Heart in Mind is committed to creating positive, powerful school environments that illuminate the brilliance of each student and provide them with the skills and encouragement to shine and thrive. We work with educators to create opportunities for success and help each student develop a positive self-concept, experience the joy of learning, recognize their accomplishments and engage positively in the classroom and the world.
Inspired by the transformational power of education, the need for equity and the importance of educating the whole student, Heart in Mind works to build capacity towards these goals: All students have exemplary educational experiences with rewarding outcomes. Families and communities are positively engaged with schools and youth. Educators enjoy a climate of creativity, professional growth, and satisfaction.
Educators and parents are faced with a growing range of challenges in helping children and youth optimize their development. Students have increasingly diverse learning needs that a one-size fits all standardized curriculum and outdated instructional modalities do not address. Our education system lacks capacity to adequately incorporate culturally responsive learning, provide differentiated instruction, and educate the whole child. The pressure on educators to teach children with significant challenges has never been greater. From poverty, racism, trauma, mental illness, drug abuse, violence, and increasing anxiety due to these and other societal pressures, children under duress need effective support to help them work through their challenges and activate their potential.
Today’s youth have countless problems to solve in their future. The issues facing society grow more complex each year, and many solutions spawn further problems. Global challenges affect us all as separation by boundaries, miles, or oceans dissolve. We share a common fate as specters of climate change, toxicity, disease, famine and war rage in full force for many of the world’s citizens. Displaced people and marginalized communities struggle to live well or live at all with systemic challenges that impede the ability to thrive.
We may not change global circumstances, but we can help youth develop the skills to cope, hope and build resilience that enables them to address the difficult, impactful problems they inherit. We can give them skills to harness creativity and intellectual growth that promotes innovations and moves society forward.
Heart in Mind helps educators deepen their understanding of social-emotional processes, create positive school climates to support a connected, compassionate community of learners and facilitate capacity for joy and success. We encourage creativity to assist each student in exploring and developing their unique talents, gifts and perspectives and coach educators to provide youth with skills to collaborate and support one another, working towards the greater good of all. It is vital that our youth have the abilities, qualities and capacities to bring about greater health and harmony for themselves, their communities and the world.