Mindfulness in Education – serie

A Mindful Teaching Community: Possibilities for Teacher Professional Learningdescribes a grassroots professional learning journey wherein a group of practicing classroom teachers researches their teaching practices and the role of mindfulness in their learning. Using a mix of methods, this book illustrates how the storiesof an educator can be uncovered, investigated, and transformed through practicing mindfulness within a community. Through the stories told in this collection the teachers learn to see greater connections between their individual ways of thinking, their actions, and the greater system they live and work in. The storied inquiry of the educators offers unique possibilities for teachers’ professional learning.

Mindful Alignment: Foundations of Educator Flourishing develops a foundation for educators to flourish by promoting self-awareness as a mindful approach to ongoing professional inquiry. It presents three mindful arts—the art of well-being; the art of positive relationships; and the art of living from strengths, passions, and purposes—detailing several practices that, when executed over time, can provide a focus for developing mindful alignment. The authors present an approach to personal, professional learning that encourages educators to slow down, create space to notice, and then nurture their intentions and actions toward fulfilling their purposes and passions, in order to grow a sense of flourishing at work and overcome the challenges presented by teaching in ever increasingly fast-paced, rapidly-changing, accountability-driven professional environments.

Mindful Alignment: Foundations of Educator Flourishing develops a foundation for educators to flourish by promoting self-awareness as a mindful approach to ongoing professional inquiry. It presents three mindful arts—the art of well-being; the art of positive relationships; and the art of living from strengths, passions, and purposes—detailing several practices that, when executed over time, can provide a focus for developing mindful alignment. The authors present an approach to personal, professional learning that encourages educators to slow down, create space to notice, and then nurture their intentions and actions toward fulfilling their purposes and passions, in order to grow a sense of flourishing at work and overcome the challenges presented by teaching in ever increasingly fast-paced, rapidly-changing, accountability-driven professional environments.

Much of the literature about stress and its effects on children is focused on how these various groups can learn how to “cope,” “adapt,” and/or “manage” stress. Practicing mindfulness, on the other hand, is about becoming familiar with how one responds to stress and, as important, how one can differentiate between stressors that generate beneficial actions and ones that escalate distress and discomfort. It was the latter approach that characterized the year-long mindfulness project that a group of racial, ethnic, and culturally diverse fifth graders in a local Boston public school participated in during the AY2016-2017. The facilitator of the project met with participating students for an average of 75 minutes, once per week. In large and small group discussions and numerous creative techniques and processes (e.g., photography, symbolic art) the participants explored, documented, and assessed how they experienced various forms of mindfulness and how those processes informed their thinking, emotions, and actions. As important, participating in the project provided the young people with opportunities to become ‘mindfulness ambassadors’ who brought mindfulness into their families, school, and respective communities.Engaging in mindfulness practices provided the young people with opportunities to develop life-long, skillful ways to become familiar with their minds, increase their self-awareness, more effectively respond to difficult thoughts and emotions, and provide strategies to foster positive connections with others. In addition, sharing and exploring strategies for developing a mindful perspective contributed to creating an environment for learning that intersected with young people’s capacity to be critical thinkers and thoughtful decision-makers. The greatest contribution of the book is that it is threaded with the voices of young girls and boys who speak about themselves, their thoughts and emotions, their experiences with fear, anxiety, success, and failure with directness, honesty, and a confidence in their skills and abilities. Their participation in the project demonstrates the possibilities classroom teachers have to integrate mindfulness practices into the school day. As important, teachers are invited to hone their own mindfulness practices to ensure that they are intentionally working with their own thoughts, emotions, and assumptions as they relate to the students they teach.

As teaching is socially, culturally, and politically constructed, it is important that teacher educators committed to social justice attempt to create secure environment where all voices are heard and teacher candidates can inquire into personally and socially challenging topics within a safe and caring classroom culture. Relationships of trust are fundamental to teaching about social justice and to being receptive as learners in such classes. Mindfulness on the part of teacher educators and teacher candidates can go a long way in fostering respect, openness and acceptance in such classes. Together they can lead to teacher educators and candidates thinking deeply about themselves, schools and schooling as they move towards a vision of a more equitable and just society. The teacher educators who have contributed to this volume recognize the challenges of balancing respect for their students with the call to social justice. Their accounts and critical reflections convey how relational and mindful approaches might offer positive avenues to self and shared exploration by teacher candidates and teacher educators alike. Several chapters attend to the challenges for educators as they encounter culturally and linguistically diverse contexts. Others attend to these issues within the complexity of diverse university classrooms in order to guide teacher candidates towards dispositions and practices that help foster inclusion and engage diverse learners and communities. Together, these chapters offer thoughtful approaches to living alongside aspiring teachers as they develop deeper understanding of the concepts of race and diversity, and inclusive approaches to teaching and learning.

Mindful Social Studies: Frameworks for Social Emotional Learning and Critically Engaged Citizens situates the field of social studies education as uniquely poised to integrate anti-racist, equity, and asset-based pedagogies with contemplative, mindfulness-based strategies to promote the knowledge, skills, and dispositions students need to be effective citizens. Students’ Social Emotional Learning (SEL) hinges upon their experience(s) engaging in authentic learning that strengthens cognitive skills, including critical thinking, self-awareness, reflection, compassion, empathy, and perspective taking. In this volume, the co-editors have curated reflective K-16 practitioner-style, research-focused, and theory-based chapters that explore social justice-orientated contemplative pedagogies, as well as mindfulness-related frameworks and strategies for teaching social studies and the social and behavioral sciences. In this book, chapter authors explore ways of cultivating specific mindfulness-related social studies dispositions and transformative rationales and approaches for critical mindfulness and SEL based on compelling arguments for meeting the needs of students, families, and educators in a dynamic and increasingly diverse society.

Burnout, imposter syndrome, changes in higher education, issues of free speech, structural inequality—the challenges facing academics today are daunting and overwhelming. How do we balance all of our responsibilities and goals without becoming exhausted? How do scholars decide if activism is right for them, and if so, what form should it take? There is, fortunately, great wisdom, solace, and practical advice for the modern academic in ancient wisdom traditions, indigenous cultures, and contemplative practices like meditation from around the world. In Resilience and Resitance through Contemplative Practice: Zen and the Anxious Academic, the author argues that contemplative practice is not a substitute for social change or a band-aid for the difficulties academics face, but rather a powerful tool in building resilience and resistance to forces that undermine our well-being. Learn, for example, how Jungian psychology and ancient dream practices can help with academic writing, how the concept of dharma can lead us to discern our vocation and if activism is the right path for us, and how meditation can help us rediscover our innate self-worth in a culture where value is judged by narrow definitions of productivity and achievement. With these tools and insights, we can create positive change in both our inner and outer worlds.

The Mindful Classroom: Constructive Conversations on Race, Identity, and Justice helps teachers and discussion facilitators practice and teach mindfulness and movement techniques that can deeply enhance conversations about race, identity, and social justice, furthering social justice efforts at their most basic stage—person to person—from the face-to-face or online classroom to the community at large. Mindfulness and movement practices can help us prepare for and engage in difficult conversations, and the more conscious we become of our emotional, mental, and physical landscape, the more we are able to engage proactively rather than reactively, consciously rather than automatically. We become able to act (or not act), rather than react in situations with others. The topics of race and social justice are timely, and they are triggers. Productive engagement with these topics demands we remain mindful of how we may be triggered and how we may be triggering others; it demands we pay attention to ourselves at a fundamental level, and it demands that we grant such attention to others.