Back To School Mindfully

In this lecture, Amy Edelstein, founder of the Inner Strength teen mindfulness programs talks about how to establish a mindful foundation in high school classrooms. She emphasises that the atmosphere cultivated must be one of calmness, curiosity, and care. This talk is interspersed with short guided mindful breathing and instructions on how to create shared agreements that work to co-create a spacious classroom culture.

Reviews

I am not a classroom teacher in a purely educational setting, but I do teach for the American Red Cross within my company and work with clients of working age who present with a wide range of documented disabilities, including anxiety and inattention. Physical conditions, intellectual disabilities, mental health, substance abuse, and combinations of them all are present uniquely in all my clients. Even working one-on-one with them, I have found it helpful to do a brief moment of silence where I simply look at them with a slight smile. It saddens me to have observed over the years, and been told directly by my clients, that they are not used to people smiling warmly at them without expecting anything from them in return. (Unconditional positive regard seems in short supply these days, alas.) After the first few times I do this when meeting with them, they start adapting quickly and even begin smiling at me as they walk down the hall towards my office door, and I can feel them calming and settling.

I have practiced various forms of meditation much of my life, but have had a more formalized daily practice for the last 4 years or so. Different techniques work best for me under different conditions, and I find this to be true with my clients and the employees I teach. The constant in it all is being mindful of self and place. Not everyone has the demonstrated capacity to utilize theory of mind successfully, but for those individuals I teach the rule of reversal, asking what their reaction would be if this was done or said to them, and then asking them if their response is how they want others to feel because of what they choose to do, essentially. Most of the time this clicks; other times it takes longer or a slightly different approach.

When possible, I like to incorporate a moment of stillness, though not articulated as such; by that time the mirroring reflex has kicked in and the clients tend to follow along without being aware of it, silently waiting. Sometimes I do not get this opportunity, such as when they are short in time or in a heightened emotional state. In the latter case, they know - because I tell them this at intake - that I will be contacting them to follow up on what happened. This seems mostly helpful.

I appreciated this talk a great deal. I actually selected it, not realizing the target audience was teachers (then upon realizing this, thinking my brother and his wife who are teachers might find this interesting). I am in a doctoral program at present, and the new quarter began today. The one class out of all the didactic courses that has provoked the most anxiety has now started. I have severe anxiety relating to math, in no small part to an undiagnosed mathematics learning disability (discrepancy model) that I finally got confirmed shortly before starting my Master's degree back in 2004 because I wanted accommodations for the statistics course I needed to take. My last stats class had been as an undergrad in 1994 and was quite traumatic. My only caution to teachers and professors who may read this - if you are teaching from the course textbook which you wrote yourself, that does not give you a free pass to ignore students who come forward with questions or tell them to "read the book, I explained all that in there. You need to keep up with reading the text. I won't do the work for you." We taught ourselves. We barely made it, and yes, we complained, and yes, action was taken.

But in my Master's degree program, I had much anxiety going into that stats class. It wasn't as bad as I thought, as I remembered important parts. However, today I begin the follow-up class to the intro stats class from 14 years ago - advanced inferential statistics. I have prepared as best I could over the last quarter, attending school Quantitative skills center webinars reviewing basic concepts, reviewing my stats terminology dictionary and test selection criteria, listening to funny stats books on my commute, and pouring over a cartoon guide to statistics which has helped me visualize the concepts. Still, even with accommodations in place, a kind instructor with whom I have spoken, supplemental instruction available twice a week, and more, I have looked at this first week of discussions and the responses already made by co-learners - and am a bit on the verge of panic. Those responses sound so effortless and informative. I doubt they truly were, but I had trouble parsing the discussion question itself, much less forming an opinion on it. I am eager to begin the SPSS portion, as I can do computer work without issue and was the SPSS lab tutor as an undergrad, in fact.

My issue, well known to me, is that I overthink and feel a compulsion to thoroughly understand every nuance of every area within my field. This includes stats, for the purposes of my research. It causes anxiety in a tremendous wave, nearing panic attacks. My long-time therapist is probably happy to have this change if subject, as normally due to HIPAA requirements, I discuss workplace matters with him. And he has suggested looking at how high my standards for myself are. They are indeed high, always have been. In this class, this creates anxiety.

And so it came to be that I decided this morning to search for a meditative way to address this academic anxiety, specific to this one class. (My other class is much easier for me.)

I am able to step back and observe myself, maintain awareness in most cases, and usually calm myself before the anxiety gets out of hand. In listening to this, the thought dawned upon me that I use these techniques, some anyway, with my clients. Why not use them with me when I notice the same signals within myself? "Physician, heal thyself." (Or rather, "Psychology Ph.D. student, heal myself.")

This was a very valuable insight, and I am glad I opted for this talk and continued on even when I realized it wasn't exactly what I had been seeking. Sometimes the most helpful wisdom comes from places we are not looking.

I have bookmarked this and will likely listen again. Thank you so much for sharing so rich of a practice fir teachers, and also fir self-use. I do feel anxious still, but more calm, more centered, in control, and with a deep knowledge that I can and I will successfully complete this course, and that I know already I am not alone - there are multiple ways already known to me within the class itself to help facilitate success by every single person in the course.

Thank you once again. I appreciated and even enjoyed the listen. 😊 I see you and the light within you. Be well. 🤲🏻❤🤲🏻

Excellent suggestions for working with the kids. Thanks for the inspiration!