Mindfulness for Teachers and Students Alike

As our guest Dr. H Associate Professor, Director of School Psychology Counseling, Educational Leadership and School Psychology, began speaking about Mindfulness, I became immediately engaged in her discussion. Mindfulness is often defined as awareness of present experience with acceptance. Mindfulness is "paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment and non judgmentally." Jon Kabat-Zinn, Professor of Medicine Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, is credited with the secularization of mindfulness, which is now used in a number of professional fields including medicine and education.

Ways to pay attention to the present:

• Put external distractions away
• Learn to quiet the internal distractions through self discipline
• Get into a "flow state"
• Don't live in the past or future

The concept of practicing mindfulness as a professional educator is extremely exciting to me. I never thought that meditation could be incorporated into a classroom setting! Practicing mindfulness makes sense however, since working in the educational field can be stressful. Its practice has been shown to reduce teacher stress levels and even prevent teacher burn out. Developing a personal practice can offer significant benefits to you and your students by decreasing your stress and enhancing your well being, in turn improving the learning environment in your classroom and making you a more effective teacher. Practicing mindfulness decreases stress, depression, anxiety, and hostility, while enhancing executive function, compassion, and empathy. In her article Mindfulness: A Guide for Teachers, Dr. Amy Saltzman "strongly recommends that you discover your own inner stillness and quietness and practice creating P.E.A.C.E. in your own life before you attempt to share these practices with students."

Pause

Exhale

Acknowledge the situation as it is

     Accept the situation and your reaction to it

     Allow your experience

Choose how you will respond; may take a few moments, days, weeks, or even months

     At its best, responding involves additional Cs:

                  Clarity: about what you want, what your limits are, and what you are responsible for

                  Courage: to speak your truth and to hear the truth of others

                  Compassion: for yourself and for others

                  Comedy: or sense of humor and a willingness to not take ourselves too seriously

Engage with people, with the situation and with life

Check out Mindful Living Programs and learn more about Mindfulness at this website.

"The newly emerging discipline of Mindfulness in K-12 education is actively investigating whether offering mindfulness to children and adolescents enhances attention, executive function, and learning, and promotes pro-social behavior and general well-being." (Saltzman 2) Mindfulness teaches students "how" to pay attention. And this way of paying attention enhances both academic and social-emotional learning. Student stress frequently inhibits their ability to learn. However, as previously mentioned, practicing mindfulness enhances executive functions, such as goal-directed behavior, planning, organized search, and impulse control all of which are essential in becoming a successful learner. Executive functions also correlate with working memory, emotional regulation, and resilience. In addition, Mindfulness enhances compassion and self-compassion has academic benefits, especially when dealing with the perceived failures that often afflict adolescents.