Often because of busy lives, we live in a state of flux. This is especially true for teachers and students who face new learnings and challenges on a daily basis. Taking time to focus on the present moment and living mindfully can help. That is the goal of this month’s lobby display: to assist teachers, students and others to become more mindful and aware of their daily environment.
Now by Antoinette Portis reflects on the many things we do throughout the day and the mindful ways to make those everyday moments matter. This book emphasizes its whimsical illustrations with a few well-chosen words. To promote empathy the main character of this book remains nameless. Through the illustrations and text, Portis depicts a young girl living her life in the moment. The result is a book which makes us see the impact of our everyday lives through the small tasks that we do throughout the day.
Mindful Teacher Mindful School: Improving Wellbeing in Teaching & Learning by Kevin Hawkins is a great resource book filled with meaningful exercises for use inside the classroom and in teachers’ lives. Through these exercises, teachers can learn how to cope with everyday life stressors and how to meditate. This book provides exemplars for teachers to incorporate mindfulness into their personal and professional daily life.
I am Peace: A book of Mindfulness by Susan Verde; Illustrated by Peter H. Reynolds. Through youthful, simplistic and peaceful illustrations of a young boy on his journey through life, this book shows how to become more mindful and present through surroundings. An excellent resource for students, it shows busy students how to be aware of their emotions and present in their surroundings by practicing mindful moments every day. This book focuses students to feel the sensation within their bodies: recognize feelings of present moment needs and leaving feelings of future worries behind. Teachers will be able to guide their students to understand what they are feeling and help them focus on mindful present moments with the use of this book.
Everybody Present: Mindfulness in Education by Nikolaj Flor Rotne and Didde Flor Rotne. This book is intended for teachers to create their own mindfulness curriculum. It details how teachers can show students how to be mindful while being mindful in their practices. This book is based on clinical research in the field of education and mindfulness.
Classroom Yoga Breaks: Brief Exercises to Create Calm by Louise GoldBerg. This book is a curriculum resource that uses images and texts to explain how teachers can help benefit their students through learning yoga as an extra part of their daily schedule. A lesson plan is incorporated at the back of the book providing guidelines for teachers on how to incorporate yoga into their classroom. Goldberg also uses yoga to show how it can assist with bullying, autism spectrum disorder and special needs students.
Mindfulness and Education edited by Tamara Ditrich, Royce Wiles and Bill Lovegrove focuses on the emerging research topic of Mindfulness being incorporated into educational settings. This book is a compilation of essays by various authors. Mindfulness and Education is a great book for teachers looking to expand their classrooms with new ways of teaching their students to be mindful. This book is split into three sections of: 1: Theorising Mindfulness: Conceptualization and Research, 2. Mindfulness in School Settings and 3. Mindfulness in Tertiary and Related Settings. These sections help teachers explore where Mindfulness is derived from and how those practices work in a teacher setting.
