Frontline Design: Campus School Teachers Help Shape New Care Curriculum

Students in Roberta Murphy’s second-grade class at the Smith College Campus School were busy making a list. They formed an eager circle around their teacher as she wrote down suggestions for a log of “100 appreciations.”

Ideas for things the students felt grateful for tumbled out: “Pencils, friends, science, fresh food!”

Murphy then asked her class to think more deeply about their list.

“How did this pencil arrive in our classroom?” she asked, as she made a web of lines around the word on her easel. “What can we appreciate about all of the people who helped bring it into our lives? Who are they?”

The room filled with the sounds of youthful brainstorming: “Lumberjacks, drivers, trees!” the children called out.

The exercise in Murphy’s classroom was meant to encourage students to pay closer attention to their environment and their connections to other people. Such lessons are part of a pioneering new “Call to Care” curriculum that Campus School teachers have been helping to shape over the past two years.

The Mind and Life Institute in Hadley is developing the new K-12 curriculum, which combines insights from neuroscience, education and contemplative practices. Call to Care aims to promote altruism and a sense of community by teaching young students critical awareness and relationship skills.

Murphy is one of a core group of six Campus School teachers serving as a frontline design team for the initiative.

“There’s an openness and eagerness at the Campus School for this type of learning,” said Brooke Dodson-Lavelle, senior education consultant at Mind and Life, a nonprofit that fosters dialogue between scientific inquiry and contemplative practices. “The teachers there have organically become a part of our team.”

About the Partnership

The connection with Mind and Life goes back to 2013, when institute leaders invited Sam Intrator, head of the Campus School and professor of education and child study at Smith, to join an advisory board for the effort to design a school program promoting compassion and community.

The Call to Care initiative aims to address “what we might call the forgotten heart of education,” reads a description on Mind and Life’s website. The program seeks to help schools cultivate not only students’ intellectual skills, but also “positive human traits, such as self awareness, social awareness, care and compassion.”

Intrator was enthusiastic about Call to Care—and he had a suggestion for improving the planning process. The institute’s advisory board—made up of researchers, scientists and scholars—was “talking about trying to devise a curriculum,” Intrator said, “but what was missing from the discussion was teachers.”

The Campus School’s mission as a lab school for innovative teaching made it a perfect fit for the project, Intrator said. Founded in 1926, the school serves children in kindergarten and elementary school and is a laboratory for teacher preparation and research done by Smith students and faculty.

“We are a place where people can try out educational ideas and get feedback from teachers,” Intrator said. “I told the Mind and Life board, ‘This is great idea, but you need teachers to help implement it—and I have just the group for you!’”

How Call to Care Fits the Smith Campus School

Promoting caring relationships has long been part of classroom learning at the Campus School, said Murphy.

The Call to Care approach “matches what already exists here in our community,” she said. “The curriculum weaves together many strands: social and emotional well-being, community practice and mindfulness. The program fosters close observation of the outside world and helps students find their inner voice.”

Last year, teachers at the Campus School began meeting weekly with Dodson-Lavelle for reflection and teacher development sessions. They also began to offer regular feedback on how the pilot curriculum was playing out in their classrooms.

Campus School teachers have played a vital role in making the new curriculum more classroom-friendly, Dodson-Lavelle said.

“The original framework was developed by educational theorists and contemplatives,” she said. “The Campus School teachers provided on-the-ground experiences. So instead of a program that says, ‘this is how you teach,’ they brought a spirit of ‘what do educators need.’”

The Smith school’s work with the program gained momentum over the past year. This summer, Campus School teachers helped lead professional development sessions for fellow educators at Mind and Life’s Call to Care Summer Intensive at Amherst College.

The school’s role as an incubator for Call to Care is also highlighted in a new book by Daniel Goleman, a former science writer for The New York Times. His new book, Force for Good—which follows the Dalai Lama’s efforts to develop a science of compassion—includes a chapter based on Goleman’s observations in Campus School classrooms.

(Smith is joining Mind and Life, Amherst College and the University of Massachusetts Amherst in hosting a three-day visit by the Dalai Lama on October 25. Details about his appearances on the three campuses will be available the first week of classes.)

About the Call to Care Curriculum

The Call to Care program has three main elements for teacher development and classroom practice: receiving care, self-care and extending care. The curriculum includes meditation practices to help teachers and students focus their attention and emotions, as well as learning activities designed to foster connections with others.

Campus School teacher Paul Matylas—one of the core group involved in the Mind and Life project—said such activities distinguish the new curriculum from other social and emotional learning methods.

“There are lots of mindfulness programs out there,” said Matylas, who teaches fifth grade at the Campus School. “What sets this apart is the idea of care—giving students the tools to understand themselves so they can have more empathy for others.”

For example, Matylas has used a classroom activity where students create word cloud self portraits that describe their interests and character traits.

“That activity led to another activity about how we see others,” Matylas said. “We do a lot of work on relationships.”

Campus School colleagues say the new curriculum also helps teachers focus their attention in new ways.

“I feel like a different person in the classroom,” said fifth-grade teacher Emily Endris. “The program is about taking time, pausing and approaching things through a different lens.”

Smith professor Susan Etheredge, chair of the education and child study department, said Smith students will learn from working with the curriculum as student teachers.

“The practices and approaches piloted in Call to Care and modeled at the Campus School will provide our student teachers with a framework that will help them build positive classroom communities in which children can flourish as learners,” Etheredge said.

Dodson-Lavelle said Campus School teachers will continue to help refine the Call to Care curriculum as the program expands this fall. The initial pilot involved educators from schools in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Seattle and New York City, as well as schools in Israel, Bhutan, Vietnam and Norway. This fall, the program will be piloted at 25 additional public and private schools across the United States, including in the Northeast, California, South Carolina, Wisconsin and Washington state.

In addition to Murphy, Matylas and Endris, the Campus School team includes the school’s former sixth-grade teacher Christina Colon Bradt, Spanish teacher Lesley Smith and visual arts teacher Robert Hepner.

Murphy describes the Campus School’s work on the new teaching program this way: “We translate the work of scholars into the language of the classroom.”

Roberta Murphy, who teaches second grade at the Smith College Campus School, is one of a core group of teachers at the school helping to shape a new curriculum based on compassion and community. Photo by Mimi Adkins.