I need the training Breathe For Change can provide in order to create an environment where students can thrive and go beyond survival.
$2,424 goal
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month
This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because
it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.
I have been a New York City public school teacher for eighteen years. Teaching a diverse student group of learners from different cultures and religions. A teachers growth is measured by rising to the challenge to find different modalities to engage and support my students. One thing I know for sure, is true learning can only happen if students feel safe in the classroom and in their bodies.
The true gift of teaching is how you learn from your students as much as they learn from you.
As a survivor of childhood trauma, I recognized my many student carrying their own back pack of sadness. Trauma can be a single event or an accumulation of events leaving you powerless. Death of a parent, addiction, domestic violence, mental illness, sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, as well as neglect, are just some of the traumas my students have endured.
I have had great success using reading and writing as an outlet for my students. Teaching my students the breathing and mindfulness techniques I have found so healing has been a breakthrough. This professional development would provide me with the skill set to teach my students to thrive and just survive.
My Project
Educators need to show compassion, to help students build an emotional learning toolkit. Students need to grow, build loving relationship with others, and most importantly with themselves. I plan to do this by receiving two hundred hours of wellness training focused on yoga and meditation through Breathe For Change.
A teacher for eighteen years in the New York City public school system, one thing I know for sure is asking a student, what happened, and not what’s wrong with you, can be the start of a trusting conversation.
As a survivor of childhood trauma, the classroom has been the place I have gotten a do over. It’s where I have been able to teach little Connie alongside my students about love, empathy, emotional regulation, trust, mindset, positive affirmation, compassion, and self-awareness. All the tools needed to build a social emotional kit for my students, but also the ones I didn’t have. The ones I had not been taught, and the ones many of my students so desperately need.
Breathe For Change is an acclaimed certification program, which empowers educators as experts in social-emotional learning, yoga, mindfulness, and community well-being. Once certificated, teachers gain ongoing access to resources and development on becoming leaders and holding school-wide wellness programs as leaders of change. The dates of this training will take place July 28, 2019 through August 16, 2019 in New York, New York from 8:00am to 7:00pm. Over the two hundred hours I will learn breath work, meditation techniques, yoga asanas, interpersonal and intrapersonal skills, and how this work can be taught in the classroom in order to create a vibrant and compassionate learners.
DonorsChoose is the most trusted classroom funding site for teachers.
As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Ms. Pertuz-Meza and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.