About Us
Our mission is to offer the timeless wisdom of the dharma to children in creative, age-appropriate ways with high-quality, scoped and sequenced materials and theoretical frameworks. Our model is ecumenical, open source, and is informed and inspired by educators, neuroscientists, and practitioners and lineage holders from across the Buddhist world.
Dharma Advisors
Board of Directors
Creating pathways for Buddhist wisdom
to enhance modern education.
History
Founded in 2017, Middle Way Education (MWE) offers the timeless wisdom of the dharma to children in creative, age-appropriate ways by investing in the research, development and distribution of high-quality, scoped and sequenced materials and supporting theoretical frameworks. Our model is ecumenical and is informed and inspired by educators, neuroscientists, and practitioners and lineage holders from across the Buddhist world. MWE has begun offering advisory services to school leaders to help establish schools or enhance existing schools and programs relying on our experience and materials.
MWE also supports Buddhist parents and teachers through its open source website, a platform to freely access and share resources including frameworks, lesson plans, articles, book reviews and other materials as well as a directory of Buddhist education programs worldwide.
After incorporating in 2017, MWE invested all of its time and resources in launching The Middle Way School (MWS), which opened in September 2018 and is now an independent pre-k to 6th grade Buddhist school for children in Upstate New York. Read More. The teachers at MWS develop and document how the various MWE materials take hold and provide expert inputs to refine and build the model. Thus far, MWE’s emerging curriculum framework has been embraced by MWS teachers and meaningful outcomes for the students are being documented. We invite you to explore the dharma components here.
We are actively engaged in the process of codifying our materials with a developmental framework, benchmarks, standards, and indicators, and are taking inspiration from our friends at The Cloud Institute for Sustainability in Education. As we continue working with education professionals, our benchmarks and standards will be made available on the Atlas Rubicon platform.
MWE has advisors prepared to help school and organizational leaders bring dharma into their educational environments. We are especially interested in working with partners in high-performance secondary schools to help us develop the curriculum into the upper grades. Read More
MWE has learned much through this process. One of our initial assumptions has been continually reinforced: The most important factor in successfully transmitting the dharma to children is the teacher. Teachers need theoretical and practical resources to help develop their appreciation and understanding of dharma so that they can bring it into the classroom. They need the time and space to connect with their own practice so that they can bring authentic presence and connection to the classroom. Other examples of our findings: the guidance or blessings of lineage holders is essential; children learn best through stories, ritual and song; the physical atmosphere of the learning environment has an enormous impact on the children; and children are naturally drawn to the dharma, it is not difficult to introduce to them, but it’s very important to do begin with inquiry rather than dogma.
Contact
If you have any questions or ideas about our resources or network, please email [email protected].
If you have any questions or ideas about models or advisory services, please email [email protected]
Gratitude
MWE is supported by a grant from Khyentse Foundation and its generous donors. Thank you!