The Path Of The Mindful Teacher

In this session, we will discuss what we mean by the “Path of the Mindful Teacher” and acknowledge the important, but often a very difficult job that each of us is doing as educators. Our days are often filled with stressful experiences and busyness, our students come to us with a variety of challenges. We are the one person orchestrating the dance for the entire classroom. Sometimes this can feel overwhelming. Discovering the way of the mindful teacher will help us find some freedom from the stress and anxiety that may permeate our classroom and fill much of our days. There is a solution and the good news is that it begins with each of us.

In this session, we will discuss the basics of mindfulness practice and how we can bring mindfulness to both our everyday activities and to a formal sitting practice. We will discover the power of pausing and bringing some awareness to the activities we do every day. We will also consider where we can designate a space for our daily practice at home and how we can create a space to anchor ourselves in our classroom.

In this session, we will explore the idea of self-care and how it is not selfish, but in fact, helps us to be able to continue doing this incredibly difficult and demanding job with grace and dignity. We must put the oxygen masks on ourselves first before we can be our best selves for our students. We will note some places where we can implement self-care into our schedules and work with feelings of aversion in caring for ourselves first.

In this session, we will explore moments of mindfulness in our interactions with students and also consider those moments that may not have been so mindful. We will recall these moments and see if we can identify how we feel in our thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations before we react to our students’ behaviors. How can we learn how to respond rather than react? What was different having chosen a different response and why?

In this session, we will explore more deeply our often ingrained reactions and emotions to student behaviors or other school stressors. We will explore the thought patterns associated with the emotions and see if there something behind the emotion that is causing discomfort. We will learn how to bring mindful awareness to our classroom scripts without judgment.

In this session, we start to dive a little more deeply into how we can create a safe container for our students through the practices of mindful listening and mindful communication. We start to consider how to balance our focus both inward in working with our own emotions and outward when interacting with students.

In this session, we build on our increasing awareness of how we are showing up in our classroom. We will explore some simple mindfulness techniques to employ throughout our days, specifically in the midst of our teaching times. We will explore ways to discover some pockets of time that could be used for a mindfulness reset throughout our days.

In this session, we explore the importance of cultivating positive emotions through gratitude and heartfulness practice. We uncover some simple ways to tap into the power of positivity and how this practice can help to transform our wellbeing from the inside out allowing us to show up differently for our students.

In this session, we discover the importance of reflective practice in our teaching and how mindful self-compassion can help us work with our new awareness. We explore the idea of letting go of perfectionism and working with what is both in our schools and our classrooms. We work with acceptance and non-judgment as we reflect on who we are in our classroom.

In our final session, we take a moment to reflect on the past lessons and chart a path for the future of how we will continue implementing mindfulness into our classrooms and life. We will meet ourselves where we are at and gently sit with what is, knowing we now possess additional tools in our toolbox. We have a solution to the busyness and the stress of our classrooms and it begins with each of us.