Mindfulness in the Classroom: For Teacher and Student
Teaching and being taught can make for uncertain and stressful situations. As a teacher, you want your students to absorb the material, but you also want them to thrive emotionally. Tensions in the classroom you want to reduce in a reasonable way although with adolescents, for example, that can be very difficult. As a student, school is a place where insecurities can arise about your abilities and also for finding your place within the group.
To make time at school more enjoyable and make it easier to absorb lessons, I go into how mindfulness can be used in the classroom in this article.
Mindfulness in elementary school
Children in elementary school are brimming with energy and still exploring the world. As a result, you may think that elementary school children are the ideal learners, but alas. Their energy can still sometimes disrupt the lesson, and a little bird chirping outside is at least as interesting as the lesson material.
In addition, children today experience more stress than children in the past. This often manifests as outbursts (including violent ones), behavioral disorders, and the development of fears, such as fear of failure. These fears have a negative effect on their ability to absorb course material because their thoughts can distract them. It can even disrupt a clear train of thought regarding the course material, thereby interfering with the learning process.
By teaching children mindfulness, it is possible to better keep their attention on the task or exercise they are currently performing. Negative anxiety thoughts are therefore less likely to become a real distraction.
An American study of children aged 5, 6, and 7 shows that mindfulness has a positive impact on academic performance and behavior during class. In particular, questions that include a story can be solved more effectively when mindfulness is applied.
This is because mindfulness allows you to see circumstances from multiple angles. Seeing the situation with fresh eyes, giving the context in which a situation takes place and eventually even giving multiple contexts to a situation.
This skill allows learners to more quickly put new information into the context in which it can be used, rather than memorizing knowledge.
In the American study, the children learned mindful breathing, the body scan, and a physical activity task incorporating mindfulness. The study found that the children who practiced these mindfulness exercises and learned to be mindful had fewer problems with social interaction, were more focused on tasks, and experienced less test anxiety. They had become better at paying attention to a specific topic.
Mindfulness in high school
Mindfulness can also influence students’ focus, emotions, and performance in high school. Young people are increasingly struggling with burnout, depression, and stress more than ever before. Burnout among people in their twenties is so common that it’s no longer even considered an exception.
Therefore, even before that, it is important to give teens and young adults the tools to deal with stress, fears and emotions. That way, it is possible to prevent these symptoms, allowing everyone to get the most out of their lives.
A study conducted at a private girls’ school, where the average age was 17, revealed that mindfulness helped reduce negative feelings, improve the ability to stay calm, and foster greater self-acceptance. Especially at that age, this is often something that doesn’t happen automatically for girls.
In addition, participants also experienced less fatigue and pain by using mindfulness regularly.
In the program, the girls learned more about body awareness—such as through a body scan—understanding thoughts and working with thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations, reducing negative self-talk, and incorporating mindfulness into daily activities. This was achieved through, among other things, meditation in the classroom, music, and emotional expression. One of the participants said:
"I learned that I have control over the way I react to things and that nothing is too overwhelming for me to deal with," he said.
However, this study only shows the benefits for teenage girls of mindfulness in school and not for boys.
A study involving both boys and girls showed that meditation in the classroom improved the school environment and also reduced stress related to lessons. The study focused on the same factors as the one conducted at the girls’ school.
The foundation for a more relaxed and focused high school experience can be laid as early as the first year of high school. Research conducted among 11- to 13-year-olds shows that mindfulness training leads to greater relaxation, a less reactive response to events, and can even foster a stronger connection with nature.
A study conducted at a boys’ school with students aged 11 to 15 found that mindfulness can help build a resilient sense of self and improve focus, so you don’t let things get to you too easily. This was achieved simply by practicing 10 minutes of mindfulness meditation daily.
Mindfulness exercise for the classroom
With all these good developments of mindfulness in the classroom that are not only good for performance, but also for personal development and forming your own identity, you naturally want to get started right away to apply mindfulness in your classroom.
In studies, mindfulness meditation, body scan and recognizing and experiencing emotions emerge as particularly important components. Of course, there are many more exercises you can do, but we will focus on these first.
Mindfulness meditation
During mindfulness meditation, let your students experience how to focus on their breathing. How thoughts arise in them and how to let them go again by staying focused on that breath.
You have the children close their eyes so they can focus better. Then you have them take a deep breath and notice that they feel air enter their lungs which feeds their bodies with important oxygen from which they get energy.
That this may be a little crazy and that it is not a bad thing if they think that, but when they find that if they stop paying attention to their breathing they should just ignore that crazy or funny thought and get back to paying attention to their breathing. Let them experience that it makes them much calmer and calms them down. That things that happen in class don't matter for a moment.
When they are a few minutes in and you think everyone is calm you stop the exercise again.
Mindfulness body scan
Especially as a child, you are not often aware that you only have 1 body you have to do with your whole life. While precisely in those young years the brain is still in full development, therefore the body scan is the way to strengthen the connection between the brain and the body.
In addition, it is also a good tool on muscle tension recognition and conscious relaxation of your body.
In another article , I explain step by step how to perform the body scan on yourself. You can also translate this to what you can tell your students while performing a body scan.
Mindfulness for emotions
Emotions are often still new to children and, for adolescents, unpleasant and something they can get completely absorbed in. By using mindfulness to recognize emotions and have no judgment about them, students can learn to master their emotions instead of being lived by them.
For example, you can set up mindful moments hourly or at a specific time during the day where students have to identify what they are working on, what they are thinking about and what emotion they are having in the process. This gives them insight into what their thoughts are doing to their emotions and allows them to look at their own emotions from a distance, possibly reducing their grip on them.
Mindfulness for the teacher
In addition to students, teaching is also a stressful job where burnout symptoms occur relatively often. For teachers themselves, mindfulness can also be the solution to reducing stress. Mindfulness among teachers can prevent burnout, make it easier to perform computer-based tasks, and even improve the teacher’s classroom management. So when a teacher practices mindfulness, it benefits not only the teacher but the entire class as well ( source).
Would you like to learn more about ways to improve your life and the lives of others and reduce stress? Then come to a seminar or check out the courses offered by the Hypnosis Institute of the Netherlands.
Sources:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J370v21n01_05
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1754730X.2009.9715696
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12671-013-0215-9
http://nora-school.org/admin-forms/mindfulness-studies.pdf