Skip to main content

The gift of mindfulness

This is a guest post from Vickie Woehrle

I know that there are many stressful professions in the world today, but I have to think that teaching ranks at least in the top 10.  I have been in teaching for 18 years and I realized a few years ago that if I was going to have longevity in this career, I needed to develop some strategies to manage the stress.  Thankfully my colleague introduced me to the concept of mindfulness.


For me it started as a kid-focused initiative. There is no doubt that this practice is beneficial for our students, and I encourage everyone to incorporate it into their classroom repertoire.  It has the ability to have a profound effect on classroom culture, with the hope that it will also work its magic in the lives of students outside of the school day.  

I would use mindfulness on a daily basis with my homeroom students.  I found my students bought into the guided imagery practice the most.  Mindfulness takes practice and patience, but it is well worth it.  Students are going to seven classes a day and really don’t have any scheduled “down time.”  Offering mindfulness is a gift that I believe every student should receive. Often times both students and staff need to be given permission to just stop and breathe.  


After seeing how mindfulness impacted my own classroom, it was clear that it was something that I personally needed to practice. I have found that it helps me both personally and professionally.  It definitely helps me to be a better teacher for my students. My only complaint is that I didn't learn about this earlier! 

Vickie Woehrle is the Library Media Specialist at Highview Middle School.  In 2012, she was awarded, "Top Teacher" by Fox 9 news. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The conscious and connected student

While the mindfulness in education movement is still young, it has an increasing footprint in schools across the US and the globe. One can argue that most of the practices are body and sensory based practices- breathing, awareness of sound, mindful movement, etc. All in the service of self-awareness and emotional health, all well and good. But some educators are trying to expand that interpretation of mindfulness. Amy Edelstein is an educator in the Philadelphia schools where she has worked as an outside provider (meaning she is not a regular classroom teacher) teaching mindfulness to students for many years. She has developed her own program called  The Inner Strength System , and her most recent book is entitled, The Conscious Classroom (Emergence Education Press, 2017) . In this  wide-ranging book Edelstein shares her experience working in the urban schools of Philadelphia. She does not shy  away from describing the tremendous challenges her school f...
Post a Comment
Read more
I recently published my first book on Amazon, "Advice for Every Hour." It's available in both ebook and paperback. It has many of the essays on this blog, as well as additional content. It chronicles my adventures applying mindfulness and other strategies in my life, and classroom. 
Post a Comment
Read more

Embracing your life

I met Tom Odland my freshman year at St. Olaf college in 1977. He was a typical college kid, full of life and had a great sense of humor. He was a talented trumpet player too, and was always after  me to sit and listen to his latest jazz hero. (He was part of  a small band that played Mexican and traditional rock music which I remember dancing to and having a ball.) Tom eventually left St. Olaf, to continue his studies at the University of Minnesota, eventually becoming a successful research scientist for St. Jude's Medical for ten years. After that, he worked for a German medical company and later, went on his own as a consultant.  He was happily married, with a wife and four  daughters, when tragedy struck.  While fixing a toilet one day,  he realized something was going terribly wrong. When he tried to grasp a plunger with his right arm, he couldn't hold it. With his knowledge of biology, he figured he was having a stroke.  By some miracle, he...
Post a Comment
Read more