Mindfulness for Educators Certificate Program

Program Description

In this hands-on course, you will explore strategies to incorporate mindfulness and well-being tools in life and your classroom. For your students, these tools can build focus, resilience and emotional literacy. For educators, these tools can strengthen their own personal and professional resiliency and work-life balance. Together, we will explore the research and practice of how to mindfully incorporate stress resilience, mental health, emotional regulation, connection, and present awareness so that those who work and learn in schools can fully thrive.

Alongside a community of practitioners, we will practice meditation together and learn mindfulness techniques you can directly apply to your life, to the stressors you may face in schools and to the classroom. Classes consist of a combination of lecture, practice and discussion across six interactive modules.

Acknowledgement

While mindfulness and self-care practices can help educators and students to thrive amidst the challenges of life and schooling, it is not a silver bullet for the deep and systemic issues in the education system. Navigating what it means to teach and learn today should not have to require so much resilience. As we practice well-being, it is imperative that schools and districts collectively work to address systemic inequities and increasingly challenging work and school conditions so that those in them can fully thrive.

Though our course here is secular, it is with an acknowledgement for the roots mindfulness has in Buddhist philosophy, which emerged in the context of an ancient India where Hinduism, Jainism, yoga, asceticism and other traditions were practiced. Certain practices and ideas have evolved and been carried across time and geography and have been adapted here for a foundational, interdisciplinary study.

We would also like to acknowledge and honor the ancestral and unceded land of the Tongva people that our university sits on. For at least 9,000 years, they stewarded the land we call Southern California along with their neighbors the Chumash, Tataviam, Kitanemuk, Serrano, Cahuilla, Payomkawichum, Acjachemen, Ipai-Tipai, Kumeyaay and Quechan peoples.

Land acknowledgment and history

Practical Application

During the course, participants will create a curricular unit or lesson plan applying mindfulness practices to the classroom, incorporating principles of equity, mental health and trauma-sensitive instruction.

This course equips educators to apply mindfulness principles in their classrooms and daily lives to:

• Enhance capacity for presence, connection, openness and grounding.
• Cultivate focus and concentration, including as they relate to working with emotions, thoughts and sensations.
• Navigate difficult emotions and thoughts, including stress, anxiety and the effects of secondary trauma.

Mindful awareness techniques include areas relating to:

• Skillfully responding, rather than reacting, to complex situations.
• Interpersonal relationships and relational mindfulness practices of active listening and mindful communication.
• Navigating change, time management, college and career readiness, and exploring what it means to have a conscious and purposeful relationship with technology.