The MiSP Pathways Portfolio helps you keep a record of the wide range of development work you have done, personally and professionally, to create a sustainable mindfulness approach in your school/setting. 

If at some point your setting applies to Step 5 of the Pathways to become a MiSP Beacon School, the Portfolio can be submitted to support your application.

In the Hub, click on the Pathways logo for each step and in the Portfolio templates at each Step level you will see suggested detailed actions/activities that will support introducing mindfulness in your setting.

• These ideas are just a suggested starting point and we welcome settings choosing other ways of getting things started.
• We recommend building the Pathways Portfolio on whichever platform is most suited to/already used by your setting, ie. Googledrive, Microsoft, Thinkific, Padlet etc.
• Feel free to use a range of different ways of recording evidence of the work you are doing; for example:- photos, videos, audio interviews (please get permissions for sharing any photographs or videos of students or staff), written work, artwork, displays, Class Impact survey results, staff questionnaires, research, policy documents, certificates or other evidence to show related CPD (for example, attending MiSP support sessions; retreats, group mentoring, practice sessions, Schools Sits and Skills workshops) 

More detailed information for each Step is or will be available in the Hub. However, here is an idea of the sorts of evidence you could collect at each Step:

Step 1 – Explore – Evidence of research using undertaken i.e. evidence of attendance at an information webinar, a Mindfulness in School action plan, a photo of attendance at a School Sit etc

Log in to the Hub and click here for Step 1 Resources 

Step 2– Introduce – Evidence of introductions to mindfulness for staff and students i.e. photos of student assembly on mindfulness using Step 2 resources, photo of a staff mindfulness display board, photo of a staff taster session, certificates of attendance of practice sessions, retreats, Step 2 Skills workshops etc

Log in to the Hub and click here for Step 2 Resources

Step 3 – Develop – Evidence of courses being offered to students i.e. photos or video clips of dots, Paws b or .b classes, photo of a student mindfulness display board, notes from Staff and/or Student mindfulness working groups, certificates of attendance or other evidence to show attending Group Mentoring sessions, Step 3 Skills workshops etc

Log in to the Hub and click here for Step 3 Resources

Step 4 – Embed – Evidence of courses being offered to staff, parents, governors and wider development work exploring how mindfulness approaches might inform/support other areas of school life i.e. photos of course, video clips of adults in setting talking about the benefits of mindfulness, policy documents that show influence of mindfulness approaches.

Also, evidence that the School Mindfulness Lead is supporting their own practice and development i.e. certificates of attendance or other evidence to show they are receiving supervision, attending Group Mentoring sessions, Step 4 Skills workshops, retreats etc. 

We hope this helps and, if you have any questions or further ideas for development, please contact enquiries@mindfulnessinschools.org.

Please join us on this journey by exploring ‘The Pathways’ today!

The post What is the MiSP Pathways Portfolio? appeared first on Mindfulness in Schools Project.

Guest blog by Zettie Taylor, Teacher of English & Mindfulness at Princes Risborough School 

One of our Year 7 students told me: “Me and a friend went to our lockers to get our laptops out for our next lesson and the locker doors would not open. We were trying as hard as we could but the doors were not opening so we went to the office but no one was there – we were freaking out! So we did petal practice and finger breathing and it worked! Turns out that the key was the wrong way. Our minds were clear which meant that we could look at the key a different way.”

I love this anecdote. By unlocking new perspectives, mindfulness offers us different ways of approaching life. I have reams of feedback from students in my school, reporting on the many ways that mindfulness ‘works’ for them. Nine out of ten of our Year 7s have said that it helps, so it came as a shock to hear the results of the MYRIAD study. As I have reflected on the gap between the data at our school and the MYRIAD project, I wonder whether perhaps something about the study itself was somehow ‘turning the key the wrong way’.

Where did it all start?

I feel fortunate to have stumbled across the MYRIAD project at the start of my mindfulness journey. With their funding, we were able to offer fifteen staff members an MBCT for life, and train four of us to teach the .b (pronounced “Dot Be”) 11-18 year olds course to our students.

Learning to teach mindfulness was the hardest thing I’d done since training as a teacher ten years previously. It requires a shift in perspective and expectation, and a delicate balance to maintain between classroom management and personal freedom. I was so keen, so passionate about sharing these fantastic techniques to help our students to self regulate, yet so inexperienced – the mistakes I made on our MYRIAD study students were, well, myriad. I tried so hard to get it right! The training, which was designed to protect the integrity of the study by ensuring that individual teachers didn’t deviate too far from the MiSP script, was definitely gold standard – yet in some ways it held me back. The limitations imposed by the study overrode my professional instinct to respond to different students’ needs, and it’s taken the last seven years of teaching Dot Be and Paws Be at PRS for me to develop my authentic ‘voice’.

I’ve learned from my mistakes over time, letting go of the need to control the outcome and relaxing into a more invitational style of teaching. I learned early on that appearances can be deceptive: quiet students who seem to be engaged can be thinking all sorts of mutinous thoughts, while the disruptive ones often (secretly) report the most gains. One lively student succinctly summed up their experience of mindfulness as “boring as f**k but I still want to do it”! The traditional teacher in me might jump on the swearing; the newer one embraces the honesty in this, and the courage. We can learn to ‘turn the key’ in different ways for different students, with acceptance, humour and respect for each student’s perspective

Developing mindfulness to suit our students

Over the years I have adjusted the delivery of mindfulness in the PRS curriculum to better suit our students. We have moved from teaching the .b course to Year 8s through Wednesday afternoon Enrichment, to teaching the Paws b 7-11 year olds course to our Year 7s within the PSHE curriculum. I’ve shared the .b course with parents, and taught it to Year 11s keen enough to attend after school on a Friday. Some decisions are practical, but I’ve learned to trust my instincts regarding what approach will best meet the needs of our young people.

While I remain true to the intentions and outcomes of the MiSP courses, I now deliver them in my own ‘voice’. As my personal practice develops and changes over the years, I find myself offering more choices. “If you don’t find the breath a helpful place to rest your attention, you can always tune in to your hands or feet instead.” After the death of my father in 2020, I better understand how trauma can affect someone practising mindfulness. For a year afterwards, turning inwards felt like peering into an abyss; it was frightening – and I finally understood why some children might prefer to disturb others rather than sit quietly. I learned to be gentle with myself, and bring that outlook to the classroom too. A belief that teaching mindfulness to young people is a process of planting seeds helps. If presented with a light touch, a student may rediscover mindfulness in later years when challenges arise.

Mindfulness has benefitted me too

Teaching mindfulness has benefitted me, too. Working with young people keeps it fresh. A daily practice helped me to balance my roles as a mother and a teacher by understanding my own stress signature. I discovered that the more busy I was, the less in touch I became with my own body. I learned to spot the signs of overwhelm much earlier. Mindfulness was the process by which I came to know myself better – and then it gave me the strength to hold steady when everything changed.

For over two years now I have lived with Long Covid, and I have come to embrace both the limitations and the possibilities of this chronic condition. I regularly tune in to my body and accept what I find, responding to fatigue and pain with compassion rather than denial. In the darkest days, when I was unable to teach, I knew I had a toolkit of practices and experience – I could ‘turn the key a different way’ and unlock a new perspective. Now I am grateful for the freedom Long Covid has given me to create breathing space in a life that had become increasingly overloaded. I know myself better, check in regularly, and make wiser choices about where I direct my energy.

So, where next?

I am keen to expand the breadth of mindfulness practice across our academy trust. I have successfully embedded an introduction to mindfulness within our Year 7 curriculum at PRS with the Paws b course. We sometimes start department meetings with a brief practice to help us change gear, which is always well received – but currently I am the only mindfulness teacher in the school. My recent absence from work has reminded me that there is strength in numbers.

I have delivered a taster session at a recent wellbeing conference run by Insignis Academy Trust, and I am trained and ready to offer an 8 week adult mindfulness course (.b Foundations) to other staff within our cluster of five schools. Offering mindfulness to adult stakeholders could start to weave a mindful way of teaching and being into the wider fabric of the school communities, perhaps leading to more teachers training to teach our students. More practitioners would enable us to offer interested students a chance to revisit mindfulness with the .b course in Key Stage 4 and 5 as the exam pressures build.

I am learning to embrace the fact that I can’t do it all myself, and that change takes time. I regularly remind school leaders of the positive impact of mindfulness on our students, using my growing bank of feedback gathered via Google forms through optional mindfulness homeworks and an end of course assessment. I need to be flexible and creative in finding ways around the restrictions of school budgets, and time. With more trained staff, we can bring mindfulness training to parents and other stakeholders, too. I dream of a team of mindfulness teachers modelling a slower, more considered way of living and working – and reaping personal rewards through the process.

I’m grateful to the MYRIAD project for giving me the start I needed on this journey. So many of the young people in our school tell me that mindfulness techniques have helped them to overcome their daily challenges in a world of increasing uncertainty. Our current education system seems to be hard to access for so many students.

What if mindfulness is part of the answer? It certainly helps us to ‘look at the key a different way’.

Read the Princes Risborough Case Study here

The post Unlocking Potential: MYRIAD and Mindfulness appeared first on Mindfulness in Schools Project.

Guest blog by Emily Brierley, Youth Ambassador for Mindfulness in Schools Project 

Mindfulness: a word often invoking raised eyebrows and a dismissive comment. It appears to exist on a spectrum of simply being a fad or the foundations of out of touch hippies. In reality, mindful qualities are inherent in human nature, most consistently and naturally seen in the curiosity of small children.

We are born with a sense of wonder at the smallest of phenomenon, a blade of grass, or an unfamiliar noise. Children see magic in the everyday, demand only what they need, and express their emotions without inhibition. This is part of mindfulness and we are born an expression of it.

What I feel is the essence of mindfulness.

So, what happened? Where does society rush in and extinguish these natural qualities? Should we blame the magazines, the trauma, our parents? The ‘answers’ to these questions can be found in thousands of costly self-help courses, but I believe we are the only ones who can re-ignite what was extinguished. This is the essence of what mindfulness means to me, it is a coming home to the children we were. To the core of who we still are if we only pause long enough to welcome it back.

Teaching mindfulness to the young people of today, just might mean that the adults of tomorrow don’t have to work so hard to find themselves. Mindfulness really can be two things. A lens through which to see the world in all of its magical glory, allowing for more joy and self-awareness. And just as importantly, a lifeline for when the world knocks you off your feet and you’re not sure how to get up. My experience of mindfulness has confirmed this time and again.

What has mindfulness done for me?

My journey began at the age of twelve, experiencing debilitating anxiety causing physical pain. I found and explored mindfulness. I saw my anxiety completely dissipate within three months, so I kept going. Not only was I not anxious, but my nervous system was relaxed and as a thirteen-year-old should, I saw the world as a beautiful place. Fast forward two years and I’m fifteen, running for my life away from an exploded bomb at the Manchester Arena. Maybe the world isn’t really safe. But a whole community coming together taught me yes, there is safety in love and belonging. Mindfulness led me to help young people, victims of terrorism, and even war veterans. It taught me that by healing others, we heal ourselves. But life wasn’t done. I was presented with multiple opportunities to rise up and every step of the way, mindfulness said, ‘remember who you are’. Three years later and I’m twenty-two. Happier than I have ever been, with a certainty that the world is a beautiful place. Where would I be without mindfulness? Look around you, and you’ll find too many examples.

So, where next?

I would argue that mindfulness needs to be regarded as equally essential as a GCSE in Maths and English, seriously taught in schools right from the start. There is no such thing as a mindful future if we don’t begin to build one now. Mindfulness needs to be a movement, not a moment (although that’s all it takes).

The post Mindfulness for Modern Life appeared first on Mindfulness in Schools Project.

For 2024, MiSP remains committed to making a positive impact on the lives of children and young people, and the adults working with them. Our recent Team ‘away day’ enabled us to revisit our current key objectives for the upcoming year, including:

• Expanding the reach of our School Mindfulness Pathways programme and resources. This will enable us to offer and articulate MiSP’s support to more schools and students, including those in underserved communities.
• Continuing to showcase the voices of children and young people, including those who have benefited from mindfulness practices.
• Increasing awareness of the connection between mindfulness and overall wellbeing. Mindfulness practices can enhance our lives in many ways. One goal in 2024 is to highlight the relationship between mindfulness and wellbeing, find new ways to articulate this and share with you.
• Supporting our community of trained teachers, including a soon to be updated round-up of the latest evidence-based research.

So, please watch this space during the coming months! This list is by no means exhaustive, and we are always open to feedback and suggestions from our community on ways we can improve MiSP’s offering.

Recent projects for long-term impact

It has been a pleasure to begin training teachers in Warrington, thanks to the generous fundraising efforts of Esther Ghey in memory of her daughter, Brianna. Esther’s dedication and support has been incredibly inspiring and we are hugely grateful to be the recipient of such a heartfelt legacy. Thank you to everyone who has donated to the latest campaign which, at the time of writing, is close to reaching its target of £50k!

We are also proud to be working with schools in some of the most deprived areas of Newcastle upon Tyne, through a new partnership with the NEAT Academy Trust and the generosity of the CHK Foundation. This project builds on our previous training efforts in the region, and it has been such a highlight to see our training in action and hear directly from the children who benefit.

MiSP is currently exploring the possibility of joint funding bids in other geographical areas to make mindfulness a community-wide initiative. If you are interested in discussing potential projects in your area or Trust, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Bringing mindfulness to schools around the world

It’s also heart-warming for us to celebrate the growing MiSP global community, with around 1 in 4 of our participants joining us from overseas and partnerships where MiSP training is delivered in the local language (including Hong Kong, Japan and the Netherlands). To support our colleagues worldwide, we will continue to pilot training that works for different time zones. These will also hopefully support our UK colleagues’ varying work schedules.

As we move forward, MiSP remains committed to making mindfulness accessible to as many children and young people as possible.  As ever, if you have thoughts about how we can fund work in your community or with a particular group of educational settings, do get in touch.

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The post What’s ahead for Mindfulness in Schools Project? appeared first on Mindfulness in Schools Project.

On 20th September 2023, we held a webinar where Chris Cullen and Richard Burnett, MiSP’s co-founders, shared the early days of Mindfulness in Schools Project (MiSP) – what gave them the idea to set up MiSP, where their personal mindfulness journey started from and where has it taken them to this point…

You can watch the full recording by clicking the image above. If you are particularly interested in the MYRIAD research, we would suggest watching from 29:06 where Chris speaks to this specifically. Also, below is a transcript from this part of the session.

In brief, I think it’s really important to get clear about precisely what question the researchers were investigating?

It wasn’t the question – ‘is mindfulness beneficial for children and young people?’  Although the fact is that the outcome data that they got clearly suggests the answer is, yes, it is beneficial for children and young people – showing that the children who actually did mindfulness practices experienced clear benefits.

And what’s more the teachers benefitted from teaching it and from learning mindfulness themselves.

And… the school environment benefitted from the introduction of a school mindfulness programme.

But that wasn’t the question – if that had been the question, the answer would have been yes, for those who actually do it and engage with it.

But nor was the question ‘Can mindfulness be effectively taught in schools using the .b curriculum?’ Though again, looking carefully at the outcome data, the answer is ‘yes, mindfulness can be taught effectively using the .b curriculum’ and when it is well taught, again the children enjoy it and they practice it at home.

Those two questions, that weren’t asked and didn’t inform the design of the trial but if they were asked, the data show that mindfulness is beneficial and .b is an effective way of teaching it and of course, that’s in line with the previous research studies that had been done into .b.

If you look closely at the research design, the question was ‘Is mindfulness in schools scalable as a universal intervention?’

And the particular model that the researchers chose was to take 650 teachers whose only qualification had to be that they had not done any personal mindfulness training recently nor had trained to teach mindfulness, they didn’t even need to show any interest in mindfulness…and let’s remember that the 100 schools were given incentives, as happens on these trials, to nominate a teacher to take part, who didn’t even have to be interested in mindfulness.

And I do not know about you Richard, but I am really glad my teaching was not assessed on the second time I delivered it within weeks of establishing a mindfulness practice myself. It’s not surprising that the Myriad team themselves said that only a few of the teachers could be rated as having taught the course well but the design of the trial meant that whether it was those few that were teaching it well or those that were graded incompetent, all of those results fed into the final outcome.

For me then, it’s not surprising they got the results they did for that big trial, particularly as it’s notoriously difficult to do big psychological research in schools. Some big international programmes for wellbeing in schools, score either no results or negligible results when tested in the realities of secondary schools and so viewed with the wisdom of hindsight one can see that there was a kind of inevitability with that, and Richard had the foresight to see that there were really serious concerns we had about the dosage levels. Now, we did feel and we were persuaded by the researchers… and it was that way round, the researchers persuaded us by saying, ‘look, previous research on .b is really promising and this is a hypothesis worth testing and you’re getting constant feedback from pupils and from teachers that they really enjoy this so this is just going to be a learning experience for us all’ was how it was presented to us ….and it has been (a learning experience).

I have personally had some concern and surprise by how some of the research team have spun these results, some but not all but I do think this needs to be set in the context of the larger trajectory of research of the benefits of mindfulness with children and young people. I really do commend the MiSP response to Myriad, also Richard [Burnett’s] piece, and [Professor] Katherine Weare’s [Mindfulness Initiative] piece. She wrote a really good piece for the Mindfulness Initiative that has to be read alongside any of the press releases or information coming from Myriad.

I really commend the steadiness and commitment of MiSP at this time and I think history will prove to show that you have made the right choice.

In response to Emily’s question about how best to respond to any negative comms:

• We’ve been through hype cycles with mindfulness in general. I think a steady commitment to doing what you’re doing as well as you can through all the ups and the downs, I think that has served the larger mindfulness community well, informed with the knowledge that if teachers introduce it to schools with enthusiasm and experience, you get a sense of how much the children benefit.
• A great ornithologist Audubon used to say ‘If the bird and the book disagree, trust the bird.’
• Whatever the Myriad research might say, as a teacher in school with the kids in front of you, you know some of the kids benefit from this enormously and let that keep your heart inspired to be doing this incredibly important work.
• The fact that MiSP is committed to introducing, developing and maturing mindfulness practitioners in this really important field is just the way to go. We need a body of competent mindfulness practitioners and those of us that are mindfulness teachers are always in training and it’s a lifetime’s journey and we teach from that.

Chris Cullen is a trainer for the Oxford Mindfulness Centre, teaching on the Master’s programme in Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy at Oxford University. He has a psychotherapy practice in Oxford, and is also on the team at the University of Oxford Counselling Service.

Previously he taught in secondary schools, and, with Richard Burnett, co-founded the Mindfulness in Schools Project in 2007. Between 2013 and 2020, he ran the mindfulness teaching programme in the UK Parliament, and co-founded the Mindfulness Initiative.

The post Chris Cullen’s reflections on MYRIAD research and its subsequent presentation appeared first on Mindfulness in Schools Project.

By Emily Slater, CEO, Mindfulness in Schools Project

As I approached my second anniversary as CEO of MiSP, I found myself reflecting on the great privilege it has been and also some of the challenges of these times.

People across the charity and education sectors have shared with me that they cannot recall a time (in their working lives) when resources were so scarce, and the cumulative impact of Covid lockdown years, the cost-of-living crisis and political uncertainties are taking a toll. Additionally, we are facing the reality of the eco-crisis, with even the weather carrying a heaviness, and global conflicts that make our hearts ache to new depths.

Despite the many overlapping challenges, I find that mindfulness has personally allowed me to dig deeper and find a sense of ‘groundedness’ that seems to expand as I practice. Working for MiSP has allowed me to see the impact of mindfulness on so many young people’s lives, even years after being introduced to it. Though I appreciate it is not a quick fix for all that we and our young people face, in my experience, mindfulness can be a stabilising force that can support and ground us as we rise to the challenges of our times.

Mindfulness in schools

These two years have coincided with the publication of the MYRIAD research results, as well as the death of Brianna Ghey, and her family’s tireless efforts to fundraise for teachers to train with MiSP. Both MYRIAD and the inspirational efforts of Brianna’s mum, Esther, have influenced me enormously.

For all the nuances of the research (question) and its design, MYRIAD underscores the importance of humility – we cannot currently expect mindfulness to be a quick fix, at scale, for all challenges our young people and schools face. It can help many when we practice but does not take away the need to acknowledge and address real issues impacting young lives – from social media and exam pressures to poverty and social justice questions.

Esther’s work and passion for mindfulness, as well as her direct experience with children, reminds me that whilst it is not a magic wand, mindfulness can be life affirming and a source of tremendous strength.  It also raises for me an urgency to MiSP’s work – to sharing mindfulness skills and approaches with others in our wider school communities as quickly and effectively as possible.

From the many testimonies I have had the privilege of hearing in this role, it is clear the benefits of mindfulness often come about gradually – or as my colleagues have taught me – ‘in horticultural time’. For instance, the seed planted years previously that becomes deep roots to return to when life is on shaky ground.

Looking ahead, I am excited about MiSP’s direction of travel, and looking forward to sharing more hopeful human stories with you. As an organisation, we will continue to do all we can to ensure increasing numbers of people – from all walks of life – are introduced to the concept of mindfulness-based wellbeing at a young age.

For if the seeds of mindfulness are planted as early as possible, the roots will surely have maximum time and possibility to grow. 

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Guest blog by Tim Anfield who is an associate trainer with the Mindfulness in Schools Project, a Mindfulness in Action trainer and founder of Mindful Families.

“a passion to help make mindfulness accessible for more audiences…”

I started teaching adult mindfulness in 2016, with a passion to help make mindfulness accessible for more audiences. The mindfulness workshops I’d attended prior to this were really great but weren’t designed for a particular population. The plan was to use my experience from community development projects to bring this to life in deprived communities and for parents with children.  I decided to train as a .b Foundations* teacher, so I could deliver an adult mindfulness curriculum designed for an educational context.

As a heart of the community, schools were a great place to start, especially with the well-developed MiSP curricula to hand.  I’ve ended up teaching Paws b and .b Foundations all over South Wales and beyond.  Sharing mindfulness with school staff in particular really resonates with that vision to reach more people with mindfulness.

We’re shaped by the world and people around us, aren’t we? Every mindful teacher might support say 30 mindful children. Better still, mindful teachers and mindful children together will help shape the school culture, and the world and people beyond.   What if every school had this basis? How might the future be affected if every community had greater curiosity, patience and kindness at its heart?

Teachers can benefit from mindfulness too

It turns out that teachers can benefit from a little mindfulness too. Not sure if you’ve heard, but teaching can feel like a pressured profession! Definitely a good reason to take mindfulness to them, and in a format best suited to their context. .b Foundations has the double potential to reach the kids, but first and foremost to stretch the net and support an audience that might not otherwise make the space to try it.

I really love the course too, it’s a great balance of structure and space. Teachers are used to presentations, resources and theory, so you’ve got to meet them where they are.  The activities, videos and visuals within .b Foundations are a great hook.

Shared experiences of teaching offers a helpful basis for enquiry on the course.  Teachers do like to talk about how busy they are, and for good reason! The course offers a space to take a closer look at this.

It’s common to hear that teachers don’t feel that they get a minute to pause during the day, and this is an interesting starting point to begin exploring the idea of pausing and turning towards immediate experience!  Pausing through the day definitely becomes a real anchor for most participants.  There are genuine insights about moment-by-moment habits, be it in active doing mode or as a vocal self-critic. For others the biggest take home is the need to make time and space for gratitude or self-kindness.

At worst participants leave the course with improved strategies for difficult times. At best, the course is life changing. Either way, the kids benefit, and we have the possibility of positively influencing a generation.  

*.b Foundations introduces participants to mindfulness over eight weeks via group sessions of approximately 90 minutes per week, which can usually be held at a time to suit the school/setting. The course can be offered to anyone connected with a school community; teachers, teaching support staff, admin and site staff, peripatetic support, parents and governors.

Tim has a background in the voluntary sector delivering community development and wellbeing schemes since 2004. This included a 4000-kilometer solo bicycle fundraiser from Moscow to London.

He now provides innovative training in education, work places and community settings to enable more people to try mindfulness. This includes the ‘Cool Cats’ mindfulness scheme for families and the ‘Mindfulness for Leaders’ course.  He also teaches .b Foundations, .begin, Paws b, .b, Nurturing Parents, MBSR and The Present.

Tim is the founder of Mindful Families, an associate trainer with the Mindfulness in Schools Project and Mindfulness in Action.

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“slowly, slowly, mindfulness will hopefully begin to help my colleagues in the same way it has helped me, and the practice and its approach might become a bigger part of school life.”

I am one of those few lucky ones that knew, from around the age of 3, that I wanted to work with children. I qualified in 1997 and fast forward 26 years later and I am still teaching, and for the most part, still loving my job. But with the lingerings of the post pandemic damage to our children, the frustration and uncertainty around supporting the strikes but then having to cope with the loss of pay, when we are already in hard times, I have to ask myself what is left to inspire the next generation of teachers? And what will happen to the good ones we currently have?

I have a role in a school where I am not so tied down to all the conformities of a heavily burdened curriculum, an already crammed timetable, cuts in budget, lack of support staff and endless targets. This is because I work within an autistic unit in a mainstream primary school, and I have more freedom to work at the pace of my children and be creative to meet the needs of my class.

However, it’s not like that for many teaching friends and colleagues. I continue to see excellent and dedicated teachers struggling to find reasons to stay in teaching, just about getting by week by week and if they are on their knees, I wonder, what effect that has on our biggest stakeholders, the children?

Mindfulness as a support for my teaching

It got me thinking about how mindfulness has supported me in my teaching and how it could support others:

• The biggest thing for me has been “turning towards the good stuff” every day. No matter how hectic or stressful the day has been I deliberately choose to turn my attention to some joy that is always there, but we forget to notice it.
• Also, being aware that I have choices within those moments of frustration, means that I can choose to support myself in a helpful way, and feel better about myself and how I teach – that choice to take an uninterrupted coffee break, in the staffroom, amongst friends, rather than in isolation whilst marking in my room. The choice to not get pulled into the negative discussions heard around school.
• To look at parents more sympathetically, as individuals, who are also struggling to make sense of all of this with their children, after they have lost huge chunks of education, socialisation, consistency and routine.
• Simply changing my lens on how I see things has been the most helpful.  I have mindfulness to thank for this.
• Along with my (for the most part) ahem…daily practice and inordinate amounts of .b’s (pauses) throughout the day, I am able to keep a certain level of balance – I feel as if I am thriving, not just surviving.
• And I am no longer one of those who starts each new term by announcing how many weeks, days and hours to the next school break. I am now someone who wants to savour the days instead of counting them away.

Sharing mindfulness with others in my school

So, what can one person do in a school where there might be many members of staff struggling to come up for air? Well, I remember the mantra with all the courses I have done with MiSP – that to take things slowly and steadily is the best way.

So firstly, in my school, I started to offer a Monday morning sit (mindfulness practice group), just ten minutes in the morning before the school day begins and all are welcome.  Some come to have a quick nap, others to chat about the weekend but we do manage to keep these going and it has become quite a popular staff group!

Next, delivering Paws b regularly in school to students meant I could train as a School Mindfulness Lead, so now I am in a position where I can offer the 8-week .b Foundations course to school staff. Again, it was a slow process of trying to drip feed to colleagues the potential benefits of mindfulness and how it could support us in our lives, over a period of about 2 years.  Last year,  a small group tentatively joined my course. This year I ran it again and now have 3 senior leaders on it. So slowly, slowly, mindfulness will hopefully begin to help my colleagues in the same way it has helped me, and the practice and its approach might become a bigger part of school life.

Final thoughts

In my experience, the teachers that tend to be affected the most with poor mental health are the ones that care the most about their vocation and for their children unconditionally. The job is hard, it can consume you but thankfully there are things you can do.

I would urge anyone in education to start with the 8-week .begin or .b Foundations for themselves and then it will open up a whole other world.

Yes, teaching is hard, but there is still a lot to love.

Chris has over 26 years’ experience as a primary school teacher, working extensively with vulnerable pupils as a Nurture specialist teacher. She currently delivers the dots and Paws b programmes to pupils in North London. She is inspired by the children’s response to mindfulness and how it has helped and empowered them to navigate through tricky situations. As well as her own continuing mindfulness practice, Chris also writes songs for children and uses music as a way to connect and become more mindful. Chris has been a Paws b MiSP trainer since 2016, and has piloted and delivered dots training since 2021.

The post Mindfulness? More than ever! appeared first on Mindfulness in Schools Project.

These are challenging times for everyone working in the public sector for reasons that everyone knows – can mindfulness help?

My answer based on my personal experience of twenty years as a primary school headteacher is yes it can. Why?

Well, we can’t control external events but we do have some agency over how we react or respond to them. In one of my mindfulness books it says that 10% of our stress comes from the things that are bothering us and 90% from our reaction. Now I don’t accept the numbers given – but even if it’s 50/50 or 30/70 that still gives us some room to make a difference.

The importance of setting up your day

What I learnt was the importance of setting up my day so that I had the best possible chance of getting through it with as little as possible collateral damage to my wellbeing. So I started to get up earlier and my morning routine was walk the dog (20 minutes), mindful movement (20 minutes) and sitting practice (20 minutes). I found that if I did all of this before 7:00am I could then get on with the rest of the day with a sense that I had already completed the most important part. It felt like putting on a suit of body armour.

This meant that I was better prepared to take the knocks that come with school leadership. Whether it was the angry parent, the upset child or the staff member who was finding it hard to cope I was better resourced to deal with the situation as well as I could and then let it go.

My internal mantra as a headteacher became “Do what you can and then step back”. Another useful one was “It’s not my fault”.

“I can’t think for you – you’ll have to decide”

In my time as a headteacher I always had two quotes on the wall of my office for people to read when they came in. The first was from Bob Dylan and said, “I can’t think for you – you’ll have to decide” and I found that helpful in reminding me that it wasn’t my job to find solutions to everyone’s challenges. The second one was from the Prophet Mohammed and stated that, “A man’s true wealth is the good he does in the world” which I found to be a useful recollection that all of my interactions gave me the opportunity to make things just a little bit better.

Mindfulness practice throughout the day

In terms of mindfulness practices throughout the day I found the movement ones to be really helpful. Just getting out of the chair, stretching, going for a mindful walk around the school – these all became ways to reset and recharge. Pausing between meetings or emails also helped. As did having friendly thoughts before a challenging meeting – wishing for the best possible outcome for all parties rather than trying to make things go my way.

At the end of the day the body scan became my go-to practice. In my favourite guided version Jon Kabat-Zinn reminds me that “if you are breathing there’s more right with you than wrong with you – no matter what the state of your body or what you are experiencing right now.”

And sometimes that was just enough to know.

David had a career in primary education for 33 years which included serving as a headteacher in four different schools.  He is very familiar with the challenges facing school leaders and is keen to support staff to develop strategies to create and sustain good mental health. Since training as a mindfulness teacher, he has worked closely with the Mindfulness in Schools Project (MiSP) delivering courses to children and adults in the education sector. In addition, he works for a local charity, leading mindfulness courses for NHS staff and the local community.

David has just started a new role as a Mental Health Practitioner for an NHS Trust  promoting positive mental health with children and young people, families and school staff.

The post Don’t adjust your set – there is a problem with reality appeared first on Mindfulness in Schools Project.

Just as we were about to press send on our latest newsletter, the sad news of the death of Ruth Perry, headteacher of Caversham Primary School in Reading (UK), hit the media. Our thoughts are clearly first and foremost with Ruth’s family, friends, colleagues and pupils at this distressing time.

It has also brought to the fore questions that have been mulling through my mind ever since taking on the role of CEO at MiSP.

Mindfulness and our work clearly do not exist in a vacuum. Whilst it would not be appropriate to comment on the details of this particular case, I know from much of your feedback, as well as from former teaching colleagues, friends and family members working in classrooms up and down the country (and overseas), these are challenging times for educators.

As a mum to a 14-year-old, I also know these can be tough times also for parents as we do our best – like teachers – to support and guide our young people. As the educationalist, Ken Robinson, used to say, “Our last great natural human resource”.

When pressures on teachers and young people appear to be ever increasing – amplified by the cumulative implications of Covid restrictions and the aftermath – is it a coincidence that our own and those of our young people’s mental health are also under pressure?

What is the role of mindfulness in amongst the multitude of challenges children and young people, and those supporting and caring for them face right now? Whether it is the pressure to reach targets, the cost of living squeeze, navigating social media and a loss of real-life interactions, knife crime and violence (including on the global stage), eco-anxiety in the face of frightening predictions about climate breakdown, the loss of ecosystems and habitats that have been part of linking humanity also to the beauty and solace of nature and ‘something bigger’, not to mention increasing inequalities and real discrimination many face due to their (ethnic, gender, sexual etc) identities. It’s a lot.

Of course challenges (and joys) have existed throughout millennia. Right now, could it be that we hear about and feel them more acutely given the information on tap and surrounding us via our smartphones and across globalised media? Yes, we can probably add that to the list of challenges too.

I realise that part of my commitment to attempting to live more mindfully is to try not to add to the noise and to not share opinions for the sake of it. Also, as the comedian Paul Merton pragmatically said, “If each of us shares our thoughts all the time, won’t the impact be that we simply cancel one another out?” But every now and then, events take over. Another voice inside reminds me that being silent can also unintentionally signal being complicit. With leadership comes responsibility and also power (to speak out).

My work in the charitable sector over the last 25 years has had one primary motivation: to be part of a movement to contribute to healthy societal change. Joining MiSP just over 18 months ago was an acknowledgement that change is not only about the big issues looming above us but also about how we care for and manage our own responses and those of others around us.  The tragic circumstances around the death of Ruth Perry are a reminder to me that it also personally continues to be about being part of a movement to contribute to healthy societal change, to raise the alarm when things appear to be out of balance and take me back to the questions I have been mulling over since arriving at MiSP:

• What conditions need to be in place in our lives and the lives of the children and educationalists we serve for mindfulness and optimum wellbeing to be nurtured?
• What is MiSP’s role and the collective role of our community when these conditions may come under threat?
• How can mindfulness help us navigate these times and allow us to show up and speak the courage of our convictions?
• How can the attitudes of mindfulness – generosity, patience, trust, gratitude, to name a few – support us all, even when times are toughest?

I don’t have all the answers and I’m learning that that is also OK. The times we live in don’t necessarily have simple answers.

What I do have, and offer this precious community of ours, is a commitment to our children and to you doing the sterling work on their behalf, and the potential role of mindfulness to support. I also have a voice on behalf of our organisation and those we work with. At times, I’m beginning to realise perhaps the most mindful/compassionate response is to speak out.

It is my sincere hope that the support we offer to sustain your mindfulness practice and your teaching will help you and the children you work with navigate these times, and if it is right in your context, have the courage of your convictions to speak your truth. With your help, we can also involve others (please see the ‘Ways of supporting MiSP online’ piece in this newsletter) and if you have thoughts on any of the questions above, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Whatever the details and nuances surrounding Ruth Perry’s death, there is one thing I’m sure we are all in agreement on: the wellbeing of children and young people and those working with them is precious, fragile and worth investing in.

This opinion piece was shared in MiSP’s recent newsletters (one to our trained teacher community; another to our supporters who may not yet have had the chance to train fully with us).  To sign up to the general mailing list and receive future newsletters, please click here.  For any MiSP trained teachers who haven’t received the latest newsletter, please get in touch to be added to the trained teacher mailing list.

The post Reflections on the news this week appeared first on Mindfulness in Schools Project.