Mindfulness for Education
Cultivate attention and well-being for teachers and students
There is a great mindfulness in education movement underway. Many schools, organizations, after-school programs, and other institutions are learning to integrate mindfulness-based curricula both for teachers and educators and also for their students.
Mindfulness offers the opportunity for cultivating attention, compassion, and well-being not only in the students, but also in teachers themselves.
Mindfulness is a particular way of paying attention. It is the mental faculty of purposefully bringing awareness to one’s experience. It can be applied to sensory experience, thoughts, and emotions by using sustained attention and noticing our experience without reacting.
One of the primary ironies of modern education is that we ask students to “pay attention” dozens of times a day, yet we never teach them how.
The practice of mindfulness teaches students how to pay attention, and this way of paying attention enhances both academic and social-emotional learning.
At the same time, training teachers in mindfulness not only reduces stress but also improves their performance in the classroom.
