Meet Monica Fitzpatrick of Mooka in Longmont

Today we’d like to introduce you to Monica Fitzpatrick.

Monica, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I think I can speak for many teachers when I say that the job is stressful. I’ve been in countless schools and classrooms in multiple states across the country, and one thing that is always the same: kids and teachers are stressed and overwhelmed. I knew I needed to find some way to handle the large stress load that I was facing. For me, my yoga practice became my saving grace. Yoga taught me how to breathe and remain more calm in moments of intense stress. And although I felt more equipped to handle the stress load of the classroom, I soon realized that so many others in the schools needed to know these tools as well. That is when I shifted my purpose in life from teaching kids how to read, to teaching kids how to breathe.

Please tell us about Mooka.
Yoga has been proven to provide quality self-regulation tools because of the inherent nature of self-awareness that the practice teaches. There is a lot of yoga out there on the market, and lots of programs designed for kids, but Mooka is different because of its simplicity. You don’t need countless lessons and a large variety of games and stories to teach these simple tools. I know how busy schools already are, they don’t want another complicated, year-long curriculum that takes large amounts of training and money to bring to their students. So I designed something different, something better.

I developed a nine-lesson curriculum to teach the foundational aspects of yoga, mindfulness, and growth mindset that clearly deliver self-awareness tools to young people and beyond. Beginning at the end, the main goal is to teach self-awareness of our own body, mind, and heart. To get there, I broke it down into nine simple and effective lessons that build upon each other. And the best part, once you learn it all you can immediately begin practicing on your own because I designed it that way! Education is power, but you have to own that education, and by that, I mean to be able to do it on your own. Mooka is the most sustainable way to teach these skills because the ultimate goal is that my students know the practice well enough that they can practice independently.

I would tell kids in the classroom that once you learn how to read, you can read to learn. I kept this idea close, and now I teach kids how to read their body, mind and heart, so they can learn themselves. This is a life-changing practice that can stay with our young people for the rest of their lives, and it may just be the most important thing we choose to teach them. Mooka teaches it and teaches it effectively.

Future Plans: What are your plans for the future? What are you looking forward to or planning for – any big changes?
Mooka is currently an enrichment program in the St. Vrain Valley School District and is beginning to be implemented by local principals during the school day. But I wouldn’t be teaching growth mindset if I didn’t also practice it myself, so of course, we are still growing! Mooka will continue to be taught in more local classrooms and one day be offered across the country through an accessible digital platform. Stay tuned! And if you are a teacher, principal, or parent and want to see Mooka in your child’s life, please contact me.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.mooka.org
• Phone: (970) 587-3206
• Email: monica@mooka.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mookaclassrooms/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mookaclassrooms/

Image Credit:
All photos that begin with DSF or DSC, and at the same location, were taken by Free Spirit Photography

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