Educating for Wellbeing (EW)

Awareness, self-regulation & connection: Empowering educators and students to cultivate wellbeing.

In Mexico, 1 in 2 children lives in poverty and 60% are behind in school by grade six. Gaps in educational outcomes across socioeconomic status fuel cycles of inequality and violence. EW aims to break these cycles by fostering learning environments that act as protective barriers. EW trains educators to improve their own SEC and well-being, foster SEL in students and implement systemic change.

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HundrED 2023

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Overview

HundrED has selected this innovation to

HundrED Global Collection 2023

Policy Report: Social and Emotional Learning

Social Emotional Learning (SEL)

Web presence

2018

Established

429K

Children

1

Countries

Target group

All

Updated

June 2023

AtentaMente’s curriculum is more sophisticated than any comparable efforts on the planet… it is amazingly comprehensive, well-constructed and goes far beyond anything similar that currently exists.

About the innovation

Why did you create this innovation?

Early childhood is a critical moment to cultivate children’s SEC, especially for those living in poverty and with delayed socio-emotional development. This hinges on educators’ own SEC and well-being; an adult who models and teaches these skills can promote a nurturing learning environment and the development of children’s SEC, which serve as protective factors for children now and in the future.

How does your innovation work in practice?

EW, AtentaMente’s proprietary curriculum, consists of three components.

1) A rigorous professional development program that uses a blended learning approach - synchronous sessions, a self-paced online course and a mobile app - to train educators to understand and practice SEC in their lives and classrooms and improve their own well-being.

2) An SEL curriculum for students, which embeds both explicit instruction and the practice of targeted skills into daily activities.

3) Leadership training that builds local capacity to ensure culturally and contextually relevant SEL implementation that enacts long-term systemic change.

EW has proven effective in improving outcomes in both educators and students. Results from pilot studies show positive changes in teachers’ SEC, stress and burnout, as well as improved students’ socio-emotional outcomes. RCTs conducted by the World Bank and the Center for Healthy Minds will publish results estimating the impact of EW in the following months.

How has it been spreading?

Starting in 2018 with 1,000 school principals across seven states in Mexico, by 2022, EW had trained 16,508 educators, impacting an estimated 429,208 students across 11 states. It currently runs in 5 states, aiming for full coverage for early childhood educators.

EW has strengthened its capacity to scale, tripling instructors from 60 to 180 in four years and working with hybrid and all-virtual delivery in close collaboration with local Ministries of Education.

In the next 2-3 years, EW aims to reach 50,000+ pre-primary and lower elementary school educators across Mexico and establish a core group of 50-200 leader educators per state to ensure SEL systemic implementation and sustainability. Looking forward, we aim to expand SEC to the adult network supporting children ages 1 through 6.

If I want to try it, what should I do?

We’re always looking for partners to expand and fund our programs in Mexico and the world.

Interested in adapting EW to fit the needs of your specific context? Email our Director at daniela@atentamente.mx.

We look forward to working with you in supporting more educators to cultivate their wellbeing, promote nurturing learning environments for students and embed SEL within their education system.

Impact & scalability

Impact & Scalability

Educating for Wellbeing is an innovative SEL curriculum combined with teacher training and the empowerment of local leaders who advocate for systemic change in schools to include SEL as a core aspect for education.

HundrED Academy Reviews

This innovation targets the full child’s ecosystem to ensure cohesiveness. It is a comprehensive program that targets the full range of SEL competencies, using evidence-based explicit and targeted practices.

- Academy member

Academy review results

High Impact
Low Scalability

High Impact
High Scalability

Low Impact
Low Scalability

Low Impact
High Scalability

Media

WISE Awards Film: Educating for Wellbeing

We are one of six WISE Award 2022 winners worldwide! A distinction that recognizes six projects around the world for their innovative solutions to educational challenges and their social impact. Know more about Educating for wellbeing https://youtu.be/0oTovK4QjG4

EW submitted to a Randomized Control Trial in Sinaloa. 2,162 educators were part of a Randomized Control Trial in 421 public preschools in Sinaloa, indirectly benefiting more than 50,000 preschool children. Educators’ emotional regulation, pro-sociality, and self-efficacy, and students' pro-social behavior and emotional regulation improved significantly. These results will be published soon.

Empowering leaders across the country for systemic implementation of SEL. More than 570 principals, supervisors, teachers and staff trained by EW’s Leadership component will spearhead the expansion and sustainability of SEL and support EW implementation school to state-wide in the Yucatan Peninsula, Coahuila, and Nuevo Leon in the next three years. Qualitative research will monitor their work.

Expanding EW in all Nuevo León The Ministry of Nuevo Leon has a vision of state-wide SEL implementation via EW. Together we aim to train all educators in the state in 6 years (2021-27), adapting curricular content so that children and youth from Pre-K to K12 can develop their SEC. Through mixed public and private funding, EW has benefited 3,000 educators and their 90,000 students.

EW grows with children in the Yucatan EW expands ages to accompany Mayan-speaking students’ SEL development into grades K1 to K3. Extending our PD to primary teachers, we developed age-appropriate curricular adaptations, didactic materials, and bilingual Mayan/Spanish games that provide continuous support for SEL skill development while revitalizing language and culture.

Social-emotional Learning in Maya Adopted by Mayan teachers, SEL was turned into “Maya Socioemocional”: videos, activities, and stories that rescue the uses and traditions of the Mayan culture as tools to help teachers promote and re-signify the Mayan language while developing socioemotional skills in preschool students. Watch the video: https://youtu.be/BN7BdSQ3rV8=share

AtentaMente - Educating from Wellbeing in the Border Belt

Daniela Labra, AtentaMente’s Director, shares more about what motivates EW's approach: the best way to effectively promote children's well-being and socioemotional competencies to thrive in life is empowering the network of adults that supports them. Listen to Daniela share our vision and propose a potential future venture: https://youtu.be/48jyCjgI_-k

Preschoolers in Maya communities are singing AtentaMente’s SEL curricula songs in their native language!

We have reached out to the youngest children and provided their parents with tools that allow them to create a shared family socio-emotional vision to strengthen family bonds in a respectful and supportive way that promotes the common good.Listen to this little preschooler sing, here:

"My sense of purpose was hurt... but taking part in EW was like the breeze of fresh air I needed"

Teachers, principals, pedagogical advisors and local education authorities across the whole public education ecosystem in the northern state of Nuevo Leon came together in EW's Introduction Course. Participants from secondary, elementary, preeschool and special education public schools were all moved and empowered by their experience with EW and eager to continue on to EW's second component: the online self-paced learning course.Listen them sharing their experience with and takes of EW in the following video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-KMaaJuMXY

Empowering the Yucatan Peninsula to sustain and adapt EW to better serve the local communities.

A core group of 160 preschool teachers and principals in the states of Yucatan, Campeche and Quintana Roo took part in EW’s leadership training component to empower them to sustain, adapt and scale-up EW in thier state. Respectful of COVID-19 guidelines, senior instructors at AtentaMente led 40 hours of in-person leadership training.

Meet Aitana, future SEL instructor for the State of Sinaloa!

As part of EW's SEL curriculum for students, educators teach children different strategies to train their attention, emotional awareness, emotional regulation and other socioemotional skills. Often, preschoolers take in all these different strategies and blend them together in a way that helps them navigate their daily lives. In this video, Aitana picks her favorite parts of different activities and brings them together in a very structured, playful and powerful guided excercise! Watch Aitana here!

"If you sit still like a mountain and take three deep breaths, you won't be angry at me anymore"

After his teacher showed the class strategies such as the "Mountain Pose" and "Breathing intentionaly" to foster their emotional regulation, this young preschooler decides to share them with his brother so that "he won't be angry at him anymore". Watch him in action!

A sneak-peak into AtentaMente’s free app! Download and try it now!

The AtentaMente app is freely accessible to everyone, whether they are taking part in EW, or are someone who is eager to explore their emotional world and start cultivating their own wellbeing.In the app you will find:- Free guided program that will accompany you as you cultivate more attention, calm, kindness and clarity.- Free short meditation videos to choose according to what you are interested in practicing.- Small reminders you can schedule throughout your day to - Programmable conscious pauses that will help you put into practice the habits you want to cultivate in your daily life.This app is a great resource for those in the EW program; it complements the other parts of the program - the live synchronous sessions and self-paced component - and acts as a resource to support their daily practice. It is a tool that educators can continue to use long after the program is finished. For those NOT taking part in EW - This App is also for you! Begin your journey of cultivating your skills such as attention, calm, kindness and clarity by through our 7-day guided program. Preview the AtentaMente app

An EW instructor modeling the SEL curriculum with students

Miryam, an EW senior instructor, at el Jardín de Niños Patria, a public pre-primary school in Zapopan, Jalisco, Mexico. She is modeling an SEL lesson to students so that the school’s teachers can see the curriculum in action.

“Every single teacher in Mexico and the whole world needs to take EW”: Teachers in Sinaloa

Maria, Penelope, and Flor, teachers from Sinaloa, Mexico, share their reflections after the last synchronous session of the 6-month EW program. They talk about what they are taking away with them from the workshop and the entire EW program, and express how deeply grateful they are for what they have learned and experienced through EW, including how it has supported them and their students. They share the way they have already begun to implement SEL with their students, and the positive impact it has had on the classroom climate and well-being of the students.Watch the video here

Dr. Richard J. Davidson shares how EW is “unlike anything else on this planet"

Dr. Richard J. Davidson, the Founder of Center for Healthy Minds at University of Wisconsin-Madison, is one of AtentaMente’s senior advisors for Educating for Well-being. In this video, he shares his belief that EW has the potential to become a showcase for how to successfully embed SEL into education and an exemplar to which the rest of the world can aspire.Watch Dr. Richard J. Davidson's video here

“I will carry EW with me for the rest of my life”: Hear from 3 teachers how EW has impacted them

Denisse, Tania, and Carlos, share their powerful experiences during the EW introductory workshop in which they explored the theory and practice of SEL. They talk about what they are taking away with them from the workshop, the differences they can identify in their daily life, how their perspectives have changed after taking part in the program and why they would highly recommend EW to others.Watch the teachers' testimonials

Live virtual workshop with parents and young children

Tania and Diana, two EW instructors, lead an EW workshop that helps parents and children in Escobedo, Nuevo León, Mexico develop skills to improve their mental health and well-being during the pandemic.

First session of Educating for Well-being in Escobedo, Mexico

Daniela Labra (Founding Partner and senior EW instructor), Clara Luz Flores Carrales (Mayor of Escobedo), Martha Patricia Herrera González (Director of Corporate Responsibility, CEMEX), and pre-primary school teachers of Escobedo in the first session of Educating for Well-being in November 2019.

Implementation steps

1. Explore

There are four ways you can learn more about and experience our program to figure out if it would be a good fit.

1. Schedule a meeting with the AtentaMente team to discuss how EW can support your specific needs. Contact Daniela, our Director at daniela@atentamente.mx.

2. Schedule a free trial session so that you can experience EW firsthand and get a sense of what to expect if EW were implemented in your context.

3. Download and use our free app. The AtentaMente app is freely accessible to everyone, whether they are taking part in EW, or are someone who is eager to explore their emotional world and start cultivating their own wellbeing.

FOR ANDROID. You can download the AtentaMente app through Google Play:

Download via Google Play

FOR APPLE. You can download the AtentaMente app through the App store:

Download via App Store

4. Explore a few sessions of the self-paced online component of the EW program. This will give you an idea of the teaching methods and kinds of materials EW provides to participants.

Use this link https://educar.atentamente.mx/login and this login information:

Email: estudiante@atentamente.org.mx

Password: Atentamente.2021

2. Assess

Once you decide that you want to work with us to implement EW in your area, the first step is assessing the needs of the local context.

The team at AtentaMente works with you to determine your needs by discussing topics such as what challenges the school communities are facing, what support do teachers and principals in your area need, what your short- and long-term goals are for your education system, among others.

Then, working together, we will find the way that EW can best support your needs and work within your context to achieve the desired results.

3. Select

Once the needs assessment is completed, together we will select the components of EW to be implemented in order to achieve the expected results in the planned time frame.

This could include:

Determining which of the resources and materials to use according to your unique needs

Designing a schedule for implementation

Identifying key local stakeholders to include from the onset and throughout implementation

Establishing the EW instructor and support teams

Deciding whether a research component will accompany program implementation

Any other strategies relevant to your context

4. Get ready

The team at AtentaMente will work closely with you to develop a strategy for implementation, such as determining the target population, designing a recruitment strategy to ensure participation, and how to communicate with educators and stakeholders about the program.

At this point, it is crucial to involve all relevant stakeholders in your context and establish a consensus for how they would like to be involved with the implementation going forward. This is the time for everyone that will be involved in the implementation to communicate their expectations, set their goals, and have clarity on their roles. AtentaMente will support you in preparing your teams to monitor these goals and progress along every step of the implementation process.

Are you interested in including a research component? If so, this is when we would determine what assessment measures to include in the research investigation.

5. Go!

The next step is to begin implementing the EW program. Ideally, local authorities, funding partners, EW directors, and all participants come together in the inaugural live session to kick-start the program.

Then, we continue implementing all activities of the EW components selected, be these synchronous sessions, online course, or booster sessions, according to the determined plan. Throughout the entire program, participants will receive continuous pedagogical and technical support 24/7 from specialized instructors and support teams at AtentaMente.

The key to EW's success is maintaining participants and stakeholders engaged and motivated. For this, EW comprises specific strategies such as weekly check-in meetings, support via Whatsapp messaging groups and email, periodic attendance records and reports to track engagement, among others. Additionally, we would ideally meet with local stakeholders once a month so that everyone can stay updated on the progress of the implementation and make decisions when appropriate.

We are committed to ensuring the most effective support and training for participants, which hinges on continuously improving the way we interact, share and learn throughout the program. We do this by enabling spaces to receive feedback directly from participants and stakeholders and then putting that feedback into action.

6. Evaluate

As we hit program milestones, as well as towards the end of the program, we assess participants’ experience with EW and measure key participant outcomes such as levels of stress and burnout, development of prosocial skills, and motivation and preparedness to implement SEL with students.

This allows us to effectively estimate the effects (and even impact) of EW on expected outcomes. When possible, we welcome opportunities to also measure the outcomes of EW on the students and the learning environment participants enable.

We also collect qualitative data (semi-structured interviews) from participants in order to hear about their experience with the program and if they noticed any differences in themselves or their work after completing it. This allows us to tell the “full story” on how EW is contributing towards participants and students’ wellbeing.

7. Wrap up

In this final step, together we will review everything we have achieved, identify key milestones, and reflect on the original goals that were set.

Then, we determine next steps for you based on the following criteria:

Do you want to scale EW to reach more participants?

Do you want to focus on empowering a leadership group that will build their capacity so that they can scale and sustain the program from the ground up?