Creating a culture of belonging and holistic wellness for education-system employees leads to professional satisfaction and employee retention and well-being. Improved workplace culture creates a ripple effect to impact students’ success and positive outcomes. Now is the time for the education sector to unite and address these complex systemic challenges!
To improve the recruitment and retention of the high-quality educators our children need and deserve, we must take strategic, cohesive, and systematic action. This includes supporting educators across the Educator Advancement Continuum and prioritizing their social and emotional health and well-being.
This interactive, experiential session will explore ways to tend to wellness at the personal/individual, interpersonal collective and structural systems levels. Participants will leave feeling refreshed and equipped with resources that can be shared across the state. Improving educator well-being impacts the overall school climate and collective wellness for all; together we can create a culture of well-being!

Speaker:

Bhagavati Mullock, School Community Health Strategist, Oregon Department of Education

In her role at the Oregon Department of Education, Bhagavati weaves together the health and education systems by creating alignment both within ODE and across agencies with ODHS and OHA, connecting dots between the K-12 system and coordinated care organizations (CCOs). Before joining the Health in EducationHiE team, Bhagavati designed workforce resilience strategies with the Oregon Department of Human Services to support workforce recruitment and retention for the long-term care sector with Aging and People with Disabilities (APD).

Bhagavati worked many years with the Oregon Health Authority, both in the Transformation Center, where she provided technical assistance on CCO strategy, and in public health with the Women, Infant and Children (WIC) Program, where she helped promote health behavior change for families and state and local employees. Aside from breaking down silos and supporting cross pollination between systems and offices, Bhagavati supports teams and individuals in their journey towards holistic wellness.

Bhagavati is passionate about yoga and human potential and has been studying yoga since 1997 and teaching in various capacities around the globe since 2000. After the birth of her daughter, Bhagavati trained with Next Generation Yoga to become certified in teaching yoga to kids and recently co-created with her daughter a yoga, breathwork and meditation series for children ages 10-12 entitled Calm the Funk Down.

At the end of the day, Bhagavati’s favorite job is being a mom to her teenage daughter. To address her own well-being, you can find Bhagavati filling her cup with yoga in all its forms, tending to her garden, adventuring in nature with her family, and nurturing her own personal and spiritual growth. Bhagavati conscientiously practices healing modalities through breathwork, meditation, chanting, and other purification practices to cultivate the energy that she graciously shares with commUNITY.