“Ding, ding, ding”. The bell rings and students exit the classroom as two students come up to you. One is concerned about their grade. Another has already lost their homework. You quickly support them as your next class is already arriving. You look up desperately at the bathroom door across the hall and then to the clock. You’ve got two minutes and debate if you can make it. You hustle and run back right as the bell rings. It’s already 4th period, you’ve got two more classes to teach and you realize you still haven’t had lunch yet. You look around staring at 32 diverse faces with diverse needs. You begin to remember you never let the cat out this morning and recall the argument you had with your youngest child. Which then reminds you of soccer practice after school and you question which fast food restaurant is on the way. You begin to scan the faces of your students, some are joking with their friends, others locked into their phones, some getting out their journals while others already have their heads down. As a good teacher, you dive right into your lesson because bell to bell instruction is the way to teach. We are scholars here, right? There is no time to waste. You call the kids to attention and dive in, “Buenas tardes chicos!”
What if we flipped the script? What if instead we stop for a moment to breathe and re-center ourselves for the day. You, the teacher, are not the only one with a million things rushing through your head trying to stay focused among all the internal and external demands. Life is a constant ebb and flow and demands so much of not just ourselves, but our students too. It takes just a few minutes to allow for a mental reset and mindfulness is a great way to do just that!
Mindfulness practice helps increase our ability to regulate emotions, reduce stress, anxiety and depression. They also help focus attention as well as observing one’s thoughts and feelings without judgement. The great thing is they don’t take that much time and can be done in the target language.
Here is an example:
The bell has rung, the class is settling in loudly with some clearly still attached to their hallway conversations or hooked on some video on their phone. Even though class has started, of course students are not yet ready to begin as they’ve just been jostled around during a 5-minute passing period where their mind was pulled between answering text messages, bumping into students as they maneuver through the crowded hallway, frustrated about the large project they were just assigned and worried if ‘so and so’ really likes them or not. The teacher asks the students to all sit in their chairs, feet on the ground, hands resting on their lap and eyes closed (if they are ok with it). Then the teacher will read a script in a calm, slow voice. The instructions include breathing activities and a request to focus on something such as their own body or positive thoughts. As a class, they spend about a minute working through the script, relaxing, resetting and calming the mind. Each person in the room, the students and the teacher, all get a moment to just stop and be present. The room is now calm, quiet and relaxed. The teacher taps the chime which slowly becomes a distant echo but also signals to the students it’s time to get out their journals and start on the Do Now (aka Bell Ringer).
What a very different way to begin a class period than just jumping right in and trying to interrupt the expected chaos of a school day. Also, everything the teacher spoke was in the target language. Not only did it settle their minds, it opens the mind for learning. It also helped shift their minds into the target language.
A quick search in Google and you can easily find several mindfulness activities, either scripts to read, short activities or even images to use. Below are some for you that were free to access and they can be found at my website, on the resource page. Also consider getting a chime. Students listen once the chime is stroked, and the ringing slowly slips away. It is a great way to signal entering mindfulness and then beginning the learning. Amazon has several and some are only around $12, which is the one I purchased!
Lastly, involve students! After the teacher has led a few mindfulness activities, encourage the students to then write their own in the target language and lead it! You can even extend the learning outside the classroom by having the students teach their families and friends the mindfulness activities. One school I work at even gave the students a list of mindfulness activities to do at home over spring break and if they completed at least 5, were entered in a raffle!
I challenge you, in our current world of constant stimulation, to flip the script in the classroom to reset, refocus and better welcome our students into the learning environment!