An Invitation to the Awakened Schools Institute
We invite your school community to embark on a transformative journey with the Awakened Schools Institute (ASI): a year-long, research-based program designed to cultivate spiritually supportive school cultures. Grounded in decades of psychological and neuroscientific research, ASI helps educators nurture the innate spiritual core of students and staff, fostering well-being, resilience, belonging, and purpose, all while honoring your school’s unique mission.
Schools today face a crisis of meaning: rising rates of youth depression, anxiety, and teacher burnout point to the need for approaches that support the whole person. Spirituality—distinct from religion—is a universal capacity that nurtures purpose, ethical awareness, and connection. ASI provides a pluralistic, inclusive, and Constitutional framework to support this growth, enabling both students and educators to flourish.
ASI is a “head, heart, and hands” experience. You will engage deeply with the science behind spiritually supportive school cultures, explore reflective and embodied practices, and participate in activities designed to awaken insight and growth. Through guided meditations, journaling, storytelling, and dialogue, you’ll explore your own spiritual development as an educator while learning to cultivate environments where others can do the same.
By the end of the program, you’ll have a ready-to-use toolkit of practices, from classroom rituals and staff meeting templates to student-led initiatives and whole-school frameworks, all grounded in research and adaptable to your community. These tools empower educators to lead with clarity, compassion, and courage, translating insight into action.
The Awakened Schools Institute invites your community to imagine a new possibility:
What might your school look like if every student and educator were fully supported in their spiritual and ethical development?
Could embracing this approach help your school live its mission more deeply, cultivate resilience and belonging, and create a culture of shared purpose and care?
ASI offers a research-grounded, pluralistic, and adaptable path to reawakening meaning, connection, and purpose in education—an opportunity to transform school culture in ways that honor both tradition and the evolving needs of students and educators. We invite you to explore this foundational module and then decide if you would like to take this journey alongside experienced practitioners, compelling research, and tested practices that can truly transform a school culture in deeply profound ways.*The Awakened Schools Institute was created and refined in collaboration with many researchers, educators, administrators, chaplains and counselors. We are grateful for the ongoing work of our innovative and ever evolving team.
Dr. Lisa Miller, President of the Collaborative for Spirituality in Education (CSE)
Jen Halliday, Director of Strategy and Operations (CSE)
Paul Pryor Lorentz, Lead ASI Instructor (CSE)
Fellows:
Dr. Rosalynne Duff
Rev. Cam Hardy
Jason Larson
Rabba Daniella Pressner
Dr. Renee Owen
Chris Tate