A student’s sense of belonging can come from connections with both peers and adults. This downloadable guide includes five strategies for building strong relationships with students and creating a positive school culture where everyone feels they belong.

*Activities & Templates are provided!

This article explains 6 ways to use breathing for stress relief and mental wellness.

"Learning skills to support our mental health early in life can provide significant benefits to our physical, emotional, and social growth for life. For example, for children to choose calm in times of stress, they first need the opportunity to experience calm and practice arriving at a calm state.

All of the tools you find in this toolkit help cultivate calm, mental health, and overall well being. In this resource, learn 9 yoga and mindfulness practices for mental health that are suitable for a variety of settings and time frames: each tool may be as brief as 1 minute or expanded as needed.

Use the tools individually or all together to tailor your own experience, now and for the long term."

*Counting Breath
*Core Breath
*Yoga Poses at Desk
*Brain Break
*Relaxation

You will need to share your email to download the guide.

A smartphone App designed to help teens and youth to cope with anxiety - promoting a shift in thinking about anxiety.

Available for iPhone/iPad in the apple store:
https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/mindshift/id634684825?mt=8

Available for android in google play store:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bstro.MindShift&hl=en

"Enjoy doing yoga workouts from home with your favourite trainers such as Jillian Michaels, Jane Fonda, Billy Blanks Jr., Tara Stiles and many others. This channel might offer the best variety of any out there – It even includes meditations with Deepak Chopra (maybe a good way to relax AFTER your workout!)"

"The Move to Learn Team is EXCITED to debut a redesigned website and a new collection of FREE classroom videos to help teenage students shake out the energy and regain focus! "

This site is great because there are videos targeted toward teenagers and most break breaks are for younger kids.

There are also collections for Prek-K, K-3 and 4-6.

This playlist has brain breaks for prek-grade 12!

This toolkit unpacks six specific, practical tools that can be used to share yoga and mindfulness with teens/adolescent students.

All six tools prioritize two important objectives:
- How to address common roadblocks that (seemingly) limit teens’ access to yoga and mindfulness, and
- How to liberate and affirm teens’ identities in yoga and mindfulness

Enter your email to download the toolkit.

These fun workout videos include dances to Disney tunes and all other sorts of fun music.
Move. Get Fit. Have fun!

Interactive videos combine movement with mindfulness, helping kids center themselves for learning. The modules are short, making GoNoodle ideal for kids that need a quick energy boost through exercise.

Check out the GoNoodle app too!

Give your eyes a break with this audio-only Digital Wellness Break. Follow along as teacher Stephanie's voice guides you step-by-step through "Tense and Release," a mind-body-breath integration that's designed for children and effective for all ages.

TODAY’S MINDFUL MOVEMENT
🦦 TENSE AND RELEASE 🦦

“It’s the end of a very long day. Back-to-back-to-back meetings. You sign-off from work, gather your belongings, rush out the door... only to get stuck in traffic. Tension rises.

A busy lifestyle with no time to relax can lead to frustration, tension, and chronic stress.

Making time in our busy days to mindfully unwind can help. Tense and Release is one of our favorite relaxation exercises to do just this. By consciously tensing and releasing our bodies, we are able to tune out what is going on outside and tune in to what’s going on inside. And in tune, consciously let go of the tension and stress we carry.

This audio-only relaxation will allow you to return to a state of balance. Just hit 'play' and give your eyes a rest for the next four minutes.” (Yoga Ed.)

The Children’s Health and Well-being Measure (ACHWM) is a tool that gives Indigenous communities and organizations an overview of the health and well-being of children and youth in their communities.

The measure offers insight into children's Spiritual, Emotional, Physical, and Mental wellness.

The survey is completed on a tablet that engages children and acts as a catalyst for honest conversation. The results are shared with each child or youth in a visual form on the Balance Chart.

"Let it Ripple is a non-profit film and idea studio. We produce films, original series, and live and virtual experiences that inspire audiences to think about what it means to be human in today's world."

Mental Wellness Basics introduces students to concepts related to mental health and wellness. Stigma associated with mental health can have serious and negative impacts on help-seeking behaviors, and many mental health conditions and symptoms can be significantly lessened through prevention. As such, the lessons in this course focus on:

Supporting students in identifying threats to mental health early, and taking measures to increase factors that protect mental health.
Introducing students to the experiences of others in order to develop awareness and empathy, reduce stigma, and provide facts on the prevalence and symptoms of mental health conditions.
Fostering a mental health mindset to help students develop feelings of self-efficacy and skills that promote and model advocacy for self and others.

This Course Covers
Self Awareness
Self Management
Relationship Skills
Social Awareness
Responsible Decision-Making

Mental Wellness – Basics is a course that introduces adolescents to concepts related to mental health and wellness. Stigma associated with mental health can have serious and negative impacts on help-seeking behaviors, and many mental health conditions and symptoms can be significantly lessened through prevention. As such, this course will do the following:

Support students in identifying threats to mental health early, and taking measures to increase factors that protect mental health.
Attempt to reduce stigma by introducing students to the experiences of others in order to develop awareness and empathy, as well as by providing facts on the prevalence and symptoms of mental health conditions.
Foster a mental health mindset in students and help them develop feelings of self-efficacy by introducing knowledge and skills that promote and model advocacy for self and others.

This Course Covers
Self Awareness
Self Management
Relationship Skills
Social Awareness
Responsible Decision-Making

Ages: 16+

Overarching Question: How do we define success and how does this definition impact our lives?

Here, you’ll find a resource of simple, step-by-step instructions on how to deal with symptoms related to specific anxiety disorders as well general strategies — such as how to get a good night’s sleep or how to deal with uncertainty in your daily life.

Follow the link to the Google Play or Apple Store to download the Release App for Mindfulness. This app was created by Keynote Speaker Trinna Markusson at iLearn & SWTA for 2020.

"This new wellness app incorporates mindfulness and tapping techniques to help empower you to begin to deal with daily stress, difficult emotions and limiting beliefs that can hold you back from living your best life! With categories for adults, teens, kids, classroom use and a special high-performance category for athletes, Release can help you to stay present and to live with more peace and ease."

For more information visit (copy and paste into a browser) - http://www.presentmomentliving.ca/

"The Science of Happiness is a free online course that explores the roots of a happy and meaningful life. Students engage with some of the most provocative and practical lessons from this science, discovering how cutting-edge research can be applied to their own lives.

Since it first launched in September of 2014, The Science of Happiness has been hugely popular: It is one of the top 10 courses on the edX platform, where it is hosted; more than 500,000 students have registered for it so far; and students who complete the course report significant increases in their happiness and decreases in their levels of stress and loneliness."

You will have to register to take this free online course!

A recent survey found that 37% of teens say they have poor mental health.

This 6-week course aims to curb this mental health crisis by bringing together the best insights from Dr. Laurie Santos’ popular Yale course Psychology and the Good Life.

In this course, you will explore what the field of psychology teaches us about how to be happier, how to feel less stressed, and how to thrive in high school and beyond. The lessons along with short weekly ‘happiness homework’ assignments will ultimately prepare you to put these scientific findings into practice. The ultimate goal is for you to feel better and build healthier habits.

Parents, teachers, and other professionals supporting teenagers may also find the course beneficial.