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,