Teaching mindfulness or mindful teaching?
This is one of the most important learnings I took back to Toronto after the 3 day-training with Mindful Schools in Oakland, near San Francisco, CA.
In order to teach mindfulness, one of the obvious requirements is to have experience with mindfulness meditation oneself. 'You can't transmit something you haven't got' goes the saying and there were two things one couldn't fail to notice during the seminar. For one that the team of Mindful Schools - Megan, Chris, and Vinny - has a vision. They know we are at a turning point and whatever the view we want to take on our world, some very simple things are missing, including the ability to be present to whatever it is we are doing. Whatever we want to attribute it to, there seems to be a consent on this very simple observation. Second, one couldn't fail to notice during the conference that something very particular emanated from the three moderators leading the workshops: mindfulness is not a theory, they live it. They have practiced mindfulness for a long time and it has become a part of their lives.
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| Megan leading a workshop on mindful teaching |
The seminar was really hands-on, we were distributed curricula and given the opportunity during workshops to lead 15 minute-classes on mindfulness, with our classmates playing the roles of students from the grade we would pick in advance. There were also role plays - such as a student on the phone, students talking, texting... - helping us to realize how to best deal with disturbing circumstances and adopt a kind integrative teaching approach, that way cultivating a mindful teaching posture.
There is in deed teaching mindfulness and teaching mindfully and this was for me one of the greatest lessons of this training session. It is essential that the teacher be mindful:
1. by being mindful, the teacher then possesses what it is he/she wants to transmit and
2. by being mindful, the teacher displays characteristics, has an aura that creates the desire to join the teacher where he/she is.
"We meet the students where they are and then take them where we would like them to be" and being mindful seems to make the process a lot easier: we are more aware of where the students are and take them to a place we are familiar with and from which we know from personal experience is a place of greater well-being than being simply the prisoner of one's emotions. Plus, the aura that emanates from us makes this state we describe desirable for students.