Child and Family Enrichment | Chattanooga Room in the Inn

We proudly announce our $3,000 October grant to Chattanooga Room in the Inn (CRITI), a vital organization providing temporary shelter and support services to women and children experiencing homelessness. Our grant will directly impact the lives of shelter residents by supporting them through education, health, and well-being initiatives. How, exactly? We’ll tell ya.

• Therapeutic Activities: Art supplies, sensory and mindfulness toys, as well as workbooks $515

• Local Adventures: Creative Discovery Museum, Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum, Rock City $500

• Tutoring Supplies $245

• Outside Talent: yoga instructors, ceramists, dance instructors $500

• Extracurricular activities: sports, dance, gymnastics, and spring, fall, and summer camps. $1,240

CRITI invests in the family as a whole. More healthy, confident, self-sufficient families in Chattanooga benefit local schools and workplaces and hopefully inspire families to spend more time together healing. As CRITI families in transition begin to engage in these programs, results should follow quickly.

Healing from trauma takes a village. We’re proud to support CRITI and families experiencing homelessness here in Chattanooga.

Mindful Innovation at Howard, Battle and Brown | Center for Mindful Living

You may have heard of mindfulness and how it helps people, and you may even be familiar with the Center for Mindful Living, but do you know what the Office of Innovation and School Choice at Hamilton County Schools is? Well, think teaching to kids the way they want to learn vs the way things have historically been done from the top down. This is important for many reasons, but most importantly teachers and students are back in school in the midst of a pandemic.

Everyone is struggling to make sense of this new life. Teachers are stressed, students are stressed, you’re stressed. That extra stress adds to the daily stress that students in these schools typically face, calling for them to be even more resilient than they already are. Mindfulness will help to mitigate some of the extra stress by providing an atmosphere that acknowledges the stressful parts of life, as well as, a helpful solution to soothe the emotions that go along with coping in chronic stress…not to mention elementary and middle school.

Our $1,700 grant will kick off a partnership between the Center for Mindful Living and the Office of Innovation and Choice for Hamilton County Schools.  Teachers running innovation classes at Howard Connect (middle school), Battle Academy and Brown Academy (elementary schools) will get training on how to use mindfulness to be more successful in the classroom at bringing calm and focus to them and their students.

Mindfulness Training for Educators | Center for Mindful Living

At the end of the 2017-18 school year, 26% of first year Hamilton County Department of Education (HCDE) teachers left for good. Teacher stress is at an all time high. According to Gallup, 46% of teachers report high daily stress during the school year. This is now tied with nurses for the highest rate among all occupational groups. The consequences are being felt. Teacher stress is correlated with lower student achievement, reduced continuity for students and increased costs. Additionally, higher teacher engagement in their jobs predicts higher student achievement outcomes. Reducing teacher stress benefits students.

Department of Education projects increases in both student enrollment and teacher hiring over the next 5 years, yet enrollments in teacher education programs were down 35 percent and the number of graduates dropped by 23 percent between 2009 and 2014. Reducing teacher stress benefits teachers and public education.

PAUSE (Practices in Awareness and Understanding for Sustaining Educators) is a pilot demonstration program run by the Center for Mindful Living to teach mindfulness in HCDE classrooms.  PAUSE is partnering with three elementary schools in Hamilton County - Hardy, Dupont and Middle Valley, representing a wide variety of communities - inner city, multicultural, and suburban to demonstrate the effectiveness of the model across demographic groups. This program will benefit teachers and students by: reducing teacher burnout, increasing teacher retention, increasing prosocial behavior among students, increasing teaching time during the academic day, and creating a more positive classroom culture. Our $3,000 is well spent.

Prison Yoga for Hamilton County Youth | Leah Bockert

When a trauma certified yoga teacher with a big heart comes calling, we answer. Especially when it's to help kids. Her name is Leah Bockert.

The security for Hamilton County TN Juvenile Detention Center is classified as medium as its standards are created similar to maximum security without the tower structures. The building is solid concrete with limited access to fresh air, with heavy guard-to-inmate ratios. There are adjacent cage-like structures that inmates may use to get some limited exercise (basketball hoop and dip bars) for an hour every other day. Most of the time spent is in their pod or 2-man cells. Movements are strictly supervised.

Can you see how yoga might benefit kids living in this situation?  We sure can, and are providing the funding to launch Leah's program at the Hamilton County Juvenile Detention Center.

Leah has compiled extensive evidence that shows how effective yoga programs are in addressing the harmful effects of trauma and the resultant behavioral issues that trauma can cause. This includes scientific research and government data as well as personal testimonies from inmates taught by teachers trained by the Prison Yoga Project. In addition to the positive impact on mental health, these types of programs have been shown to lower healthcare costs for the institutions, an incentive on their part to allow and support these programs.

Mindful School for Teachers and Students | Lakeside Academy

In elementary school, everyone had math, science, and reading.  But did you ever have a Mindfulness class?!  Well, the students of Lakeside Academy will this school year!  When we were approached by educators at Lakeside Academy wanting to partner with Chattanooga's Center for Mindful Living, we jumped at the opportunity.  

Mindfulness experts will visit Lakeside Academy once a week and teach the Mindful Schools curriculum to one teacher at each grade level K-5 for 13 weeks.  A trained mindfulness educator from the Center for Mindful Living will meet with the teachers and students in their classrooms, and introduce one mindfulness lesson at the beginning of the week. The teachers and students will practice the lesson for the remainder of the week. All students and teachers will benefit.

This curriculum has been taught to over 300,000 students in 50 states and is based on a well-researched MBSR program started at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in 1979 by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn. It is suggested that mindfulness training will help students and teachers enhance self-awareness, self-management, and expand the number of skills they have available for stress management. Mindfulness empowers better learning.

Red Bank Elementary Lions' Wellness Den

At Red Bank Elementary, a Title 1 school with about 700 students, Annette Longoria Adams' primary duty is serving students with behavioral issues. Trained in mindfulness, Annette is able to teach students how to be aware and in control of their bodies and actions. When they are more aware, they are better able to self-regulate, be responsive rather than reactive, and make better choices. Those skills help keep them from repeating inappropriate behaviors.

Enter The UNFoundation. Our $2,500 will help Annette transform an unused room into a therapeutic, safe and dedicated space with a variety of interactive equipment and tools that provide students with personalized sensory input. What does that mean? We're going to help her buy things like a Beginner Yoga Poses Poster, a Hike & Seek Fred Crawling Tunnel, and a SensaRock Sensory Rocker. With these tools students can reset with Annette and return to class more calm and focused so they can be better prepared for learning and interacting with others.