Jessica Morey and Chris Crotty answer questions about the Mindfulness Teacher Training program. Listen to the recording here.
If you have any additional questions, please contact us at teachertraining@ibme.com.
The iBme Teacher Training was created to offer a comprehensive teacher training program that supports a high standard for teaching mindfulness in communities. We believe that personal practice and retreat time is essential to being able to show up as an engaged and authentic mindfulness teacher. With this in mind, we developed a model consisting of residential learning-retreats that combines intensive silent meditation with didactic teaching and relational mindfulness. Our program is supported by expert faculty and includes an online curriculum, daily meditation practice, a practicum, and personal mentoring.
Yes, a scholarship application is included in the admissions application, if needed. We will be as generous as we are able, however scholarship funds are limited and we will not be able to offer any full tuition scholarships. We ask that you consider paying as much as you can while also exploring other funding options in your local community to supplement any scholarship that iBme may be able to provide. Scholarship awards will take into consideration iBme’s intention to make mindfulness more accessible to underserved populations.
There is an application fee of $50.
If your application is submitted prior to December 31, 2020, you will receive an admissions decision in early February. Applications received after December 31 will be reviewed on a rolling admissions basis with admission decisions made on a monthly basis. Space is limited so we recommend submitting your application as soon as possible.
We anticipated 40 participants in our 2021-2022 cohort.
The iBme Teacher Training will provide content and support for teachers to develop mindfulness skills specific for adolescents and adaptable for different settings. We will not provide a standardized curriculum to implement. However, as part of the training you will be introduced to several different school-based models and have access to faculty who teach in public and private schools, colleges, wilderness programs, and through workshops, trainings, and retreats.
Yes, we will support professionals in various fields to be able to effectively offer mindfulness teachings to their particular community.
Each participant will have a personal mentor, who will meet with them once a month to support on-going learning and meditation practice. Additionally, each student will be part of a small cohort that meets as a group once a month. All sessions will be held virtually through zoom.
Between retreats participants will complete assigned readings, listen to recordings, and commit to a daily meditation practice. Engagement with the material for each unit will include participating in an online forum and completion of a short reflection paper. The program will also include a practicum, in which you will develop and teach an introductory mindfulness class or program in a setting of your choosing.
The iBme Teacher Training does not identify with one meditation lineage, but draws from various traditions that have a foundation in mindfulness meditation and heart practices such as kindness and compassion.
You can list the person who knows your meditation practice the best, or the name of the person you have taken a retreat or training with.
Some participants in the iBme Teacher Training may be part of an ongoing training path towards becoming an iBme teen & young adult retreat teacher, however, completion of the iBme Teacher Training is not a guarantee of teaching on retreats. Teaching at iBme will be by invitation and may include ongoing personal mentoring by iBme senior faculty along with criteria for further training and personal development.
The following centers offer several retreats per year that would fulfill the retreat requirement for the iBme: Insight Meditation Society, Dharma Ocean, Spirit Rock, Natural Dharma Fellowship, Zen Mountain Monastery, Upaya Zen Center, Dharma Drum Retreat Center, Karme Choling, Shambhala Mountain Center, Vipassana Retreats (Goenka), Shinzen Young and Caverly Morgan.
While our teaching is geared towards teaching youth, we believe that the way we teach youth should be how we teach adults!
We were all youth once + what happened in our youth has a great impact on how we’re showing up as adults right now.
Use these tools + adapt them to other populations!
Yes, but it’s a bi-yearly program (every other year), meaning our next cohort will start in 2023.