compassion for self and for others.
We can make a difference if we choose to act, to believe, to elevate our collective consciousness with compassion. As educators, we have an enormous charge before us. If we are to properly prepare the next generation for their future, helping all students develop into healthy, well-adjusted, caring, and contributing individuals for their success and ours, then a paradigm shift is critically needed: a paradigm shift in mindset, in the way we think and act regarding education, our children, families, and our world. Our collective and shared work on this shift begins now.
Mindful Reflection
As an individual or with your study group, respond to the mindful reflection questions, taking notes on the following page.
• What do you know about the trauma your students experience at home or at school?
• What steps, if any, is your school community taking to combat trauma and increase social well-being for students and teachers?
• Racism, intolerance, and prejudice are major factors contributing to trauma. How prevalent are these in your local area? Who is addressing them, and how?
• What do you know about mindfulness?
• Are you implementing any mindfulness practices in your classroom, your school, or your own life? If so, describe the practices and their impact to date.
• Describe your school community. How compassionate is it? Has there been a conscious effort to increase compassion? Explain how.
— Notes —
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,
