The Spiritual Side of Writing: Releasing the Learner's Whole Potential

We have all experienced spiritual empowerment in learning. It may come in the form of a sudden insight or seemingly magical awareness; in an instant we reach a level of understanding that evokes feelings of joy, wonder, and a renewal of energy. It surprises, assures, and transforms us. It makes us want to know more.

The Spiritual Side of Writing helps teachers and students to achieve that level of understanding--to discover ways to tap the inner power inherent to us all. Through its fifteen essays by best-selling authors, composition specialists, and classroom teachers, it demonstrates the transcendent and egalitarian nature of spirituality and learning, allowing us to reenter the place where insights become illuminated, where the difficult becomes clear, where complex details melt into wholes.

Foehr and Schiller assert that spiritually open pedagogy is a choice that can reintroduce balance and, at the same time, foster lifelong learning. To them and their contributors, critical thinking and spirituality are not mutually exclusive but mutually intertwined. They view intellectual argument and the interpersonal exchange of ideas as some of the highest forms of spiritual empowerment, capable of filling students with wonder, exhilaration, and an awe for learning. Those interchanges give students a new vision of their own power to understand and create meaning.

The Spiritual Side of Writing will inspire all teachers, especially those at the college level. It will invoke renewed hope not only for their classes but for the world as well.