What inspires me most about the work that I do is when I hear stories from teachers, students, or families about how mindfulness practices have transformed their lives. When I hear that a little girl taught her mother who was struggling a mindful breathing technique with positive affirmations. When I hear students say that because of mindfulness practices they are happier, better able to let things go, more positive, or getting better grades. When I hear from teachers that the practices have transformed their teaching and their personal lives.

The COVID situation has created more stress and anxiety among our school communities so our work is needed even more. Unfortunately, we are unable to access most of our students. We are providing free Facebook live events for adults and for students, and we know that we are reaching only a small portion of our students. We are creating online programming specifically for our educators as well. For our budget, we are unable to hold a spring fundraising event and we also don’t know if we will be paid our services contracts with our schools this spring as we are not physically able to be there. This significantly affects our financial picture. We also know that much funding will be directed toward medical needs, food and housing insecurity, and more, which will make fundraising difficult for us.

Space Between supports school communities in creating healing-centered, relationship-based environments, using mindfulness tools and practices. When implemented with a community approach, mindfulness tools promote attention, regulation, compassion, stress reduction, well-being and resilience. Our work aims to address the increasing levels of stress affecting the mental health and learning of students in our community and the adults, both teachers and family members, who work with them. Mindfulness practices and tools are one important piece of enabling systemic support for the mental health and well-being of our teachers, students, and families. Our key programs are 1) school-based professional development for teachers/staff, classroom mindfulness lessons for students and teachers, and family education; and 2) community-wide retreats and professional development for educators and family workshops.