Dismissal Observations

    Students need to feel comfortable to take risks, and in order to learn they need to take risks. It's the end of another productive day in my classroom and my students are buzzing with excitement about things happening in our school and in our classroom. I love to listen in on their conversations during these moments, the moments when they don't realize anyone is listening.

    I hear bits and pieces of excitement about math they are learning with my colleague. There is helping and sharing of ideas about how to do certain things on their chrome books. There are questions about what books are being read and explanations of stories that they share with each other. Reminders about bringing certain books home. Laughter about desks being messy and classmates helping each other find materials. There are helpers tidying up our room and getting it ready for the next day. There are students writing and students drawing and some taking the time to get a head start on their homework. All of this until the announcements call them to leave. 

    I love these moments so much even in the chaos of them. From these moments I learn about my students' personalities. I see how caring they are with one another. How they go out of their way to help one another. I learn about their interests. I learn about how they solve problems. But most of all I see how happy they are and how excited they are to learn and be in school. This makes me happy, this makes me very happy. 

Meditation in Schools

I am thinking a lot about the benefits of meditation in the classroom. I have been reading, "The Wise Heart," by Jack Kornfield and learning about the benefits of mindful meditation and the power of noticing the external and internal energies that pass through me on a daily basis, minute by minute, and second by second. I started seeing an improvement in my ability to handle myself in my life, even in difficult situations using some of these strategies I learned from this wonderful book. I then began to wonder how these strategies could also help my students inside and outside of the classroom.

Last week the Sunday paper featured a huge article on the CEO of Aetna, Mark Bertolini, and his incorporation of meditation and yoga into the company. Forbes recently also posted a spread on his thoughts and philosophies about mindful meditation and how they are helping people to decrease healthcare costs and improve performance. Check out his video here...CEO of Aetna is into meditation

After I read that lengthy article in the paper, a fellow teacher posted an article to her Facebook page that was touting the benefits of including meditation in the school day to help children to relieve stress, improve performance, and increase their levels of happiness. The article features a picture of students sitting atop their desks, eyes closed, finger tips together, legs crossed, in a meditative pose. The article goes on to state quite succinctly the five reasons why meditation should be allowed in schools. Check out the article here...Meditation in Schools

Another quick search on the internet proved that other top leaders of major corporations and companies such as Google are also embracing these ideas and including them as a part of the corporate culture. With leaders making grand statements claiming that they had breakthrough results when they meditated, it is hard to not want to at least give it a try.

I think that learning is a challenging act that takes courage and a great deal of effort that occurs over a lifetime, beginning in our elementary years and following us through adulthood. Children are learning so much even in just one day that at times they must feel like their heads are about to explode with all of the information they are absorbing. The process is fun, exciting, boring, tedious; it is so many things, and for many children it is extraordinarily stressful. Kids are being asked to know more, do more, be more, and have huge lives in and outside of school. Imagine the benefits of teaching students to look inward, to sit with themselves in a still and quiet place, to calm their breathing, to relax? Maybe the breakthrough results leaders of this country want can be obtained in different ways other than high stakes testing. Maybe students would be more able to receive learning and advance in unimaginable ways if we started teaching them from the inside out? I for one would be willing to give meditation in the classroom a try.