About Mindful Schools Retreats
Mindfulness Practice • Community • Connection
Strengthen your inner resilience and gain inspiration alongside a community of like-minded educators. Mindful Schools retreats are an opportunity to expand and deepen personal practice through more dedicated periods of guided practice. Together, we explore and cultivate a range of mindfulness strategies that support educator well-being in the classroom and beyond.
Join us for a day dedicated to mindfulness practice, community, and connection. Our retreats are five-hour, live virtual events guided by Mindful Schools faculty.
Upcoming Retreats
New Year Retreat
Saturday, January 27, 2024
Registration Deadline: January 25 at 11:59PM PT
This retreat is offered on a sliding scale basis. $195 suggested tuition for families making over $75,000 a year.
New Year Retreat for Educators ** Scholarships Available **
Saturday, January 27, 2024
8AM–1PM PT / 11AM–4PM ET
Guided by Neena Barreto and Devon Sangster Rath
Mindful Schools retreats are an opportunity to expand and deepen personal practice through more dedicated periods of guided practice. Together, we explore and cultivate a range of mindfulness strategies that support educator well-being in the classroom and beyond. Join us for a day dedicated to mindfulness practice, community, and connection. Our retreats are live virtual events guided by Mindful Schools faculty. This experience is designed to nurture your well-being, supporting you to strengthen your resilience, agency, and inspiration throughout the rest of the school year.
The retreat schedule includes:
- Guided Silent Practice, Movement, Journaling
- Connection and Interaction in Small Groups
- Q&A with Faculty
Read our guide: How to Prepare for Retreat at Home
Certificate of Attendance is provided for attendees who meet the criteria, see FAQs.
New Year Retreat Registration
Saturday, January 27, 2024
Registration Deadline: January 25 at 11:59PM PT
This retreat is offered with sliding scale options in an effort to create access for as many educators as possible. We depend on you to select the option that most closely represents your financial capacity. Our intention is to uphold this sliding scaled option for as long as it is sustainable. We thank you for your thoughtful selection. $195 suggested tuition for families making over $75,000 a year.
Meet the Mindful Schools faculty guiding this retreat:
Neena Barreto (she/her)
Neena comes to this work with over 20 years as a public school teacher and teacher leader. She has taught mindfulness in more than 30 classrooms from transitional kindergarten through sixth grade. Neena has coached teachers, provided staff training, parent classes, as well as educator retreats and public speaking engagements. Her most impactful work has been to create a trauma-sensitive and inclusive curriculum that gives students agency and voice to make mindfulness meaningful to them. A San Francisco Bay Area native now living in Southern Oregon, Neena draws upon the natural world as a deep resource to embody her mindfulness practice. She currently teaches elementary school in the Rogue Valley and is a Mindfulness Director with the nonprofit Whole School Mindfulness, where she integrates mindfulness at a K-8 Outdoor School in Ashland, Oregon. Neena identifies as Punjabi-Salvadoran American, as well as multi ethnic, second-generation, mother and poet. Her most powerful teachers continue to be her three boys.
Devon Sangster Rath (she/her)
Devon served as a social worker at a San Francisco public high school for ten years. She is a queer woman who cares deeply about the power of mindfulness practice to heal and liberate. Devon is especially passionate about making mindfulness accessible to all, specifically people who have experienced trauma, are recovering from addiction, and historically marginalized populations, including people of color, LGBTQ, and people of size and different body abilities. She has practiced meditation since 1997, has been formally teaching mindfulness since 2010, and currently lives in New Mexico with her little dog Chulito.
Why Retreats for Educators?
In our 101 and 201 courses, educators learn that a mindfulness practice is not something that we “achieve” and then check off as complete. It is an ongoing process of learning and investigation into ourselves and our experience. As we cultivate awareness over time, and through more dedicated periods of practice like retreats, we deepen our understanding of what it means to be an embodied educator. This is a foundational element of the Mindful Schools Domains of Mindful Teaching framework (see pg 4), supporting us to approach our work with young people with curiosity and compassion.
What to Expect
Our retreats are five-hour, live virtual events guided by Mindful Schools faculty. Retreats include both silent and guided practices as well as interactive elements to connect with each other as a community.
Since you will be joining us virtually, our faculty will create a retreat container that is both firm enough to hold your experience, and also flexible enough to meet our varied living circumstances. View our guide: How to Prepare for Retreat at Home.
Faculty
All retreats are guided by Mindful Schools faculty. You can learn more about our amazing faculty members, or Program Facilitators, on the “Meet Our Team” page.
Retreat FAQs
How do I join the live event? When you register, you will receive call-in instructions to join the zoom room as well as a 1-hour reminder on the day of the event.
What if I can’t make the live event? This live event will not be recorded. We encourage you to make necessary accommodations to attend the event at the scheduled time.
What can I expect at this retreat with Mindful Schools? Please read our How to Prepare for Retreat guide.
Who is this retreat for? Do I need a certain level of mindfulness or retreat experience to participate? Our retreats are appropriate for all levels of experience. Mindful Schools programs are designed by educators––for educators, counselors, parents, and a wide range of school community members who are excited to share mindfulness with students. We encourage you to take our 101: Mindfulness Foundations course so you may participate with a shared understanding of the Mindful Schools practice framework of secular mindfulness.
Cancellations: In order to receive a full refund, cancellations must be made at least 48 hours prior to the scheduled event. Refunds will not be granted after this time. If you need to cancel and request a refund, please contact support@mindfulschools.org.
Certificate of Attendance:
To be eligible for a Certificate of Attendance, participants are required to:
- Register and pay for the retreat by the registration deadline (published on the event page)
- Attend in full. Attendance will be verified if you complete the following:
- Join the retreat, by web browser or Zoom App (not dialing in by phone) within the first 10-minutes of the start of the retreat.
- Join the retreat using the same email as used to register.
- Stay logged-in, and engaged, for the duration of the retreat.
- Complete the event survey within 1 week of receiving the link to access the survey. The survey link will be emailed on the day of the event.
Certificates of Attendance will be emailed to those who complete the attendance requirements and submit the survey within the stated time frame. Certificates will be emailed 2 weeks after the event.
Important Notes:
- Certificates are available only for those who complete the attendance and survey requirements, without exception.
- It is the responsibility of the participant to ensure adequate internet reliability and bandwidth.
- Incomplete attendance nullifies eligibility for the certificate. Attendance is considered incomplete if the participant joins more than 10 minutes after the start time, has gaps in attendance, or leaves early. We are unable to give partial credit for incomplete attendance.
- There is a $20 fee to reissue certificates, and certificates are available only if the attendance and survey requirements were met.