What is Mindfulness and Why Should Educators Care?

In today's episode of Lean Into You, we talk with Megan Sweet, the Senior Director of training for Mindful Schools, an organization which empowers educators and students to spark change from the inside out, by cultivating awareness, resilience, and compassionate action. Today we will cover:
   
     1) What mindfulness is and why educators should care
     2) A few practices you can implement today to become a more mindful person
     3) How to continue the conversation about mindfulness

If you would like to find out more about Mindful Schools, visit their website at www.mindfulschools.org.

This podcast is funded through a grant with the Tennessee Department of Human Services and Signal Centers, Inc. 

Transcript

What is Mindfulness and Why Should Educators Care?

Fri, 8/19 4:43PM • 23:48

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

mindfulness, educators, practice, present moment, important, mindful, bit, thoughts, mindfulness practice, schools, breath, feel, kids, teacher, moment, speak, life, happening, listening, tennessee

SPEAKERS

Megan Sweet, Alex Farrell, Wesley Mayes

Alex Farrell  00:04

Hello, and welcome to lean into you a podcast to remind educators the best investment they can make today is in themselves. We're your hosts Alex Farrell with child care wages, Tennessee,

Wesley Mayes  00:15

and Wesley Mays with the Tennessee Childcare Resource and Referral Network.

Alex Farrell  00:20

And today, we are talking about mindfulness.

Wesley Mayes  00:24

How often do we feel we are able to stay in the present moment? How much time do we spend thinking about what is to come in the future? Or what has already transpired in the past? How might mindfulness help bring us back to being precisely where our feet are planted?

Alex Farrell  00:40

Our guest today is Megan sweet, the national director of training for Mindful Schools. Meghan has a bachelor's in history from UC Davis, a master's secondary education and teaching from Stanford, and a Doctor of Education, educational leadership and administration, from Mills College.

Wesley Mayes  01:00

In our conversation, we're going to talk about what mindfulness is and why educators should care.

Megan Sweet  01:05

So one thing I knew, I discovered the hard way, as a teacher was that if I was having a bad day, my whole day was generally a mess, the kids would pick up on that, and they would pick up on how I was feeling, and they would become dysregulated.

Wesley Mayes  01:21

We'll also talk about a few practices you can start to implement today to be a more mindful person. And finally, we'll direct you to some great resources to help you continue the conversation about mindfulness for yourself or for the children in your care.

Alex Farrell  01:42

Hi, Megan, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us today.

Megan Sweet  01:44

Thanks for having me.

Alex Farrell  01:46

So Megan, let's just get started talking about you a little bit, I think you I believe you have a background as a teacher, as an educator. And if you will talk a little bit about your experience there. And kind of how you got to where you are today as the Director of Training for Mindful Schools.

Megan Sweet  02:02

Yeah, thanks for asking. So I started out as a teacher at 22 years old, and I spent 10 years teaching middle school in here in California. And as I continued to do my teaching, what I noticed was just a real desire to be able to have a larger impact and to have some kind of influence extended outside of my classroom, I'd see my kids doing well with me, and then they leave my class and they would struggle, so I want to have a wider reach. So after 10 years, I went back to graduate school to get my doctoral degree in educational leadership. And ultimately, what I studied was how we create effective change in educational settings. So creating change in schools and elementary schools and preschools is challenging. There are a lot of things that aren't in our control. And there are a few things that are in our control. But being able to figure out how to do that with some intentionality and with community is really important to me. So that's why I went back to school to study. At the same time I was doing that I was a founding assistant principal at a inner city Elementary School in Oakland, California, that needed to be redesigned. So studying school change in school at the same time, those leading school change in actual school. And from that experience, I just I learned a lot of really important things about the power of community, the importance of dialogue, the fact that change absolutely is possible, it can go beyond just an academic experience to being something that's real and tangible. And it requires open and heartfelt conversations, and a lot of curiosity and flexibility. And a lot of just continuing to keep working. So some stubbornness, but you got to just keep going. It's really possible. And I love that career. What I started to feel there, though, also, by the time I last few years was something that I always had in the background of my life was a mindfulness practice I grew up in in Berkeley, California, and actually was exposed to mindfulness for the first time as a student in fifth grade, and then again in high school, and found myself leaning on it throughout my life when things were challenging. But over the last few years, I started seeing the connection and the yearning I had for my mindfulness practice to show up in my work life. So over time, it just became louder and louder for me that I wanted to have mindfulness be a more central part of the work that I did. And I started doing some research about how mindfulness can work with schools and what its impact could be. And I discovered that mindfulness has a lot of really great benefits for schools. And for educators, what I what I'd be best positioned for at this point in my career is actually to help bring mindfulness more forward into other educational settings. So to bring my my administrative and teaching experience and my experience leading change into this field that I'm so passionate about, which is mindfulness. And so I joined Mindful Schools about a year and a half ago and we've been charted the course ever since working towards bringing mindfulness to schools.

Alex Farrell  05:03

One of the things that I love about your story, when you speak about your responsibility as an educator, you're talking about wanting to have impact on children, not just inside, inside the walls, but giving them tools that they can continue growing when they're either at home or with their friends or yeah, just lasting change, like you said, outside of the four walls of the classroom, which I think is really great. The other thing is you were doing mindfulness practices and fifth grade. Who are you?

Megan Sweet  05:34

Well, I grew up with Berkeley in the 70s. Okay, you know, we have some unconventional practices.

Wesley Mayes  05:41

For our listeners who may not know what mindfulness is, how does Mindful Schools define mindfulness? And how could it be practical in usage for educators?

Megan Sweet  05:50

Yeah, that's a great question. I think there's a lot of misconceptions about what mindfulness is. So Mindful Schools, our focuses is on secular mindfulness. And by that I mean that it's not attached to any specific religion, it's devoid of religion. And it's really when you get down to it, what mindfulness is, is being in the present moment, period. So what that means is like you're aware of the thoughts that you're having, you're connected in with your body, you're very present with where you're at in the moment in time. And it seems like we often feel like we're actually, like, it sounds kind of counterintuitive, like, well, of course, we're in the present moment. But actually, much of our time, is spent not actually being present, we're thinking about the future, we're kind of dwelling on the past. And so a lot of our actual immediate impressions and thoughts and experiences actually go by us. And so when you start to practice mindfulness, what you're practicing is the ability to stay present. And so part of that we do through mindfulness practices like breathing. So really just paying attention to your breath. There's other practices that do the same thing you can practice, like listening to the sounds, and in the space that you're in listening to music, just feeling into your body, and what it feels like to be in your body in that moment. So it's all those kinds of things. And what happens when you do that are a lot of things that are scientific, that can give you some kind of scientific grounding, but actually, it starts to slow down our nervous system and starts to help to bring our prefrontal cortex back online, again, our frontal cortex back online, again, it helps us to be more regulated, it helps us to be more aware. And so that's the benefit of mindfulness for educators. And what mindfulness can look like is really just this present moment awareness. We feel better, we feel more connected. And we're also just more aware of those impressions and thoughts that are happening. And it's almost like a feeling of, of time slowing down a little bit, you know, there's just a little bit more room to to notice all those things, the more and more that you practice. So it's really that kind of practice that mindfulness is trying to cultivate?

Alex Farrell  07:58

Sure. And especially in a career field, where things can get a little crazy from time to time, how do you how do you start to balance yourself out, when you have that kind of impulse, kind of hitting you on a day to day basis.

Megan Sweet  08:13

We know it was one of those things, when I started connecting mindfulness to what was happening in my, in my work life. And like I said, I for a very long time, they were separate. But when I started to make the connection, I just started having these aha about what I knew to be true as a teacher. So one thing I knew, I discovered the hard way, as a teacher was that if I was having a bad day, my whole day was generally a mess, right? Rugby, even if I tried to on the outside, you know, manage that which I always tried to obviously try and take out my grumpiness on my students, but the kids would pick up on that. And they would pick up on how I was feeling and they would become dysregulated. So one of the things that we've discovered at Mindful Schools, and again, is why this starts to help us with having the kids climb on us. And everything else is that, you know, something that we like to say is that our nervous system is the intervention. And what that means is that we as mammals, as humans, we, we have something called mirror neurons, which means that we reflect the energy and the emotions of the people around us. And we just we pick it up. And we all know that we know what it feels like when you know, if someone's in a bad mood, you know, our, like, our anxiety starts to go up, we start to pay attention, we start to notice what's going on with them. And we'll start to reflect back our response to that energy level. And so, by practicing mindfulness, one of the things that we gain not only is this a little bit more space and a little bit more awareness, a bit more grounding, but the more grounded we feel, and the more connected we feel with ourselves, the calmer we feel, actually our kids mirror that as well. And so it helps them to calm down. It helps them to feel more connected and centered. And that helps them to learn more

Wesley Mayes  10:00

It's so interesting that you're you know, you're speaking about community here. But something like mindfulness that is a very personal practice, you know, it's turning inward a bit can have such an immediate effect on the community surrounding us.

Megan Sweet  10:13

That's a really great point. And I think often is educators too. And it's something that we talk a lot about at Mindful Schools, live a lot of educators that come in and their their thought is actually for their kids, right? So most of the time, educators are showing up, they're like, well, we've heard mindfulness is good, we want to bring it to our kids, tell me how to take this thing and bring it to our kids and our responses. Cool, we want to beat you there. And actually, the most important thing to do is bring it to yourself first. Absolutely. For us, as educators, that's often really counterintuitive. Anybody that's in a serving or giving feels like ours is wants to do the giving. But it's actually really important and educators because we're under so much stress, we need that self care for ourselves, if we want to stay in the profession, if we want to be our most effective in that profession. As much as it's counterintuitive for us and how we're kind of programmed, taking care of ourselves, first, developing our capacity to manage our own nervous systems, develop our capacity to be aware of our own biases, and impressions and thoughts that are leading our actions anyway. It's so important to start that first, because then we're actually more empowered to do the acting on the world to the care for the world that we want to do.

Alex Farrell  11:26

You've touched on a little bit already, but what are some practices you incorporate yourself and your own life that educators can also adopt to start leading a more mindful life.

Megan Sweet  11:37

I like to think of myself as a pretty self aware person, I practice attempted moment to moment awareness, which of course, you know, we always being aware all the time is almost impossible. But I started a few years ago to to bring a notebook with me as I went to meetings. And so there's downtime in meetings, you're not always actively engaged. And so what I would start to do is this, notice the thoughts that I had, what were kind of buzzing through my mind, but the physical sensations I was experiencing at the same time, and what emotions I thought I could attach to that. And I just would, you know, I just was out of curiosity, I did a log of that one time for three days, I just would kind of track it. And I didn't look back for those three days, there's let those three days happen. I captured my thoughts. And then I went back and I looked at the logs that I had. And again, I'm a pretty self aware person. But what I discovered was how much of my day how much of my time I was spending, worrying about what other people were thinking about me so many of my thoughts that I was having. Were about worries that people that I had said or done something that offended somebody that someone was mad at me, if I did speak out, feeling fearful that what I said was going to somehow get me in trouble or have someone that like me. It was just all this like very hard, like self criticism and worry about me stepping forward and speaking my truth. And it was such a big surprise for me that that was the thought that was there. Because I also kind of had this conception of myself as being pretty forthright and comfortable speaking my truth. But there was like very clearly in my own handwriting, that I had all this doubt and fear. Now that I have that information, I can just use it all the time, I noticed that when it's coming up, once you can see it, you can start to work with it. And so I noticed like when that doubt or that fear comes up, or or what I'm saying I can start to transform that in the moment. And I can also show myself a lot of care when that worry comes up, I can put my hand on my heart, or I'll take a breath like oh, okay, there that thing is again. And it's really changed how I show up in meetings and in spaces. So I just think it's really amazing what can come up once you start to practice a little bit more

Alex Farrell  13:34

sure. And what I love about that that particular anecdote in that practice of just journaling is the not looking back part. Three days later, you're now somewhat disconnected from that emotion that you were feeling in that moment. So you're able to look at it more objectively. And I feel like the more that you do that, the more you're conditioning your your brain or your mind to give yourself grace in the moment. I love that practice. That's something very specific of just journaling. Do you have any other exercises on the mindfulness Schools website or Mindful Schools website? They've got a lot of great, really practical exercises for grounding and that sort of thing. Can you talk a little bit kind of specifics of different exercises that teachers can or educators can implement? You

Megan Sweet  14:19

know, one of my favorite ones is just taking three breaths. One of the misconceptions about mindfulness is that it's something that needs to happen off on a meditation cushion somewhere. They will conjure images of someone off on a cliffside somewhere in a cave, like somewhere very far away from their real life experience, but really mindfulness, the way we define that Mindful Schools and understand it is actually the the embodiment of that present awareness all the time. And so using practices that you can do on the spot to get reconnected with the present moment feels the most urgent for us, and it's what we really like to focus on. So the three breaths is one of those things. So with the three breaths, the first breath you just used can stop and just notice again that you're breathing. Because how much of our data we don't even notice, the powerful and very simple act of breathing becomes something that like, drops off from our radar. So, with a three breath practice, the first breath is just remembering that you have a breath, noticing breathing. And the second breath may be trying to like notice into your body a little bit more. And if there's anything that's tense, try and soften a little bit, maybe our brow is furrowed, or our hands are clenched, or our chest feels tight, just with that second breath, trying to soften those muscles just a little bit. And the third breath is just to ask yourself a very brief question, which is what's most important right now? What do I need to attend to right now. And by doing that, it just helps to get you right back into the present moment. I mean, I can think of times, and I didn't use mindfulness a lot as a teacher I wish I had. But you know, I would have these moments of like, Okay, before getting to the battle with the kid who's wanting to fight with me about whatever rules going on, or whatever is happening in the classroom, and all the dynamic things of like what's most important right now, and remind myself of that moment, another practices is something that we call mindful listening. And mindful listening is really just listening to someone without the urge to speak back. It's a very rare thing that we have in life where someone actually holds space for us to speak without them interjecting or jumping in with their thoughts or feelings. Their normal dialogue is the back and forth, it's what we're used to. It's an important part of who we are as humans to have this back and forth. But especially when we're with kids, or we're for administrators working with teachers, of taking actually just a few minutes to hold space for someone just to share what's important for them, and let them get those complete thoughts out without the interjecting back again. So that's really trying to listen with your whole head, heart mind, being in nature, journaling, you know, mindfulness practices can be a lot of things beyond the breath practice that we talked about. And the breath practice is important. Having a mindfulness practice is important. But there are a lot of things in the moment that are really helpful. And it's really all about getting back to connecting to who we are making ourselves the present moment. You know, Berkeley was when we get accused of being called tree huggers all the time, because we're love nature, but actually hugging a tree is a really legitimate great thing to do. Right? Right, right mindfulness practice. In Japan, they actually have trees, right bathing and walking, which means walking amongst trees as being a legitimate health intervention. So you know, there's lots of ways to do it, just connecting back in with ourselves with nature with how we're feeling.

Alex Farrell  17:39

The thing that's important to take away here is yes, these are specific practices, but make your own practice. No, just whatever. If you're going about your daily routine, you're in the classroom, and you recognize that something has triggered you to be aware of where you are in this present moment, try to replicate that and try to fold that into something that might be repeatable, that you could potentially turn into a routine. And that's, that's one of the best ways to curate your own practice. But if you've never done this kind of thing before, those three examples are fantastic. I love the mindful listening. It is so important. It's I mean, even I recognize my relationship with my wife, that process of I think we communicate so well together, because we allow one another that space to feel and to express and to say whatever we need to say with the intensity that we want to say it and then okay, let's come back and discuss. And that has been so healthy for, for just our communication. I love it. I love the mindful listening one.

Megan Sweet  18:48

Yeah, yeah, there's two different ways of practicing mindfulness. There's a dedicated practice. And so the dedicated practice of mindfulness with the doing something like paying attention to your breath, or pay attention to the sounds around you, and intentionally practicing the art of coming back to the present moment. So that could be more of what I often people imagine of right away, mindfulness would look like sitting and breathing, eyes closed. So it's what we call a dedicated practice. And it's good to practice that dedicated time. It's a little bit like going to the gym. So if we want to get fit, and maybe we have, we go to the gym, and we very intentionally do bicep curls, or, you know, deadlifts or whatever it is that we're doing to try and make our muscles bigger. We're running on the elliptical machine. It's that's a dedicated time we're going to the gym with the intention of getting more sets and you can start a dedicated practice with as little as five minutes a day doesn't need to be long. The other one is more of the applied practice, which is what we've been talking about. So that's making these choices to to bring mindfulness into your day, through taking three breaths through doing some mindful listening through, hugging a tree, whatever we've been talking about. And that's kind of like if we're thinking about likening it back to fitness that's like choosing to park our car a little bit farther away from our destination and walking a block, it's choosing to take the stairs instead of the elevator. So it's choosing to apply more physical fitness routines into our daily life, as we're going about our day, rather than just that dedicated time at the gym, so it's on the move. It's in that moment. And so it's really great to practice mindfulness in both

Alex Farrell  20:27

ways. That's amazing. So I think we should probably start to wrap it up. Can you actually just plug Mindful Schools, their website, we've kind of gone throughout the website a little bit, and there's a lot of really useful, just practical exercises and online classes for educators.

Megan Sweet  20:47

Yeah, that's great. Thanks for giving me the opportunity. So part of is that we have a lot of free resources on our website. We're a nonprofit organization. And so we try and provide resources to educators that are going to be supportive. We have blog posts, that are, I think, really impactful that gives lots of good insight. We have workshops that happen that are pretty low cost and recordings that you get afterwards that are also low cost. We've been paying a lot of attention to what's happening with this. We haven't talked about the Coronavirus, actually, which was quite nice. But like the Coronavirus, we actually recorded a 10 part series of mindfulness exercises just for kids that are free and downloadable on the website. So I know you work with a lot of preschool age teachers, these are all super appropriate and can be used with kids right away. We offer a monthly free set. So lots of free things that are available. We also have a pretty expensive mindfulness course. So just an introductory course what mindfulness is, we have a new course now, which I think is really helpful for this moment in time that we're in where a lot of people are experiencing a lot of crisis, which is called self compassion for educators. So if our discussions about self compassion was intriguing to your audience, I strongly encourage taking this course it's a really great introduction to what self compassion is, it's been created specifically for educators. So it has relatable examples that educators can understand.

Alex Farrell  22:15

And just for everyone, if you would like to access that information, their website is mindful schools.org. Because of a lot of the things we've talked about today, we can just get distracted. And we can start to either lose purpose, lose passion or lose a sense of our own value. So would you mind just signing off with a little word of encouragement to our educators?

Megan Sweet  22:37

Absolutely. We say this a lot at Mindful Schools, which is we love you keep going.

Alex Farrell  22:42

Perfect. It's amazing. So far, every single sign off has been super simple like that. And it's I think it's really telling

Wesley Mayes  22:50

me it's really telling me, you can take that into your day.

Alex Farrell  22:52

Megan, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. And we hope you have a great day. Thank you.

Megan Sweet  22:57

Thank you. Thanks for Thanks for having me. 

Alex Farrell  23:01

Thank you all for tuning into the podcast today. This podcast is funded through a grant with the Tennessee Department of Human Services and signal centers. Signal centers is a nonprofit in Chattanooga, Tennessee, whose mission is to strengthen children, adults and families, their services focusing on disabilities, early childhood education and self sufficiency.

Wesley Mayes  23:19

If you have a review, a comment a suggestion for a future episode. Please do so on our Facebook page at facebook.com/t N wages or email us at wages at signal centers.org. Again, thank you for listening to the lean into your podcast and we hope you have a great week.