***A previous version of this article was published in Collage: Colorado’s Magazine for Art Educators, Winter 2020-2021 and the artwork made the cover! The article features student work from the art education classes I designed and taught at Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design.***

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It is imperative that we maintain hope even when the harshness of reality may suggest otherwise.
--Paulo Freire

Before reading, I invite you to pause.
Relax your jaw and shoulders. Take three, deep breaths.
Send yourself some Gratitude, Love, and Kindness. You deserve it.

Teaching in the arts has always required improvisation and an ability to meet students where they are, in terms of skills, motivations, and emotions. The enduring stress of 2020 has magnified these requirements and challenged our stamina for doing more with less. So how do we and our students remain energized, motivated, and productive?

For starters, we must pause. Pausing becomes more urgent when we feel we have no time. As teachers and artists, we have seen the positive effects stepping back and reflecting have on creativity and learning. We need to prioritize the pause, for the well-being of ourselves and our students. 

Caught up in the pressures of our daily lives it can often feel as if we do not have any time to practice mindfulness. Breathing in and out mindfully, letting go of our thoughts and becoming grounded in our own body, however, takes only one or two minutes. We can practice all day long and benefit right away, whether sitting on the bus, driving a car, taking a shower, or cooking breakfast. We cannot say, “I have no time to practice.” We have plenty of time if we know where to look. This is very important. When we practice and we get relaxation and joy, our students profit. To practice mindful breathing is an act of love. We have peace, relaxation, joy, and we become an instrument of peace and joy for others (p.5).  

-Thich Nhat Hanh & Katherine Weare, Happy Teachers Change the World, 2017

Mindful Pedagogy is a continuing education series designed to support both teachers and students and is applicable to on-line and in-person learning environments.

Mindfulness changes our brains for the better and is especially useful during this intense time. Mindfulness practices thicken areas that deal with emotional regulation, flexibility, resiliency, rational thought, learning, memory, focus, productivity, and creativity, while decreasing areas of the brain that connect to stress, depression, anxiety and highly emotional responses (Congleton, Hölzel, and Lazar, 2017). 

Mindfulness should no longer be considered a “nice to have” …it’s a “must have”: a way to keep our brains healthy, to support self-regulation and effective decision-making capabilities, and to protect ourselves from toxic stress (Congleton, Hölzel, and Lazar, 2017, p.32).

The 7 Keys of Mindful Pedagogy

Mindful Presence is consciously connecting with the people and purpose of the moment, with wakefulness, positivity, curiosity, empathy, and non-judgment.  

Mindful Meditation is the quiet, singular direction of the mind, such as focusing on the breath, an intention, a sound, or an activity.

Mindful Self is observing and reflecting upon one’s thoughts, words, and behaviors, noticing how they affect oneself and others; it is the practicing of social-emotional competencies, such as self-awareness and self-management. 

Mindful Community is welcoming and honoring the whole student, including emotions, with an open heart and clear boundaries. Mindful Community invites learning that is inclusive, respectful, personal, and meaningful. 

Mindful Communication is choosing words and phrases that are enlivening, constructive, and welcoming of multiple perspectives and ways of being, knowing, and creating.

Mindful Play is approaching teaching and learning with a sense of openness, lightness, spontaneity, and experimentation. When we make space for play and wonder, we and our students are much more likely to find meaningful and joyful pathways of engagement.  

Mindful Modification is teaching with flexibility, relevancy, and awareness, receiving and responding to the pulses and pulls of the moment. 

Mindful Presence

Pause and Ponder: What helps you to calm, ground, and focus? What could you easily integrate into your teaching day, whether in-person or on-line, to support you in staying present and connected?

One simple pathway that requires only a minute, sometimes even less, is grounding yourself through your breath. Once you are able to calm and focus your mind-body through following your breath, you could add an intention that helps you to remain present and engaged with the moment and your students. Other options include sounds, such as a pleasant chime or bell, simple stretching and movement, and having visual cues to remind you to pause, breathe, connect and focus.

Mindful Meditation for Mindful Presence

Once you are comfortable leading yourself through mindful breathing, you could integrate this activity into your teaching. For example, I begin every class with chimes followed by moments of quiet, guiding students through simple breathing meditations and intention settings. As the teacher, I am extremely grateful for these moments of self-connection, and they help me stay alert and flexible during class.

Offering space and time for this simple check-in at the beginning of class has the same positive effect for students. A few moments of mindfulness shift the tone and energy of the entire class. Through the quiet, students become more comfortable with themselves and each other. Class discussions become more personal, constructive, and layered, and each personality has more space and confidence to shine.

For younger students, it is often helpful to make these moments of mindful breathing physical or tangible. For example, students could trace their fingers as they breathe in and out (on-paper or in the air); they could move their arms up and down with each in- and out-breath; they could feel their bellies rise and fall.

Another option is to integrate quiet, mindful breathing with brushstrokes, pencil strokes, paper cutting, walking around the room, etc.  

If students are working remotely, you could record or upload a guided meditation. Another option is to integrate written steps into project instructions, inviting students to pause, breathe, and set intentions before beginning their work. There are limitless pathways to self-connection. Free guided meditations for teaching may be found at mindfulandcreativeliving.com.

Mindful Self

To grow as teachers and artists, we need to grow as individuals. Personal and professional growth are intertwined. In order to grow, we need to be self-aware, and to be self-aware, we need time and space for reflection, connecting to the keys of Mindful Presence and Mindful Meditation.

As art teachers, we may structure our “project plans” (Marshall, 2019) around a big idea, such as resilience. It could also be useful to structure our self-reflection around a big idea. For example, thoughts could be a theme or big idea of self-reflection. You could observe your thoughts for a day or week. When are they negative? When are they positive? When are they jumbled? Our thoughts are the roots of our daily lives; they generate everything else, including emotions, interactions, productivity, attitudes, and biases. Let’s pause, pay attention to our thoughts, and choose positivity and progress.

Mindful Community

In Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope (2003), bell hooks writes beautifully about “conscious teaching—teaching with love” and the necessity of making a place for students’ emotions. 

…when we teach with love we are better able to respond to the unique concerns of individual students while simultaneously integrating those of the classroom community… Refusing to make a place for emotional feelings in the classroom does not change the reality that their presence overdetermines the conditions where learning can occur. Teachers are not therapists. However, there are times when conscious teaching—teaching with love—brings us the insight that we will not be able to have a meaningful experience in the classroom without reading the emotional climate of our students and attending to it…

When as teachers we teach with love, combining care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust, we are often able to enter the classroom and go straight to the heart of the matter. That means having the clarity to know what to do on any given day to create the best climate for learning. (p.133-34).

Emotions are the elephants in the room. We cannot teach or learn effectively when blocked by our emotions, especially during the persistence of a pandemic. Often, simply acknowledging our emotions and giving them space and respect, is enough. For example, when connecting with our breath, we could also connect with our emotions and where we hold them in our bodies. Through honoring the feelings under the surface, we lessen the chance of them surprising us in unproductive ways. When we convey to students that emotions are a part of the learning process, students relax; they no longer need to use so much mental and physical energy “holding it all together.”

As hooks notes, teachers are not therapists, and we need to consciously create boundaries. In The 5 dimensions of engaged teaching: a practical guide for educators (2013), Laura Weaver and Mark Wilding prompt us to reflect upon which emotions we are comfortable experiencing in ourselves and witnessing in others, and why that is. They also prompt us to reflect on boundaries and how to create and hold them. We need to be honest in terms of our strengths and limitations when navigating emotions and communicate and hold clear boundaries. Making space for emotions does not mean that class becomes an emotional dumping ground, or that we, as teachers, need to navigate situations that are better handled by the school counselor or social worker. 

Responsibly and respectfully welcoming emotions and personal experiences creates opportunities for students to approach projects in divergent, relevant, and meaningful ways. During a pandemic, this approach is even more beneficial, as we are all experiencing and navigating the challenges differently. 

People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
- Maya Angelou

Mindful Communication

The words we use while introducing a topic, conducting a demonstration, giving feedback, or conversing with students have the power to either open hearts and minds or close them. Mindful language is at the core of creating an encouraging and inclusive learning environment.

The following two research-based approaches are useful guides for constructive communication (and play!) with and among students. These approaches easily integrate into any remote or in-person curriculum.

The first is Artful Thinking, a program from Harvard’s research center, Project Zero. Artful Thinking offers routines for cultivating mindful thinking habits, such as deep observation and listening, avoiding assumptions, taking multiple perspectives, critical thinking, and more (Tishman & Palmer, 2006). These routines could be used to structure discussions, projects, critiques, papers, assessments and more. All routines may be found at http://pzartfulthinking.org/. Below are a few favorites:

SEE/THINK/WONDER
What do you SEE? What do you THINK about what you SEE? What do you WONDER or want to know more about? This routine is useful for introducing a new artist or artwork, facilitating a critique, discussing student work, and more. 

THINK / PUZZLE / EXPLORE
What do you THINK you know about an artwork or topic? What questions or PUZZLES do you have? What does the artwork or topic make you want to EXPLORE? This routine invites in students’ knowledge, experiences, perspectives, and personal thoughts.

PERCEIVE / KNOW / CARE ABOUT
Step inside a character, figure or object. What might this person/object perceive? Know? Care about? This routine is a wonderful starting point for exploring, sharing and discussing different perspectives and experiences. 

I USED TO THINK…NOW I THINK
Useful for assessing students’ learning around a topic/technique.

Mindful Communication promotes Mindful Play, which promotes Mindful Learning

The second research-based approach is from Ellen Langer, Harvard social psychologist and researcher, often referred to as the “Mother of Mindfulness.” Langer’s research shows that the language we use has a significant impact on creativity, joy, engagement, and learning (1997).  

Langer advocates focusing on finding potential over problem solving; potential has no limits, whereas problems operate in existing parameters. She also advocates prioritizing play, especially when introducing new topics and techniques. An example would be encouraging students to play with a medium or tool before showing them how to use it. Langer’s research has shown that play heightens and lengthens engagement and invites in creativity and diverse ways of learning.

Another focus of Langer’s is the use of conditional language versus absolute language. Using conditional language invites multiple perspectives and approaches. Absolute language can narrow and stunt thinking (1997). For example, when introducing a tool/medium/technique, instead of saying, This is how you…, you could try saying, Play/experiment/explore… and then we’ll discuss some ways you could …

Absolute Language

·      This is how….

·      This is what…

·      The only way to…

·      The right way to…

·      Follow these steps…

Conditional Language

·      Play/Experiment with…

·      One way you could…

·      This could be…

·      What/How else…

·      What other perspectives…

·      What if…

·      Explore how one could…

Mindful Modification

As artists and teachers, we know that everything is a process, especially teaching and learning in a worldwide crisis! When we pause, breathe, and settle into the “flow” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996), we are more flexible and awake to the pulses and pulls of the moment. We practice what Langer calls “soft vigilance” (1997), calmly alert to what is happening in the periphery. Complementing this vigilance is Brené Brown’s (2018) “grounded confidence,” leading and taking risks while grounded in self-awareness, vulnerability, and personal growth. Mindfulness supports us in these practices. Through the pause, we find perspective, calm, and inspiration.  

To close, I offer this quote, which seems especially relevant during this time of uncertainty and potential.

Mindfulness is the simple act of actively noticing things…
You come to see that you didn't know what you thought you did as well as you did. And, because everything is always changing, everything looks different from different perspectives. We tend to hold it still and think we know, and then life becomes uninteresting. By actively attending [and] noticing new things...the familiar becomes interesting again and we become more aware of the inherent uncertainty, and that promotes even more mindfulness (Wbur, 2014).

-Ellen Langer

References:

Brown, B. (2018). Dare to lead: brave work. tough conversations. whole hearts. London, UK: Vermilion.

Congleton, C., Hölzel, B., Lazar, S. (2017). Mindfulness can literally change your brain. Mindfulness: HBR emotional intelligence series. (p.27-35). Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press.

 Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity; Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. New York, NY: HarperCollins.

Hanh, N., & Weare, K. (2017). Happy teachers change the world: a guide for cultivating mindfulness in education. Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press.

hooks, b. (2003). Teaching community: a pedagogy of hope. New York, NY and London, UK: Routledge. 

Langer, E. (1997). The power of mindful learning. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press.

Marshall, J. (2019). Integrating the Visual Arts Across the Curriculum: An Elementary and Middle School Guide. New York, NY and London, UK: Teachers College Press.

Tishman, S., & Palmer, P. (2006). Artful thinking: stronger thinking and learning through the power of art. Cambridge, Ma: Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Wbur. (2014, October 17). 9 Ways To Be More Mindful From The 'Mother Of Mindfulness,' Ellen Langer. Retrieved November 01, 2020, from https://www.wbur.org/radioboston/2014/10/15/mindfulness-langer

Weaver, L., & Wilding, M. (2013). The 5 dimensions of engaged teaching: a practical guide for educators. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.