“I think it is the good teachers who will be able to change the world. That’s my belief, because a teacher can nourish, can heal, can build healthy, happy human beings.” - Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh
Greatwoods Zen is excited to begin offering daylong mindfulness retreats for classroom teachers, administrators, social workers, others in the field of education, and basically anyone who works with youth/young people. This retreat will offer participants a chance to refresh themselves and cultivate their own personal mindfulness practice as a base for any sharing of mindfulness with others. It will support them to have an experiential understanding of the practices, and develop the language and skills needed to bring the practice back to the communities they serve. They will also learn effective methods to enhance presence and connection with others, attention, kindness, and emotional well-being inside and outside the classroom.
The retreat center at Greatwoods Zen offers an intimate setting in nature that pleasantly supports our communal practice of mindfulness. The modest retreat size is a precious and powerful opportunity that allows for every participant to have personal contact with the Teachers.
We are excited to welcome you to our community of practice!
This is a Wake-Up Schools Level I Program. For more information, visit wakeupschools.org (there is a lot of inspiring material available on their site!)
Practices during the retreat will include:
Mindful Breathing
Walking Meditation
Mindful Eating
Deep Relaxation
Circle Sharing
Loving speech & deep listening
Stopping, Pausing, and Looking Deeply
Bells of Mindfulness in Daily Life
The retreat will also include:
Ways to develop mindful communication
Inspiration to support mindfulness practice among co-workers and school staff
Ways to sustainably care for oneself as an educator
Financial Assistance: Anyone who wishes to attend the retreat will be welcomed, no matter of financial ability. We are happy to share that we have a generous scholarship fund for this retreat!
Retreat Teachers
David Viafora is a co-founder and the program director at Greatwoods Zen Center. David has organized and led mindfulness retreats for educators, physicians, families, teens, children, young adults, and other groups in North America, Europe, and Oceania. He first ordained as a monk with Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh in 2005 and spent several years living in the Plum Village tradition monasteries. David is now a lay ordained member of the Order of Interbeing, and works part-time as a licensed therapist for children, adults, and families. His forthcoming book is Conscious Communities: The Transformative Power of Sangha (Parallax Press, 2024). David identifies as a white-presenting Chinese-American cis man.
SB Burns practices as a clinical psychotherapist in Charlotte, NC and has been teaching mindfulness practices since 2015 in various capacities with adults, children, and families in mental health settings and schools. SB identifies as a white, queer, non-binary, and able-bodied person. Having worked and volunteered in Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools for many years, SB is passionate about supporting educators in their personal and professional self-care. SB was deeply involved in helping to found “GenOne” alongside their spouse since 2014. GenOne is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping talented, first-generation students from under-served communities navigate to and through college successfully.
Retreat Staff
Nick Neild has worked as a classroom teachers for the last 8 years, where he teaches mindfulness skills to students. For the last 5 years, Nick lived and worked as a teacher in Prague Prague, Czech Republic, where he also taught mindfulness to other teachers. Nick recently moved to Charlotte and is a co-founder of Greatwoods Zen Center. He now works part-time as a substitute teacher in Charlotte, while serving as the business administrator at Greatwoods Zen. Nick will be providing organizational and administrative support, as well as some facilitation during the Educators Retreat.
Vision for Wake Up Schools - Mindfulness in Education Training:
For teachers to effectively transmit mindfulness to their students, they must learn to apply it first in their own daily lives. Therefore Wake Up Schools training is in two stages: the first encourages teachers to embody the practice, the second focuses on sharing mindfulness practices with their students and school communities.
The two training levels are non-religious and non-sectarian. Their foundation relies on the insights and concrete practices of classical mindfulness training and philosophy: interdependence, non-duality, and the intimate connection between happiness and suffering.
Scientific evidence has demonstrated that methods arising from mindfulness traditions tradition are effective, and that they can be applied successfully in an educational and secular context.
Training Overview
Level I: Taking Care of the Teacher
Level I Training focuses on learning basic mindfulness practices and incorporating them into our lives. These include:
Cultivating awareness of breathing to help unite body and mind, and develop concentration
Caring for our body to reduce stress and pain
Learning to cultivate feelings of joy and happiness, and appreciate what we already have
Learning to simplify our lives so that we have more time to relax and enjoy life
Learning to listen to and embrace our strong emotions, such as fear, anger, anxiety and despair
Learning to use loving speech and compassionate listening to care for our relationships
Exploring non-sectarian, ethical guidelines for our own health and happiness, and that of our families, schools, communities, societies, and the world
Looking deeply into our consumption and production, as individuals and as a society
Foundational Principles
Wake Up Schools is underpinned by three foundational principles:
Embodiment – our greatest teaching is the presence that we offer to others; we seek first to embody a peaceful, happy presence, so that we can be truly there for our students and our educational community;
Service – Wake Up Schools is a gift of gratitude, understanding and love. We offer this gift from our heart in order to be of deep service to others. It is not a business or a profit-making endeavour
Community – establishing a community of friends on the path is what makes our work sustainable. Each of us is a member of many communities, including our family, classroom and teaching staff – we aim to deepen friendship and connection so that we can support each other and walk together in harmony and joy.
Our Approach
Focus on Teachers – We start with teachers, aware that only when somebody embodies mindfulness practice can they truly inspire others to practice mindfulness.
Training – Teachers learn to practice and embody mindfulness before they can share the practices with their students. To support this we offer retreats, mentorship and other activities for teachers and educators.
Community Building – Mindfulness practice can really take root when people come together to form communities of practice. We support educators to create and maintain practice communities within schools and outside of schools.
Flexibility – We offer a flexible approach without rigid curriculums understanding that there can be many ways to share mindfulness practices with schoolchildren and that a teacher’s approach will differ depending on their students and their school environment.
Non-Religious – Though mindfulness has its roots in the teachings of Buddhism, we see and share mindfulness as a universal and secular set of practices that can be enjoyed by anybody. People of all religions and none have been able to enrich their lives with mindfulness.
Holistic – We share mindfulness in its broadest sense which is not merely a technique to deal with stress but a holistic approach to life which includes practices for relating to other people, to look deeply into lives and to engage ethically with the world.
“The practice of mindfulness has the capacity to relieve the suffering in oneself and to help the other person to suffer less and restore communication and realize reconciliation. And all of this we believe can be taught in school. We have trained groups of schoolteachers who try their best in order to bring this practice to schools, because in our education system now, both teachers and students suffer a lot.” - Thich Nhat Hanh