Breathe for Change Podcast

Breathe for Change Podcast is hosted by Dr. Ilana Nankin, co-founder of Breathe for Change. After certifying 20,000 educators and impacting millions of students, we're digging deeper into what really drives learning: Human Intelligence. Each week, we explore how educators can unleash the full human potential in themselves, their students, and their communities to transform education from the inside out.

Breathe for Change Podcast is a education podcast hosted by Breathe for Change, with 35 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Breathe for Change hosts Breathe for Change Podcast, a education show with 35 episodes published.

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  Breathe for Change Podcast

  Why Student Engagement Starts in the Nervous System

  Sep 30, 202659 min

  Most teachers can name the moment a lesson gets away from them. A student who will not take a seat. A conversation that will not stop. A head that has been down on a desk since second period. Nothing in a preparation program covered this. The default is to manage the behavior and get back to the content. Dr. Ilana Nankin and Beth Schreiber make the case that this gets the order backwards. A student in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn is not refusing to learn. Their nervous system has left the window where learning is possible, and redirection cannot reach a brain that is offline. What works is reading the state before responding to the behavior. A loud, defiant, out-of-their-seat student is usually over-activated and needs grounding: Feel Your Roots, a few slow breaths. A silent, sleepy student hiding in a hoodie is shut down and needs energy: Mindful Movement, Shake It Out, a Sun Breath. The wrong tool for the state makes things worse, so students first learn to notice and name their state. Weather Report gives them the vocabulary. Affirmation rewrites the story they carry about themselves. Peer Cheer and Appreciation Circle build the belonging that makes it safe to not know yet. Hopes & Dreams and Intention Setting tie today's work to a future they want. These span the Somatic, Emotional, Relational, and Universal layers of the Human Intelligence framework. A student engages with their whole self, or not at all. BEST MOMENTS Beth's reframe of the only question that matters: from "what's wrong with you?" to "what's going on inside of you?" "My job is not to teach math and literacy right now." Ilana on why regulation comes before content, every time. A guided Weather Report you can do along with the episode (unless you're driving). A student walks up to say: I was so anxious, I took three deep breaths, and now I feel better. The practices become theirs. The Hopes & Dreams wall: a North Star for the mundane days. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN How to tell whether a student is over-activated or shut down, and why the two need opposite tools What fight, flight, freeze, and fawn each look like in a classroom, including the students who never cause a problem How to guide Feel Your Roots, Weather Report, and Peer Cheer with any age group How to teach students the language of the nervous system so they can regulate without you How to build a Hopes & Dreams wall and connect daily intentions back to it Why your own regulation is the first classroom management tool you have EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS 00:00 - Introduction: Student Disengagement & Trauma-Informed Care 01:12 - The Challenge of Classroom Behavior & Student Engagement 02:25 - What Disengagement & Disruptive Behavior Looks Like in Practice 05:36 - Mindset Shift: From "Problem Student" to Dysregulated Nervous System 07:09 - Understanding the Nervous System & The Window of Tolerance 08:25 - Hyperarousal Zone: Fight or Flight Responses 13:31 - Hypoarousal Zone: Freeze State & Internalizing Behaviors 16:03 - The Fourth F: Fawning & Appeasing Behaviors 19:30 - Mirror Neurons & Educator Self-Regulation 21:15 - The Human Intelligence Framework: 5 Layers of Engagement 24:51 - Somatic Intelligence: Decoding Signals & Modeling Self-Awareness 27:50 - Redefining Regulation & Building Interoception 29:46 - Grounding Practice: "Find Your Roots" Storytelling 32:00 - Energizing Mindful Movement & Tension Release Practices 35:12 - Emotional Intelligence: The Internal Weather Report 40:26 - Reframing Mindsets Through Student Affirmations 45:18 - Relational Intelligence: Peer-to-Peer Cheers & Community 51:16 - Universal Intelligence: The Hopes & Dreams Practice 55:36 - Holding Accountability: Daily Intention Setting 57:30 - Transforming Education & Breathe For Change Resources HASHTAGS #Education #ClassroomManagement #SocialEmotionalLearning #StudentEngagement #TeacherWellness #Belonging #BreatheForChange

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  Breathe for Change Podcast

  Repair and Gratitude: The Two Skills That Make Connection Possible

  Sep 23, 202656 min

  Somewhere in every school week there is a moment that never gets resolved. Two students stop speaking after recess. A comment from a colleague lands wrong and sits there for a month. Most of us were never taught what to do next, so we get past it as fast as possible.Avoiding conflict feels like keeping the peace. Dr. Ilana Nankin and Sam Levine make the case that it does the opposite. Every unspoken resentment becomes the lens through which the next interaction gets read, and the relationship erodes quietly. Escalation is no better, because no repair is possible from a nervous system in panic. The work happens in the stretch zone between the two, and it IS a teachable skill.It starts with a conversation: what does repair look like here, and what does it not look like? From there, the Peace Process gives students a route through conflict: name what actually happened before the story about it, name the feeling underneath the anger, name the need, make a request. I Hear You, I'm With You, and My Truth build the two halves of any repair, being heard and being able to hear. Gratitude does the rest. Peer Cheer and Shower of Acknowledgment train students to give appreciation and to receive it. All of it lives in the Relational Intelligence layer of the Human Intelligence framework.The harder question is the one the adult answers first. Nobody can make you feel anything, and owning that is the price of teaching it. Across a week, what is the ratio of correction to acknowledgment your students hear from you?If there is a repair conversation you have been avoiding, this is your invitation to have it. The relationship on the other side is what makes the work worth doing. BEST MOMENTS "Nobody can make you feel anything." Ilana on why "you made me feel" ends every repair before it starts. Sam asks a Google product leader which human skill students will need most. The answer breaks his heart a little. Forty emotion words on a pre-K wall by June, each one a photo of a real face in a real feeling. Why comfort-zone conflict avoidance and panic-zone escalation fail for the same reason, and what the stretch zone asks instead. The Shower of Acknowledgment, the practice Ilana says makes her cry every time. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN How to open the topic of repair with students by defining what it looks like and, more importantly, what it is not How to separate what happened from the story about what happened, the first step of the Peace Process Build emotional vocabulary that reaches the primary feeling underneath anger Teach the pause between a trigger and a response, and what to ask in it Run a Peer Cheer or a Shower of Acknowledgment, and teach students to receive one Track your own ratio of correction to acknowledgment across a week EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS 00:00 - Intro & Highlight Teaser 01:14 - The Power of Connection in Education 03:10 - Navigating Disconnection and Isolation 04:44 - AI Technology vs. Human Connection 06:58 - Defining Relational Intelligence (RQ) 08:56 - The Importance of Relationship Repair 12:13 - The 3 Zones: Comfort, Stretch, and Panic 18:05 - Core Repair Practices: Hearing, Empathy, and Truth 19:24 - Step 1 of Repair: Separating Fact from Story 23:42 - Step 2 of Repair: Primary vs. Secondary Emotions 29:40 - Building Emotional Literacy (The Emotions Wall) 31:47 - Conflict De-escalation & Secondary Classroom Impact 37:37 - Relational Intelligence as a Core Life Skill 42:22 - The Second Pillar: The Power of Gratitude 45:57 - Practical Exercises: Shower of Acknowledgment 47:35 - How to Give and Receive Appreciation 50:22 - The 5:1 Positive-to-Negative Ratio (Gottman Research) 52:53 - Summary: Gratitude and Repair as Pillars of Connection 55:05 - Breathe for Change Master's Program & Outro HASHTAGS #Education #SocialEmotionalLearning #RelationalIntelligence #ConflictResolution #Belonging #BreatheForChange

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  Breathe for Change Podcast

  Teacher Burnout Isn't Your Fault. Here's What Actually Helps

  Sep 9, 20261h 1m

  You are not burning out because you are bad at this job. You are burning out because no one trained you for the part of the job that actually breaks people, and because the story you have been telling yourself about it has gone unchallenged for years. That story usually sounds like this: I am a failure. I can't do this. I don't have what it takes. It feels like an assessment. It is actually a habit, and habits can be rewritten. Dr. Ilana Nankin and Beth Schreiber have both lived on the wrong end of that sentence. "Burnout was our story," Ilana says, and between them they have spent more than a decade building the thing they needed and could not find: a practice set that treats the educator as the intervention, not the delivery mechanism. This episode hands you three of those practices and walks you through the hardest one live, on tape, with Beth as the volunteer. The tools come from the Emotional Intelligence layer of the Human Intelligence framework. Feeling Finder gives you a way to locate the emotion sitting underneath the tight shoulders and the fast drive to school, before it starts making decisions for you. Story I Tell Myself surfaces the belief driving the feeling. Re-THINK Your Story takes that belief apart with five questions, asking whether it is true, helpful, inspiring, necessary, and kind, and then rebuilds it into one you can actually work from. By the end of the hour, the sentence that nearly ended Beth's career has become something usable: I am feeling depleted right now, and I am deserving of refueling. Same starting point. Different life. You will also get the reason any of this holds. Shame does not survive being spoken out loud to another person who has been there, which is why these practices are built for community rather than for willpower, and why Beth's own school data shifted the way it did when she brought a handful of colleagues and her principal into a weekly practice. Best Moments -Why the profession runs on "not knowing yet" in a world that has stopped tolerating any waiting at all -The five question sequence that dismantles a limiting belief in under ninety seconds -What the window of tolerance is, and how to tell when you are above it or below it -The four kinds of intelligence school never trained you to teach, and why they are the ones AI cannot touch What You'll Learn -How to name what you are feeling before it starts running your classroom, using Feeling Finder -How to find the belief underneath the feeling, and why that belief is driving your actions more than your circumstances are -The full Re-THINK sequence, and how to use the same acronym in reverse to build a story worth keeping -Why isolation is the mechanism of burnout, and what changes the moment another educator says "me too" Episode Highlights 00:00 - Open: The Most Burnt Out Profession in America 01:25 - Welcome: Addressing the Educator Burnout Crisis 03:08 - Why Burnout Hits Teachers So Hard 07:42 - What Traditional Teacher Preparation Programs Miss 10:00 - Overcoming Isolation, Shame, and the "Itty Bitty Shitty Committee" 11:30 - Ilana's Personal Story: From Rock Bottom to First Breath 14:34 - Integrating Simple Mindfulness Practices in the Classroom 18:02 - The PhD Research Behind Breathe for Change 23:00 - The Healing Power of Community and Vulnerability 27:00 - Internal vs. External Obstacles: Shifting Your Narrative 33:20 - Why Educator Transformation Must Come First 41:40 - The Human Intelligence Framework vs. Artificial Intelligence 46:50 - Somatic Intelligence & The Window of Tolerance 48:10 - Practical Tool 1: The "Feelings Finder" Practice 51:33 - Practical Tool 2: "The Story I Tell Myself" & The THINK Acronym 55:20 - Real Results: How 6 Weeks of Practice Flipped Stress & Satisfaction Data 59:55 - Closing Encouragement & Breathe for Change Resources #TeacherWellness #TeacherBurnout #Education #SocialEmotionalLearning #Mindfulness #BreatheForChange

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  Breathe for Change Podcast

  Back to School Series | Episode 6: How Teachers Can Use AI Without Losing the Human Side of Teaching

  Sep 2, 20261h 4m

  AI arrived in classrooms faster than any guidance for using it. Most educators are being handed the tools without being handed a framework, and the result is a lot of quiet uncertainty about what counts as appropriate use, what counts as cheating, and what is worth protecting regardless.This conversation offers a way through. Dr. Ilana Nankin is joined by Khushali Narechania, Director of Learning at aiEDU, a former high school math teacher who spent a decade developing educators before moving into the AI and education space. Together they work through what these tools actually are, where they genuinely help inside a teacher's week, and which parts of teaching and learning should stay untouched.Educators will come away with practical entry points that require no technical background, a working understanding of why AI produces what it produces, and clearer language for talking about all of it with students.Building context, thinking with AI rather than handing your thinking over, considering impact — these are the three skills at the heart of Breathe for Change's AI, Teaching, and Learning course. This conversation is where they start. Best Moments A student flagged for fully AI-generated writing, and the five-minute assignment that revealed what actually happened The elementary classroom where AI wrote the skits and students did all the acting, reading, and revising Why AI is a prediction machine, not an answer machine - and what changes for teachers once that clicks Why oral arguments and in-class presentations are coming back as assessment Why productive struggle has to stay protected, even when a tool could remove it What You'll Learn Where to start with AI if you've never used it, without putting student data anywhere near a tool How to give AI enough context that the output is worth editing instead of rewriting How to design assignments so the skill you're assessing is the skill actually being demonstrated How to build AI expectations with students as classroom culture rather than enforcement Which parts of your week need a person, and which can take an assist What to hold onto as the tools keep changing Episode Highlights 00:00 - Opening: Preparing Students for AI-Driven Careers01:16 - Guest Welcome: Khushali02:54 - The Current Landscape of AI Policy in Education08:43 - Core Opportunities and Risks of AI in the Classroom11:31 - Shifting Educator Mindsets from Resistance to Empowerment15:22 - Demystifying the Technology: Math and Probability vs. Fact-Giver20:08 - The 3 Meta Skills: Context Building, Thinking with AI, & Impact27:01 - Practical AI Use Cases for Teacher Efficiency & Differentiation33:06 - Adapting AI Strategies for Elementary vs. Secondary Students36:50 - Rethinking Student Assessment & Academic Integrity47:32 - Real-World Examples of Successful Classroom AI Integration52:18 - Simple First Steps for Educators Dabbling in AI58:00 - The Future of Education & School as a Human Convening Space1:02:37 - Closing Thoughts & Breathe for Change Course Preview#Education #TeacherWellness #ClassroomManagement #SocialEmotionalLearning #AIinEducation #FutureOfLearning #BreatheForChange

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  Breathe for Change Podcast

  Back-to-School Series | Episode 5: Classroom Management, Reframed

  Aug 26, 20261h 4m

  What Nobody Taught You About Classroom Management Nobody teaches you how to run a classroom. Kristy Herrera cannot remember a single lecture on it in her teacher preparation program. Chrizia Dela Rosa was told to be strict and not to smile until December. Between them, they now hold two of the most visible roles an educator in California can hold. Chrizia Dela Rosa was named California Teacher of the Year. Kristy Herrera was elected teacher union president. Neither of them got there by learning to control a room. Kristy describes the shift that changed her practice as moving away from managing student behavior and toward “figuring out what they needed.” Dr. Ilana Nankin brings them together - one kindergarten teacher and one high school math teacher - to ask whether the work of classroom management is actually the same across thirteen years of student development. It is. The language changes. The underlying human needs do not. Together, they get practical about what that means: what to do on day one, what to do when your structures get tested, and what to do when the classroom comes apart anyway. And beneath every strategy is a deeper shift: from managing behavior to understanding the whole human being in front of you - and creating the conditions for every student to feel, connect, learn, and thrive. Best Moments Why Chrizia was taught not to smile until December, and what she does instead The first-day family photograph that stays on Kristy’s classroom wall all year The question almost no teacher asks families: “Who should I call when your child does something well?” What changes when you stop asking what is wrong with a student and start asking what they need The three C’s - culture, consistency, and connection - invented live in the final minutes of the conversation What You’ll Learn How to build classroom agreements students will actually hold each other to - from kindergarten through high school A practical first-week approach for learning who is actually in your room, not just who is on your roster How to create a calm-down space that supports regulation rather than becoming a reward Why consistency matters when building a classroom rooted in trust and connection How to hold meaningful consequences without abandoning a relationship-centered approach Episode Highlights 00:00 - Opening: Educator Energy and Student Connection 01:21 - Introduction: Rethinking Classroom Management 03:14 - Back-to-School Check-In: Feeling "Scare-Cited" 04:05 - Redefining "Classroom Management" Beyond Control 05:34 - Shifting from Compliance to Whole-Child Support 11:03 - Co-Creating Classroom Agreements vs. Rules 18:48 - Intentional Ways to Build Student & Family Relationships 27:05 - Streamlining Daily Check-Ins & Data with AI 31:31 - Cultivating Belonging Through Presence & Eye Contact 37:40 - Trauma-Informed Teaching: Choice, Voice & Emotion Naming 47:43 - Safe & Predictable Routines to Foster Self-Regulation 52:56 - Navigating Escalation, Accountability & Restorative Consequences 56:26 - Conflict Resolution & Nonviolent Communication (Peace Corner) 1:00:50 - The 3 C's: Culture, Consistency, and Connection 1:01:46 - Resources at Breathe for Change About Breathe for Change Breathe For Change is leading the movement to transform education through human intelligence, starting with the people who make it possible. As a transformative higher education institution, we offer teacher trainings, certifications, and graduate degree programs that empower educators to enhance well-being, improve educational outcomes, and reach their full human potential. Connect With Us Learn more about Breathe for Change's Master of Education and discover how to bring these practices into your classroom, career, and life: https://breatheforchange.com/ #BreatheForChange #HumanIntelligence #ClassroomManagement #Teachers #Educators #TeacherWellbeing #StudentWellbeing #SocialEmotionalLearning #WholeChildEducation #EducationPodcast

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