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CHAPTER 2

The Journey—Healing Along the Way

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.

—Leo Buscaglia

key principle

Mindfulness and compassionate learning communities are critical for alleviating the lifealtering impacts of stress and trauma.

The reasons for writing this book are many, but none are more important than our unwavering belief that each and every school leader and teacher has the amazing proclivity to demonstrate genuine caring and compassion toward their students. Because of their compassion, they also have the unique opportunity to help students heal from the toxic repercussions of the stress so many endure. We believe that through developing higher consciousness and deeper compassion, teachers and school leaders can deliver healing as an integral part of children’s school experience. With healing comes opportunities to thrive as children and to later become positive, contributing adults in our communities and world.

Through Mindfulness and Compassion Comes Healing

As we developed this chapter and book, we took a hard look at the world before us. We also considered the many lenses and perspectives that our experiences as humans and as educators provide. We considered many terms to describe what schools need to support all children’s innate potential to succeed. Teachers and other educators could provide nurturing environments, foster climates of success, or incorporate social-emotional learning in our schools. All these are good.

However, we decided on healing. Healing (“healing,” 2018) is the “process of making or becoming sound or healthy again” and as such implies damage, action, and progress. We are intentional in our use of the word healing because it implies action and impact. For our students who have experienced trauma, there has been damage and with damage comes a deep need for healing.

With healing, we do not stop at nurturing or fostering but rather stimulate healing through a higher consciousness of deliberate actions, words, and caring. With healing, we take actions to further well-being, beginning with mindfulness exercises to help ourselves and the students we serve become more conscious or mindful of ourselves, others, and our environment.

Catalysts for Healing

We believe that educators not only have the capacity to help students’ healing but have the ability to take the necessary action to create sustainable compassionate communities within their own schools. This is vital action because many students come to school needing to regain a sense of self-esteem, confidence, and courage. An important part of what teachers do goes far beyond the academics. The human connection is critical. A kind word or a caring presence is easily delivered in schools where children spend so many hours each year. And, as caregivers outside the home, teachers have a unique opportunity to become catalysts of healing and help students heal every day through mindful classroom routines, activities, and experiences.

Mindfulness is about seeking greater understanding through paying attention on purpose and gaining insight to respond to our students’ needs and feelings from moment to moment throughout the day. When we mindfully respond with a caring and compassionate heart instead of reacting, we are sending the message, “I care about you, and I care about how you are feeling because your well-being matters.” Compassionate actions open the door for deeper mindfulness experiences. Some mindful experiences that we can provide at school begin with helping students get more in touch with their bodies and their breath—how they feel when they are happy, sad, or stressed, for example. You create other experiences through our positive moment-to-moment interactions with children. Over time, these precious moments have a cumulative effect, and students who are stressed out and broken learn to count on you, creating a sense of security, safety, and trust.

This is where our journey begins as we begin to shift our thinking by focusing on healing instead of trauma, calm instead of agitation, pleasure instead of pain, and love instead of hate.

And, in doing so we capitalize on our potential as human beings to strive in achieving positive emotional health and well-being for our students and ourselves.

Restorative Healing and Relationships

Teachers can be at the heart of the solution, serving as the catalyst of protection and as healing agents for those students whom trauma, violence, and crisis affect. We see teachers as agents of mediation. Mediation is a process through which the teacher provides support and experiences to assist students in moving from coping with stress to thriving and flourishing.

For some students, an agent of mediation is someone listening to their fears and concerns; for others, it is someone helping them problem solve or learn new ways to handle situations and conflicts. In this book, you will learn how to naturally embed vital mindfulness and mediation into your classroom so that it becomes part of your common practice and daily routine. You will see evidence of healing already happening in classrooms and how true cultures of health and well-being can transcend the walls of the classroom and permeate throughout the school building to the playgrounds or athletic fields, bus rides, and beyond. And finally, we will provide information regarding why more healing is both required and possible.

Anchors of Support

As educators, we have the ability to not only attend to students’ basic needs but also the capacity to mediate their overall desperations and ensure healthy growth and well-being. More important, we have the power to help circumvent the displacement, hurt, loss, and violence that threaten students’ normal development when we learn to be more conscious of ourselves and in-tune to a student’s circumstance on any given day.

A longitudinal study examining youth at risk from birth to age eighteen shows that even those with previous or ongoing trauma have much better chances of achieving success if they have a strong emotional bond with a role model in their community (Werner & Smith, 2001). For many youth at risk, this role model might not be someone in their family, in which case they need someone in the community to step up. Since teachers spend so much time with their students every day, they are primary candidates for this role.

Learning, teaching, and student engagement directorate Cecily Knight (2007) argues that all people have the trait of resilience but that protective factors enhance that trait. These protective factors as previously discussed in chapter 1 (page 13) include having a supportive relationship with an adult and a sense of optimism about the future.

A related review of literature from Howard et al. (1999) finds that the more protective factors a child has, the greater his or her odds of resilience. However, the risk factors work in the same cumulative fashion where the more risk factors present, the more resilient one needs to be. Knight (2007) also writes that risk factors are less influential in children’s lives than protective factors.

In a review of resilience factors, Ryan Santos (2012) at San Diego State University finds that a compassionate, supportive school environment is of utmost importance. This kind of environment helps students learn how to trust, which is a necessary element in any relationship. Students who have experienced trauma often find themselves in a world of chaos, where they may not have set routines or be able to count on parents to be there and be protective. As trauma experts Margaret E. Blaustein and Kristine M. Kinniburgh (2010) explain, “Trauma often involves children being hurt by others [and] not protected by others. When early relationships are not consistently safe, children may develop a sense of mistrust in relationships” (p. 249). If adults in their world cannot be trusted, it becomes difficult to trust anyone. However, when teachers gain mindfulness skills, they become more responsive to individual students. Through their consistently compassionate interactions with students—including having consistent classroom rules and procedures—they establish predictability and trust.

One way to build more compassionate, supportive environments is to first become more mindful or conscious of students’ needs, the needs they bring to school each day. It is important to note, however, that a school does not and should not have to choose between being caring and having high expectations for their students. In fact, Santos’s (2012) review finds that a caring community and a culture of high expectations are both of vital importance as protective factors in schools.

Providing both nurturing and challenging school environments will help all students succeed. While some might lack this environment at home, it is absolutely necessary that they find it at their schools. Our school families have great potential and opportunity in the course of a school day and year to provide a safe haven for all students. Given the amount of time students spend at school on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis, it is possible and also critical that we create the best environment for our students. Consider a simple equation: How many hours do children spend in classrooms between the ages of five and eighteen, assuming nine months of schooling, with perhaps the equivalent of a month of vacation, and classes from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.? Omitting preschool or summer sessions, look at the following numbers.

6 hours per day × 5 days per week × 4 weeks a month × 8 months a year × 13 years = 12,480 hours in class

Where else, other than at home, do children spend as much time? With 12,480 hours, a staggering amount of time, a precious gift, educators have such an opportunity. We cannot afford to forfeit any time we have with our students. When children are in crisis, when their egos are shattered, and their sense of self-worth is minimized, the most hazardous measure educators can take is to ignore their pain. Despite research showing the importance of a caring adult (Center on the Developing Child, n.d.a; Santos, 2012), too often children’s anguish is ignored as we attend to our curriculum pacing guides, high academic standards, and preset agendas (Hargreaves, 2000; Jardine, 2017; Krashen, 2014; Ravitch, 2016). However, to begin the process of healing, we must provide students more time for mediation from a caring adult—some time to pursue something where they excel and some guidance to help them understand their pains, develop self-compassion, and empower them to heal from within (Cole et al., 2005; Ritchhart & Perkins, 2000; Semple, Reid, & Miller, 2005; Singer & Bolz, 2013).

Where and how do we begin to facilitate change?

Mindsight as the Beginning

For some of the concepts this book presents, we recommend that you begin with yourself. Sometimes it is a matter of pausing and mindfully reflecting, reexamining our beliefs, and looking more closely at our own roles and what we might be able to do in classrooms and schools. We ask that you start with yourself so that you will have sufficient perspective from your own frame of reference—and the insights that come from that direct knowledge and firsthand experiences. It is through this personal journey and expanded knowledge that we as educators gain a better understanding of the students and families we serve. After all, checking in with yourself is one of the first steps toward mindfulness.

Sometimes to truly understand the students we serve we need to take a step back to look more carefully at ourselves. We may have our own suppressed childhood experiences; sometimes for a variety of reasons, we may have compartmentalized our life experiences. However, it helps to turn inward and examine even those things that we find unpleasant, or frightening; perhaps even those things that give us a sense of remorse—the times when we wish we had behaved differently. As we do this, for those who are willing to put forth the effort, we may find that we develop what Daniel J. Siegel (2007) calls our mindsight, our capacity to be aware of what we are thinking, enabling us to truly begin to see our students and our world differently. When we do this, we realize that the depth of our understanding, empathy, and capabilities increases.

A View of Our Students

To reach students, it helps to begin with understanding something about them. As of fall 2016, approximately 98,300 U.S. public schools served over 50.4 million elementary and secondary students (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2017a).

The United States is a land of great diversity, and the percentage of Caucasian students is declining. In 2013, 51 percent of students were Caucasian, 25 percent were Hispanic, 16 percent were Black, 3 percent were of two or more races, and 1 percent were American Indian or Alaska Native. NCES (2017b) expects the number of white students to continue declining, totaling 46 percent of enrollment in 2025, while the number of Hispanic students will continue to increase, totaling 29 percent of enrollment in 2025.

A report shows that 25 percent of U.S. twelfth graders are proficient in mathematics and 37 percent are proficient in reading. In earlier grades, academic proficiency is also disturbingly low (NCES, 2016).

• Forty percent of fourth-grade and thirty-three percent of eighth-grade students perform at or above the proficient level in mathematics.

• Thirty-six percent of fourth-grade and thirty-four percent of eighth-grade students perform at or above the proficient level in NAEP reading.

• Seventy-nine percent of eighth graders recognize the meaning of the words when reading them in a reading assessment.

Looking at the scores, there is more evidence supporting mindfulness. When we open the cognitive pathways that have been clogged with stress and trauma, students will be better prepared for mathematics and reading.

Contributors That Complicate a Student’s World

Trauma, poverty, and numbers are compounding contributors that complicate a student’s world. By as early as age four, over one-quarter of U.S. children experience trauma that impacts their lives and their learning (Costello, Erkanli, Fairbank, & Angold, 2002). Moreover, if children live in neighborhoods with high rates of violent crime, estimates increase to 83–91 percent (Breslau, Peterson, Poisson, Schultz, & Lucia, 2004). Results from a North Carolina study indicate that more than 68 percent of children and youth experience a potentially traumatic event by age sixteen (Copeland, Keeler, Angold, & Costello, 2007). Sixty-eight percent! That is over two-thirds of our students. And there is more. In 2014, more than two-thirds of children (ages seventeen and younger) were exposed to violence within the past year either directly (as victims) or indirectly (as witnesses; Finklehor, Turner, Shattuck, & Hamby, 2015). Exposure to violence can lead to enduring physical, mental, and emotional harm. Exposure to violence at a young age is associated with attachment problems, anxiety, aggression, and depression.

Additionally, even merely witnessing violence may negatively impact children’s attentional and cognitive achievement (Child Trends, 2016). According to sociologist and researcher David Finkelhor and his colleagues Anne Shattuck, Heather Turner, and Sherry Hamby (2014), one in nine girls and one in fifty-three boys under the age of eighteen experience sexual abuse or assault at the hands of an adult. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2016), fifty-seven thousand children were victims of sexual abuse in 2016.

The gap between potential and performance that is present in achievement tests for students living in the most and least affluent homes widened 40 percent since the 1960s (Reardon, 2011), leading to greater disparities in terms of not only demonstrated educational achievement but also post-school opportunities. Approximately 21 percent of children in the United States under age eighteen years old are from families living in poverty, and an alarming 43 percent of students are living in low-income homes (Jiang, Granja, & Koball, 2017). See figure 2.1 (page 28) for a state-by-state breakdown.

Figure 2.1 represents individuals with different histories, interests, capabilities, abilities, and needs. There is great diversity. Some students come from large families with a traditional mother and father. Others don’t have siblings. Some students are raised by same-sex parents. Others are raised in single-parent homes, or by extended families. While some students are raised in families where one or both parents work, others come from families where parents have trouble finding or keeping jobs.

The research on socioeconomic status (SES), race, and the prevalence of child maltreatment and abuse is not definitive. While most studies (Dubow, Huesmann, Boxer, & Smith, 2016; Kim, Drake, & Johnson-Reid, 2018; Moore & Ramirez, 2016) show that poverty is definitely associated with more ACEs, other studies show that abuse and maltreatment cross SES conditions (Chiu et al., 2013; Steele et al., 2016). The relationship between race and abuse is also complex. Several studies find that abuse is higher among white people than other groups (Chiu et al., 2013; Kim et al., 2018; Mersky & Janczewski, 2018). Fewer studies report that abuse is higher among Latinos (Clark, Galano, Grogan-Kaylor, Montalvo-Liendo, & Graham-Bermann, 2016; Lee & Chen, 2017) or African Americans (Scher, Forde, McQuaid, & Stein, 2004). We conclude that although poverty is a significant contributing factor, abuse is not limited to specific SES levels, and maltreatment is perpetuated by adults across all races and cultural conditions.

Further, while we conclude that SES is a significant contributor to childhood trauma, other factors such as maternal stress, parenting skills, home environment, and school safety may offset the disadvantages associated with poverty (Aizer, Stroud, & Buka, 2016; Hackman, Gallop, Evans, & Farah, 2015; Moore & Ramirez, 2016). Students in so-called traditional families may feel the impact of abusive homes, while children raised by extended family members or by a single mother may find a high degree of support. Other students may be raised by a parent or parents who are stressed with the demands of parenting, and it may be hard for a parent or parents in any of the family constellations to provide the nurturing and caring a child needs (Walsh, 2016). Yet other students experience the instability and uncertainty of being moved from one foster family to another.

Source: © 2015 by Southern Education Foundation. Used with permission. Statistics source: National Center for Education Statistics, 2016.

Figure 2.1: U.S. families living in poverty.

Students’ interests, skills, abilities, and needs also vary widely. Some students are blessed with circumstances that allow them to explore a dream; others can only dream without having the opportunity to take dance lessons or attend a science camp. Despite the excellence in the United States, despite everything the country has achieved, many students have undeveloped or underdeveloped potential. We believe that significant contributing factors to this unused potential include lack of adequate nutrition, threats to the emotional and psychological well-being of children (including racism and low expectations), poverty, and an instructional paradigm that disregards the strengths and needs of the individual child.

Children living in poverty and lacking mediated, enriching experiences that cultivate interest and attention are more likely to display short attention spans, have difficulty monitoring the quality of their work, and struggle with problem solving. Poor Students, Rich Teaching author Eric Jensen (2009, 2016) provides substantial research on how to teach students, understanding what we know about the impact of poverty. He concludes the following about students in poverty.

• They enter school with a less developed vocabulary, resulting in barriers to learning.

• They are less likely to exercise, get proper diagnoses, receive appropriate and prompt medical attention, or be prescribed appropriate medications or interventions.

• They have a higher likelihood of ear infections resulting in hearing problems, undiagnosed vision problems, greater exposure to lead, higher exposure to asthma, and greater problems with their immune systems.

• They are less likely to have breakfast and more likely to eat less nutritious food.

• They are more likely to experience acute and chronic stress, often related to their parents’ stress, poverty, and living conditions.

The Complexity of a Student’s World

Each of the previously mentioned factors negatively affect attendance, attention, behavior, energy, reasoning, learning, memory, and cognition. For students, there are stressors associated with not going to school and stressors associated with being in school. There are peer group pressures and home and life pressures. Students also face a myriad of situations that can evolve to a high level of stress. These challenges may involve using good decision-making skills each day for the seemingly small decisions such as who to hang around with, when to speak out, or when to back down. Consider, for example, the stress that poverty or abuse creates. Students may wonder where their next meal will come from or whether their home will be safe when returning from school.

To reiterate our earlier point, many students live in a culture of violence, bullying, and trauma (CDC, 2014). Additionally, the epidemic of violence on streets and on elementary or secondary school campuses (McDaniel, Logan, & Schneiderman, 2014; Schoen & Schoen, 2010), and the pervasiveness of school and cyberbullying, further the urgency to find creative solutions to violence and stress that go beyond academic reforms (Adelman & Taylor, 2014; Sugai, Horner, & Gresham, 2002).

Understanding the realities of the stressors associated with young children and families is the beginning of our quest to understand the complexity of the world in which our students find themselves.

This Is a Conscious Shift to Reach All Students

While we have provided many statistics regarding violence, poverty, and trauma, the approaches we recommend are for all classes, all students, all teachers, and all school leaders. Without a unified, schoolwide approach, we can anticipate fragmented results. It is simply inadequate to only teach compassion to the students who are bullied, or to those who bully. Also, at a societal level, our need is to deepen an understanding of and commitment to compassion at all levels, in all districts, with students from different walks of life. And the research-based strategies we recommend are effective across the board.

The stakes are high. When we look at the world at large, and at neighborhoods in the United States, we believe that the role of compassion and mindfulness is foundational, and that high-stakes assessments, while important, cannot be a sole driver to further our educational agenda. Despite the pervasive trauma, educators have the opportunity to help students heal and overcome the obstacles to happiness, success, and well-being that stress, trauma, and daily challenges create. Educators, with the nuanced approach we are recommending, can achieve the mission of reaching all students so they not only learn, but also experience a higher quality of life. With our intentional support, even students who are difficult to reach can experience basic opportunities that are at the core of our democracy—greater happiness, more justice, and more equity—and lead more productive and fulfilled lives. Educators, by first being aware, or mindful, can then implement strategies that could make substantial differences for many students. It might even be a matter of a few moments of consideration a day—a few moments of planning, greater expressions of caring, and extended compassion.

from the classroom

Caring can be demonstrated with small gestures of kindness or understanding such as a kind greeting or explanation of how students feel on a five-point scale or a simple journal prompt. In Lori Curtin’s first-grade classroom at Lee Elementary School, in Lee, Massachusetts, every day is a new beginning, with each first grader taking a turn as the morning greeter. These students stand alongside their teacher welcoming classmates with a smile, handshake, or high five.

When in the classroom, students follow a well-established and practiced routine: hanging their belongings, placing homework or notes from home into the teacher’s bin on her desk, standing in line patiently, or talking quietly at their desks. Exchanges are pleasant and respectful. Students then fill in a small writing prompt at their desks, much like a short journal: “On a scale of one to five, where one is very sad and five is very happy, I feel like a _______ this morning” or “Dear Ms. Curtin, I wish you knew _______.” This writing activity helps students identify how they are feeling and helps the teacher understand their feelings as well.

The short writing entry also helps alleviate any fear or anxiety that students may be feeling at that moment—maybe they didn’t eat breakfast, maybe their parents had an argument, or maybe something consistent changed to upset them. Whatever the reason, students can start their day aware of how they feel and move forward. At the same time, the teacher is alerted (through the student lens) to any concerns she should know about to help students through the day (L. Curtin, personal communication, May 2, 2017).

We Can Take a More Holistic and All-Encompassing Approach

To quote Peter A. Levine (2008), “As individuals, families, communities, and even nations, we have the capacity to learn how to heal and prevent much of the damage done by trauma.” All of us remember teachers who made a difference, teachers who elevated our sense of well-being. Educators will only optimize the learning success of children when they make this shift from a sole focus on academics and learning in academic environments to a more holistic, all-encompassing approach that also includes understanding the varied social-emotional and psychological needs of students in their classrooms and the trials they bear.

The approach we recommend has its roots in various cultural traditions, with individuals with mental health and medical concerns, and by organizations promoting healthy organizational climates that boost good health and well-being. For example, the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (2014) describes the need to build trust before the work of healing trauma can begin. In Capacitar: Healing Trauma, Empowering Wellness, Joan Rebmann Condon and Patricia Mathes Cane (2011) address trauma through a multicultural approach that addresses body, mind, spirit, and emotions, discussing the need to heal the brain, heal the person, and heal the community. Physician, neuroscientist, and author David Servan-Schreiber (2013) discusses a need to reprogram the brain to adapt to the present rather than to continuously call up past experiences. Mindfulness facilitates that work, and part II (page 59) introduces those practices step by step. Servan-Schreiber (2013) also discusses an approach to reduce stress and help heal stress through creating more coherence between the brain and the heart.

Jon Kabat-Zinn (2003), creator and researcher of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, suggests that our thoughts, emotions, and life experiences influence our overall health and well-being. While Jon Kabat-Zinn and Thich Nhat Hanh (2013) acknowledge “there are few outright cures for chronic diseases or for stress-related disorders” (p. 199), they believe it is possible for people to heal themselves when they learn to live and work with conditions in the present, moment to moment. Specifically, their research, work, and practice of mindfulness demonstrate the moment-to-moment awareness of cultivating just being and how this heightened awareness can boost our immune system, help regulate our emotions when under stress, reduce our pain, increase our energy, and allow us greater peace, calm, and happiness. According to Kabat-Zinn and Hanh (2013), healing “implies the possibility that we can relate differently to illness, disability, even death, as we learn to see with eyes of wholeness” (p. 199).

One of the primary reasons we recommend focusing on healing in classrooms is the wide-ranging extent and prevalence of trauma. There is simply too much work to be done to rely on organizations outside of schools to take on a lion’s share of the work. Another simple reason is that the research continues to show that by addressing trauma and teaching mindfulness, we better situate students for learning and success (Bandura, 1991; Felver et al., 2015; Kauts & Sharma, 2009; Shunk & Ertmer, 2000; Zelazo & Lyons, 2012).

The students we are teaching will only focus and flourish when we meet them where they are, when we teach with a full realization of how to mindfully educate in a way that pulls each child into the excitement of learning and draws out his or her innate potential and confidence to learn. It isn’t so much about teaching academics as shifting our focus to teaching students—paying attention to what impacts learning and how to nurture students so they learn well.

We Can Support Teacher Health and Well-Being Through Mindfulness