Part II: Mindfulness’s 10 Greatest Teacher Lessons
6. Simplify
Simplifying can be physical, emotional, and cognitive. For me, simplifying my life has had a significant impact on my ability to remain mindful and joyful. For example, my desire to wait until I have all the information to make the absolute best decision in teaching can lead to paralysis and unnecessary overwhelm. Angela Watson in her podcast Truth for Teachers, introduced a “one touch rule”* I found to be very helpful with this. The premise is that if you are spending time contemplating two options, set a time limit for how long you will debate and then move to a decision right then so that the thought does not continue to clutter your brain. I have also found that simplifying my routine has afforded me greater concentration. I normally commit to checking my school email at three designated times during the day and then leave my notifications disabled. In my personal life, my spouse and I decided to go without internet and TV at our house for several months as part of our desire to de-clutter our lives. It was incredibly difficult at first. But, soon I began to crave music and reading instead of finding myself unquenched by the endless choices modern technology provides. Since then, even just limiting the hours that I am on the internet has helped bring calm to my life. Thoreau was on to something when he reminded us in his perennial text Walden, “Simplify! Simplify! Simplify!…Our lives are frittered away by detail”
7. Find Community
Accountability partners and professional support networks are the antidote to faltering in our resolves. Teaching can be a surprisingly lonesome profession as we often make decisions about our classes in isolation. For me, joining a mindfulness book study at my school helped encourage conversations with other teachers about well-being. Jennifer Gonzales also wrote a wonderful blog post on the importance of finding a co-worker that you can count on for support and inspiration called “Find Your Marigold.” Furthermore, a larger support network, be it online or through a program, cohort, or university, can be a huge help. I will be forever thankful for the Greater Madison Writing Project (GMWP) for providing a professional home for me. Through GMWP, was able to forge relationships with similarly-minded educators dedicated to improving their practice, and I carry the benefits of belonging to an authentic professional community in my daily teaching endeavors.
8. Make leisure meaningful
Sometimes the most relaxing things seems to be surrendering all our conscious thought to a movie or television show for an hour or two. While consuming media can be relaxing in the moment, it sort of hijacks our consciousness, and as soon as it is over we find ourselves plagued with all the worries that were temporarily silenced during the show. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in Flow discusses the power of finding leisure activities that provide challenge and mastery and auto-pilot activities that enable us to unconsciously problem solve. Not only is leisure enjoyable, leisure also make us more capable. The book Rest by Alex Soojung Kim Pang provides research on the practicality of engaging in leisure. For me, these activities include biking, painting, and writing. Leisure isn’t the opposite of work. It is what we must do in order to have productive work.
9. Decrease your paper workload
Can I get an AMEN?! Mindfulness allowed me to take a step back and evaluate what I truly need to grade. Through my summer research project with GMWP, I learned that I need to have students writing four times as much as I grade. So, I have been disciplined this year to allow students to write items that I don’t grade (and sometimes don’t read). Also, I have found ways to be more strategic about the way I assess writing. I have been running a student-led writing mentor program where students can get feedback on drafts from other students and work on specific skills I noticed needed improvement from a formative check-in. Fully utilizing technology to expedite feedback (for example, leaving verbal feedback through the app Voxer) and really hashing out my philosophy of grading, also allowed me to more efficiently process the items I do grade. Additionally, since my more mindful approach to classroom management has led to class sessions where students are more independently monitoring their work, I have more class time to confer with students, which is the most impactful form of feedback in the first place, and conveniently also lowers my paper load.
10. Become aware of bias and ego
We all have ego and we all have bias. While ego is often associated with self-concern or narcissism, it can broadly mean self-concept. We are all always acting to save face and protect the way others view us, since we desire to maintain a certain identity in the eyes of others. This is one I still have so much work on, but by being aware of how ego can rear its ugly head in so many ways has at least allowed me to more often investigate my intentions. For example, I use to reach out to the students that were failing my class and their parents to notify them. I definitely feel compelled to do this because I am afraid of being perceived as a bad teacher by my administrators if they were to find out I failed someone without making contact, so I can do that out of ego instead of out of genuine concern for the students’ progress. I guarantee students see right through this. Being aware of when we may be acting to save face, or acting out of self-based intentions, we can reconsider our purpose and perhaps approach the situation with a different approach or at least with a different heart. This also opens up more joy when you can genuinely investigate your reasoning and decide that what you are doing is because you really truly want to do it instead of doing it for others.
Bias, for me, was evident mostly in the assumptions I made about students. It came out most clearly for me when I realized through conversing with a professional mentor. I noticed I gave choice in writing assignments to my honors students and not my regular students. Why not? Because I didn’t think my regular students could handle it. When I started to give my regular ed students some of the “privileges” and choices I have my honors students, amazing things began to happen in my classroom. Students can read very clearly your expectations of them. And, whatever you think they are capable of doing, they will be capable of doing.
Check out PART I of this blog post.
*Truth for Teachers Podcast: “Overcoming decision paralysis: how to make better choices more quickly” S4Ep03
