Module 3: Intentional Lexicon
ASI Video Companion Guide: Intentional Lexicon
Please print this guide BEFORE you watch the next video in this module.
Framing the Session
In this session, you’ll explore the driver of intentional lexicon — the shared vocabulary that shapes a school’s spiritual culture and identity. Paul describes how language can open doorways to belonging, awareness, stillness, and meaning for students of all backgrounds.
Pause & Reflect before beginning
What shared words, phrases, or practices already carry meaning in your school?
How might language shape how students feel, relate, and understand themselves?
What words guide the spirit of your classroom — intentionally or unintentionally?
Pause & Reflect. 2 — 2:38 (When Paul explains Espacio)
Summary:
Paul introduces Espacio, a unique practice that affirms silence, stillness, receptivity, and listening to the transcendent. Through intentional language, the community learns to open themselves to mystery, intuition, and depth.
Pause & Reflect:
How might silence or stillness support students’ inner lives?
What practices currently help your students listen — inwardly or relationally?
What word or phrase might you use (besides “Espacio”) that fits your school?
Pause & Reflect 3 — 6:36 (Distinguishing mindfulness from Espacio)
Summary:
Mindfulness turns inward; Espacio focuses on receptivity to something larger. Both have value. An intentional lexicon helps a community name different kinds of knowing — cognitive, emotional, intuitive, spiritual.
Pause & Reflect:
How do you support multiple ways of knowing in your classroom?
When have you sensed intuitive or “heart” knowledge among students?
Pause & Reflect 4 — 8:05 (Stories of skepticism and resistance)
Summary:
Educators or parents may hesitate when spirituality is mentioned. Paul describes how experience changes perception. A felt sense of calm, meaning, and presence helps skepticism soften.
Pause & Reflect:
How would you respond if a colleague or caregiver felt uneasy about “spiritual” language?
Which words feel most accessible and inclusive in your setting, especially if your setting is secular?
Pause & Reflect 5 — 11:09 (Multiple epistemologies & heart knowing)
Summary:
Students are not only logical learners; they are emotional, intuitive, artistic, relational beings. An intentional lexicon dignifies these other ways of knowing and gives students permission to name and trust them.
Pause & Reflect:
How do you currently affirm knowledge of the heart — not just the mind?
What happens in your classroom when students express emotion, intuition, or wonder?
Which shared words could help normalize discussing feelings, presence, relationship, or love?
Pause & Reflect 6 — 14:15 (Shared song and language catching fire)
Summary:
Language (and song) can spread organically across ages and grade levels, forming culture through joy and repetition. When intentional language is planted early, students grow into it — without cynicism.
Pause & Reflect:
What repeated words, songs, or rituals form the “soundtrack” of belonging in your school?
What seeds could you plant now that might bloom years later?
Pause & Reflect 7 — 38:40 (Closing — encouragement to develop lexicon)
Summary:
Developing intentional lexicon is meaningful work — sometimes challenging, always worthwhile. Schools already hold seeds of language in mission statements, mottos, traditions, stories, songs. Educators help those seeds grow.
Pause & Reflect:
How does your school intentionally include language across the school community?
How might intentional language strengthen belonging, care, or courage (or your school’s deepest values)?
How might students become co-creators of your school’s spiritual language?
Where might you start this week to use language more intentionally? Maybe: What new word, phrase, or practice would you love to introduce?
The intentional lexicon, therefore, becomes rooted in tradition for the school and invites an openness to new language as it becomes necessary or organically emerges within a school context. A key rationale behind intentional lexicon is that language informs the way we think and builds a sense of awareness, knowledge, and self. Therefore, schools utilize their intentional lexicon to build relationships, spiritual curiosity, empathy, and connection. The shared understanding of these terms, rooted in interconnectedness, further fosters relational spirituality between the members of the school community.
Example:
Espacio: a term used in the Convent of the Sacred Heart that invites a practice for intentional silence. It is meant to affirm the value of stillness and silence in life, and then to open hearts to be receptive to divinity, mystery, or the experience of the universe. All Sacred Heart students are familiar with this term, and it invites receptiveness to Spirit, and it creates a culture of seeking silence and stillness authentically
Intentional Lexicon is….
The school-specific language is a loving, authentic, and interconnected
Vertically aligned throughout a school
Open and pluralistic
Intentional Lexicon is not….
Forced, or rote
Inherently exclusionary
Prescriptive and divisive
This module invites attention to the language we use and the effects it has on our communities. It is not an invitation to perfect our words, enforce agreement, or replace one rigid vocabulary with another.
Language, like formation itself, is living. It evolves, breaks down, and sometimes fails to carry what we intend. That is not a mistake; it is part of how meaning is made together.
As you encounter the ideas and examples in this module, notice what feels expansive, what feels constricting, and what may no longer serve. You are not being asked to adopt a fixed lexicon, but to cultivate attentiveness to how words shape experience, relationship, and belonging.
Expect moments of clarity, hesitation, and uncertainty. All are welcome. The work here is less about choosing the “right” language and more about remaining responsive to the people and contexts language seeks to hold.
Proceed with curiosity rather than certainty. Understanding will deepen through practice.