Programs & Partners

Partnership With Children

Partnership with Children provides critical mental health services for students and engages families in the school community. We support schools in low-income communities across all five boroughs of New York City.

Founded in 1908, Partnership with Children works to help children overcome the chronic stress of growing up in poverty so they are positioned to succeed. Originally called Big Sisters, our organization was established to provide support and mentoring for girls referred by the family court system. In the early 1990s, we made the strategic decision to place full-time social workers into schools in the city’s most under-served communities. Over the past twenty-five years, we have refined our model of expanded mental health services and systems-building for schools to address the unique set of mental and behavioral health challenges faced by children growing up in poverty.

In every school, our staff collaborates with school leadership to customize a plan to address the needs of each community. We provide student counseling, family supports, staff training and community development in schools so that students can learn and thrive. Partnership with Children has demonstrated significant positive results: increasing student attendance and on-task behavior, improving teachers’ classroom management skills, engaging families in their children’s education, and partnering with schools to develop vibrant community schools.

Brain Power Wellness

Brain Power Wellness teaches physical and mental brain breaks, mindfulness practices, and social emotional wellness strategies that support a positive classroom atmosphere. We partner with Teachers, Students, Parents, and Administrators to create a sustainable, healthy, happy and focused school environment.

When we are physically healthy, energized, happy, passionate, creative, focused and confident we are simply better at what we do.

All the research-based brain exercises we teach are proven to not only improve student health and achievement they work for us, too!

By engaging in everyday classroom routines that include simple mind-body exercises such as breathing, meditation and stress management techniques, we are able to bring a powerful dose of wellness into our lives and the lives of our students.

Brain Power Wellness believes it’s important for all of us to have a big, beautiful dream that gives our life a vibrant purpose and keeps us motivated and inspired.

BGES Brain Power Leaders
Mrs Celentani & Ms. Zaiya

This program helps teach our scholars mindfulness activities, provides teachers different brain break activities for all content areas, yoga techniques, and meditation. It also focuses on positive socialization, regulation of emotions, and character development. Our main goal is to empower our scholars to achieve academic success and social emotional health. Ultimately for us we utilize these tools to become responsible and proactive citizens of our global community. We will always want to have a collaborative environment therefore the scholars can take an active role in their academics. This will lead our scholars to be independent thinking, show compassionate leadership, and be creative problem solvers.

Click on any of the videos to check out mindfulness activities such as breathing, balancing, and more! If you click around you will also see links for our brainpower wellness sites on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube!