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ELITETEACHERS

Walking mindfully requires practice. One cannot expect to become an expert the first day,
but little by little we can incorporate mindfulness in our lives and we will become better at it.
During our first attempts, we might realize trying to walk mindfully but really thinking about
what we are going to cook for dinner, how many copies we need to make for our next class,
etc. We must reduce our mental load and give ourselves and our minds space and time to
engage our next lesson.

Once you enter the classroom, you can keep on practicing mindfulness by remaining calm in
your attitude, trying to answer and explain things with a calm voice mindfulness by being
calmer in your interactions with students, and avoiding multi-tasking.

“Of course, teachers need to be efficient and pay attention to all the students in the
classroom, but multitasking, which consists basically on trying to do many complex things at
the same time, always ends in disaster. Our brains are not capable to manage doing 10 tasks
at the same time, think about the following ones and interact with our students at the same
time. It is just impossible. It impairs memory and communication,” says Dr. Ana Oswalt. This
being said, we can all agree that mindfulness should improve communication in the
classroom. As the teacher interacts being mindful, the students will feel better and will
engage in the conversation, which ultimately will result in the improvement of the teaching-
learning activity.

When dealing with difficult situations, mindfulness can be very effective as well. According to
Dr. Ana Oswalt, “mindfulness boosts resilience”. When dealing with a difficult or tough
situation, we often tend to think in advance that we will not succeed, and we start
introducing negative feelings in our minds. “It is so energy consuming, strips our motivation
and put on us a feeling of wanting to give up,” adds Dr. Ana Oswalt. However, by being
mindful we open our minds, we are more open to stimuli and our capacity to observe and
learn increases significantly. Therefore, it is important to take a step forward into
mindfulness to increase personal and professional well-being.

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NOVEMBER 2019 | ISSUE 05