I every time spent my half an hour to read this web site's articles every day along
with a cup of coffee.

I teach in a post-secondary techical institute where we focus on job-related skills. In bringing mindfulness practices to my students, I face two challenges. First, if I don't carefully make a case that the mindfulness practices lead directly to better job skills, the students won't buy in. Second, I have to be very careful to make the point that mindfulness practices are not religious practices (although they are incorporated into all of the world's great religions). I sometimes feel like I have to tippy-toe around to sneak in practices that I know are likely to be more beneficial to students than anthing else I do in the classroom.

Frieda, I would like to thank you for using skillful means to bring mindful practices to your students. Perhaps mindful teaching involves tippy-toeing as part of a new and beautiful choreography in our instructional repertoire.

One key challenge of mindful teaching is figuring out if there are other ways of teaching even better. Although there is always assessment of student learning during/after the lesson that can inform us about the effectiveness of our lesson, when colleagues and experts come in as critical friends, our understanding of how effective our pedagogical approaches are improves tremendously. This is especially so when you have colleagues with a variety of experiences.

A few years ago, I had the good fortune of taking a class offered in my district called Mindful Teacher. This gave me a group of teachers with whom I could practice mindfulness, which helped me to stay on the path. I find that when I leave it to myself to practice, without a peer group, I often let other things take its place.
In using the practices with my students, I find it difficult to find the right balance with my active 6/7 year old students. Just a few seconds of quiet feels like a lifetime for them, but I do find that when I make the time, they seem to really love it and benefit from that time, just to be quiet.
This is to say that finding a group to practice with is what helps to make mindfulness reach it fullest potential, for the teacher and students.

Thank you for your posting, Katie! It is very important for all of us to find colleagues who can support us in the contemplative practices that benefit our students. Sometimes this can be sponsored by our district, as it was in your case, but more often we find that there are ways to start our own independent networks.

Hello

Thich Nhat Hahn is promoting the International conference on mindfulness in Education on his FB feed. Thought of you Dr. Shirley! Will you be going? Best, MBB
http://www.ub.edu/ice/en/jornades/mindfulnessen