The practice of mindfulness has been one of the most beneficial components of my self-care routine as an educator. I knew that I wanted my students to experience the same benefits I was receiving from practicing mindfulness, so I took it upon myself to explore mindfulness in the classroom.
After searching online, I stumbled upon the book, Happy Teachers Change the World by Thich Nhat Hanh and Katherine Weare. I was so pleased with the practicality of this book! It provides a progressive approach to incorporating mindfulness in your classroom as a teacher. Like anything, mindfulness takes time to learn and get used to. This book provided me with strategies on how to incorporate mindfulness by simply starting with breathing techniques, and incorporating movement and sounds (like yoga and chime work) afterwards.
One of our first teaching opportunities in our program was through one of our classes that was held at a local school in Prince George. Once a week, we would get together with small groups of learners for 1.5-2 hours and teach Social Studies. Given that I was working with grade 1 students, it was extremely difficult to keep their attention on one topic for this time frame. I found this to be the perfect opportunity to integrate some mindfulness techniques. I started by slowly integrating “breathing breaks” where we would take a few minutes to focus on our breathing. I was amazed by how calm and concentrated my learners were from using this simple technique! After a few sessions of using breathing breaks, I decided to incorporate some movement into our mindfulness practice. I picked up a set of Strong Body and Mind Yoga cards from our District Learning Commons. These cards connect the practice of yoga with Indigenous culture through the topics of respect, witness, gratitude, and connectedness. My learners LOVED practicing mindfulness with these cards, and they even led into some inquiry lessons on First Nations culture!
Since then, I have become comfortable embodying and practicing mindfulness with all of my classes, even as an on-call teacher! One morning, I was called in late to a Grade 1 classroom with no lesson plan. The learners were quite thrown off by the change in schedule, and were quite busy around the classroom. I figured this would be a great opportunity to incorporate mindfulness! I had my chime with me, and had all the learners find a comfortable space to lay their heads down. At the sound of the chime, I told my learners that we were going to be as quiet as possible and focus on our own breath for a silent count of 4 seconds on the inhale, hold for 4 seconds, and count of 4 seconds on the exhale. When I rang the chime, I was blown away by the response of the learners! Their busy bodies and loud voices responded so well to this activity, and we were able to carry out my back-up lesson plan for the day with calm, concentrated bodies and minds.
I am constantly researching new mindfulness exercises, which I will be using in my upcoming practicums. My goal is to make mindfulness a daily routine in my classroom somebody so that my learners are able to use mindfulness both inside and outside of the classroom!
Reflection from final practicum:
The incorporation of mindfulness into my final practicum came naturally to me. I brought in my chime on the first day and introduced my students to it. They LOVED the chime, and were constantly asking to use it. We practiced different meditation and breathing techniques, and each time, I would invite a new student up to ring the chime. The chime was our grounding tool, and I knew I could always count on mindfulness when the students needed to re-center. During one lesson, I noticed that students were extremely off-task and ungrounded. I decided to scrap the remainder of the lesson and bring out the chime to allow for some reflection and mindfulness. I was amazed by the behaviours of the students before vs. after the chime. It was as though the chime allowed students to calm down and re-center almost instantly!
