week 13 post 1

Week 13 post 1

The implementation of social emotional intelligence strategies and mindfulness exercises in k-12 schools should be mandatory.

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_teach_teens_about_the_brain 

How to Teach Teens About the Brain BY AMIR FLESHER

Why did I feel alive and connected during the week I spent living on a farm in Ecuador, but depressed and unmotivated as soon as I got back home? Why do I find certain types of faces attractive and others ugly? Why do I laugh?

• why they experience strong feelings such as sadness, anxiety, attraction, and joy.
• fundamental nature of reality
•  Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin, has done pioneering work exploring how contemplative practices like meditation can help us manage negative emotions and cultivate positive ones. Joshua Greene, a psychology professor at Harvard University, has shed light on how gut feelings and reason battle it out in the brain to influence moral decision making.

• Deconstructing the mind

• our perceptions, emotions, and values are mediated by a nervous system that has been shaped by evolution. Unfortunately, we do not come equipped with a user’s manual explaining how our biology sets the stage for how we navigate a world quite different from the one in which our neurobiology evolved.
• Science of the Mind CLASS
• Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction program

• A reservoir of ease

• the practice of mindfulness, the moment-to-moment awareness of our sensations, perceptions, thoughts, and feelings. 
• While cognitive science serves to unpack the self at a conceptual third-person level, mindfulness practice does the same thing through direct first-person observation of the mind. Working hand-in-hand, cognitive science and mindfulness form the backbone of a comprehensive contemplative studies program.
• mindfulness gives them a chance to experience moments of silence and calm in the midst of their hectic daily lives, helping them cultivate a reservoir of ease and stability that they can use when the going gets rough.
• Emerging research on school-based mindfulness programs suggests that even one to 10 minutes of mindfulness practice, combined with 15-40 minute of discussion, can have a positive impact on cognitive performance and mood;
•  however, more deeply experiencing the benefits of mindfulness takes significantly more training, which requires discipline and intensive practice time. It is for this reason that people go on meditation retreats—lasting anywhere from several days to three months or more—in which practitioners spend 10 to 15 hours a day in silence and formal meditation practice. Such practice can result in profound shifts of perspective and previously unheard of improvements in cognitive ability
• Inward Bound Mindfulness Education(iBme), founded in 2010 to bring the benefits of more intensive practice to teens.

• The next phase: Semester school

• high school juniors and seniors will spend one semester away from home engaged in cooperative living, a rigorous interdisciplinary curriculum centered on Science of the Mind, and extended periods of mindfulness practices.
• around a dozen semester schools operating like this in the United States, focusing on one theme intensively, but this would be the first program dedicated to contemplative studies
• I hear regularly from alumni of Science of the Mind how the perspectives and tools they gained from the course have helped them deal with everything from the stress of finishing a college term paper to existential questions such as choosing a life path. In feedback she wrote to me last year, one former student captures my hopes for the course perfectly: “Science of the Mind frames education as an essential part of being a happy, moral person. The class connects facts and comprehension to the project of living well. It’s kind of about empowerment—learning how to use knowledge to understand yourself, and how to use your self-knowledge toward change.”

 https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/images/uploads/Davis-Mindfulness_Potential_on_Education_Psych.pdf benefits of teaching mindfulness

How_to_fall_in_love_with_teaching_again BY CHASE MIELKE

• after five years, 46 percent of teachers either move to new positions or quit teaching, often because of overall job dissatisfaction, loss of autonomy, and lack of feedback
• Ironically, I had been teaching a 12-week positive psychology class for high schoolers for years, based on research about engagement, positive emotion, meaning, and accomplishment. But I wasn’t practicing what I preached.
• applying the science of happiness and meaning, I learned to love teaching again.

• We can change our attitude toward our jobs

• Sonja Lyubomirsky and Kennon Sheldon’s Sustainable Happiness Model.
• our circumstances—factors often beyond our control—typically only account for 10 percent of the variance in happiness between people, while 40 percent is determined by our intentional actions and daily habits.
• our well-being is within our influence. 

1. Awareness: Mindfulness

• We are constantly thinking about the future—the next lesson or the next question—or we are mulling over our students’ past performance
• “Some of your thoughts don’t have your best interest in mind.” We teachers often have to fight two beasts of burnout: rumination and resentment, which erode our well-being. How can we fight these? With mindfulness.
• even the most basic practices of mindful breathing benefit us. We can take two slow deep breaths before speaking our first words to our class. When we get emotionally worked up, we can use thought and emotion labeling to activate the frontal lobe and calm the amygdala.
• The moments we practice mindfulness, even for just taking a few deep breaths, are like stones dropped into a pond. The benefits ripple out to our students, our teaching, and our lives beyond the classroom.

2. Attitude: Gratitude

• Teaching can be challenging because we are constantly engaging in comparisons. Can be good for some but for many this is draining. Comparing students, classes, and data. 
• comparing is eroding our well-being, we can reframe our view of our current situation using gratitude, focusing on what’s going well, how we might be fortunate, and who has provided good things to our lives.
• Education can be filled with things that aren’t good enough (and social media isn’t shy of zeroing in on these). But it’s also filled with victory, hope, and positivity. Gratitude is better than griping when it comes to our well-being; so, focus on things that inspire you.

3. Action: Job Crafting

• Passionate teachers aren’t born that way. They just practice what researchers call job crafting: taking intentional actions to change how we interact with our tasks and with others. We can craft our calling to our profession by reflecting on the following:
• Boosts: What makes me love this job and how can I do these more?
• Burdens: What frustrates me about this job that I can reduce or shift?
• Gifts: What are my strengths and how can I apply them more?
• Gaps: What are my weaknesses and how can I outsource or get help with them?

 For example, grading was a burden for me. So, I shifted to do more pre-writing conferences with students. The benefits? Less time grading afterthe assignment, more time using a boost (one-on-one conversations with students), and more quality feedback to help students learn.