Foster Care Training

Many of the challenges that youth in care face come from feeling disconnected. When we act from a place of disconnection, we can’t value, understand, or respect ourselves, we can’t value, understand, or respect others, we can’t value, understand, or respect the world around us. This training explores mentoring young people in connection: to themselves, to eachother, and to the natural world. These three concentric circles of connection rely on a foundation in mindful awareness, a tool that allows us to focus our attention in the present moment, in an intentional, non-judgmental way. Through the process of bringing mindful awareness to our own internal experience, to our experience of relationships with others, and to our experience of the natural world, we can explore each of these dimensions, get to know them more deeply, and come to feel connected to them. This training will explore concrete tools and develop provider’s skillfulness around mentoring connection.

Learning Objectives

1. Participants will be able to identify 8 hallmarks of connection
2. Participants will be able to list 3 characteristics of mindful awareness
3. Participants will discuss qualities of effective mentoring
4. Participants will be able to guide simple sequential exercises for helping young people develop connection to:
   • Self (Self-Awareness)
   • Others (Relational Mindfulness)
   • Nature (Nature Awareness)
5. Participants will review ways that building connection in one area supports building connection in other areas

INSTRUCTOR BIO
GABRIEL KRAM has a deep and abiding interest in and practice of mindfulness, emotional self-awareness, and somatics work. Over the past sixteen years, these modalities have transformed his life, and he is committed to training organizations and individuals in these tools to transform quality of life and organizational culture. He is the founder of Applied Mindfulness, Inc. He previously directed The Mind Body Awareness Project, whose innovative mindfulness-based interventions for incarcerated youth are being scaled into new national models of rehabilitation, and are the subject of both dissertations and forthcoming peer-review journal articles. He studied neurobiology at Yale College, and narrative at Stanford University. He brings a reverence for indigenous culture, sixteen years of mindfulness practice, ten years of mindful movement, and a lifetime of wilderness exploration, nature awareness, and creative expression to his work. He is the author of the Inner Life Skills Curriculum for Youth and Transformation through Feeling: Awakening the Felt Sensibility.