Event Details

Mindful Education Institute - Retreat 2

Co-Sponsor: Mindful Education Institute

Contact Name: Juliana Johnson

Website: juliana@mbaproject.org

Phone: 415-824-2048

Date: 11/29/2012

End Date: 12/2/2012

Time: all day

CE Hours: 20.500

The Mindful Education Institute’s (MEI) year-long teacher training is a journey of self-discovery and awakening as well as a path to becoming a skilled and creative mindfulness educator. MEI’s goal is to support the real-world implementation of mindfulness-based programming for youth in diverse environments including K-12 schools, foster care facilities, juvenile detention centers, and community-based sites. With mindfulness, social and emotional literacy, empathy training, and other awareness-based practices, educators around the world are helping youth to cultivate insight, compassion, attention, and other skills that have the capacity to transform their lives, families, and societies. MEI draws together preeminent teachers to offer you the most comprehensive, supportive, and dynamic mindfulness and education training available. Mindfulness is the radical notion of opening to the truth of what is happening right here and now, which allows life to be marked by openness, courage and deep compassion. Research shows that mindfulness decreases stress, attention deficit issues, depression, anxiety, and hostility in children, while benefiting their health, well-being, social relations, and academic performance. Children can easily learn these techniques, and when learned young, they become lifelong tools. The core aspect of becoming a good mindfulness teacher is cultivating ones own practice. Much of the retreat time, talks, and projects will be focused on deepening personal mindfulness practice and identifying ways to become more present and empathic in relation to the individual’s population. MEI believes that the facilitator is 99% of what makes the intervention effective; the curriculum is 1%. A big focus of the MEI training will be getting participants more comfortable in their own skin, more improvisational, and dynamic in teaching.

Schedule: THURSDAY *7:00-9:00- Daniel Rechtschaffen Discussion of how participants have integrated their mindfulness practice into their schools. Overview of retreat. Meeting in Cohort groups and discussion. FRIDAY *9:30-12:15 Linda Lantieri Teaching on Social Emotional Learning. How to develop the emotional lives of children. SEL lessons and school structures. *2:00-5:00- Daniel Rechtschaffen, Megan Cowan, Vinny Ferraro Teaching mindfulness lessons to children. Explanations of mindful breathing and other lessons to be taught to different age groups and populations. *7:00-9:00- Jon Kabat Zinn Talk on how to teach mindfulness in a secular context. How to use the language of mindfulness in mainstream America. SATURDAY *9:30-12:15- Linda Lantieri Teaching on creating a mindful classroom. Creating a peace corner and other ways to develop a mindful structure in schools. *2:00-5:00 Break out Groups on working with different populations Daniel Rechtschaffen- Mindfulness in the Therapy Room Vinny Ferraro- Mindfulness with at risk youth Meena Srinivasan- Mindfulness with young children in a classroom setting Chris Mckenna- Developing a mindfulness program *7:00-9:00 Jon Kabat-Zinn Dialogue between Jon and teenagers from the Mt Madonna school. The discussion should illuminate how to communicate mindfulness to different age groups and learning from the youth. SUNDAY *9:00-10:00- Jon Kabat-Zinn Guide Meditation Instruction *10:00-11:00- Practice Teaching in Cohorts Practicing teaching lessons in our cohort groups. *11:00-12:00- Amani and Daniel Ending Ritual and explanation of instruction for coming months.