‘Shaman’ Takes His Own Medicine

Donald Paulus’ day job is to teach high school social studies. But his calling, he says, is to heal people with his shamanic powers.

The mix has earned the 63-year-old teacher at East Syracuse-Minoa High School a reputation as an eccentric.

A former Roman Catholic who converted to the archaic belief system, Paulus talked in class about shamanism and once even performed a classroom healing ceremony.

Administrators in his suburban school district say Paulus has crossed the line from eccentricity to unprofessionalism. He is accused of improperly bringing his beliefs into class, and school administrators are attempting to fire the veteran teacher with 38 years’ tenure.

Paulus has been suspended with pay from his $73,766-a-year job for the last year and a hearing is pending.

It’s been a messy--and often public--fight.

Documents released by the administration allege that Paulus bragged of his powers in class, harassed co-workers, seated students according to “energy flow,” told his class that he was a pterodactyl in a previous life and that he was at Golgotha when Christ was crucified.

Paulus says the charges are either lies--such as the pterodactyl and Golgotha claims--or grave distortions. He claims the administration has a vendetta against him and he’s fighting back. He notes with glee that the district paid about $7,000 to train him as a shaman in the first place.

“If the system is sick, how appropriate it would be that a shaman whose training they financed heals it,” Paulus says.

A solidly built man with white hair and glasses, Paulus looks more like an accountant than a tribal healer. A hint of something different comes only when he loosens his collar to reveal a gold necklace laced with sacred stones--ruby for confidence, amethyst for controlling appetites, emerald for defense against evil.

Paulus isn’t sure if the stones work as advertised. Similarly, he interjects much of his talk of shamanism with phrases such as, “I know this sounds crazy.” But his belief is deep and tied to a monumental event.

Paulus’ mother died in 1987. He describes her as a psychic--she could tell when people were going to die--who transmitted messages to him from the afterlife. Her message was clear: Go to Esalen, the famous New Age camp in California.

He went. It was a turning point.

At Esalen, Paulus says, he was guided through special breathing exercises that revealed to him he had past lives, including one as a caveman who fought a bear (he lost). The revelations shattered his belief system, and he became devoted to the nature-based spirituality of American Indians and other cultures.

The middle-class, married father of two also began performing sacred rituals to heal people of malignancies ranging from back problems to cancer.

“I had the need to heal people,” he says.

Paulus doesn’t dispute that he sometimes mentioned shamanism in class. But he said it was in context, such as when he was teaching Native American culture. Nor does he dispute going into a light trance one day amid students, shaking rattles and drumming to heal an athlete’s afflicted knee.

Paulus said he “saw” that cartilage was detached in Jay Van Nostrand’s knee and “spot-welded the cartilage. I know it sounds crazy.”

Not to Van Nostrand, who gingerly removed his brace later that day to find his knee “felt considerably better.”

“The surgeon was baffled by my improvement,” he says.

Van Nostrand, now a junior at Syracuse University, doesn’t know whether to chalk up the improvement in his knee to Paulus’ act, his faith or coincidence. He added that Paulus seemed to be misunderstood by other students.

“He’s kind of been passed off as a kook more or less. There’s not even a euphemistic way of putting it,” Van Nostrand says. “At the same time, he’s a very intelligent man.”

Not all his students agree.

In a handwritten note included with the charges the district has filed, one girl wrote:

“He only talks about his weird experiences and his way that he can heal and be a shaman and how he hates fundamentalists and Republicans and Christians. I am all three. He also doesn’t teach us at all.”

A fellow teacher filed a harassment complaint, claiming Paulus buttonholed her in a cafeteria and tried to persuade her to travel around the country with him to heal people. A supervisor alleged that Paulus acted “totally berserk” upon a chance meeting at a bank, administration documents say.

Paulus disputes the charges, saying it’s part of a “hatchet job” on his reputation orchestrated by an administration that is angry with him.

Tensions between Paulus and school administrators date from before he was suspended in November 1995. He filed an age discrimination suit against the district with the state Division of Human Rights in 1991. The agency found enough evidence to merit further investigation. Paulus plans to take the case to federal court.

He also has publicized administrators’ salaries and recent revelations that the school had sometimes bought outdated food for students.

Paulus notes that his evaluations from the school district had been positive since he began working at East Syracuse-Minoa in 1958. The officials also agreed to send him to courses like “Shamanic Counseling” and the “International Transpersonal Conference” at the school district’s expense.

Gary Minns, the current school superintendent, says he’s approved no such sabbaticals for Paulus since he started as superintendent in 1990.

“His behavior really had worsened over the years,” Minns says. “It was now affecting students and teachers.”

As a tenured teacher, state law requires Paulus’ case to be heard before a three-member panel. No date is set for the hearing.

“I was going to retire last year,” Paulus says. “But I told my wife, ‘I am not going to retire under a cloud.’ ”