Teachers can use meditation, guided imagery, conscious breathing, body scanning, drawing, and other activities related to personal and space awareness, along with gratitude practices. Students can also practice in the classroom and at home.
Mindfulness
sessions can be arranged daily or weekly with different teachers. Mindfulness is the awareness that arises from purposefully paying attention, in the present moment and without prejudice, to the development of the experience moment by moment.Many classrooms have some kind of signal that is used to bring everyone together or to focus busy minds in preparation for a lesson. Research shows that mindfulness skills improve memory, organizational skills, reading and math scores, while providing children with the tools they need to manage toxic stress. On a recent visit to Daniel Warren School, where she is a visiting mindfulness instructor, Cheryl Brause entered a second-grade classroom, sat down and made eye contact with the children who sat on the floor in front of her. Including parents when introducing a program is a way of exposing them to what mindfulness is and isn't.
As you become increasingly familiar with the usual patterns of your mind, mindfulness allows you to CHOOSE what your mind focuses on by interrupting its habits (for example, last summer, she earned her certification as a conscious educator and was part of a team of McLean School teachers and administrators who have implemented a schoolwide mindfulness program. In addition, mindfulness strengthens some underlying developmental processes, such as concentration, resilience and self-relaxation, that will help children in the long term. Compared to students who learned the social responsibility program, those who received mindfulness training scored higher in mathematics, had 24% more social behaviors and 20% less aggressive. In addition to teaching mindfulness in high school, Allen can see the benefits throughout the school building.
The word mindfulness can be used to refer to both the state of mindfulness, as described above, and to daily practices (e.g., most experts believe that the best implementation of mindfulness involves the teacher having their own mindfulness practice or, at least, an understanding). In mindfulness meditation, you learn to stay aware of what's happening and what you're feeling right now, whether you like it, don't like it, or you're confused about it. You can try to introduce a new mindfulness practice every week, every month, or every quarter, or simply choose an idea (mindful breathing, for example) and practice it throughout the year.
