Social and Emotional Support for Teens in Crisis

These photos bring back memories from the program I developed for City as School, a transfer high school in Tribeca. The program was an eight-week internship for new students, located off campus at a yoga studio in Dumbo. The students engaged in six hours of contemplative practice every week. We practiced qigong and yoga, as pictured here, held council circle, journaled, meditated, shared, and generally chilled out. It remains one the most meaningful programs I created to meet the needs of young people in crisis.

Today I'm thinking about how much the young people I worked with were grappling with at the time. And how much more complicated the lives of New York youth have become since the schools have closed. This fall, one of my goals is to come up with a program to support these kids as so many support structures they've been counting on have collapsed.

Working Well is an official vendor for the NYC Department of Education. (not an easy feat!) So if you have any ideas for a program or specific needs for your school, please reach out.