Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/modeling-mindfulness-by-practicing-presence/5024085/
Mindful is the word of the moment, and mindfulness in education has exploded. It sounds so obvious; who doesn’t want to be mindful? The alternative, mindless, isn’t what most of us are striving for. However, mindfulness in education is in the precarious position of being relegated to a programmatic approach. We certainly don’t want to mandate mindfulness. This article will advocate that if teachers are to guide mindfulness practices for children, it’s important that teachers embody mindfulness themselves and have their own personal practice. Mindfulness isn’t meant to be a script—much like you wouldn’t ask a teacher who can’t swim to teach a swimming class from a textbook.
Let’s let go of the race to adopt a mindfulness curriculum. Instead, let’s take a step back, and focus on individual teachers and how to enhance their personal well-being by first exploring ways to practice being present themselves, before we layer on the expectation that they teach it to children. Being present serves both teachers and students.
Breaux and Wong (2003) assert that if well-trained, competent, caring teachers were consciously present in every classroom, we should witness a staggering increase in student achievement, motivation, and character improvement, along with a marked decrease ...