Mindfulness

The mindful website is a great resource to help improve upon one’s mental and emotional health. Adults and kids alike will find appropriate activities to help quiet their minds so that true reflection and growth can occur. Gifted children need this to manage unhealthy perfectionism as they grow older. Black children need help distressing from historical and institutional disenfranchisement. Adults need it…well…because of adulting?!

Finding reprieve is necessary for all of us, so we must commit to the emotional parts of our mind just as we do the reasoning and logical parts.

I did not learn about mindfulness until I began my accelerated Master of Education program. One of the introductory classes introduced us to the concept and explored how we could use these strategies and techniques with our students. But what I valued the most was how mindfulness inspired us to become more empathetic educators. And apparently my professor knew how imperative these skills would be for our graduate journey because the assignments forced us to slow down and take pause to reflect on our thoughts, ideologies, etc. It was the first time I had ever done yoga in class. All of us went to the movies to watch and analyze Pixar’s Inside Out. Some of our homework revolved around presenting our gratitude journal from the previous day. It was also where we studied growth mindset.

That class will forever have a special place in my heart because I had always been concerned with how great of a teacher I would be, but I had never stopped to consider how I would achieve that goal AND keep my sanity intact. Well, these practices work! And as a world still reeling from the 2020 pandemic, we could all use a little more mindfulness.