News — Teacher mindfulness doesn't begin on the first day of classes in the late summer or early fall. It is an invaluable skill that can be practiced and perfected all throughout the year, especially when teachers are on summer break.
Her work particularly focuses on how teachers’ emotions impact their instructional practices, and the role that early-career teachers’ emotions play as they transition into the career. She holds expertise in quantitative, mixed-methods, and longitudinal study design and implementation, multileveled data analysis, and classroom observation.
Below she gives a few tips on how teachers can begin preparing themselves – and by extension their future students – for all the ups and downs of the upcoming school year.
Engage in restorative rest this summer.
One of the ways to prepare for the upcoming school year is to get restorative rest. It's important to let your brain disengage for a short time, but it's also beneficial to set aside time, before the school year begins, to think about the past school year. What went well? What could be done better? What techniques are you hoping to improve in the coming school year?
As we as a society still reel from the COVID-19 pandemic, meaningfully reflect on the past four years and ask yourself what you've see with your students. What do they need to succeed this upcoming year? How can you facilitate an environment where students are getting the unique support that the pandemic created?
Incorporate mindfulness into your daily habit.
You cannot expect to dive into mindfulness on day one of a new school year, it take practice. Pay attention to your emotions and work on emotional awareness. Shift into thinking "My emotions are signals that I have to pay attention to." This is impossible to do for the first time in the heat of teaching. Summer and the weeks leading up to the school year are great times to practice these techniques.
As educators, teachers experience the full range of human emotions every day, and they are usually the only adults in the room.
Dr. Jon Cooper, Director of Behavioral Health for the Colonial School District in New Castle, Delaware noted: "We want teachers to be the emotional thermostat, not the thermometer."
During the summer, think about how to set classroom norms and expectation to be responsive to your emotions and those of your students in a way that will create a more mindful classroom all around.
All emotions are ok, even the bad one. Not all behaviors that come from those emotions are ok.
Take yourself through a school day and anticipate the needs of your students.
One major mindfulness practice is taking yourself through a typical school day and identifying parts where students are most likely to have difficulties. Do students have challenging moments during small groups? Is there math anxiety? Restructure these so even the things that don't go well, can go well.
Utilize mindfulness websites and apps.
There are websites and apps teachers can use to further incorporate mindfulness into their daily lives, including:
For more tips...
McLean is available for interviews and can expound on the ways teachers can set themselves – and their students – up for success.
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