The Mindful Schools Curriculum for Adolescents

This curriculum offers invaluable ways to address some of the biggest things that teens struggle with, including social media, bias, working with difficult emotions like anxiety, and gaining authenticity in relationships.--Daniel Rechtschaffen, MFT, author of The Way of Mindful Education, The Mindful Education Workbook and Alphabreaths An absolute must-read for every person teaching mindfulness to teens and young adults. Oren Jay Sofer and Matthew Brensilver have combined their many years of experience teaching mindfulness for adolescents and developing curriculum for Mindful Schools with their decades of personal mindfulness meditation practice to create a clear, engaging, very down-to-earth and step-by-step classroom approach. And as an extra bonus, each chapter offers the science background with citations for the reader who wants to know more.--Christiane Wolf, M.D., Ph.D., coauthor of A Clinician's Guide to Teaching Mindfulness Teaching mindfulness is an art; teaching mindfulness to adolescents is a rare art. In this thorough, well-researched, and creative curriculum, the authors offer innovative and timely tools for sharing the powerful practice of mindfulness with teens and adolescents. This book will serve well anyone who is seeking guidance on how to teach mindfulness to adolescents.--Bonnie Duran, Ph.D., Professor, University of Washington School of Social work, Public Health, and Indigenous Wellness Research Institute This comprehensive and beautifully designed curriculum is sure to become a classic in the field. It offers carefully crafted lessons with helpful examples, study and practice questions, and scientific evidence to back it up. I would recommend this to anyone who wishes to teach mindfulness to adolescents, although I have no doubt it would be relevant to teaching adults as well!--Diana Winston, director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center, and author of The Little Book of Being . The Mindful Schools Curriculum for Adolescents by Oren Jay Sofer and Matthew Brensilver is a timely and valuable contribution to the field of Mindfulness in Education. The curriculum does a wonderful job creating connection and making mindfulness relevant to the adolescent context. This resource is a must-have for anyone sharing mindfulness with teens!--Meena Srinivasan, author of SEL Every Day: Integrating Social and Emotional Learning with Instruction in Secondary Classrooms and Teach, Breathe, Learn: Mindfulness In and Out of the Classroom.

Oren Jay Sofer leads retreats and workshops on meditation and communication throughout the United States. A member of the Spirit Rock Teachers Council, he holds a degree in Comparative Religion from Columbia University and is a Certified Trainer of Nonviolent Communication and a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner for the healing of trauma. Matthew Brensilver, MSW, PhD, is a member of the Teachers Council and Guiding Teachers Executive Committee at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. He previously served as Program Director for Mindful Schools and for more than a decade, was a core teacher at Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society. He lectures at UCLAs Mindful Awareness Research Center about the intersections between mindfulness and mental health and teaches retreats nationally. Before committing to teaching meditation full-time, he spent years doing research on addiction pharmacotherapy at the UCLA Center for Behavioral and Addiction Medicine and is interested in the unfolding dialogue between meditation and science.