The Conscious Classroom

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Conscious Classroom, Amy Edelstein unpacks the importance of teacher happiness and how to use mindful awareness and perspectives to improve teacher wellbeing and sense of possibility prior to making practical changes, which undoubtedly also need to occur.  Amy explores the impact of educators who tap into their passion, setting the classroom tone and invigor...

Send us Fan Mail Discover the keys to unlocking our children's potential in an era where education is at a crossroads and technology's influence is undeniable. This enlightening journey through the world of learning reveals how an evolved mindset, coupled with a transformative educational system, is essential for nurturing the curiosity, purpose, wisdom, and respect desperately needed to...

Send us Fan Mail Discover how the relationship we forge with AI in our classrooms can go beyond mere functionality to touch the very core of our humanity. Join me, Amy Edelstein, as we unveil the transformative potential of AI when approached with the same reverence we approach the great mysteries and subtleties of sentience and life. It's an invitation to infuse our relationship to education...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Amy Edelstein reflects on a recent trip to India, which raised intriguing and inspiring possibilities as she visiting with the founders of the Happiness Curriculum, that reaches 1.7 million students each day. She also explores AI potential and urgency to train AI on compassion and wisdom and scale that use for the benefit of all. She also shares the value of refle...

Send us Fan Mail There's a hidden superpower in a regular teen activity that will provide support for teachers as well as students. This inclination, when activated, encouraged, and guided can create a safety net for students, build webbing so classrooms feel warm and encouraging, catch students who are falling behind, and bring out the sensitivity and protectiveness of some of the most unrul...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Conscious Classroom, Amy Edelstein shares from the heart about the impact of the eruption of war between Israel and Gaza, and that pain that is bringing to so many in the region and beyond. How do we provide steadiness and guidance within our classrooms? How do we rise authentically and demonstrate care that goes beyond divisions? Included is a long guided m...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, The Future of Education, Amy Edelstein explores a visionary approach to teacher training. If we are to truly inspire teachers and students to engage with their own learning in an innovative and even prophetic way, the training grounds that prepare teachers to teach must exemplify that new world and its higher values. Far too many people are concerned about how AI...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Conscious Classroom, Amy Edelstein shares insights about the potential and peril of new AI tools and considerations explored in the recent C20 meetings on Technology, Security and Transformation. As a panelist for the convening on Technology & Education, Edelstein was able to share views on the importance of teachers and teaching, and how to meet this br...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Amy Edelstein looks at the difference between empathy and compassion, exploring the elements of compassion that allow it to become a source of our own joy and upliftment. She also illuminates how detachment, universality, and self-care enable us to orient ourselves around compassion and fuel our own resilience and upliftment.   Support the show If you enjoyed this...

Send us Fan Mail In honor of Women’s History Month,  Amy Edelstein was invited by Villanova University's School of Business to  unpack what it takes to pursue our own calling, break limits, and strive to for excellence in our work, our personal growth, and our contribution to the world.  These days, we are pressured to achieve in so many spheres, from the obligation, as  leaders, to the botto...

Send us Fan Mail Virtual Reality Education is not a future prospect. Higher Education spaces like Morehouse College have already taught full semesters using VR. This Metaverse is rapidly expanding into K-12. In this episode of The Conscious Classroom, Amy Edelstein asks who is thinking about the potentials of this space to train us to be truly mindfully compassionate, awakened humans? And what are...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Amy shares a brief look at how our awareness of large scale systems that we can intuit through our mindfulness practice and through exploring the interconnected systems we see in nature and in the structure of the cosmos can reveal new solutions to our very entrenched problems. For teens who are discouraged and feeling defeated by the issues of the world and in th...

Send us Fan Mail A Freedom Worth Striving For - Reflections in Independence on the American Holiday 4th of July What makes freedom exalted? What can our students aspire to when the "freedom" they have been taught to cherish is either - in the case of politics and social orders - profoundly inequitable and even harmful or - as in the case of personal freedoms - exacerbates a sense of exis...

Send us Fan Mail These recent weeks have seen the scourge of senseless gun violence tearing through a school, a supermarket, and neighborhoods across America. In this episode, Amy Edelstein reaches deep into the power of meditation to imprint in us the undeniable experience of interconnectedness and love, a love that inspires us to want to dispel ignorance rather than fight (even for a cause) in w...

Send us Fan Mail Purpose Driven Education and the Role Mindfulness Can Play In this episode, Amy Edelstein talks about the role of purpose in teen flourishing.  When people are connected to a purpose greater than themselves, they experience more resilience, ability to persevere through challenges, sense of connection, and happiness. We can work with tools of mindful awareness to help students conn...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Amy Edelstein explores the power of purpose and the value that speaking about purpose with youth has on the rest of their lives. She discusses the great Stanford Educator and Author William Damon and his book The Path to Purpose , which looks at the impact of materialism and our fast-paced technological world on the exploration of greater goals. Going as far back...

Send us Fan Mail The world renowned and beloved Vietnamese teacher Thich Nhat Hahn passed this week at the age of 95. This episode is dedicated to his work and life, bringing mindfulness to a secular environment, connecting deep mindfulness practice with social, political, and environmental activism, and being a powerful -- albeit profoundly gentle -- activist for change. We value and honor his li...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Amy Edelstein talks about the need of our times for greater courage, centeredness and connection to presence, or being. This episode and its guided meditation will start the new year off on a positive and directed note.  Support the show If you enjoyed this episode please leave a review ! Your review supports our podcast to reach more educators and share the impor...

Send us Fan Mail Can technology empower rather than divide? Can we train robots to exhibit the empathy of their operators in humanitarian situations? How is Inner Strength looking ahead and the possibilities for supporting youth wellness through technology? Join Amy Edelstein in dialogue with XPrize semi-finalist and Inner Strength Board Member Anthony Holland. In this final installment, Tony and...

Send us Fan Mail Can technology empower rather than divide? Can we train robots to exhibit the empathy of their operators in humanitarian situations? How is Inner Strength looking ahead and the possibilities for supporting youth wellness through technology? Join Amy Edelstein in dialogue with XPrize semi-finalist and Inner Strength Board Member Anthony Holland. In this second part of the dialogue,...

Send us Fan Mail Can technology empower rather than divide? Can we train robots to exhibit the empathy of their operators in humanitarian situations? How is Inner Strength looking ahead and the possibilities for supporting youth wellness through technology? Join Amy Edelstein in dialogue with XPrize semi-finalist and Inner Strength Board Member Anthony Holland. More at Inner Strength Education Sup...

Send us Fan Mail Adventure in Zanskar: one woman's solitary journey to reach physical and metaphysical heights This episode of The Conscious Classroom is a little different, some fun. I just published a memoir about a solitary trek I undertook in the highest mountains of the world, the western most corner of the Tibetan Plateau, and area called Zanskar, India. I simply couldn't wait to s...

Send us Fan Mail Do you often relate just to the ways teens present in the classroom and forget that what goes on in their personal reflection may be much deeper? Teens present in all their awkward ways, they are in a growth stage and sometimes it feels like their bodies don't quite fit their minds and emotions or vice versa. Remember, there may be much more going on under the surface that is...

Send us Fan Mail Recently I've been asked, "How does your Inner Strength school mindfulness program help prevent gun violence?"  When you are being asked that in a city that has one of the fastest rising rates of gun violence per capita in the United States, that's a serious question. In the last 4 weeks, we've seen 4 shootings at schools, with multiple youth killed.  This...

Send us Fan Mail We all know play is important for little kids. Imagination, working out scenarios, assuming roles. It's how kids develop a wider sense of being in the world. Play is also important for teenagers. They need to have fun while learning. Play can also break up the day, change the rhythm. It teaches important and deep values as well. Games help students see each other in a differe...