Dr. Dana Dorfman has 30 years of clinical practice treating children, adolescents, parents, and adults in New York City and is also the author of When Worry Works: How to Harness Your Parenting Stress and Guide Your Teen to Success. In this episode we talk all about the most identifiable emotion today: anxiety. It’s a timely conversation! Her book …

As educators, we again find ourselves in the aftermath of yet another school shooting. This time in Nashville, TN. In today’s podcast we try to find some agency over what is, for some, a terrifying part of our jobs as teachers. Feeling physically and emotionally safe is what we all strive for as human beings. But how can we feel that as these horri…

Recharging is such an important way to step back and find inspiration. In today’s episode Erin shares her experience at SXSW EDU, an educational conference in Austin, TX where she was inspired through amazing connections and learning opportunities. She left the week feeling that the profession is alive and well. There are some very motivated, highl…

Welcome back to the Mindful Educators Podcast. In this episode we catch our listeners up on what’s new with us, what we have been up to, and share our continued vision on how we want to support educators in our community. Plus we lean into the power of self-awareness as a skill and discuss several strategies we use to increase our awareness. Show a…

In this episode, we discuss the concept of educators teaching this year as if they were training like a wrestler. We talk about ways to take care of our physical, mental and emotional health while also acknowledging all the blood, sweat, and tears. With the proper training and mindset, we can all finish this year in a better place than where we beg…

Welcome to Season 3 and to what seems like another challenging year in education. In this week’s episode listen in as we share our new transitions in the world of education. We also break down some of the new challenges educators are facing this year and share our thoughts on how our mindsets, support systems, and clarity on time and energy will be…

As many districts are starting to transition more students back to in-person instruction, provide longer days of in-person instruction, or are preparing for the Fall 2021, we all need to know that these changes can be stressful for teachers, students and parents. In this episode we explain our long delay between episodes as well as offer some gentl…

Teacher friends, are you feeling it? That piling on that is happening in our profession right now is at an all time high. Listen in to this week’s episode as we discuss the impact this is having on teachers everywhere and what we can do about it. Show and Tell: Erin: Personanutriton - personalized supplements Dave: Podcast: Renegades: Born in the U…

Friends this week on the podcast we sat down with Paria Hassouri, MD the author of Found in Transition: A Mother’s Evolution During Her Child’s Gender Change. Paria is a pediatrician, mother of three, and transgender rights activist and lives in LA. Erin was lucky enough to read her book as part of an educator book club and was so captivated by her…

Join us this week for our first ever fireside chat where we sit down with every day educators deep in the trenches. We are hoping to amplify the voices of our fellow educators and remind each other that we are all in this together. This week we chat with Dr. Dan Johnson. Dan has been an educator for the past 25 years, 20 of which have been spent as…

This week on the podcast we are fortunate enough to be sitting down with Amber Harper to talk about teacher burnout, a very timely topic. Amber is an educator, author, speaker, Google Certified Trainer, and Teacher Burnout Coach. She’s the founder of www.burnedinteacher.com, author of Hacking Teacher Burnout and is dedicated to empowering burned-ou…

After taking a bit of a break, this week on the podcast we reflect on the events of the last year looking for clarity. We share our gentle reminder that the experiences that are happening to us are really happening for us and if we can just lean into that pain, that discomfort of whatever we are feeling, we can really be transformed by it. We can a…

Friends, for many of us in education, our job has not only changed and continues to change on a daily basis but it has in fact doubled. The job has broadened and developed into one that is so multi-faceted and multi-layered that it is truly unsustainable. As we move into our much needed winter break, we honor that educators everywhere are not ok. T…

Friends, if you've been following along sequentially and listening to our podcast you know we have gleaned and shared a lot of wisdom from the book Coaching for Equity: Conversations that Change Practice by Elena Aguilar. Elena is a writer, coach, speaker, teacher and leader. She has trained thousands of educators around the world to have conversat…

In this week’s episode we talk to author Andrew Jordan Nance about his journey to mindfulness and education. Andrew shares his passion for bringing mindfulness to students through storytelling and the arts. He is the author of three children’s books as well as Mindful Arts in the Classroom, a user friendly curriculum written especially for teachers…

This week on the podcast we look at invisible teacher narratives that we have developed over the course of our careers, and we begin to question them. The subliminal messages from society set impossibly high standards about how teachers should be showing up in the classroom which results in high stress and teacher burnout. Listen in as we walk you …

Last week on the podcast we talked about having what we called “the willingness to begin to look at our own hidden biases” and the willingness to look at how we are contributing to equity in education. We based a lot of what we talked about on the book Coaching for Equity: Conversations that Change Practice by Elena Aguilar. This book started to sp…

In this week’s episode we are diving into a topic that we feel is very timely both globally and educationally. We hope this is the beginning of many conversations where we bring mindful awareness to the topic of equity in education and more specifically how we are thinking and working towards equity in our schools and classrooms. Listen in as we sh…

Last week on the podcast we discussed teacher stamina and whether teachers will be able to sustain the emotional, mental and physical energy that teaching remote, hybrid or in person takes and it seemed to hit home with a lot of people. So this week, in an effort to support ourselves and our community, we are sharing a small practice, one we are pe…

Our podcast process is one where we get together to discuss episode ideas that are born from what’s going on in education, in our life personally, or showing up globally. But this week we had a lot on our minds. So we thought we would use today’s podcast to share and have a conversation about what we are wondering about in this new state of educati…

Surrendering. It feels scary, out of control, and down right hard. In this week’s episode we discuss how well (or not so well) we practice surrendering to what is, especially in school, and especially now. If you are like us, you might find it easy to resist, control, muscle or complain your way through challenging times like these. Listen in as we…

Criticism. Anger. Judgment. These are harsh words that can be very impactful on our emotions and mindset. In many places, the tides have turned right now on education and educators. In the spring, society as a whole were singing the praises of educators everywhere while we pulled off the unimaginable with very little training or time. And here we a…

Welcome back friends to season 2 of our podcast. It’s a hard time in the world right now and a hard time to be in education, and so in this week’s episode we focus on how we as educators continue to show up and teach when we feel like we can’t or don’t want to? We discuss how looking too far ahead right now keeps us stuck and unmotivated while focu…

It’s been a few weeks and while we are preparing for our second season of our podcast, we thought we would pop in with a personal update mainly because education has been at the forefront of everyone’s mind right now as we are planning for the return to school. In this week’s episode we share about the success of our summer as well as the struggle …

It’s summer, now what? We think it is the perfect time to invest in yourself! So, in today’s episode we are super excited to share our bite-size summer PD: 5 Days and 5 Ways: The Power of Mindfully Navigating Teaching in the Fall of 2020 This has been a long spring and if you are like us, we are tapped out! Knowing that summer is the perfect time t…

In this week’s episode, we piggyback off of last week’s podcast on uncertainty and how we can harness it to build resilience. We have been on such a unique and challenging trip during quarantine and to extend the metaphor, today we discuss how this transition into a world and life getting ready to open up a bit, is an opportunity to mindfully pause…

Are you feeling as uncertain as we are? In this week’s episode, we dive into the universal feeling of uncertainty surrounding us these days and unpack how we can use it to help build resilience. The feeling of not knowing or not being in control spirals us towards feelings of anxiety, fear, worry, and anger. Listen in as we unpack 3 ways to flip un…

This week on the podcast we talk to our good friend Dr. Dana Dorfman, a New York City psychotherapist with over 28 years of experience and a passion for mental health education and awareness. Dana offers great insight into how our global pandemic impacts both children as well as parents. She shares her unique perspective on how we can help children…

Dr. Marc Brackett is on the podcast today and you are in for a real treat! He has not only influenced the way we teach and live but he is someone who has transformed our thinking in the area of emotional intelligence and learning. In this episode, you see our fangirl and fanboy emerge as we sit down and talk about his book Permission to Feel: Unloc…

Welcome to The Mindful Educators Podcast Covid-19 edition! We know it has been a few weeks since we have released a podcast. Truthfully, we were feeling that the world felt instantly crowded and inundated with content and we were both feeling the need to pause with the intention that when we had something of value to share, we would record. And so …

Friends, We are in unprecedented times right now. As educators many of us, if not most of us, will be teaching in a whole new way for a quite a while. In the time of Covid-19, we are finding ourselves navigating teaching through distance learning which just might make us feel disconnected and overwhelmed. In this episode we offer 5 mindful ways to …

Marc Brackett director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and author of the book Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help our Kids, Ourselves, and Our Society Thrive writes “The three most important aspects of learning- attention, focus and memory- are all controlled by our emotions NOT by cognition.” So if we want kid…

EMOTIONS Part 2: Managing your teacher emotions. Once I am aware of how I am feeling, now what? This week we dive into part 2 of our 3 part series on emotions. Last week we discussed the role emotions play in our lives and in our classrooms. In this week’s episode, we break down real actionable takeaways to work through our emotions allowing us to …

Have we got an episode for you this week! It’s a relevant and huge topic that we are breaking into 3 parts simply because there is so much ground to cover. For three weeks we will be talking about emotions and the role they play in our lives and in our classrooms. We will be sharing from our own personal database of what we are hearing from educato…

Teacher friends! Do you think your family and friends understand what you do day in and day out? Would it help if they did? We say YES and in this week’s episode we share the parts of our job we thought our NON-teacher friends and family should know about as well as ways in which they can support us in our demanding profession. Why is it so importa…

We have a special episode this week and we are super excited about it because despite the title, it’s chock full of wisdom for all classroom teachers. We were lucky enough to sit down with Deirdre Azzopardi in our basement studio to discuss how mindfulness positively impacts the special needs population in our schools. Deirdre is an occupational th…

How to change your energy when you need to in the classroom. Have you ever been in such a mood that teaching seems impossible? We have for sure and in this episode we talk about the reality of teaching while trying to manage our personal emotions. It can be overwhelming at times but we need to show up each and every day despite what’s happening per…

The new year brings about a lot of hope and possibility. In 2020 we have decided to begin the new year remembering and reflecting on why we teach. On the surface, this seems like a pretty simple question. But with a little mindful awareness the answer just might surprise you. In today’s episode, we dig into our why and have decided to use this as o…

Reflection is fitting for this time of year as we are closing out 2019 and beginning a new decade. It is also a mindful practice we feel passionate about. In this week’s episode we discuss how reflection, both personally and in school, can support the growing and learning process. It offers clarity, challenges our thinking and develops self-awarene…

Q and A with Dave and Erin Have we got answers for you! On today’s podcast, we respond to the questions we received via email, DM or from our professional development sessions in the hopes of sharing how to begin a more formal mindfulness practice in the classroom. We talk about everything from teacher fear, to students not cooperating, to letting …

Are you ready for it? The question we are asked the most: Do you have to meditate to have a mindful classroom? Our answer: NO! Would it be great and ideal if you did? Yes. But as with all things, the key to making something part of your life is taking baby steps. And because we thought there might be teachers listening who may want to up level thei…

Have you ever fallen into the trap of trying to make everything “perfect” or fearing making a mistake? Well, if you are like us, the answer is yes. On today’s podcast we are talking about perfectionism in teaching, and how historically, teachers have been held to high standards where mistakes and not having all of the answers was frowned upon. Thes…

In today's episode, we are talking about something that impacts most people in the workforce. Stress. However, according to a recent Gallup poll 46% of teachers report high daily stress, tying them with nurses for one of the most stressful occupations in America today. We could recite lots of alarming statistics about stress, the burnout rate and t…

In this episode of The Mindful Educators Podcast we discuss the power in habits, those structures and routines we try to implement in order to live our best lives. While all of our episodes tend to be geared towards teachers, we also think teaching our students how to create impactful habits supports their social and emotional learning. As mindful …

Jim Stroker is a life coach, motivational speaker, teacher, father and personal friend to both of us. Intentionally chosen as our first guest, Jim has had a huge influence on our lives. In this episode, Jim personally shares his struggles both in and out of the classroom and the tools he uses to get through them. He also offers his top tips to supp…

Today we share the last part of our four part series on connection. In this episode we talk about the power in connecting to the content you are teaching. We feel strongly in connection as the foundation of a strong school and classroom culture and mindfully connecting or reconnecting to your content in a new way can reignite your passion for teach…

Today we are sharing part 3 of our 4 part series on the power of connection. In this week’s episode, we focus on the importance of forming connections at work. In a profession that can be pretty isolating at times, we discuss how we can foster these meaningful relationships in order to increase our happiness and productivity. Take a listen as Dave …

In today’s episode we are sharing part 2 of our 4 part series on connection. The beginning of the year is a great time to pay attention to the different ways connection can be used as the foundation for the year. In part 1 we highlighted ways to create more self awareness and inner connection as educators and this week in part 2, we are discussing …

Happy September friends! New beginnings are such a good time to bring a mindful awareness especially in the area of supporting yourself as you begin the year. In this episode we talk about using September to mindfully focus on the power of connection. It’s so powerful, we thought we would try something new: a four part series all around connection.…

In today’s episode, we discuss our plan to mindfully step into the new year. It is perfect to think about at the start of school or honestly at any time you want a reboot! Both of us have unique dreams and visions for our upcoming year but our intention is to commit to an idea that has to do with our own mindfulness as teachers, not a classroom goa…