Behind the Curriculum Curtain

In the spirit of Chris Perrin’s The Good Teacher, let’s talk about something we often overlook in our bustling school days: the practice of scholé—that contemplative, restful pause where students and teachers alike can simply “be” with ideas. Perrin suggests that just as the seventh day in Genesis was set aside for rest, a portion of our time—maybe a seventh of it—should be devoted to contemplation.

Now, what does that look like in a classroom? It’s not just about squeezing in a bit of quiet time. It’s about creating a space where students can pause and, yes, even play with ideas. Perrin talks about different forms of contemplation—from natural contemplation, where students might just quietly observe nature, to textual contemplation with poetry or literature, to artistic and even mathematical contemplation, where we just let the beauty of patterns and logic sink in.

In other words, it’s not just about racing through the curriculum. It’s about allowing a moment of “scholé” or rest so that learning isn’t just about content delivery, but about deeper reflection. If we have a 60-minute lesson, maybe eight or nine minutes of that could be left unstructured for this kind of thoughtful pause. Or maybe over a two-hour block, we carve out a quarter of an hour for students to just breathe and think.

And for younger children, it’s important to remember that scholé isn’t just about sitting still for extended periods of time. It’s really about letting children to literally play. This is how children naturally make sense of the world—by playing with ideas and bringing what they’ve learned to life. Maybe that means heading outside at recess and letting them explore nature with fresh eyes, or giving them a little corner of the classroom with materials they can use to invent stories and build their own imaginative worlds. Whatever the case, it’s about giving them that chance to play with ideas so they can start to process the deeper thinking that scholé invites

It’s a shift, of course. We’re used to planning every minute, but there’s real value in becoming teachers who also plan for contemplation. And when we do, we give our students a chance to see learning as something that’s not just about tasks, but about truly absorbing the beauty of the world and the wisdom within it. So let’s find that time for a little scholé and see how it transforms our classrooms.