As a classroom teacher for the past dozen plus years, I have practiced daily meditations with my students. It was the focus of my Masters studies, and I have continued to research the topic, as I have continued studying, teaching and meditating with my students. Practicing meditation with my students has become the cornerstone of my teaching practice, fostering a climate of respect, compassion and belonging that permeates everything else I do in my classroom, in about 6 minutes a day.
Over the years, I have been mildly successful in documenting my own classroom experiences with our practice, as well as those my students have related to me, both orally and in writing. I am very proud of my chapter in the Ebook, Sustainable Well-Being: Concepts, Issues and Educational Practices (2014, ESWB Press,
http://www.cityuniversity.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Sustainable-Well-Being-2014.pdf#page=181)
While teaching full-time, and now that I am out of the university loop, it is challenging to find the motivation to continue writing, especially as it also entails the need to further pursue audiences and opportunities for publication.
In part as an effort to instill more, or perhaps some, discipline in my own writing practice, and in part because I believe in the value of classroom research and teacher insight and experience, and in part because I have been thinking about it for a long time, and one colleague in particular has been encouraging me to do this for equally as long, I have decided to blog about our classroom meditations and my experiences with my students.
Tomorrow, as I welcome my new groups of grade 7's, the first thing I will do with both of my classes is meditate, as I have done on the first day of the last 13 years in middle school pretty much exactly as I describe in my writing. The difference is, for the first time ever, I will share my experiences in a more public forum. I am not sure if anyone will actually read it, but I at least I will know it is written and here to be read.
So I begin a new year with new inspiration....this blog is dedicated to the practice I share with my students and discovering where documenting a year in the life of classroom meditation may lead
Over the years, I have been mildly successful in documenting my own classroom experiences with our practice, as well as those my students have related to me, both orally and in writing. I am very proud of my chapter in the Ebook, Sustainable Well-Being: Concepts, Issues and Educational Practices (2014, ESWB Press,
http://www.cityuniversity.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Sustainable-Well-Being-2014.pdf#page=181)
While teaching full-time, and now that I am out of the university loop, it is challenging to find the motivation to continue writing, especially as it also entails the need to further pursue audiences and opportunities for publication.
In part as an effort to instill more, or perhaps some, discipline in my own writing practice, and in part because I believe in the value of classroom research and teacher insight and experience, and in part because I have been thinking about it for a long time, and one colleague in particular has been encouraging me to do this for equally as long, I have decided to blog about our classroom meditations and my experiences with my students.
Tomorrow, as I welcome my new groups of grade 7's, the first thing I will do with both of my classes is meditate, as I have done on the first day of the last 13 years in middle school pretty much exactly as I describe in my writing. The difference is, for the first time ever, I will share my experiences in a more public forum. I am not sure if anyone will actually read it, but I at least I will know it is written and here to be read.
So I begin a new year with new inspiration....this blog is dedicated to the practice I share with my students and discovering where documenting a year in the life of classroom meditation may lead
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