Initiative on Contemplation and Education

The Garrison Institute’s Initiative on Contemplation and Education (ICE) works to develop the field of contemplative education for K-12 educators and classrooms. It fosters the field’s growth and evolution, and introduces evidence-based contemplative methods to educators, helping improve student academic performance, reduce teacher burnout and create healthy school environments conducive to children becoming responsible, productive, caring adults. ICE offers high-level forums engaging dialog among educators, scientists, funders and policy makers, contemplative- based teacher trainings, classroom pilot programs, publications and other resources for educators, researchers, teachers and schools.

A 2009 independent assessment found that ICE has made “significant” progress in building the professional field of contemplative education, gaining recognition and impacting the personal and professional lives of educators. In 2009 the US Department of Education Institute of Educational Sciences awarded funding to Pennsylvania State University and the Garrison Institute to complete the development and preliminary testing of CARE.

As ICE grows and gains recognition, it can help redress the ongoing crisis in American education. Today nearly half of all K-12 teachers quit during their first five years, a quarter of students don’t graduate from high school (percentages are much higher among minorities) and five percent of schools are failing (percentages are much higher in urban areas).

The growth of contemplative education can help keep teachers teaching, keep students learning and help schools succeed. Contemplative activity strengthens skills such as attunement with others, emotional self-regulation, awareness, resilience, flexibility, insight, empathy, intuition and morality. Building these skills enhances a broad range of K-12 educational outcomes, from academic achievement to social and emotional learning.

Field Building

Guided by a distinguished leadership council composed of leading educators and scientists, ICE identifies, convenes and networks field leaders, hosting cutting-edge professional gatherings and offering actual and virtual hubs for exchanging information among researchers, educators, policymakers and funders. We disseminate our work widely through presentations, published reports and studies, journal articles and other media. This recent article about our CARE program in Edutopia, and this peer reviewed journal article are examples.

"The wonderful thing about Garrison is that it provides a physical and conceptual space to carve out the trajectory of how to bring internal education into the mainstream. They had a fantastic conference last year. It was a groundbreaking, landmark achievement combining scientists and educational practitioners."
– Program participant

CARE

Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education (CARE) is a professional development program for teachers, designed by the Garrison Institute to give them tools to cope with stress and support their pupils to overcome difficulties and flourish socially, emotionally and academically.

Based upon our most current understanding of the neuroscience of emotion, CARE introduces emotion skills instruction to promote understanding, recognition and regulation of emotion.

It is offered to teachers through retreats at the Garrison Institute, and through pilot programs in schools. After successful pilots in school districts throughout the US, and a two-year multi-district pilot researching CARE’s impact on teachers and classrooms is now underway in Central Pennsylvania, funded by the US Department of Education.

"CARE enables teachers to be the role models we always wished we had growing up, and to become the kind of teacher they always wanted to be. It helps them release their stress and frustration and expand their sense of well-being. This markedly changes the climate in the classroom, bringing more joy into class and into teachers’ lives. It also turns out to be a very cost-effective way to make dramatic improvements in classroom learning."
– Adele Diamond, Ph.D.

Other ICE Programs

ICE researches, develops and pilots various contemplative education tools for diverse settings. For example, The Garrison Institute has collaborated with the Andrus Children’s Center to provide specialized training for K-12 teachers working with at-risk traumatized children, called Creating Sanctuary from Within.