How We Work | Spirituality in Education

Our Pathbreaking Research

Our research hub at Teachers College harvests practices from leading schools that have achieved excellence in promoting the inner spirit of their students. We test methodologies and tools that schools can use to build a culture and climate of awareness, belonging and connectedness.

10 CHARACTERISTICS OF A SPIRITUALLY SUPPORTIVE SCHOOL

When the CSE promotes spirituality in education, it envisions the creation of caring, inspiring and safe school communities where:

Respect and Love | Young people feel respected, understood, and loved.
Meaning and purpose | They develop a deep sense of self-worth, belonging, meaning and purpose.
Wonder | Their sense of wonder, a love of knowledge and a reverence for the mystery of being is nurtured.
Inner life and self care – They learn to care for their heart, their deep inner core, as well as their body and mind.
Moral development | They learn the meaning of freedom, self-discipline, and moral responsibility.
Caring relationships | Their capacity to form and sustain caring relationships is cultivated.
Democracy and social justice | They study and put into practice democratic ideals and principles of social justice.
Compassion and service | They honor generosity of spirit, compassion, and service to the community.
Connection to nature | They respect and care for the greater community of life and the environment.
Joy/whole being | They experience the joy that creativity and the blooming of one’s whole being can bring.

Our Pathbreaking Research

Our research hub at Teachers College harvests practices from leading schools that have achieved excellence in promoting the inner spirit of their students. We test methodologies and tools that schools can use to build a culture and climate of awareness, belonging and connectedness.

The Awakened School Institute

Next Cohort Begins Fall 2022

The Awakened Schools Institute is where the research of CSE comes to life. Through professional development for educators, our goal is to work alongside educators in public and under-resourced schools in designing an Awakened school culture. Given this priority, The Awakened Schools Institute will be offered free of charge for all participants.

Teacher education is at its best when new ways of teaching or leading are modeled. Showing people what spiritually supportive education is, rather than just telling them what it is, speaks to the lived experience of teaching and learning in deeper and more lasting ways. By cultivating our own spiritually supportive professional development environment, we will be accessing and nurturing teachers’ own innate spirituality, nourishing them in ways that are so needed now and allowing them to experience how transformative and meaningful spiritually supportive education can be.

Group of diverse students performing stretching exercise in the garden at school. school and education concept

The objectives of the Awakened Schools Institute are:

To encourage teachers and school leaders to nurture and ground their practice in their own spirituality;
To reclaim why teachers entered teaching initially, reclaiming that excitement, love, and purpose;
To experience what spirituality in education means and to tie that to their reason for becoming a teacher;
To (re)awaken teachers to this approach to education so that they can change their school culture. By getting back to who they wanted to be as teachers, and to do this collectively so that they can support each other in maintaining this shift and in changing school culture.

This type of approach also models for teachers our understanding of the connection between the work of CSE and preparing students to inherit democracy. Nurturing one’s innate spirituality also forms one’s civic outlook and cultivates one’s civic engagement: if we recognize our inherent interconnection, that cannot but inform and transform the ways in which we engage in our communities. By creating an environment in which people are members of a community, we are establishing a space in which they can practice the type of society we aim to create, modeling such a process which schools could emulate. In this way, through modeling, we can show through experience the link between a spiritually supportive school culture and civic engagement.

This type of approach also models for teachers our understanding of the connection between the work of CSE and preparing students to inherit democracy. Nurturing one’s innate spirituality also forms one’s civic outlook and cultivates one’s civic engagement: if we recognize our inherent interconnection, that cannot but inform and transform the ways in which we engage in our communities. By creating an environment in which people are members of a community, we are establishing a space in which they can practice the type of society we aim to create, modeling such a process which schools could emulate. In this way, through modeling, we can show through experience the link between a spiritually supportive school culture and civic engagement.

The Awakened School Institute

Next Cohort Begins Fall 2022

The Awakened Schools Institute is where the research of CSE comes to life. Through professional development for educators, our goal is to work alongside educators in public and under-resourced schools in designing an Awakened school culture. Given this priority, The Awakened Schools Institute will be offered free of charge for all participants.

Teacher education is at its best when new ways of teaching or leading are modeled. Showing people what spiritually supportive education is, rather than just telling them what it is, speaks to the lived experience of teaching and learning in deeper and more lasting ways. By cultivating our own spiritually supportive professional development environment, we will be accessing and nurturing teachers’ own innate spirituality, nourishing them in ways that are so needed now and allowing them to experience how transformative and meaningful spiritually supportive education can be.

The objectives of the Awakened Schools Institute are:

1. To encourage teachers and school leaders to nurture and ground their practice in their own spirituality;

2. To reclaim why teachers entered teaching initially, reclaiming that excitement, love, and purpose;

3. To experience what spirituality in education means and to tie that to their reason for becoming a teacher;

4. To (re)awaken teachers to this approach to education so that they can change their school culture. By getting back to who they wanted to be as teachers, and to do this collectively so that they can support each other in maintaining this shift and in changing school culture.

Participants

Whole-school change requires a team made up of members who are experienced and seen as leaders. The Awakened Schools Institute will invite small teams of teachers and educational leaders to participate in a year-long process of nourishment, relationship building, and reimagining education for school culture change. These teams should be made up of

Work on Culture and Climate in Schools

We have developed a process built around the 11 Drivers of a Transformative School Culture. Our staff members are available to work with schools as facilitators of that process, helping schools examine their current strengths and set their own goals for the future. The process is designed to be flexible to adapt to the unique context of every school community.

Participants

Whole-school change requires a team made up of members who are experienced and seen as leaders. The Awakened Schools Institute will invite small teams of teachers and educational leaders to participate in a year-long process of nourishment, relationship building, and reimagining education for school culture change. These teams should be made up of

Work on Culture and Climate in Schools

We have developed a process built around the 11 Drivers of a Transformative School Culture. Our staff members are available to work with schools as facilitators of that process, helping schools examine their current strengths and set their own goals for the future. The process is designed to be flexible to adapt to the unique context of every school community.

The National Council on

Spirituality in Education

The National Council is a meeting ground for sharing research, learning, resources and ideas related to the spiritual development of children and adolescents in the school environment. Through its national conference in November 2019 and other future activities, we look to support the broad-based movement for spirituality in education. We aim to elevate awareness of the need to nurture the deep inner core of the child, build awareness of what it takes to do this work, and eventually influence public policy.

The National Council on

Spirituality in Education

The National Council is a meeting ground for sharing research, learning, resources and ideas related to the spiritual development of children and adolescents in the school environment. Through its national conference in November 2019 and other future activities, we look to support the broad-based movement for spirituality in education. We aim to elevate awareness of the need to nurture the deep inner core of the child, build awareness of what it takes to do this work, and eventually influence public policy.