We caught up with the brilliant and insightful TaTaNisha Copeland a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

TaTaNisha, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So, let’s start with a hypothetical – what would you change about the educational system?

A. One thing I would change about the educational system is the lack of focus on the mental well being of students and staff. It seems that is has taken an entire pandemic for the “powers that be” to realize that if educators aren’t okay , then the students will suffer. Teacher burn out is real and is the cause for the increasing teacher shortage throughout the country. It is encouraging to see some school districts offer upgraded employee assistance programs that offer free therapy for its employees.

B. One way to prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career is to introduce them to social emotional learning (SEL) at an early age. Introducing students to SEL competencies such as: Self-Awareness, Social Awareness, Self-Management, Responsible Decision Making and Relationship at an early age will provide them with the skills needed to maintain fulfilling and healthy lives and careers.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I am an elementary school counselor in Atlanta. I noticed that my students were experiencing anxiety, anger and other behavior issues that required coping skills. My daughter Maya and I also suffered from anxiety and mindfulness and meditation worked for us, so I thought it would work for my students too. However, in my quest to find mindfulness resources for them, it seemed that there was a lack of diverse resources that my students could identify with. There were not a lot of resources that talked about mindfulness that featured African American children. So with the help of my amazing son Jacobi and amazing daughter Maya, we decided to create Mindfulness Maya. Mindfulness Maya is a YouTube series of videos that promote Mindfulness and coping skills for those not so good feelings. Each video ends with a breathing exercise that can be done with children. We release videos weekly and it has received rave reviews from fellow educators that use the videos for their students as well.

How did you build your audience on social media?

The Mindfulness Maya target audience is educators. We wanted to offer a free resource for educators to use with their students. Budgets are limited when it comes to resources in education. Providing free access to our youtube videos helped build our audience on social media and it is helping us with our book sales as well. While we are no where near where we want to be, our social media presence has increased significantly within the past year. The key to building a solid social media presence is to make sure you know what audience will be able to use your product/resource and benefit from it.

How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?

We upload new content consistently that cover topics that educators can use in their classrooms. As a Thank You, We also gift our books to early learning centers to use with their students.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://mindfulnessmaya.wixsite.com/mysite
• Instagram: @mindfulnessmaya
• Twitter: @MindfulnessMaya
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCNpFzEQp1DlLbHxNaFIorJA

Image Credits
All images are ours.