Mindfulness, Courage, and Reflection for Educators

Pilot Phase

Mindfulness, Courage, and Reflection for Educators is an after-school program that offers educators the opportunity participate in a unique pilot training.  Piloted at Columbus Park Preparatory Academy- Worcester, MA in Fall 2007, this new program integrated the strengths of the renewal work of Courage to Teach® from Courage & Renewal Northeast at Wellesley College, together with mindfulness training as it is taught at the Center for Mindfulness(CFM) Stress Reduction Program at UMass Medical School. 

We recognize the extremely valuable care you offer children through your work, and we intend with this course to introduce tools for reflection, self-care and nourishment, which will support you as a person and as a teacher.

Please check back soon for details about the next phase of the program.

What is Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and the Courage to Teach®?

You’ve probably encountered moments of “mindlessness” — a loss of awareness resulting in forgetfulness, separation from self, and a sense of living mechanically. Restoring within yourself a balanced sense of health and well being requires increased awareness of all aspects of self, including body and mind and heart. Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction is intended to ignite this inner capacity and infuse your life with awareness.  Fortunately, mindfulness is not something that you have to “get” or acquire. It is already within you — a deep internal resource available and patiently waiting to be released and used in the service of learning, growing, and healing.

Courage to Teach (CTT), which is based on the work of Parker Palmer, is a program for the personal and professional renewal of teachers in K-12 schools on whom our society depends for so much but for whom we provide so little encouragement and support. CTT focuses neither on "technique" nor on school reform, but on renewing the inner lives of professionals in education.   CTT uses large group, small group, and solitary reflection to invite teachers to explore the intersection of soul and role, personal and professional life, and the relationship of the inner life to the outer work of service in the world.  Making use of stories from participants' own experience and insights from poets, storytellers and diverse wisdom traditions, individuals have the opportunity to reflect on the journey that has brought them to this point in their lives and to explore hopes for the future. 

Given the current demands in schools, we believe that joining these two approaches--Mindfulness training and Courage work--will support your capacity to be more present in your work and life and more connected to your hopes and aspirations in your work with children.

To learn more, please contact us at 508-856-2656 or mindfulness@umassmed.edu