Can we increase relational trust to help make our schools, colleges and universities healthier and safer environments for teaching and learning? How can we remain connected to our deepest aspirations for our students in the face of ever-increasing demands? This day draws on work developed as part of Leading Together, a leadership program of the Center for Courage & Renewal.

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Pamela Seigle, MS is the Executive Director of Courage & Renewal Northeast at Wellesley College, an affiliate of the national Center for Courage & Renewal. She co-leads the Center for Courage & Renewal’s “Leading Together” initiative, a program that brings teams of principals and teacher-leaders together to experience and learn reflective and mindfulness practices and to build relational trust amongst the adults in their school community. Pamela is the founder of the Open Circle® Program based at the Wellesley Centers for Women, Wellesley College. Open Circle is a leading provider of evidence based curriculum and professional development for SEL in kindergarten through grade 5. Since its inception in 1987, Open Circle has reached over two million students and trained more than 13,000 educators. Pamela is a Fellow of the Mind and Life Institute and is on the Advisory Board of the Center for Advancement of Contemplative Education at Naropa University. She is currently a Trustee of the Conservatory Lab Charter School, a music-infused elementary school in Boston that has implemented El Sistema as a whole school initiative, and a former Trustee of the Boston Public Library.

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Chip Wood, MSW, is on the Advisory Team for the Courage in Schools program. He has been an activist in the fields of education and child development for the past forty years, with extensive experience as a classroom teacher and principal in both public and private schools. He was a co-founder and co-developer of The Responsive Classroom® approach of professional development, and executive director of its non-profit organization, Northeast Foundation for Children. Chip is author of Yardsticks: Children in the Classroom, Age 4-14 (NEFC, 2007 revised), Time to Teach, Time to Learn (NEFC, 1999), and co-author of Responsive School Discipline, as well as numerous book chapters and articles.

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Jessica began practicing meditation at age 14 on teen retreats offered by the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) and has been practicing mindfulness every since. She is a founding board member and lead teacher for iBme teen retreats and is currently part of the IMS Teacher Training.

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Relating mindfulness activities I’ve used with students and educators since 1995, I will describe the evolution of the field of mindfulness in education and the direction my personal work has taken. As our field has burgeoned with new curricula, new training programs and new research, I’ve shifted my attention from sharing formal mindfulness practices to sharing mindfulness as a way of encountering oneself and others, encountering life. Along with this shift, I’ve left the classroom to focus my attention on educators, understanding that if they aren’t finding joy, peace and understanding through their practice of mindfulness, they won’t have it to share with their students.

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Richard Brady, MS, is a writer, educational consultant (www.mindingyourlife.net), and co-founder of the Mindfulness in Education Network.  Richard has practiced mindfulness since 1989. His publications include: “Learning to Stop, Stopping to Learn: Discovering the Contemplative Dimension in Education”, 2007, Journal of Transformative Education and Tuning In: Mindfulness in Teaching and Learning, McHenry and Brady, eds., 2009, Friends Council on Education. Richard taught high school mathematics at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC for 34 years before retiring in 2007.

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Mindfulness and culturally relevant contemplative practices can help Black youth remember their inherent value and cultivate their inner resilience. Beyond that however, educators, parents, and community members must adopt empowering practices to actively challenge the legacies of racial injustice. Combined with our social justice activism, these practices may help society re-imagine Black youth — disrupting stereotypes that cast them as violent, angry, loud, and criminal — and dismantle systems of oppression within and beyond our schools. In this presentation I will share how practices from African and African American cultural traditions, such as The Coltrane Meditation, Ancestral Awareness, Freedom Songs, and Affirmations, can support us in creating spaces for healing, restoration, and justice.

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Michelle Chatman, Ph.D. is a cultural anthropologist and Assistant Professor in the Crime, Justice, and Security Studies Program at The University of the District of Columbia (UDC), where she teaches courses on restorative justice, urban ethnography, and youth development. As a contemplative educator, she weaves meditation, music, and introspective practices into her teaching to help deepen learning, and develop community. She is particularity interested in implementing culturally relevant, contemplative practices that foster critical inquiry and inspire justice activism. In her inspiring TEDx talk, “How Africa Changed My Life,” Michelle links her contemplative journey to her volunteerism in The Gambia, West Africa. Her research examines how gentrification and urban inequality impacts the social well-being and cultural expression of African American communities. Her article, “At Eshu’s Crossroad: Pan African Identity in a Changing City” is featured in the Capital Dilemma: Growth and Inequality in Washington, DC, edited by Derek Hyra and Sabiyha Prince (Routledge 2016). Michelle sits on the Board of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society and AHEAD, Incorporated, which sponsors self-help projects in The Gambia, and Tanzania.

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The Compassionate Schools curriculum takes a 21st century approach to health and wellness skills development for children in grades K-5. It approaches wellness through a lens of compassionate care for self and other and integrates instruction in social-emotional learning, mindful awareness practices, healthy eating, and physical activity. Our evaluation aims to measure potential impacts on attitudes and behaviors in areas such as emotional awareness, self-regulation, peer relationships, health and academic performance. Taking place in Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville, KY, the size and structure of this large randomized control trial research will yield an unprecedented breadth and depth of knowledge for the field. This talk will explore the multifaceted implementation of this educational approach and the design of the evaluation research.

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Alexis Harris, Ph.D., is a research faculty member of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia. She is interested in the intersections of developmental science, education science, and prevention science. Her work employs qualitative and quantitative methods to develop a better understanding of how the interactions between developing youth and their school and community contexts influence social emotional development and wellbeing. She has been involved in the implementation and evaluation of multiple intervention strategies to promote social emotional competence and wellbeing and to prevent the negative consequences of stress, including school-based universal social-emotional learning interventions, contemplative/mindfulness-based approaches, and professional development for educators. She is the developer of a contemplative wellness-promotion intervention for educators, the CALM program and is the Project Director for the Compassionate Schools Project in Louisville, Kentucky.

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In this interactive session, we will explore this question, with focus on the vital role of college/university educators’ ongoing development of culturally responsive social-emotional skills. Promoting constructive dialogue and inclusive excellence is emotionally-laden work that demands complex conceptual capacities and social-emotional stamina. To fully address the challenges and teaching dilemmas that come with engaging dissonance in culturally responsive ways, faculty are summoned to develop awareness of and critically reflect on their own held biases and assumptions. Contemplative practices and pedagogy can anchor this process, and help educators build relational trust and facilitate transformative learning experiences with students, in intersectional ways. This workshop will include content presentation, question generating, circle dialogue, and reflection activities.

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Deborah Donahue-Keegan, Ed.M., Ed.D. is a Lecturer in Tufts University’s Department of Education, and is Associate Director of Tufts Social-Emotional Learning & Civic Engagement Initiative through the Tisch College of Civic Life. She is also the co-founder and co-director of the Massachusetts Consortium for Social-Emotional Learning in Teacher Education (MA SEL-TEd). Since participating in an intensive week-long retreat through the Cultivating Awareness and Resiliency in Education (CARE) program, during the summer of 2011, she has intentionally integrated contemplative practices into her teaching. Deborah believes that “becoming a contemplative educator is an ongoing process that involves continuous engagement in mindfulness practices to cultivate one’s own deep self-reflection (on meaning, values, ethics, and purpose), cultivate open-hearted awareness, and foster culturally responsive socially emotionally approaches to teaching and learning, with students as co-learners.”

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There is a great storehouse of wisdom in our bodies, from which we’re often disconnected.  Our children are experiencing first hand a culture that’s promoting rigor, standardized assessments, and cutting important hours dedicated to the arts, health and physical education. This, combined with increased screen time and trauma, leave many of our youth in a state of disembodiment; disconnected from their bodies. In this engaging workshop, participants will explore current research connecting movement and breath-based practices to learning readiness, engagement, and stress resilience. Walking away with tangible tools, participants will learn and practice simple chair yoga activities, mindful movement, and breathwork practices to share with youth. These practices will support and encourage mindfulness by bringing attention to the here and now of sensation, helping our youth to befriend and come home to their own bodies.

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Mayuri Gonzalez is a nationally recognized presenter, trainer and instructor in mindfulness and children’s yoga, leading teacher trainings and continuing education seminars at renowned retreat centers such as The Omega Institute and IONS Earthrise Center. She has more than 25 years of experience practicing yoga and mindfulness, and provides therapeutic yoga classes to children and families as well as teaching yoga and mindfulness classes in schools and community centers. In her role as director of the School Yoga Project, (a Little Flower Yoga program that brings yoga and mindfulness classes to over 8000 children each year in New York City schools), Mayuri trains and mentors teachers, counselors and school support staff. She is a contributing author to Transforming Education: Best Practices for Yoga in Schools, a white book published by the Yoga Service Council and Omega Institute in 2015, as well as author of the upcoming book Little Flower Chair Yoga: A Sustainable Approach (2018).

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Tim Iverson holds degrees in art education, psychology, and philosophy, and currently teaches art and humanities at Highview Middle School, in New Brighton, Minnesota. Tim has been sharing mindfulness with staff and students for many years, searching for creative ways to bring mindful awareness into public education. He has also shared mindfulness with adults living with anxiety disorders through work with NAMI Minnesota. He is an award-winning artist, and his blog is called The Mindful Teacher.

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Calmer Choice presents a compelling and thoughtful narrative regarding their journey navigating through challenging waters after a concerned parent and Californian law firm very publicly articulated concerns with mindfulness being taught in the public schools as First Amendment violation. They speak honestly and compassionately about their struggle, how they emerged stronger, much wiser and with overwhelming support from their community. This workshop will explore important questions for public school based mindfulness programs. Attendees with leave with a clear understanding of how the First Amendment applies to mindfulness programs in public schools as well as how to ensure programs are not inadvertently in violation of constitutional law.  This will be an engaged interactive workshop.

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Fiona Jensen, OTR/L is the Founder and Executive Director of Calmer Choice, a non-profit organization that provides mindful awareness and social emotional learning programs to students throughout Barnstable County, Massachusetts. Fiona started Calmer Choice in 2009, in response to the emotional devastation experienced by the community after the tragic death of several Barnstable High School students and graduates. To date, Calmer Choice has reached over 14,000 students in 8 different school districts across Cape Cod. Beyond its work with children and adolescents, Calmer Choice provides programming for parents and educators, and collaborates with researchers at Tufts, MIT and Yale Universities to establish precedents for the impact of mindful awareness on overall health, wellbeing, and academic performance. A graduate of Tufts University, Fiona is a tireless advocate for children, and was featured in the April 2013 issue of Mindful Magazine, Cape Cod Life and various other publications.

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Adria Kennedy, MSN, CNP is the Program Director at Calmer Choice. She has been with the organization since 2009, and has been an integral part of creating the vison for the organization, the programing for schools, and the training program for instructors and teachers. She is a board-certified family psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner with MSN from the University of South Alabama. Ms. Kennedy has over 25 years of nursing experience working with families and children in the community, as a school nurse, and in psychiatric clinical practice. Throughout her career Ms. Kennedy has integrated a mindfulness-based approach into all her work. She has served on advisory boards of national, regional and local maternal child health and mental health organizations and views mindful awareness and social emotional education in schools as an important public health intervention. Most importantly, she is a wife, mother of two awesome teenage children, and is loved daily by three dogs and three horses.

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Katie Medlar is the Director of School and Community-Based Programming. Katie has been with Calmer Choice since its inception in 2009. She comes to this work with over 18 years of living and learning with mindful awareness. She studied Human Development and Elementary Education at Lesley University and has a background in teaching and education. As a Calmer Choice instructor and trainer, she has worked directly with thousands of children and hundreds of classroom teachers on Cape Cod. Katie’s expertise has been essential in developing and implementing the Calmer Choice curriculum (pre-k-high school), the instructor training program, working with classroom teachers and creating parent programing. She finds immense joy in watching children and adults find connection to themselves and others. Katie feels fortunate to live on Cape Cod, to have raised her two sons, ages 16 and 23 there, and to be part of an organization that cares so deeply about the well-being and future of its beautiful community.

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We can transform our very human ‘negativity bias’ and make a habit of happiness. In this workshop, we will learn practices that can restore ease and well-being in ourselves and our students, nurture gratitude and deepen joy. We will also learn ways to understand and mindfully care for our difficulties and painful emotions and how well-being and challenges are not mutually exclusive, but can co-exist. We will explore how we can engage in authentic communication with ourselves, our colleagues and students and create a culture of compassion and connection throughout the school community.

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Kaira Jewel Lingo teaches Buddhist meditation and mindfulness internationally, with a focus on activists, people of color, artists, educators, families, and youth. She began practicing mindfulness in 1997. An ordained nun of 15 years in Thich Nhat Hanh’s Order of Interbeing, she is now a mindfulness and meditation teacher based in Washington, D.C., leading retreats in the U.S. and internationally, and offering mindfulness programs for educators and youth in schools. She edited Thich Nhat Hanh’s, Planting Seeds: Practicing Mindfulness with Children and helped to start and develop Wake Up Schools, cultivating mindfulness in education. She has articles and chapters published in numerous magazines and books, including Real World Mindfulness for Beginners; Together we are One; and Dharma, Color and Culture. Visit kairajewel.com to learn more.

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Participants can expect to learn how to lead “a mindful minute,” play mindful theater games, use breathing cards, arts activities, implement movement exercises, and incorporate storytelling (including the book “Puppy Mind”) and utilize mindful props to teach the principles of mindfulness to youth. Participants will be given free access to the comprehensive and easy to follow 20 + week MASF curriculum, which we will explore in depth. The training will be very hands on, so dress comfortably and be ready to explore your artful and mindful selves.

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Andrew Jordan Nance(Author, Educator, Actor) has been an educator for over 30 years. He is the founder of Mindful Arts San Francisco, whose mission is to provide volunteer mindful educators to teach in underserved San Francisco Schools. Mr. Nance is the author of the critically acclaimed book Puppy Mind, and is an award– winning actor and director. For almost thirty years he taught performing arts to students from diverse backgrounds, and for 18 years he was the Conservatory Director at San Francisco’s New Conservatory Theatre Center. His theater training comes from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts (BA in Theatre). His Mindfulness training comes from Mindful Schools, UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center and is a longtime member of Spirit Rock Meditation and retreat Center’s Wednesday Sangha. He is on the Board of Directors of several educational based non–profit organizations including The Mindful Life Project in Richmond California, San Francisco’s New Conservatory Theater Center, and Arts Ed Matters, a California– based arts– integration organization. Andrew Jordan Nance lives in San Francisco.

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We will provide a framework to view intention from a variety of angles; for example, daily personal intentions for a school day may differ from group-wide intentions shared at a department meeting. Working within this framework, we will practice setting intentions from the educator’s point of view, focusing on distinctions between goals and intentions. We will share examples of how similar intentions across disciplines can manifest in varying actions. We will then provide tools for teachers to scaffold students in setting intentions. There will be ample opportunity for sharing ideas, deepening practice, and asking questions.

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Julie Kim has taught science in a variety of school settings—public, private, charter, urban, suburban, and even international—for the past nine years. Throughout this time, mindfulness practices have helped her reconnect with the intentions that support her work, continually revitalizing her relationship with teaching. Currently, as a biology teacher at Belmont High School, (Belmont, MA) she uses mindfulness tools in the classroom, driven by her intention to bring more awareness and personal connection to the learning process. She has collaborated with colleagues to bring mindfulness to teachers through professional development workshops and presentations. To strengthen her personal practice, she has been working toward a Graduate Certificate in Mindfulness Studies at Lesley University. She plans to research the role of mindfulness in teacher education programs as a doctoral student in Boston College’s Curriculum and Instruction program. She holds degrees from Amherst College and the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

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Nichole Bukowski has served in educational roles for the past 14 years. She has been an educator in the corporate world, non-profit sector, and both urban and suburban schools. She is currently a health and wellness teacher at Belmont High School where she created the curriculum for a new yoga and mindfulness course. She currently serves on Belmont’s social and emotional district leadership committee. As a committee-member, she collaborates with peers to enhance the use of mindfulness practices in classrooms district wide. She has held seminars for parents and coaching sessions for educators to teach practical tools for starting a mindfulness practice and supporting our youth to do the same. She holds degrees from Boston College and University of Massachusetts Boston. She is a 500-hour certified yoga teacher.

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Special emphasis will be placed on getting young people engaged in practice in their daily lives. We will explore the best wisdom and research for supporting a mindfulness practice as adults and communities of support. Participants should be prepared for an interactive workshop adapting and practicing a variety of mindfulness exercises using senses, visualization, movement, games, and more that can be practiced by professionals and kids of all levels of experience.

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Christopher Willard, Psy. D. is a psychologist, educational consultant and author of multiple books on child development and contemplative practice. He has been practicing mindfulness for nearly 20 years. He currently serves on the board of directors at the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy, and president of the Mindfulness in Education Network. His thoughts on mental health have been featured in The New York Times, cnn.com, The Washington Post, Mindful, and elsewhere. Dr. Willard is the author of Growing Up Mindful (2016), Raising Resilience (2017) and other books. He teaches at Harvard Medical School. When not working, he enjoys time with family, travel, cooking, eating, reading, writing, hiking and any combination of these he can manage.

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Elizabeth Kriynovich has more than a decade of experience working and teaching in Quaker schools. Since 2009, she has been passionate about bringing mindfulness practices into the classroom, and specifically supporting the needs of students with learning disabilities using mindfulness. Her primary mindfulness trainings have been in the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, and she is a member of Wake Up Schools, a worldwide community of educators in the Plum Village tradition. Elizabeth is also a certified yoga teacher. She has led workshops and presentations on using mindfulness in the classroom nationwide, and has trained in both yoga and mindfulness meditation around the world.

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Irene McHenry, PhD, is a psychologist, consultant, executive coach, writer, keynote speaker, and co-author of The Autism Playbook for Teens (2014) and Tuning In: Mindfulness in Teaching and Learning (2009). She consults with organizations nationwide providing professional development, coaching, and delivering mindfulness trainings. Irene co-founded a Friends elementary school and a high school for teens with learning differences. She initiated the founding of the Friends Council’s SPARC program based on Parker Palmer’s teacher formation principles and was a founding faculty member for Fielding Graduate Institute’s doctoral program in education. She recently retired from Friends Council on Education where she served as Executive Director.

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