I have to admit that I hit a wall a while back. I was mindful of the wall, but it was there nonetheless.
I started my journey to bring mindfulness to my students earlier this year with a sense of urgency and vigour. I knew that what I had to share was not only worthwhile, but also vitally important for the wellbeing of my students. I took two online courses about mindfulness in education, bought some books, followed the tweets of the guru’s, practiced on my own, and taught the lessons to my students.
And then came the wall.
It appeared almost out of nowhere. Of course it had always been there, but now it was messing with my mindfulness. It was a big, messy, towering giant of a wall. It was made of stress and ticking clocks and looming report cards and coaching responsibilities and piles of marking and other unidentifiable detritus. It caused my enthusiasm to deflate and it made my brain hurt.
“But that’s exactly the moment in time that you actually need mindfulness the most!” said all the experts.
Easier said than done.
But they’re right.
A couple of weeks ago, one of my students was having a really difficult day. When chatting with him, he asked me if he could just stop and take a few mindful breaths. Now, admittedly, this came after quite a lengthy hiatus from the mindfulness lessons I’d been teaching. But he still remembered the techniques, applied them on his own, and was able to turn his day around.
My revised plan is to bring one moment of mindfulness to my classroom each day. It might be during a discussion with a student. It might be a whole class lesson or example. It might just be me taking a few deep, mindful breaths and feeling grateful for the gift of teaching such an incredible group of students. However it happens, mindfulness has taken root and can only continue to grow.
And as for the wall…
My student have me a gift that day. He didn’t shatter the wall or make it disappear or punch an enormous hole in it. He simply gave me a ladder. The wall is still there. It will likely grow and shrink with time, but now I can climb it whenever I please. You should see it some day…the view from the top is breathtaking. 🙂
What a great post, Danny!
Sometimes, the harder we try to find balance (through mindfulness, exercise, or whatever), the more stress it can add to our lives, and the less balanced we feel (@lmcbeth and I were just “virtually” chatting about this). But your revised action plan makes the pursuit of mindfulness totally doable.
How incredible is it that your mindfulness lessons resonated enough with your student that he – on his own and some time later – employed a strategy to help him turn around his day? Whether it’s one student, the whole class, you, or your Cohort 21 followers that are impacted by your efforts to promote mindfulness, then I would say your plan has been a great success!
It was great learning about mindfulness from your at our last F2F, and I’m excited to be hearing more about your journey as it unfolds. Best of luck!
That is quite a view from up there! Your ladder motif is an excellent one – do I sense a classroom activity coming on?! The Mindfullness ladder where students add to the different steps and you practice each one that has been added?!
In our last F2F I mentioned this Happiness Unit that one of our teachers at BVG is designing and running (you and @aharding were chatting about this). It has been very successful – I don’t know if you follow me on Instagram, but I posted a few pics of the activities that students are performing (notes, decorating lockers, etc…). But it is the action of the students that is building the capacity within their classroom (dare I say grade) to channel the energy that being happy can bring.
Check out Allison’s post too: http://cohort21.com/allisonharding/2015/03/19/in-the-words-of-the-dalai-lama/
See you soon,
garth.
Hmmm…maybe this question is out of left field, but do you have a daily meditation / mindfulness practice of your own? I’m curious if you think that cultivating a space for this practice PERSONALLY is an important step in being able to guide students towards this? I mean, if we didn’t personally ever read outside of school, could we really get our students passionate about literacy?
Have I shared these books with you yet?
http://www.amazon.ca/Buddha-Classroom-Wisdom-Inspire-Teachers/dp/1616083158
http://www.amazon.ca/Mindful-Teaching-Mindfulness-Teaches-Anything/dp/0861715675
I’ve loved them both: they might be worth checking out!
That was refreshing to read! It’s always nice when your impacts on students are visible and can keep you going.
My first quick thought was that you might be able to build back some of the momentum with mindfullness in your class by celebrating these success with them. Some activity/discussion where you and your students can share with the group examples of times they have been mindful and how it has helped them.