SELF-PACED OPTION NOW AVAILABLE

Foundations of Mindfulness for the Classroom

Learn how to teach mindfulness to teens.

This 8-week self-paced training is for anyone interested in supporting teens using the tools of mindful awareness.

The world is a wonderful and a challenging place.

Teens are finding themselves growing up in an era that presents unprecedented concerns and possibilities.

The stress of massive global issues including the coronavirus pandemic, climate change, and injustice weigh heavy on their shoulders. New technologies, communication tools, and the computing power of giants in handheld devices open the door to thrilling innovation.

There is great freedom. And there is not enough reliable social support.

With youth mental health issues on a dangerous rise, we can all agree, our teens need better guidance, reassurance, and support.

Foundations of Mindfulness puts those tools in your hands and in the classroom.

Administrators, Educators & Teachers

It's Hard to See the Youth of Today Struggling. You Care. You Want to Help.

If you are concerned about teen mental, emotional, and behavioral health . . .
If you see youth struggling with anxiety, focus issues, dis-regulation, trauma, or depression . . .
If you feel like the students you work with are giving up on their higher potentials . . .
If you feel passionate about giving them lifelong tools for their ongoing wellbeing . . .

Then this opportunity is for you.

The Foundations of Mindfulness for the Classroom gives you the training you need to bring the powerful tools of mindful awareness & critical thinking into the classroom. You'll be able to channel your care in a way that amplifies a student's own strengths. Th is a recipe for their lifelong success.

Do You Feel Overwhelmed, Unsure How You Can Help?

Understandable. But with the right tools, you've got this.

You can follow Foundations of Mindfulnessevidence-based approach and give teens tools that will help them cultivate inner strength and outer stability.

You'll see your classroom calm and your students grow in confidence and care.

Join me to learn how.

This is for you

If You Care About & Want to Work with Teens

Teachers, Counselors, Youth Leaders

If you are a passionate classroom teacher but you find yourself spending too much time disciplining or coaxing students to learn, it is time to pivot with potent calming & community building techniques.

Mindful reflection helps students dial back anxiety and anger. Through self-care, their natural curiosity comes forward, and they become interested in learning.

Foundations of Mindfulness will teach you how to share mindfulness in classrooms, pediatrics offices, or on the sports field. You'll see the youth you work with light up and calm down.
Mindfulness Practitioners

If you have experienced the benefit of mindful contemplation, you probably feel like you have lightning in a bottle. The Foundations of Mindfulness teacher training lets you share that lightening with teens.

You’ll feel your own insight deepening and you’ll experience the rewards of empowering teens to develop good habits of mind, relationship, and physical health that will serve them their entire life.

The latest research on neuroplasticity shows the short time it takes to provide “vitamins to the brain” through specific mindfulness exercises.

Peer-reviewed studies point to long-term emotional and physical benefits. By helping teens learn to practice the art and science of mindful awareness, you will be planting seeds for long-term health, lowering stress and cortisol levels, mitigating the negative effects of trauma, and helping teens be happy.

For a generation that is the first in two centuries to be at risk of having shorter lifespans than their parents...

This can be a critical intervention.

Join me in helping develop a strong, positive, and compassionate next generation of leaders. There are big problems to solve. Let's give them the best training possible to be the future this world needs.

"I am blown away by how powerful and personal the impact of the Inner Strength teen mindfulness program is…

I am blown away by how powerful and personal the impact of the Inner Strength teen mindfulness program is for young adults from all walks of life. Mindfulness is, in my opinion, an essential component of the core curriculum for life at this time on the planet.

If we are going to empower our future community-builders and leaders, then we need to support them in developing the most potent tool they have to contribute: their full potential as compassionate, creative, resilient, and unique individuals.

I learned how to teach that and I am so excited. Making this accessible within the school system is both practical and brilliant.

– Sharon, Colorado

Introducing

Foundations of Mindfulness for the Classroom

The Foundations of Mindfulness is designed for optimal learning. You will learn the techniques and perspectives, the philosophy and science behind why these tools have such a beneficial effect. You will practice-teach the classroom exercises with a practice partner, prepare your own classroom materials, and have the opportunity to participate in ongoing coaching groups once you begin in your classroom.

The goal of this program is to impart in-depth training and ensure a high caliber of instruction in the schools.

As Educators, We All Know That a Large Part of What We Teach Is What We Embody

That Is Even More so with Mindful Awareness

To that end, all participants are required to keep their own mindfulness practice for the duration of the course.

You will be encouraged to engage afresh with tools you may be familiar with in order to discover an inexhaustible wellspring of curiosity.

If you are learning mindful awareness practices for the first time, you will have the opportunity to ask all your questions and receive expert meditation guidance. Amy Edelstein has had a consistent and indepth practice for over 35 years and can help guide you through confusion and pitfalls.

Your authentic vibrancy and fascination will be infectious in the classroom, modeling the results of a perpetual curiosity and a deep engagement with life, in all its wonder.

The support you will receive in the Foundations of Mindfulness will connect you with the essential value of these practices.

Whether you’ve been meditating for twenty years or you come to this program with a teaching background, you’ll be supported and challenged to engage at your own edge of exploration.

You’ll learn in an environment that is highly supportive.

At Inner Strength, we value collegiality, mutual support, co-mentorship, and compassion.

Through your work with your practice partner and small group discussions you will develop connections with a cohort that can continue to support you long after the training has been completed.

Additionally, once you begin teaching, you will be eligible to participate in regular conference calls so you can get answers to your questions about real events that occurred in your classroom.

By the end of Inner Strength Teacher Training You:

Will be prepared to teach 7 common evidence-based mindfulness tools to teens.
Will be able to choose which tools will be most appropriate for different classroom situations and will understand the different results they produce.
Will have practiced teaching with a partner and will have learned from their constructive feedback.
Will have developed a consistent personal mindfulness practice
Will have assessed your skills through homework completion and the final proficiency exam.

Successful teaching of mindfulness to teens rests on your own familiarity and groundedness with the practice. While you are in the training, you will maintain a regular practice 5 days a week on your own or as a participant in a lightly guide half hour meditation practice session Mon-Fri 8 AM US ET.

Mindfulness requires practice, understanding, and insight – are you ready to train?

Week-by-Week You Will Learn & Grow

Course Content

Lesson 1

Introduction to Mindfulness

You will learn:

You will learn why it is valuable to teach mindful awareness to teens, how to work in a secular educational environment, and how to be sensitive to appropriate language that is comfortable for the students.
You will learn how to two exercises designed to cultivate calm and focus.

Lesson 2

Cultivating Curiosity | Objectivity on Thought

You will learn:

You will learn how to explain, with a simple somatic visual, what it means to develop objectivity on thought. You will learn how changing our relationship to thought cultivates an interest in discovery, a foundation for teen academic success.
You will learn how to teach a practice that cultivates objectivity.

Lesson 3

Cultivating Care: The Practice of Love & Kindness

You'll learn:

You will learn how to inspire teens to practice kindness towards themselves and others. You will learn ways to bring this concept alive in the classroom and how to motivate students to pay attention to and value every day kindnesses.
You will also learn the neuroscience showing the brain changes made when teens maintain a practice over a period of time.
You will learn how to teach a practice that cultivates generosity towards self and others.

Lesson 4

Connecting with the Physical

You'll learn:

You will learn how to teach teens to become aware of what is happening in their body. By paying attention to sensation, teens discover a groundedness, presence, immediacy and greater satisfaction from their experience.
They learn to disrupt negative rumination as well as become attention to hydration, minor injuries, and nutrition needs.
You will learn how to teach two exercises that stimulate awareness of how the body is feeling.

Lesson 5

Seeing Freshly (aka Mindful Eating)

You will learn:

While this lesson focuses on the activity of mindful eating the emphasis is on learning to become curious about the familiar, seeing freshly. This practice can help students cultivate a wholesome relationship to eating and hydrating, can support those working to overcome eating disorders, and help teens develop satisfaction from simple actions.
You will learn how to teach one exercises that trains teens how to see freshly and eat mindfully.

Lesson 6

Teaching in the Classroom

You will learn:

You will learn the nuts and bolts of standing up in front of a room full of teens, holding their attention, and managing a room full of students with diverse needs.
While this single lesson won’t cover the gamut, you will learn how to develop your own toolkit, how to choose what to pay attention to, and how to hold the container of the classroom even when you cannot attend to every individual student’s needs.

Lesson 7

A Trauma Sensitive Approach & A Systems Perspective

You'll learn:

You will learn how to orient yourself towards understanding what may have happened to a child rather than trying to manage their behavior. You will learn how to be sensitive to students who may have experienced trauma and how to help them work within their own comfort zone.
You will also be introduced to the unique way Inner Strength works with systems thinking and context-setting to help teens understand their experience and the world.

Lesson 8

Self Care & the Essence of What We Teach

You'll learn:

In this final lesson, you will learn how to bring everything together, resting in the simple–but profound–fundamentals of mindfulness.
You will learn how to grow as you teach while maintaining authority. You will learn techniques for self-care and how to pay attention to your own triggers.

Meet Your Instructor

About Amy Edelstein

Amy Edelstein, educator, author, and public speaker is a powerful communicator of ideas and beliefs that can help us transform ourselves and the culture we live in.

In 2014, Amy founded the Inner Strength Foundation, a non-profit organization that has trained 15,000 inner-city teens in mindfulness and systems thinking.

She currently serves as Inner Strength’s Executive Director. Amy began her own mindfulness practice in 1978 and has been an avid explorer of these tools ever since, studying indepth and then teaching in half a dozen countries around the world.

She received a Philadelphia Social Innovation Award for her organization’s work in Violence Reduction. She is a Cornell University College Scholar, cofounder of of the learning platform Emergence Education, and author of five books including the IPPY award-winning, #1 Amazon educational bestseller The Conscious Classroom.

About Us

The Conscious Classroom

The Inner Strength System™ is a unique mindfulness school program, which teaches adolescents evidence-based focus, stress reduction, and compassion tools, all set in a developmental framework.

Inner Strength has already trained over 15,000 students in high schools in Philadelphia. You’ll receive the benefit of lessons learned in the classroom to prepare you to be the best facilitator you can be.

The Fundamentals of Mindfulness teacher training is a 40-hour professional training that will enable you to teach the valuable tools of mindful awareness to high school students.

Teaching the Inner Strength Teen Program is personally rewarding. New insight catalyzes our own growth and transformation. Not only do we learn how to teach inner strength for outer stability, we develop those qualities in our own lives.

When you share your authentic enthusiasm with teens, the inspiration becomes contagious.
Everyone is enriched by the joy of discovery.

Participants have come from all over to immerse themselves in this comprehensive program—from Chile to New Zealand, New York to California, Vancouver to Massachusetts, Seattle to Michigan, and from other places in between. Graduates have taken their training into school classrooms and non-profits, arts programs and honors clubs, juvenile facilities and alternatives to detention.

I can’t wait to see what you will do!

You'll Receive

Your Foundation of Mindfulness for the Classroom Resources include:

Online Class Portal

All of your lesson material conveniently in one place. A private forum to comment and converse with your class cohort.
8 video lessons

Weekly modules to learn at your convenience so you are ready to discuss in the live sessions. Each lesson is approoximately 60-minutes.

8 two-hour interactive live video sessions

Weekly sessions to delve into the material in more depth with Amy Edelstein and to explore in small group discussion periods.
Paired practice teaching

Practice teaching with a partner from the cohort giving you the experience and confidence to teach these tools in the classroom.

Audios & Transcripts of all lessons

Revisit your lesson, take notes on a pdf transcript, and refresh your memory at any time.
Weekly Contemplations & Journaling

Make the understandings of each week your own through guided Contemplation and journaling exercises.

Guided morning meditations

Deepen your own practice so you strengthen your anchor and understanding of the tools from the inside out. Amy is a master meditation teacher with over 40-years experience.
Curated Reading List

Get new insights from some of the most thoughtful and innovative teachers in the field.

"I felt so personally and professionally supported…

Everything about this course both challenged and encouraged me. From the clear way the lessons were delivered,

to the thoughtful reflection questions that really helped me grow, to the way Amy brought the whole group together...

I've taken so many continuing education courses, but none that I can truly say helped me grow from the inside the way this one did. And I feel well prepared me with such an actionable skill set. Wow and Thank you!

– Jennifer, Philadelphia

“Warm, challenging, and truly supportive.

I found training with Amy and my cohort in the Inner Strength Teacher Training to be a warm, challenging, and truly supportive experience.

Amy’s knowledge is vast and her presentation is highly factual, superbly interesting, sometimes over my head, yet always accessible, and delightful! We also developed friendship and respect for each other. A bonding experience it was and a truly passionate organization to be involved with. Thank you for this life changing experience!"

– Brittany, South Carolina

"This class is one that everyone should take, whether teaching mindfulness or not, all the tools that we learn are beneficial to all humans. The array of information learned through Amy, the required readings, our own practice and the conversations during class are so invaluable. The contemplation questions are so insightful. Anyone who takes this class will be more empowered and have a deeper understanding and respect for the positive power of mindfulness practice. Amy is a phenomenal teacher and demonstrator of the qualities of mindfulness through her being, speaking, teaching and curiosity. I am forever grateful for this experience and looking forward to ongoing mindfulness education& practice in my day to day. This system is important for a culture of care."

Jaz, Philadelphia

"The opportunity to participate in this course came just at the right time, as I identify strategies and practices to support the students who have begun to return to the classroom both late this spring and next fall. They will be experiencing challenges on different fronts and any tools we can share to help them manage these challenges will be invaluable."

Lison Nelson-Haynes, Philadelphia Young Playwrights

""The information in this course is taught with an academic attention to detail yet infused with compassion and insight teens' unique needs and challenges. This training will motivate and inspire anyone with a call to help today's high school students navigate these challenging times."

Ginger Sands, All Access Mindfulness

"I just got off the phone with T.P. and she couldn't stop raving about how well today went! She can't wait until next week. I was able to pop in to H.S.’s GoogleMeet and he was screen sharing the zoom from your class. So glad to welcome you back to our school!!!!"

J.L., High School Principal

"Your mindfulness course is genuinely unique, academically rigorous, mind/soul/mind stretching, and life-changing! From the bottom of my heart, I exclaim, "THANK YOU"! You've made my day and uplifted my spirits!"

H.S., Art Teacher

"Thank you so much for leading our staff through mindfulness practices. We appreciated and enjoyed the time to relax, rejuvenate, and be with themselves and each other in ways we don't usually have time to do. I look forward to our continued work together!"

A.D. High School Principal

Ready to jump in?

Begin Your Journey Now!