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Purpose of Mindfulness A few examples of the purpose of mindfulness: a way to be present rather than hyper-focus on the past or future, help us be clear-minded during difficult situations, help us determine if we need more energy or less energy in any given moment, etc. Feel free to share your own purpose and ask students what they think as well. Mindfulness is something to practice, but also a way of being. Additionally, you can find videos for elementary and secondary students in this link. | Your Brain on Mindfulness Teach your students about neuroplasticity and how mindfulness can help strengthen the brain. You can use this document to teach about the three parts of the brain affected by mindfulness: FREE download on Teachers Pay Teachers. You can also use a video from the Mindful AISD YouTube Playlist about the hand model of the brain. | Different Ways to Practice Mindfulness There are many different ways to practice mindfulness. I really like this image as it provides many different ways to practice. Thinking specifically about breath; focused, intentional breaths take time to learn. Start small with three collective breaths and slowly grow from there. You can use these animated GIFS to help guide you and your students' breathing. |
Purpose of Mindfulness
Feel free to share your own purpose and ask students what they think as well. Mindfulness is something to practice, but also a way of being.
Additionally, you can find videos for elementary and secondary students in this link.
Your Brain on Mindfulness
Different Ways to Practice Mindfulness
Regarding my partnership with Cultural Proficiency & Inclusiveness, Mindfulness 101, 201 & 301 will have a prerequisite of attending Isolating Race, a workshop I attended this summer that I feel supports and focuses on self-awareness in a productive manner. The workshop has a great deal of mindfulness embedded. The workshop is led by CP&I staff members that I have a great deal of respect for and I'm looking forward to the chance to be on the team that presents Isolating Race occasionally.
A big part of the reason behind this particular shift is that I had the honor of learning from Dr. Angela Rose Black this summer at the Disrupting Systemic Whiteness in the Mindfulness Movement Institute and it inspired me to think more critically about how I'm sharing mindfulness and how it's being used in AISD. I've noticed that mindfulness can be used as a means of discipline or silencing our students of color and I want to be very intentional about addressing this serious issue.
Isolating Race Workshop Links Below. Sign up soon as these will fill quickly...
The letter and most of the resources are translated into Spanish, Arabic, Farsi/Dari, Burmese, Kinyarwanda & Swahili. Feel free to share the link with families as well: bit.ly/mindfulfams
James Butler, M.Ed.
Austin ISD SEL Mindfulness Specialist
2014 Austin ISD Teacher of the Year
Author of Mindful Classrooms: Daily 5-Minute Practices to Support Social-Emotional Learning
