These four educators will share their grassroots mindfulness and SEL initiatives in the greater Pittsburgh region. Tina has taught an Intro to Positive Psychology elective for the past five years at the high school level.  The course focus is on mental well being through Mindfulness, Social Emotional Learning and Positive Psychology. She has been working over the past six years to bring Mindfulness/SEL programming to her district and last year founded the Building Compassionate Learning Communities Conference/Project (BCLCtogether.org).

Kelsey and Cheryl both teach at Markham Elementary in the MTLSD outside of Pittsburgh.  They have each incorporated Mindfulness/SEL into their classrooms and are working with their principal to grow the school culture in their building, for both staff and students.

Leah has been teaching Mindfulness and Yoga to K-8 students at the Falk Laboratory School for the past nine years.  Three years ago Leah was on a team that founded the Center for Mindfulness and Consciousness studies at the University of Pittsburgh, and now serves as its Co-Director.

I had trauma informed training, it was fascinating and validating but, I wanted to know what to do now. I had been doing yoga in my classroom and the brain dance. Was that enough? Was it appropriate? I had already taken two courses from Mindful Schools, I already was an RYT500.  I began to look back into the research of Jon Kabat Zinn and Daniel Siegel on how mindfulness changes the brain.  I have taught in low income and high risk schools all my 26 years. I will share my stories of success and the challenges- from personal challenges to administration to parents. Mindfulness is not a magic pill; other structures must be in place. What are they? Mindfulness with kids of trauma has to look different. How is it different?

We will practice: moving mindfully, key mindful yoga poses, and an ice cube practice that helps teens/adults look at staying with uncomfortable emotions.

In a suburban community of MetroWest Boston, mindfulness has taken root in a public middle school. What began over five years ago as an experimental elective class for eighth graders, has evolved into a larger mindfulness movement embraced across grade levels by faculty, students, administration and parents. Joan and Gretchen will share their experience in creating an elective class, incorporating mindfulness into individual and small-group counseling, and promoting whole-school ownership of mindfulness as a practice for students and adults.

Just as the psychology of the parent shapes parenting, the psychology of the teacher shapes the teaching/learning experience.  We believe that, because we are the tools of our trade, nothing influences our teaching conduct more than our own attachment history and patterns of behavior and responding. Rather than our repertoire of theories and techniques, it is who we are—and who we can become—that ultimately determines our capacity to create with each of our students a genuinely connected relationship in a caring classroom community that will motivate and inspire them to lifelong learning. Heart-Based Teaching is a two-course undergraduate journey of mindful development in a setting designed to promote candidates’ emotional reflection, personal growth, and ability to help K-12 students develop emotional awareness and regulation, relationship skills, and wise decision making.  We present the research base of this approach and our curriculum structure and engage participants in experiential activities from the courses that can be used in your own classes and in your school's professional development offerings.

Every mind has its own kind of mindfulness. We just have to allow each kind of mind to find its own way.   As we lead others in these practices, we assume that it should be individualized to that person.   However we may inadvertently place our own judgements and limitations on to those we may be leading.  To use a phrase from social work education, be where the client, the student, the patient is at.  Working with the hard to reach is easier when we allow their resistance to be our guide. 

Mindfulness invites us into deeper relationship with ourselves. As we practice, we discover the many habitual patterns of thinking and feeling that dominate our daily lives. Left unexamined, our conditioning can be harmful to ourselves and to others. With mindfulness, we can challenge it – to actually think and feel in new ways which empower us to be more skillful, loving, and just in our interactions with one another. In this session, we’ll explore implicit bias: where it comes from, how it shows up, and why it matters. We’ll consider specific practices for using mindfulness to challenge bias in our everyday lives. These practices will guide us in better aligning our actions with our values and becoming the “change we wish to see in the world.”

​

Grace Helms Kotre is a certified mindfulness instructor and social justice educator. As the founder of Power to Be, LLC, she shares mindfulness with children and adults in schools, non-profit organizations, businesses, community groups and families in southeast Michigan. 

A “Community of Practice” is a group of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.  We have used this framework to share a sustainable blended learning model of the Mindful Schools online courses, designed by Mindful Schools grads Jelena Popovic and Lucy MacGregor.  Course content is acquired online through the experienced teachers at Mindful Schools but is facilitated utilizing face-to-face practice/learning sessions with me. By the end of this school year we will have facilitated over 60 participants using this teaching format.

Cheryl Hazek will share about the grant-funded work their YWCA facilitates that includes executive function (EF) screenings, intervention strategies that include mindfulness, and trainings for educators, parents and youth leaders on EF skills and how to help develop these skills with engaging intervention strategies. In this session you will learn the three components of EF, how EF skill development is impacted by trauma and chronic stress, and several simple intervention strategies to help young children regulate.

The session will focus on some of the challenges that current English language teachers face. Participants will review the affective filter in language learning, specifically, language anxiety and how it affects students in the classroom. Discussion will afford participants to share their experiences with this construct and how they have addressed it. Strategies for decreasing anxiety will be explored including yoga movement in mindfulness. Engaging families of English learners will also be addressed, along with specific take-away ideas for ESL teachers.

Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) are increasingly being incorporated in schools as a means of mediating the increased prevalence of students’ behavioral and mental health needs. School social workers, employed as experts in mental health and student behavior, most frequently provide direct MBIs or act as consultants to teachers and administrators. The future of school social workers’ training and involvement with MBIs will be contemplated and discussed.

What began as 5-minute mindful moments in Michelle Martin's high school French classes has evolved into three sections of a one-semester, one-credit elective mindfulness course. From curricular decisions to implementation and student feedback, Michelle and her colleague Brooke Frazer will share what they have learned along the way. Please feel free to come with questions and enrich our discussion with your own experiences!

Our core purpose at the SEL Initiative is to empower teachers and children with mindful skills that foster their humanity and sense of belonging so they can flourish in school and life. In this session we will dive into mindfulness as a framework for building community in your early childhood classroom. Our behavior guidance approach includes reframing behaviors, enriching SEL vocabulary and mindful teacher self-care. 

​

With nearly 20 years’ experience bringing wellness education to children, families and educators, Adenia's organic style - "teaching while playing" creates a dynamic dialogue about the body and its maintenance. Adenia has partnered with over 50 Chicago schools and community organizations, supporting their staff and families. As a graduate of UIC's Department of Educational Psychology, she is engaged in ongoing social and emotional learning research, serves as an adjunct professor and conducts anti-bias workshop at Erikson Institute. She is also currently enrolled in Erikson’s Doctoral program with a focus on the intersection between social justice and social and emotional learning.