Educators For Nonviolence

Here at the Metta Center, we have a special fondness for teachers. Michael was a professor at UC Berkeley for over 40 years, and experienced firsthand how formal education was not fulfilling the potential of its transformative power. 

As the school year begins anew, we are pleased to announce the re-launch of Educators for Nonviolence (EFNV), our resource portal for educators that Metta first inaugurated back in 2004.

We have redesigned and updated our EFNV website, adding a host of new resources for creating harmony in the classroom and furnishing students with an age-appropriate introduction to that all-important, inspiring field of nonviolence. You’ll find tools and support across a wide range of topics including Restorative Justice and collaborative learning.  You’ll also find support for your own ongoing education in nonviolence.

As part of EFNV’s re-launch, we have also created a new online course specifically for teachers: Nonviolence 101: Crash Course for Educators. Completion of the course will qualify you for 1 CEU, and includes a 30 minute consultation with the Metta Center.

In developing the course, we surveyed teachers and discovered some essential information: most educators have no time for self-development, and many teachers are actively looking for ways to bring the principles of nonviolence into their classrooms.  We created our course with these things in mind. 

Nonviolence 101: Crash Course for Educators is teacher-focused.  The journey of nonviolence begins from within, and we frame the course around a teacher’s personal learning of nonviolence. We also provide practices focused on resilience and self-care, as we are aware of how much of themselves educators consistently give to others.  The course is also designed in bite-sized sections that can be completed quickly, with plenty of resources to come back to and explore further.

Finally, the course includes multiple lesson plans that correlate with each section of the course, so that teachers can bring the fruits of their own experiences with nonviolence to their students and classrooms.

If you are a teacher of any kind, know a teacher, or have a teacher, make sure to share these resources.  At the heart of this re-launch of Educators for Nonviolence is our commitment to creating community and being in shared dialogue together.

Please let us know how these resources are serving you! We’d love to hear how you and/or you friends and family are putting them to use. You can reach us at: info@mettacenter.org