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Introduction

My hope and wish is that one day, formal education will pay attention to what I call education of the heart. Just as we take for granted the need to acquire proficiency in the basic academic subjects, I am hopeful that a time will come when we can take it for granted that children will learn, as part of the curriculum, the indispensability of inner values: love, compassion, justice, and forgiveness.

—The Dalai Lama

Imagine for a moment if we refined schools’ focus through a cultivation of both the heart and the mind. What if we pay less attention to what isn’t working, feel less pressure from the many mandates and demands that teaching and leading present, and develop a more caring lens of nonjudgment for ourselves, our coworkers, and our students?

Imagine recreating schools as compassionate learning environments, school cultures built on positive relationships that deepen and where cooperation expands, where students and teachers alike gain the confidence and courage to act in ways that enhance their own lives and the lives of others. Imagine schools where leaders, teachers, and students alike cultivate a compassionate, caring learning environment; where teachers once again enjoy the small teachable moments that pop up when room to breathe and to reflect on learning replaces the emphasis on record-breaking speed of learning; and where a natural balance emerges. Envision a balance of academics and conversations about life, a balance between doing well and feeling great, a balance between a focus on self and a focus on others. Imagine that you, your students, and your peers eagerly await Monday mornings. Then what would education look like? And, how would you feel about your job, your work, yourself, and your students?

Now imagine a conscious effort to refocus our schools and school cultures so that students become immersed in environments that consider social-emotional well-being and the needs of self and others. Envision this awareness and goodness extending to a wider school community of parents, families, and community stakeholders; embracing our ability to educate with both our hearts and minds. Imagine a school where caring matters; where teachers and administrators seek to learn more about their students and are more supportive of families; where students appreciate the extra effort teachers take to welcome and encourage students and support student success. This is a heart centered school community, a compassionate school community that balances well-being and learning.

Within the walls of a school is a community of students, teachers, and staff. To be a heart centered community, compassion is quintessential. Compassion is necessary to educate, lead, learn, and live with heart and be at our best. In this book, as we discuss compassion, we intentionally use the term heart centered. We do this in part with a nod to mindfulness and meditation. (See chapters 4–6, pages 61, 73, and 91.) As an introduction to this concept, we invite you to read the next few lines and then close your eyes and follow these steps.

1. Take a couple of breaths and consider compassion.

2. Visualize a scene with students at your school and picture the students feeling excited, engaged, kind, and considerate.

3. Consider what you pictured and how you felt.

4. Place your hands over your heart, take a couple of deep breaths, and picture the same scene.

5. Consider what you pictured and how you felt. Did you note any difference?

With your hands over your heart, you may have noticed a warmth in your heart, a sense of a more complete scene, or a feeling of being more fully present with the students, more connected to these students. (However, we are not suggesting that there is one correct response to this exercise—not everyone experiences the same feelings when placing his or her hand on his or her heart.) So, while we are focused on compassion, the term that more precisely reflects the spirit we are seeking to achieve in schools is heart centered. You will learn more about this in this book and will gain some experiences to deepen your understanding of both mindfulness and heart centeredness. In a compassionate, heart centered community, a spirit of cooperation helps develop the goodness and best in others and ourselves.

Education of the Heart Through Mindfulness

Remember the days before you taught, when you considered a teaching career, when you desired to teach to make a difference in the life of a student? Our wish for every teacher, staff member, and school leader who picks up this book is that the fire and passion that first drew you to teaching reignite. And that as you consciously address what students really need most in the moment, that you also feel more fulfilled. We see mindfulness as the vehicle to bring us back to authentic, foundational, and compassionate relationships—relationships that cultivate the gift of connectedness, being, and the goodness in all.

Why Mindfulness Practice?

Far too many children and adults carry an insurmountable weight of stress or past traumatic experiences that can negatively impact the way that they interact, learn, teach, lead, and live (Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, 2014). Mindfulness is an organic, practical, and accessible life tool that they can use to calm the mind and body and counteract the high levels of stress and trauma associated with school, work, and life. To be mindful is to be aware, to be sensitive to oneself, to how others are feeling and behaving, and to one’s environment. Mindfulness is also about balance or equanimity—the feeling of ease, calm, acceptance, and nonreaction in that same particular moment of awareness. Mindfulness is the opposite of absentmindedness. When we are absentminded, we are distracted in thought and inattentive to what is before us. When we are mindful, we take care—we are not careless or neglectful. When we are mindful, we consider the well-being of others, ourselves, and our world, the greater good, the needs of the planet, the best course of action for preserving the environment, and the impact on children and others.

Cultivating an environment where we are mindful—where students, and the teachers on whom they depend, can focus and flourish—requires staff who have an ecological perspective. That perspective is one where teachers develop a keen awareness of the factors that affect themselves and their students inside and outside of school. Professor and stress-reduction expert Jon Kabat-Zinn (2003) says that such awareness “emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally” (p. 143). Such awareness or mindfulness involves turning inward to be more aware of self; being more observant of the external world; and having a greater awareness of self and others in various situations. Being mindful is to put in place the practices and strategies that create an environment where students and staff “wake into a day in which there is a possibility of grace, of being ‘gifted,’ of being surprised” (Jackson, 2011, p. 35) and of learning instead of waking into a day of stress or hopelessness (Whyte, 2002).

Mindfulness is enhanced through a range of activities that elicit greater awareness of one’s environment, awareness of experiences, awareness of breath, and awareness of emotions and how one is feeling. The use of activities that generate mindfulness in schools is growing rapidly (Felver et al., 2016). A meta-analysis of twelve databases of research conducted on the effectiveness of mindfulness activities in schools makes apparent the accumulating evidence of the popularity of these activities (Zenner, Herrnleben-Kurz, & Walach, 2014). Mindful attention to self and others is a powerful first step to creating schools that are more responsive to the needs of students and to our own needs. With mindfulness, you can become the change you seek in your school community. Through developing a greater sense of calm and living life moment by moment on a deeper level, you can reduce stress and see the possibility of experiencing greater joy, insight, and understanding.

Why Is Mindfulness Important to Combating Trauma and Stress?

While mindfulness is an important component in improving well-being for all children and adults (Farrell & Barrett, 2007), it has particular significance for those who experienced trauma (Fischer, 2017). One of every four children experiences a trauma before the age of four. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 2014) reports that many children live in a culture of violence, bullying, and trauma. And if children live with poverty, if children live in neighborhoods of high crime, if children experience racism and discrimination, the frequency and severity of their trauma will be even greater. Paul Gilbert (2009), the founder of compassion-focused therapy, describes the extent of harm that children experience: “Individuals subjected to early [traumatic] experiences can become highly sensitive to threats of rejection or criticism from the outside world and can quickly become self-attacking; they experience both their external and internal worlds as easily turning hostile” (p. 199). Children who are ashamed often “use a cold, bullying or aggressive inner tone to try to change their thoughts and behaviors” (Gilbert, 2009, p. 203). They often experience difficulties with learning, attention, memory, self-esteem, decision making, communication, fear, and impulsive behavior.

Through mindfulness practice, we can help build stronger connections between the areas of the brain that stress and traumatic experiences have compromised. Mindfulness helps to slow down reactivity and increase body awareness. It can contribute to greater emotional regulation and help us cope more easily with life’s frustrations, setbacks, and relationship challenges (Siegel, 2010a). When considering the trauma children face and the impact of poverty and neighborhoods of violence, the importance of being more responsive to the needs of our students is obvious. Developing a greater awareness, understanding, and compassionate response to children’s suffering is essential. In essence, we might be able to achieve greater compassion and greater academic gains if we pay more attention to what our hearts tell us. As Rollin McCraty (2015) indicates in Science of the Heart, Volume 2:

The heart communicates to the brain in four major ways: neurologically (through the transmission of nerve impulses), biochemically (via hormones and neurotransmitters), biophysically (through pressure waves) and energetically (through electromagnetic field interactions)…. The heart-brain’s neural circuitry enables it to act independently of the cranial brain to learn, remember, make decisions and even feel and sense. (p. 3)

Rollin McCraty’s (2015) extensive research suggests that it may be worthwhile to pay attention to our hearts. When we focus solely on our intellectual understanding, we may miss out on important information that is readily available to us as it is processed at our heart level.

Why Should We Open Our Hearts Through Mindfulness Practice?

So, we are suggesting that you consider opening your heart, listening to your heart, and acting from a place that includes input from your heart—increasing your mindful awareness of what your heart is feeling. If you have ever felt that your heart was telling you one thing and your head another, you may understand the value of tuning into your heart. Mindfulness practices can help us increase our sensitivity to our feelings and help us make more balanced heart-head decisions.

We believe that to adequately prepare our students for college, career, and life, we must educate with both our minds and our hearts. Chapters 1 (page 13), 2 (page 21), and 3 (page 37) offer research to support this belief. However, before educators can open the minds of their students, they must open their hearts to understanding the magnitude of the stressors, trauma, and circumstances that surround their lives. It is not good enough for teachers and other school leaders to simply stay the course with a sole academic focus. If they are going to address the many challenges associated with trauma and stress that so many students and teachers endure, and how they impact both learning and teaching, then small steps are not enough. It is not enough to practice compassion one day a week or to celebrate success with an annual assembly. If we are to improve the lives and education for all students, it will require a paradigm shift in the way we think about education, our children, families, and our world. It will require a move toward educating the whole child, with a balanced focus of academics and health and well-being so that all students feel safe and are cared for. We are concerned about the trauma, the violence, and the stress that permeate society, our families, and our schools. However, we believe we can turn this around.

Today, schools can increase protective factors—factors that help protect students from both the short-term and long-term damage of stress and trauma (Howard, Dryden, & Johnson, 1999; Knight, 2007; Santos, 2012). Schools can also decrease risk factors when we use our hearts to educate our students and ourselves. Listening to our hearts is not always easy to do. In fact, we have been trained as professionals to not get too involved with our students’ problems, to not care too deeply. Yet, with the approach we will outline in this book, we can achieve a balance—high expectations for students, research-supported pedagogy, and mindfulness.

We can help magnify protective factors in schools so long as there are caring and compassionate adults to help support students and parents during times of need. These supportive actions help to increase resilience and grit, making it easier for individuals to bounce back when experiencing stress and trauma. Using mindfulness practices in this book will guide us to achieve more favorable and positive outcomes for all students, helping to prevent child maltreatment and other social problems that complicate their lives.

What Do Students Need to Focus and Flourish?

Where would you begin if your task was not to ensure academic excellence, but to consider the ultimate well-being of each student, to give each student a toolbox to enhance skills, knowledge, and opportunities for individual feelings of success and being valued? If you think of students in your school who seem happy, successful, joy filled, and ready for the challenges of any particular day, what traits come to mind? Why do some students seem to be able to readily focus on tasks at hand, and others become easily distracted? Why do some gravitate toward high achievement, a healthy self-esteem, and happiness while others seem to walk under a cloud of doom? Substantial research suggests that we start with consciousness and mindfulness—something we consider to be two sides of the same coin (Diamond & Lee, 2011; Flook et al., 2010; Rempel, 2012; Schmalzl, Powers, & Henje Blom, 2015; Zelazo & Lyons, 2012). Mindfulness and the steps we recommend are research-based strategies for creating compassionate school communities where students, and the teachers on whom they depend, can flourish.

Mindfulness focuses our attention on the here and now. Meditation and yogic practices heighten our awareness of self and others by quieting our thoughts and creating a sense of calmness, and improving our awareness of the relationship between our physical feelings and our emotions. Research supports their value in a wide array of instances and for various subpopulations of students. It shows that mindfulness and yoga decrease anxiety and depression and increase self-esteem, mood, and ability to focus and control emotions (Büssing, Michaelsen, Khalsa, Telles, & Sherman, 2012; Felver, Butzer, Olson, Smith, & Khalsa, 2015; Raes, Griffith, Van der Gucht, & Williams, 2014; Semple, Droutman, & Reid, 2017).

Yoga, meditation, and mindfulness are being integrated into a growing number of U.S. schools, and teachers and students are adapting as they learn about these practices that used to be relegated to fitness centers and after-school programs. We find it useful for middle or high school student athletes, perhaps even some who participate in what some consider traditionally masculine sports such as football and wrestling, to talk with middle schoolers about their own yoga practices. Because athletes are sometimes revered, students are often surprised to find that these rough and tough student athletes are doing yoga. Using student leaders to guide activities also helps narrow the gap of discomfort some students associate with trying something new. Adolescents with depression or mental illness; children with learning disabilities, autism, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder; students with conduct disorders, or students with high rates of truancy or school suspensions all benefit from mindfulness (Ehleringer, 2010; Frank, Kohler, Peal, & Bose, 2017; Malboeuf-Hurtubise, Lacourse, Taylor, Joussemet, & Ben Amor, 2017; Zenner et al., 2014).

Teachers and school leaders create mindful, compassionate communities when they have the foundational knowledge in part I of this book; personal and classroom experience with the exercises in part II; and the deeper collaborative understanding and experience that we present in part III. We present a package to help grades preK–12 teachers, school leaders, and school communities practice the steps we recommend.

Mindfulness Practices: About the Book

While developing Mindfulness Practices, we relied on our collective experience leading schools and districts to consider what was essential to set the stage for cultivating more responsive and compassionate school communities through mindfulness. Our experiences facilitating systemic change, focusing on student self-determination and strengths, and collaborating with neuroscientists and educational leaders provided an important backdrop for our recommendations. Our work with rural and urban, including high-poverty, schools rounded out our practical experience, grounding us in the realities that teachers and principals face. Our experience teaching and practicing yoga, mindfulness, and meditation gave us confidence in the instructions we provide for incorporating these into your lives and into your classrooms through compassionate, heart centered action and instruction. The CEI (n.d.) says Heart Centered Learning™:

Equips students with the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, feel and show empathy for others, resolve conflicts nonviolently, think creatively, and overcome obstacles to succeed in the classroom and in life. Heart Centered Education is not overly dependent on rigid academic scheduling or expectations for academic growth—instead taking a holistic approach.

Note that the CEI is not alone in its connection of mindfulness to heart centeredness: many yogic and mindfulness traditions refer to listening to and acting from our hearts (Ruth, 2017). Hence, we use the term recognizing the importance of tuning into our hearts as we make decisions and help children heal from the trauma they have experienced. As a life-long student of metaphysics, mysticism, and spirituality Kiyanush Kamrani (2017) states that a “mindfulness practice is only complete when it includes the heart, as awareness is not limited to the mind; the heart is the center of our consciousness” (p. 1).

This book is grounded in research, input from exemplary principals, and practical experiences in schools. The research-based principles and activities that follow are universal, and you can easily adapt them across grades preK–12 or apply them to multiple settings. Whether you are concerned with a preschooler who seems withdrawn, a fourth grader who is missing too much school, or a ninth grader who bullies others, you will find that the mindfulness practices we recommend can help you restructure learning expectations, give you tools to help establish a sense of calmness, and turn around the lives of that student and teachers.

While there is an urgency to provide mindful instruction to help students mediate immediate and long-term trauma and stress impact, mindfulness is a simple and useful life tool for everyone (including our own selves, parents, families, and the larger community). With this book, you will learn steps and strategies for creating compassionate communities of students, teachers, staff, and school leaders to alleviate the impact of trauma and toxic, daily stress. In our approach, we make apparent the value of helping all students become more aware of the needs of self and others, as well as becoming more attuned to being compassionate.

The research conducted to date on mindfulness confirms its overall effectiveness (Schmalzl et al., 2015; Zenner et al., 2014). While the techniques are meant for all schools and all classrooms—not just those with the most serious needs—the results will be especially significant for those trauma and stress most highly impacted. The topics we discuss throughout this book—trauma, neuroscience, mindfulness, and compassionate community building—have not been part of undergraduate or graduate teacher preparation programs. They have not been part of the curriculum for preparation of school administrators. They have also not been popular topics for teacher or administrator professional development. So, by reading this book, most of you will gain new insights and understanding. As presented in this book, you achieve mindfulness through practice of a carefully sequenced range of activities and processes that will result in greater awareness of self and others. Mindfulness practice is most effective when naturally infused into the curriculum and fully integrated into the course of the school day. In this three-part book, you will learn practical ways to easily implement mindfulness practice into your school community and lives.

Part I provides foundational background information. Part I is the why. We set the stage in chapters 1–3, describing why there is a sense of urgency to move toward a more compassionate and supportive learning environment as a direct response to combat trauma and toxic stress. We also provide information on developmental trauma and neuroscience, as well as the interconnectivity of our brain, our emotions, and trauma.

Part II contains information and exercises for you to practice by yourself and with your students to learn the mindfulness strategies we recommend. Part II is the how—how to transform classrooms into nurturing, caring, and compassionate learning environments through mindfulness practice to create caring, compassionate communities. This part explains how we use mindfulness and compassionate activities, exercises, and practice to combat trauma and stress. While individual teachers can implement this book’s recommendations with good success, we believe that even greater and more long-term gains result with the consistency of schoolwide implementation. Principal leadership is key to creating heart centered school communities, as is consideration for schoolwide policies for discipline, celebrations of success, and welcoming families. Mindfulness is not something that you can read about and then just start implementing. With practice, you will become more mindful. Chapters 4–6 provide exercises to enhance breathing, practice yoga and meditation, and increase mindfulness. These mindfulness practices are mutually beneficial for students, teachers, staff, and leaders when they practice them individually or collectively with others. Because it is easy to forget to check in with yourself, we will remind you, at the end of most exercises, to ask yourself how you feel.

You will benefit the most by going beyond merely reading the material presented in part II to actually practicing the exercises. We recommend practicing a few of them yourself on a regular basis before bringing them to students. Students will also benefit the most if you implement these exercises routinely. Mindfulness is not a one-time event. You can practice the following exercises with one of three methods.

1. Having someone read them to you

2. Recording them and playing back the recording with your eyes closed

3. Reading them and then closing your eyes to go through the exercise

If you are using the third method, you can gain a lot by simply approximating the listed steps—you do not need to be exact. After you practice any of the breaths you are planning to introduce in the classroom, you can introduce them to your students. You will lead students through the exercises.

These chapters provide strategies for practical application of mindfulness, complete with teacher, staff, and student exercises and activities that help develop a greater consciousness and a compassionate mindset to combat trauma and stress.

Part III will help teachers and school leaders consider implications and procedures for infusing mindfulness practices into academic instruction and for schoolwide or districtwide implementation. Part III is the now what. It explains what you do after you practice the mindfulness exercises. You will find guidance on how to introduce mindfulness and compassion activities and strategies to impact not only your students’ and your own well-being, but also to improve academic performance and resilience. Building on the exercises presented in part II, part III takes you another step forward with activities to become more mindful of your school, your students, and your classroom community. This includes how to reduce stress and address compassionate challenges—those times when it is difficult to be patient, understanding, and compassionate.

Part III provides insights into improving students’ learning, memory, attention, and reasoning abilities and implementing empowering community-building strategies within your schools. Because the greatest and most lasting gains will be made with collaborative community building within schools, this final section of the book also offers an opportunity for you to learn from mindful leadership experts about what it means to be a mindful leader, and why mindful leadership is important to transformational change.

At the beginning of each chapter, you will find a key principle that highlights one essential point from that chapter. At the end of each chapter, you will find mindful reflection questions to help you connect the information to your own circumstances and experiences, as well as space to record your answers or any other thoughts you have during your practices or while reading this book. These questions, which are available as free reproducibles at go.SolutionTree.com/behavior, may also be useful for those of you who meet in small groups to study, learn, and practice mindfulness. You can easily form specific study groups for population groups, such as teachers or parents. The group might even provide an opportunity for parents, teachers, and staff to learn about mindfulness as a part of your larger school community.

Whether you are a teacher, parent, or community member, you may find it worthwhile to approach this book in three dedicated blocks of time—(1) setting aside a few hours for part I, (2) reading and practicing the exercises in part II over a period of several weeks, and (3) then reading and reflecting on part III when you are ready to advance broader collaborative use of the suggested techniques. While there are many reasons to approach this book sequentially, reading it front to back, if you want to know more about trauma or neurobiology, or have an interest in a specific technique, then you may opt to hone in on specific chapters. If you are an administrator, you may be most interested in part III—particularly chapter 9, which includes practical advice from a former school superintendent and several principals. Please note that chapters 4–6 (part II) are linked and that reading that set of chapters together can help you gain more complete information.

Let’s get started on your journey toward mindfulness, and prepare for creating, and being a part of, a heart centered community.