Mindful Kids Peace Summit Speaker Info
Speakers Info
Heather Schwartz
Session Title: CASEL-Social Emotional Learning: What it is and Why it Matters
Free Learning Resources:
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Heather Schwartz works with school leaders and teams of teachers on effective implementation of CASEL’s systemic SEL model. Before coming to CASEL, she taught seventh grade and completed a master’s in educational leadership at Columbia University Teachers College. Heather enjoys yoga, dance, and reading fiction. She aspires to contribute to a more just society by supporting SEL in schools.
Andrea Samadi
Session Title: 5 Simple Ways to Use Your Brain to Get Better Results with Your Grades, Sports and Life!
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Andrea Samadi, a former middle school teacher, has worked with some of the most powerful minds in the motivational speaking industry. She participates in ongoing mentoring featuring some of the top neuroscience researchers in the country and has developed an online course for educators and students to apply basic neuroscience for improved results with grades, sports and life. She is currently working on a new book and online program to increase productivity in the workplace.
Dave Smith
Session Title: Mindfulness in Schools
Mr. Dave Smith is the Head of Practice for Mindful Schools, an organization that integrates mindfulness into the everyday learning environment of K-12 classrooms. Mr. Smith is also a mindfulness teacher, addiction treatment specialist, and published author. He has extensive experience bringing meditative interventions into schools, youth detention centers and addiction treatment facilities, and he works with students through a meditation mentoring program.
Session Title: Exercise: Exploring Relevance Meditation
JusTme is a mindful hip-hop artist and mindfulness instructor. Since 2012, he has been bringing students and their families positivity, mindful practices, and well-being through his coined term, “mindful Hip-hop”, JusTme started working with K-12 students in the West Contra Costa Unified School District of Richmond, CA. Inspired by JusTme’s musical approach, a group of 5th grade student’s at Glendale Elementary made a music video for JusTme’s “D.F.Y.L” (Don’t Flip Your Lid). This song explains the brain science on the ‘Fight or Flight response’, and how mindfulness can help a person calm that response. He does school visits and assemblies as well as virtual mindfulness “Kick It” sessions. http://www.justmindfulness.com/
Diane Gehart
Session Title: What I Wish I Knew Before 10 th Grade: The Science of Happiness for Youth
Free Learning Resource: http://www.mindfulschool.net/Lessons/
Diane Gehart, Ph.D. is a Professor in the Marriage and Family Therapy Program at California State University, Northridge and has a private practice in Agoura Hills, California. She has authored several books including Mindfulness for Chocolate Lovers: A Light-hearted Way to Stress Less and Savor More Each Day (due out September 2019), Mindfulness and Acceptance in Couple and Family Therapy, and Mastering Competencies in Family Therapy, and co-edited Collaborative Therapy: Relationships and Conversations that Make a Difference. In addition to teaching mindfulness in therapy to children, families, couples, and adults, she has also developed a school-based mindfulness for preschool and elementary schools.
Coming Soon
Andrew Jordan Nance
Session Title: Navigating Emotions
Free Learning Resource:
Video Emotional Musical Chairs
Andrew Jordan Nance is the author of two books, Puppy Mind, and Mindful Arts in the Classroom as well as the forthcoming book The Lion in Me (Parallax Press). He has been an educator since 1992. He is the founder of Mindful Arts San Francisco, whose mission is to provide volunteer mindful educators to teach at underserved San Francisco schools. His mindfulness training comes from Mindful Schools, Spirit Rock, the Greater Good Science Center, The Omega Institute, and Esalen. He is on the board of directors of several educational nonprofit organizations including the Mindful Life Project in Richmond, California; San Francisco’s New Conservatory Theater Center; and Arts Ed Matters, a California-based arts-integration organization. Andrew Jordan Nance lives in San Francisco.
Supna Shah
Session Title: Raising Teens with Emotional Intelligence
Free Learning Resource: https://wegokids.lpages.co/tantrumfree/
Supna Shah is the founder of WeGo kids and mom of 5 year old triplets. WeGo kids takes an Emotional Intelligence approach to everyday parenting and delivers innovative content and products to parents, just before they need them. With over a decade studying and applying principles of Emotional Intelligence in multi-national corporations, Supna used emotional intelligence to help guide her as a first time mom. When Supna realized that she wasn’t having many of the challenges of other parents, she started sharing her techniques with others, and WeGo kids was born.
Rick Hanson
Session Title: Build a Happier Brain!
Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is a psychologist, Senior Fellow of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, and New York Times best-selling author. His books are available in 26 languages and include Hardwiring Happiness, Buddha’s Brain, Just One Thing, and Mother Nurture. He edits the Wise Brain Bulletin and has numerous audio programs. A summa cum laude graduate of UCLA and founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom, he’s been an invited speaker at NASA, Oxford, Stanford, Harvard, and other major universities, and taught in meditation centers worldwide. His work has been featured on the BBC, CBS, and NPR, and he offers the free Just One Thing newsletter with over 120,000 subscribers, plus the online Foundations of Well-Being program in positive neuroplasticity that anyone with financial need can do for free.
Karen Bluth
Session Title: Helping Teens Cope: Self-Compassion for Teens
Free Learning Resources
Dr. Karen Bluth is Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a certified instructor of Mindful Self-Compassion, an internationally acclaimed 8-week course created by Dr. Kristin Neff and Dr. Chris Germer. She is co-creator of the curriculum Making Friends with Yourself: A Mindful Self-Compassion Program for Teens, the teen adaptation of Mindful Self-Compassion for adults, and author of the book “The Self-Compassion Workbook for Teens: Mindfulness and Compassion Skills to Overcome Self-Criticism and Embrace Who You Are” (New Harbinger Publishers).
Angelina Alvarez
Session Title: Exercise: Exploring Potential Meditation
Free Learning Resource:
Sue DeCaro
Session Title: Creating a Sense of Calm and Peace Within
Free Learning Resources: Self-care for parents
Sue is a heart-centered life coach, educator, motivational speaker, and writer, working with individuals, corporations and families around the globe to navigate life’s daily challenges. While integrating education, consciousness, and coaching, Sue helps individuals to feel empowered, grow and thrive. Her passion is to help people deeply connect to themselves, to their children, and of course, to the world around them, creating a brighter future.
Michael Bready
Session Title: Mindfulness for Youth
Free Resources: Overview of Youth Mindfulness Kids
Michael Bready is the founder and director of Youth Mindfulness: a Glasgow-based charity dedicated to enhancing the wellbeing of young people through developing innovative mindfulness programmes. He’s taught mindfulness to 1,000s of children teens and adults; developed a positively evaluated mindfulness programmes for young men in prison; and has trained over 600 educators from more than 15 countries to deliver the Youth Mindfulness Kids Programme.
Laurie Rich Levinson
Session Title: Why Programs Like This Are So Important
Laurie Rich Levinson was elected in 2010, and re-elected in 2014 and 2018, as the District 6 Broward County School Board Member. She was Born and raised in South Florida, she is married and has three children, all of whom attended Broward County Public Schools. Ms. Laurie Rich Levinson graduated from Miami Palmetto Senior High and received a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from Brandeis University. She has been in the business world for over 30 years, and
a parent activist for over 20 years at the school, area, and district levels. She presently represents the School Board on the Board of the Council of the Great City Schools, Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance, and the Early Childhood Learning Coalition. Additionally, she is on the State Board of Take Stock in Children and a JAFCO Ability Center Board Member. Thank you for joining us for the peace summit Ms. Rich Levinson.
Sam Himelstein, PhD
Session Title: Working with Trauma-Impacted Youth
Free Resources: Teaching Mindfulness To Teens
Dr. Sam Himelstein is a licensed psychologist in Oakland, CA and has specialized in teaching mindfulness to trauma-impacted youth for over a decade. He has worked with youth in the justice system, foster care system, in schools, in juvenile halls, in outpatient medical settings, and in private practice. His own background in juvenile hall influences his passion for working with young people and teaching mindfulness.
Richard Burnett
Session Title: How to Bring Mindfulness to Young People and Those Who Care for Them
Free Learning Resources
Richard Burnett is Co-founder and Director of Mindfulness in Schools Project (www.mindfulnessinschools.org). Richard co-wrote the highly-acclaimed 10 week mindfulness course, .b (pronounced dot-b) designed to engage adolescents in the classroom. Richard is a teacher and boarding Housemaster at Tonbridge School, the first school in the UK to put mindfulness on the curriculum, an event covered by press, TV and radio in early 2010. He gave a TEDx talk about mindfulness in schools and was an expert witness at the All Party Parliamentary Group on Mental Health and Education. Since 2011, MiSP has trained over 4,500 teachers and reached around 400,000 children and young people. Jon Kabat Zinn headlined MiSP’s most recent conference in June 2018, highlights of which can be seen here.
Go All Creative EDU
Session Title: Film Mindfulness
Go All Creative EDU brings authentic real-world experiences into schools – to help school teams with their efforts in supporting creativity, development of 21st century skills and whole-child development.
What it is
Go All Creative EDU is a groundbreaking new video-based Professional Development platform that brings the authentic, real-world voice and experience of highly successful Super Creatives into schools. Guest Super Creatives include Tricky Stewart, multi-Grammy award-winning music producer and songwriter (i.e., Beyoncé / Single Ladies, Rihanna / Umbrella), Jeremy Soule, music composer of some of the highest grossing video games (i.e., Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Harry Potter), Audrie and Georg Roth of GRLA, international fashion designers, and Pen Densham, Oscar nominated filmmaker (i.e., Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Backdraft). Season 1 covers the main themes that emerged from these conversations: the importance of iterating your work, the power of curiosity in rewiring the brain, use of calibration experiences to create excellence and the value of relationships. This online series features 5 episodes 15 to 18 minutes long with corresponding activity and discussion guides for school teams, students and the home.
Who we are
Designed and created by education innovator and school designer, Ted Fujimoto, and film and television actress and content producer, LeighFaith, who spoke with award-
Leigh has acted in over 20 feature film and television projects for CBS, Lifetime, Syfy, CW and more, and produces content through her production company, Unleighshed Media Group. Ted is an education innovator, school designer and entrepreneur who co-founded the original New Technology High School in Napa, California, and the replication organization known as the New Tech Network with over 200 schools. He co-designed the scaling and replication strategies for organizations that redesigned more than 700 high performing public schools.
Sign up here for all 5 episodes:
Check out Episode 3 where Super Creatives talk Mindfulness.
Nimrod Sheinman
Session Title: Mindfulness in Education and Teens Self-Regulation and Resilience.
Presentation: Mindfulness in Education, 2019,Bangkok Conference on Holistic Education
Nimrod Sheinman B.Sc., N.D. is one of Israel’s leading mind-body experts, and an international spokesperson advocating mindfulness-based initiatives for children and youth. He is the founder and director of Israel’s Centre for Mindfulness in Education (2013), co-founder of Israel’s Centre for Mind-Body Medicine (1998), and leads the International Soul of Education Initiative, now gaining momentum around the globe.