academics is the answer, or values, or put police in the halls,
and so forth. Whereas you appear to be saying, teach them how
to live.
Toby: I feel that both are
very important. Essentially, it comes down to what makes somebody
happy. And that means they need to have control of their energy.
They need to have control of their attitude. They need to learn
to deal with the things that life throws at them. In the struggle
to learn math concepts and spelling, the children are also developing
spiritual qualities. In playing the game, there's the skill of
the game, and there's the character quality behind it. We try
to work with both aspects, helping our kids learn to take what
they're given and be the best they can with it, inwardly and outwardly.
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