Opening Fall 2026

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Support Thay’s Vision

Your gift will do more than build a school. It will plant seeds of peace and enable the first students and teachers to live and learn in an environment infused with mindfulness and community.

Your generosity will echo far beyond a single campus. It will shape a movement — one that embodies Thich Nhat Hanh’s greatest teaching: “Peace in oneself, peace in the world.”

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About Us

OUR MISSION

Educating the Heart and Mind for a Compassionate Future

The Thich Nhat Hanh School of Interbeing is a continuation of Thich Nhat Hanh’s vision of creating a more peaceful world. To that end, we nurture curious, compassionate, community builders rooted in joy and interbeing.

We base our teachings on Buddhist principles and applied ethics, and empower students, parents, and teachers alike with the ability to live in deep relationship with themselves, their communities, and the natural world.

The K-8 school is part of a larger community organism fostering interconnectedness, belonging, and sustainability at Deer Park Monastery. That community includes a mindful school, an organic farm, an elder care home, a youth social service program, and a spiritual practice center.

To learn more about Thay’s vision for village living and the emerging reality of Simplicity Hamlet at the foot of Deer Park Monastery, read Thay Phap Dung’s article here.

Our Vision

We aspire to continue Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings, transforming education by nurturing the ethical, emotional, social, intellectual, and spiritual dimensions of our students, parents, and teachers. It is our intention that the entire learning community is equipped to live in deep relationship with themselves, their communities, and the Earth.

We aspire for the school to be a living experiment. The School of Interbeing’s innovative educational approach, curriculum, organizational structures, and operations are designed to be easily shared with and implemented by other communities and educational institutions around the world.

Our Roots

The Continuation of a Movement

Throughout his life, Thay established communities, temples, schools, and movements. Since 2008, he has emphasized the importance of supporting teachers in their personal practice of mindfulness so they can transmit it to their students and colleagues. As a result, monastics, in partnership with lay practitioner-educators, have held numerous retreats for educators worldwide and initiated a secular, international movement known as the Applied Ethics Initiative, which later evolved into Wake Up Schools and the Wake Up Schools movement.

A Profoundly New Approach to Education

For many years, teachers, parents, and practitioners attending our educators and general family retreats have expressed the aspiration to bring the Plum Village way of practice into their children’s and students’ daily lives — both at school and at home.

Some aspects of this approach can be found in a variety of alternative educational models., But many feel that a school rooted in Thay's teachings and the Plum Village tradition — where mindfulness, applied ethics, compassion, joy, and community are at the heart of learning — would offer something profoundly new and deeply relevant in response to the challenges facing today’s society and the field of education.

Planting Seeds for a School

The idea of the Thich Nhat Hanh School of Interbeing has begun to take shape. This includes training programs for teachers in the US, France, Spain, and Italy since 2008 — a natural continuation of the Wake Up Schools movement.

The school offers a holistic approach to education that nurtures the ethical development of the child and inner transformation through the practice of mindfulness, as described in the Happy Teachers Change the World book and the Wake Up Schools mission statement.

Our Team