About
Empowering Minds believes in empowering individuals of all ages to live their best lives.
Empowering Minds was created as a response to a variety of wellness needs in society including gaps in both physical and mental health, as well as academic achievement.
The most significant academic gaps include: lowering of academic standards, lack of trauma informed education, inadequate accommodations for girls with autism and ADHD, and girls’ disinterest in participation in a mixed-sex classroom.
Empowering Minds is happy to be able to work with what shows to be best for our students!
All our movement programs are created from a medically-based injury prevention program that include a trauma informed approach, which helps both those with and without trauma.
Empowering Minds’ holistic approach to academic physical and mental health is effective because it meets clients where they are in order to help them grow!
Staff
Experienced Educators
All instructors at Empowering Minds are certified Pre-K-12 teachers in addition to their area-specific training, and experience educating in ways that are comfortable and age-appropriate. We do not allow anyone without the above minimum qualifications to be an instructor at Empowering Minds.
Miss Aubrey
We are thrilled to welcome Miss Aubrey to our school! Miss Aubrey comes to us from Manhattan, but shares our Midwestern values, particularly when it comes to behavior and attire for students.
Miss Aubrey has an impressive history in the arts world as well as in professional sports training. She had worked with professional sports players, Olympic athletes, and internationally acclaimed actors and singers. Her students work for professional ballet companies, on Broadway productions and for television and movie networks including Disney, Nickelodeon and Netflix.
She completed her professional dance training at the School of American Ballet, and has danced with national ballet companies in addition to her work for networks such as Lifetime, the CW, Nickelodeon, Netflix, Disney and ABC. She is also a certified stress, grief and sport massage therapist, energy worker, and isolation and loneliness abatement worker with a focus on trauma and neurodivergence. These separate but important skills can be booked by private appointment.
Miss Stacey
A Rockford native, Miss Stacey loves her work at Empowering Minds. She has recently returned from working with family in Minnesota and is happy to be back helping us here!
Her specialty is tutoring and she enjoys working with Rockfords’ older students, helping to steer them towards successful academic goals and on to university life!
Miss Katherine
Miss Katherine has traveled the country and worked extensively as an educational advisor and teacher with schools of all sorts from private boarding schools to small one room schools – yes they still exist!
Miss Katherine is a certified school teacher with over 20 years of classroom experience. She uses her experience to see that all students are given the educational advantages often reserved only for the wealthy. Miss Katherine also specializes in childhood trauma and classroom application of trauma informed education.
Sensei Gonzales
Sensei Gonzales, a Chicago native, teaches our martial arts classes in Roscoe.She has been actively involved in the martial arts since she was 8 years old. She trained for 12 years in Chicago and became an instructor there, before moving to this area with her family. Sensei Gonzales loves teaching her martial arts skills to the local community.
Our Core Tenets
Respect
All students are taught to respect themselves, which includes being taught to recognize when they are not being shown respect. Students and their families are expected to show respect at Empowering Minds. This includes respecting others’ privacy in person and online.
Safety, Trauma Informed Education, and Social- Emotional Learning
The first requirement for any kind of learning is safety. Creating a safe environment for all students is our first priority. Empowering Minds also teaches social-emotional learning as we believe in identifying and expressing emotions in healthy ways.
Studies have shown that speaking openly about the subjects of safety and abuse is a powerful prevention tool.
Empowering Minds helps the community teach and reinforce these valuable lessons by speaking openly and often about online and in person safety, situational anwareness, abuse and bullying in ways that are age-appropriate.
Respecting Women
Empowering Minds believes in women. We believe that women deserve a wage that enables them to live independently. We also believe that women deserve to live free of fear and violence and without their personal information or gossip being spread online.
Empowering Minds often provides career and financial mentoring and workshops to girls and women to help them avoid becoming trapped in a cycle of abuse or poverty.
We Take Safety Very Seriously
As we work with and are staffed by populations that are often prone to violence ie women and children-we take care never to give out identifying information about staff or students.
Empowering Minds locations are not listed online for safety purposes. Exact locations are given after registration. This prevents unwanted individuals from showing up and gives students a great sense of safety in knowing this.
Online Safety- Don’t “Google” Anyone
Empowering Minds has staff that worked(s) with organizations dedicated to protecting individuals in the Witness Protection Program including human trafficking and stalking victims. We use this knowledge to protect staff,families and our clients.
One of the most surprising takeaways: in order to keep your community safe don’t “Google”anyone to learn about them.
Example: Sally does an online search for Susie not knowing that Susie just escaped an abusive relationship. Susie’s abuser has an automatic search engine notification for his victims name. The search engine notification will include the location of who is searching, and is discoverable even with a VPN. You don’t want Susie’s abuser showing up in our community, and neither do we.
In short, don’t use the Internet to try to find out information about someone. Be old school and ask that person instead. There are more women and children in hiding in Rockford than you would ever imagine. Help us continue to keep them safe!
Rules
Classes at Empowering Minds focus on building the brain and the body and in building and maintaining positive character traits and habits that will last a lifetime.
Empowering Minds adheres to traditional Midwestern values and behavior expectations for students and their families. Our classes are always fun, but can only be that way due to adherence to rules and expectations.
Our instructors are experts in their field, and as such their expertise is expected to be respected accordingly. They alone are in charge of their classes.
When you sign up for classes with Empowering Minds, you are making a commitment to those classes, to the other students and to the staff. Even the youngest student is expected to attend their classes. It is important to teach children to honor their commitments and to continue to participate in activities that are good for them.
Families are not allowed to observe classes in session other than on announced dates. This includes the very first day of class. If your child is not yet ready to be away from you from the first day, we recommend waiting to register your child.
Both families and students who cannot follow the rules set forth herein or by staff or follow standard societal expectations for decorum and behavior can be asked to leave permanently without a tuition refund.
General Info
Sadly we do not have the resources to accept students with severe behavioral, learning or physical difficulties.
Not all locations have space for parents to wait for classes end. Please inquire about this before registering for classes.
In an effort to keep all students and staff safe we do not make location addresses public knowledge.
Always consult with you or your child’s physician before enrolling in any physical activity.
Empowering Minds reserves the right to refuse admittance for any reason.
It is understood that participation in any activity has the potential to cause injury or harm. By registering for classes you agree to hold Empowering Minds and any staff or volunteer blameless and not responsible for any incident damages or harm that may be caused as a result of attending events or classes or driving to locations.
Former Students
Empowering Minds does not release the names of our students, current students or former students, for reasons of safety and privacy.