We live in a stressful world in troubled times, and that is not supposed to be the way children grow up. School classrooms can be the safe haven where academic practices and classroom strategies can provide children with emotional comfort and pleasure as well as knowledge. When teachers use strategies to reduce stress and build a positive emotional environment, students gain emotional resilience and learn more efficiently and at higher levels of cognition. Mindfulness is a state of being aware of your own mind, at any given moment. It means to pay attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment and without judgment.
Mindfulness is a path for cultivating awareness. The better we understand our own thoughts and feelings, the more we are aware—and in control of—our own behavior. Rather than judging and reacting what occurs in our experience, we learn to observe and respond. It may sound difficult at first, but it’s not. Mindful awareness is simple and accessible to people of all ages. It isn’t something you have to get or work hard to achieve. It already exists in every one of us. It’s a moment-to-moment approach to engaging fully in your experience, whatever that experience may be.
Mindful, focused awareness can increase children’s attention, memory, and enjoyment of what they see, hear, and experience so sensory input becomes wisdom and knowledge. When students experience school as a supportive community where they can share in an exchange of ideas, build knowledge of subject material motivated by interest and personal relevance, and associate pleasure and joy with learning their brains are in the ideal state to learn.
When classrooms are low stress and students are engaged and motivated, they are able to achieve the highest levels of cognition, executive thinking, and making of connections. This comes not from directed lectures and teacher-centered activities, but rather when classrooms have an atmosphere joyful discovery, mindful awareness, and cooperative peer interactions. Those are the classrooms where students of all ages retain that kindergarten enthusiasm of embracing each day of joyful learning. The goal of learning is for classrooms to once again become the place where the imagination and spirits of children are embraced, rather than left outside in the playground, when the school bell rings. Superior learning takes place when classroom experiences are enjoyable and relevant to students’ lives, interests, and experiences. That the supportive environment of a strong classroom community and implementation of strategies that enable students to be open to the flow of the sensory input yields a model for joyful, successful education.
To implement the best environment for the brain to acquire new information, the learning experiences need to be relevant to students’ lives, interests, and experiences. Lessons ought to be stimulating and challenging, without being intimidating. The recognition that low stress and relaxed alertness, the likes of which result from mindfulness educational practices gives teachers the advantage of being able to connect the neuroscience of learning to the art of teaching. When a lesson or series of lessons will be full of dry facts that must be memorized, the stress can be reduced when students see an authentic, intrinsic reward for their mental efforts. Mastery of the facts can then be seen as a needed tool so students can participate successfully in multi-sensory or hands-on/minds-on discovery laboratory exploration.
Helping children learn through personally relevant activities and experiences as they form and revise their beliefs about themselves and the world as they travel through a curriculum is no small or straightforward task. This is a goal, like world peace, that is hard to be against. To educate young people who can thrive in and make significant contributions to a democratic society, we need to ensure they develop the intellectual, social, emotional, and basic skills needed to inquire, reason, and debate and to value these activities as the soundest path to achieving goals, resolving conflicts, and ensuring individual happiness and the collective welfare. Mindfulness education is not a panacea to correct American education, but it is certainly a step in the right direction.
