Cultivating a Caring and Benevolent Environment in Education

The course offers an innovative, ground-breaking approach to cultivating a caring, benevolent environment in your personal and professional life and in educational settings. You’ll acquire simple, practical tools for creating such an environment, based on current, up-to-date research. No prior knowledge is required – just curiosity and the will to be surprised.

The course was developed by Prof. Ofra Mayseless from the University of Haifa, Israel, along with many others. We invite you to go on a journey in the realm of caring and benevolence. Enter a magical world of wonder and play, where you will learn mostly through experience.

The course includes theoretical models and practical tools for advancing the personal development of teaching staff and students and provides participants with tools for changing the social-emotional climate of educational institutions by relying on "contemplative education". Contemplative education promotes deep listening to the self and to others, connecting with one’s deep meaning of life and developing a sense of understanding and caring towards yourself and others around you. Within the realm of caring, participants will enter eight different gateways. These are gateways through which one can readily summon a deep and meaningful experience of caring and benevolence. * The course provides practical tools that do not necessarily require additional resources. *

**By relying on extant theory, research and practice the main aim of the course is to promote the possibility of applying "contemplative education" in the educational practice and personal lives of its participants and to create a caring and benevolent culture. **

The course is composed of 8 gateways:

Gateway 1: Welcome to the Realm of Caring
Invites you to learn about caring in general, and in education, and the reasons why it’s important and even essential to promote caring in education.

Gateway 2: Listening to Yourself
Opens the door to a more profound encounter with yourself and allows you to experience one of the most amazing tools we all possess.

Gateway 3: Seeing the Other
Focuses on our ability to feel empathy and compassion, and to see the other and the beauty of their inner world and spirit.

Gateway 4: Nature and its Magic
Invites you to experience nature, learn about its importance in our lives, and discover practical ways to promote and recreate its incredible qualities.

Gateway 5: Joy and Playfulness
Shows how you can infuse joy, pleasure, playfulness, and humor even into environments as stressful as the education system.

Gateway 6: Art, Music and Movement
Invites you to discover new realms and engage your heart and mind in creative methods of learning, experiencing, and teaching.

Gateway 7: Meaning and Life’s Mysteries

Focuses on our need for meaning in life and the importance of pondering life’s big questions.

Gateway 8: “Back to the Future”

Helps you gather all the insights, tools, and experiences you’ve acquired in the course, so you can use them to light the way in your personal and professional journeys. Including a surprise!

The course includes a short quiz at the end of each gateway, a final exam and a concluding essay describing the implementation of the skills acquired in the course.