Episode 27:

Mindful Education, Trauma, and Social Emotional Learning

In this episode David speaks with Meena Srinivasan, an expert in the field of mindful education and Social-Emotional Learning (SEL). They discuss the relationship between SEL and mindful education, the mental-health crisis of Covid and the particular forms of stress that educators are facing in school systems, the difference between mindfulness as a path versus mindfulness as a tool in education, and the relationship between identity, SEL, and traumatic stress.

Meena Srinivasan is a South Asian-American ‘edupreneur’ with deep expertise in the fields of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) and Mindfulness in Education. She is the Founding Executive Director of Transformative Educational Leadership (TEL), a racially and culturally diverse, compassion-centered, innovative program for educational leaders who are called to integrate mindfulness-based, social, emotional, academic and ethical learning into schools and school systems. Prior to this role she spent five and a half years working in partnership with the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) to implement SEL system-wide in the Oakland Unified School District. She’s also the author of Teach, Breathe, Learn: Mindfulness In and Out of the Classroom, SEL Every Day: Integrating SEL with Instruction in Secondary Classrooms, which was chosen as one of 2019’s Favorite Books for Educators by the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, and Integrating SEL into Every Classroom Quick Reference Guide.