Does work ever stop these days? It's not just negotiating with all the demands, it's setting boundaries. Here are some ways to set limits and allow yourself to keep your sense of energy, agency, and positive parameters. Mindfulness tools really do help stretch time and enforce boundaries. In this era of ongoing demands, there's no better time to work with them to support your own wellbeing and that of all those you live...

The New Year is a time when all of us make resolutions to improve, accomplish, and achieve. In this episode of The Conscious Classroom, Amy Edelstein will talk about how to use the tools of mindful awareness and contextual thinking to tap into a student’s passion to learn. When we feed their inspiration and show them how to recognize their own desire to grow, we set the stage for positive classroom culture. As always, we’ll practic...

Holidays are a time of giving and family. For students who are resource-challenged, this time of year can be challenging. In this Conscious Classroom episode, Amy Edelstein shares mindfulness tools and perspectives to bring the spirit of the holidays into your classroom. You will learn how to emphasize human connection, care, and appreciation and transform worry and concern into positivity and joy.

Support the show (https://bit.ly/s...

Teaching in an online environment due to coronavirus restrictions has required us to deal with new and challenging questions. How can we teach if we can't see our students faces? How do we know if they are comprehending or struggling? Do we demand that they "camera up" or do we allow them to find their way? In this episode, Amy Edelstein talks about online teaching and how to invite but not impose a visual on students. ...

When there's distraction in the classroom and students are disengaged or wound up, our inclination as teachers is often to clamp down, to try to control. We do that with greater or lesser degrees of success. But after that, how do we feel? Those are the days that usually leave us more spent, drained, and wound up. 

In this episode, Amy talks about establishing our own anchor as a way to coalesce our classroom community. Using mi...

Thanksgiving is a time for conscious appreciation, recognizing the gifts in our lives, even during hard times like these days during the pandemic. How to we build gratitude and what is the relationship between gratitude, awareness, and ease? 

In this episode, Amy Edelstein will share some insights about the deeper dimensions of gratitude, how our culture and self-sense can serve to obstruct our appreciation for connectedness, and ho...

Gratitude feels good. In this episode of The Conscious Classroom, Amy Edelstein will talk about building a culture of thanks. As we lean into the Thanksgiving season, it’s a time where we can begin to bring in awareness of the things that we’re grateful for and start helping our students appreciate so much around them. Specific gratitude practices, questions, and meditations will help you build a culture of thanks in your classroom...

COVID-19 has changed all our lives. Students, Teachers, Parents . . . . But regardless of the medium you are going back to school - online or in person or blended, it really is great to be back in class. Learning, teaching, connecting is perhaps more important than ever. When you don't take school for granted, which we can't in these times, the school connections become even more precious. Enjoy this exploration and some gu...

Awareness is the foundation of stability, good relationships, and creative learning. Mindfulness techniques help teens cultivate self-knowledge – the awareness of their habits of thought and behavior, their likes and dislikes, and the way they feel happiness and sadness. In this Conscious Classroom episode, Amy Edelstein will shed light on how we cultivate awareness and lead you through meditation exercises you can do in your class...

It’s the start of the school year. Hey, no smell of new textbooks, no bulletin boards to decorate, no lockers to assign, no bells and the patter of hundreds of pairs of shoes clattering down the hallways. This year is quiet. Buildings at rest. Teachers and students at home, each in our own little spaces, connecting via . . . what seems like magic . . .  our bodies and voices broadcast as little bits of numeric data, miraculously ap...

Love of learning is essential for youth to truly internalize information. Contemplative exercises, contextual seeing, and the practice of re-framing our worldview cultivate a student’s curiosity. In this episode of The Conscious Classroom, Amy Edelstein will talk about how to shift a student’s experience from overwhelm to interest, and how to work with the art and science of observation and reflection. As always, the episode will i...

Bruce Lee, the iconic martial artist, often spoke about the value of a mind like water -- fluid, flexible, soft enough to go around obstacles, persistent enough to carve a hole in rock, and forceful enough to uproot tall trees or buildings. Water can be invisible as steam, transparent in its liquid state, and hard and opaque as ice. Our minds can be as flexible and powerful if we know how to cultivate attentive calm, precise discri...

Good relationships with adults and peers help teens navigate mental and emotional challenges more effectively than any other intervention. Friendships gone sour can snuff out the light of enthusiasm in an adolescent. How do we help our teens learn the art and science of friendship? In this Conscious Classroom episode, Amy Edelstein will map the cartography of friendship. She will guide you in mindful awareness practices you can use...

Hard to believe, the end of the school year is upon us! In this Conscious Classroom Webinar, Amy Edelstein will lead you in some reflections and meditations that will celebrate the year’s victories, allow more challenging times to be assimilated and transformed into lessons learned, and consciously close the year so everyone can enjoy the summer break ahead.

This episode looks at how to bring in celebration in the time of COVID-19 a...

Resistance and frustration is an inevitable human reaction to the stressful conditions we are living in. We can learn to allow, observe, and be with our responses as they are, without creating more tension or negative self judgment. Self care means treating ourselves with kindness, learning how to be gentle when needed and how to turn our minds away from thought patterns that sap our vitality and well-being. 

Working with tools such...