The Mindful Education Two Book Set

The new educational paradigm for student mindfulness: Daniel Rechtschaffen’s The Way of Mindful Education and The Mindful Education Workbook, now available in a two-book set. With attention spans waning and stress on the rise, many teachers are looking for new ways to help students concentrate, learn, and thrive. The powerful new educational paradigm of student mindfulness opens the doors for teachers to cultivate attention, compassion, and well-being in their classrooms. Having taught mindfulness in schools and communities around the world, psychologist Daniel Rechtschaffen offers practical mindfulness tools for teachers in his Mindful Education series, collected here for the first time in this two-book set. Students are told to pay attention a thousand times in school, but rarely are they taught how. The Way of Mindful Education is a practical guide for exercising students’ attention muscles and building stress relief and self-compassion both in students and in teachers themselves. Packed with lesson plans, exercises, and considerations for specific age groups and students with special needs, this working manual demonstrates the real world application of mindfulness practices in K-12 classrooms. The Mindful Education Workbook provides a structured curriculum for implementing mindful education in the classroom. Teachers and administrators can use this workbook—rich with simple, effective lessons, tips, charts, checklists, and worksheets—to bring mindfulness-based lessons into their schools and support the health and well-being of both students and teachers.

A new educational paradigm for youth mindfulness. “If you are a teacher, or an educator, or involved in school administration and curriculum development, the book you hold in your hands has the potential to transform your life, the lives of your students, and the life of the school itself, as well as education in America.”—Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, from the Foreword With attention spans waning and stress on the rise, many teachers are looking for new ways to help students concentrate, learn, and thrive. The Way of Mindful Education is a practical guide for cultivating attention, compassion, and well-being not only in these students, but also in teachers themselves. Packed with lesson plans, exercises, and considerations for specific age groups and students with special needs, this working manual demonstrates the real world application of mindfulness practices in K-12 classrooms. Part I, Why Mindful Education Matters, explains what mindfulness is, the science behind its benefits for students and educators, and the inspiring work that is already underway in the Mindful Education movement. In Part II, Begin with Yourself, we are reminded that in order to teach mindfully, we need to be mindful. Here teachers will learn the when, where, and how of mindfulness so they can effectively embody its practices with their students. Mindfulness practices offer teachers self-care and attention skills that prepare them to teach with greater energy and mastery. Discover how simple exercises can help manage stress, focus attention, develop compassion, and savor positive experiences in everyday life. Part III, Cultivating a Mindful Classroom, explores the qualities of a mindful teacher, the ingredients of a mindful learning environment, and helpful skills for appropriate, supportive work with cultural diversity, student stress and trauma, and varying age groups and developmental stages. Finally, in Part IV, Mindful Education Curriculum, we learn eighteen ready-to-use mindfulness lessons for use in schools. These practical exercises, designed to foster skills like embodiment, attention, heartfulness, and interconnectedness, can be readily adapted for any age group and population, and the author draws from his extensive personal experience to offer a wealth of tips for introducing them to students in real-time. Decades of research indicate the impressive benefits of mindfulness in social, emotional, and cognitive development, and as an antidote to emotional dysregulation, attention deficits, and social difficulties. This book invites teachers, administrators, and anyone else involved in education to take advantage of this vital tool and become purveyors of a mindful, compassionate, ethical, and effective way of teaching.

A structured curriculum of classroom-ready lessons, practices, and worksheets for actualizing a powerful new educational paradigm: student mindfulness. This workbook offers a step-by-step curriculum of classroom-ready mindfulness lessons for personal and professional development. It’s a trove of fun, easy activities specially designed to help educators engage K-12 students and cultivate mindful attributes like attention, compassion, and well-being. Rich with simple and effective tips, techniques, worksheets, and guided exercises developed through extensive on-the-ground experience with real students and teachers, The Mindful Education Workbook empowers readers with all the tools they need to integrate mindful education in the school day.

Happy Teachers Change the World is the first official, authoritative manual of the Thich Nhat Hanh/Plum Village approach to mindfulness in education. Spanning the whole range of schools and grade levels, from preschool through higher education, these techniques are grounded in the everyday world of schools, colleges, and universities. Beginning firmly with teachers and all those working with students, including administrators, counselors, and other personnel, the Plum Village approach stresses that educators must first establish their own mindfulness practice since everything they do in the classroom will be based on that foundation. The book includes easy-to-follow, step-by-step techniques perfected by educators to teach themselves and to apply to their work with students and colleagues, along with inspirational stories of the ways in which teachers have made mindfulness practice alive and relevant for themselves and their students across the school and out into the community. The instructions in Happy Teachers Change the World are offered as basic practices taught by Thich Nhat Hanh, followed by guidance from educators using these practices in their classrooms, with ample in-class interpretations, activities, tips, and instructions. Woven throughout are stories from members of the Plum Village community around the world who are applying these teachings in their own lives and educational contexts.

Mindfulness is increasingly being used in educational environments as a proven way to help students: • learn more effectively • develop personally • enhance their physical and emotional health, and • deal with study and exam-related demands. Written by two leading experts with many years of personal and clinical experience, Mindful Learning provides practical insights and exercises on how to apply mindfulness in any educational setting. The result is a book that clearly sets out how you can: • manage stress • improve performance • enhance communication • develop more meaningful relationships • unlock creativity • improve mental flexibility and problem-solving ability, and • use technology wisely. Whatever your age, whatever your learning environment, mindfulness can make a positive difference, and Mindful Learning shows you how.

This new and expanded edition of the bestselling The Mindful Teacher provides educators everywhere with practical ideas for improving teaching and learning. Dennis Shirley and Elizabeth MacDonald have created “Mindful Teacher” seminars that enable teachers to focus their craft so that students can learn with dignity and purpose. This updated second edition includes completely new sections on the promise of teacher leadership, the strengths and perils of technology, and schools in the midst of change. The Mindful Teacher is an indispensable and timely resource for all educators who seek to transform schools into places of learning and joy. The Mindful Teacher describes real educators in real schools working with real students. It bridges the rapidly evolving field of mindfulness studies with educators’ life-long quests for substantial and sustainable improvements in the educations we provide our students. “This updated and expanded second edition of The Mindful Teacher presents a truly inspiring vision of educational change. It is essential reading for all who agree that it is time to spark a quiet revolution of learning in which teachers and their students can truly flourish.” —Michael Schratz, president of the International Congress of School Effectiveness and Improvement “When reforms in some education systems result in alienated teaching rather than improved learning, it takes a book like The Mindful Teacher to remind all that education has deeper meaning and substance than merely achieving performance indicators. This book has a very important message for all educators!” —Pak Tee Ng, National Institute of Education, Singapore, author of Educational Change in Singapore

This book provides original ideas and practical recommendations for educators in a post-pandemic world. We live in a world that has been upended by the COVID-19 pandemic. Students around the globe have been besieged by disruptions that threaten not only their academic learning but also their mental, emotional, and interpersonal well-being. In the midst of pressing and mounting challenges, how can schools ensure the total wellness of all their students? Beyond reactive, piecemeal, and short-term measures, how can schools enact mindful education that pays attention to wholeness in every student? Extending the current research on well-being and mindfulness, this book draws insights from Confucian and Christian traditions. These two traditions have been selected as they are widely seen to represent, and have impacted, Eastern and Western civilisations respectively for millennia. Informed and inspired by Confucian and Christian perspectives, this book proposes that mindfulness is an orientation towards wholeness, where one experiences he (harmony) and shalom (peace). Mindful education is realised through: A school community of ren (humanity) and agape (love); A transforming curriculum that centres on dao (way) and imago dei (god’s image); Empathic teachers who are motivated by shu (putting oneself in the other’s place) and the Golden Rule (do to others as you would have them do to you); and Self-directed learners who develop themselves through xiuji (self-cultivation) and spiritual disciplines. Applying ancient wisdom to contemporary settings, this book on promoting student well-being through mindful education is a useful resource for policymakers, educators, researchers, and general readers.

Radical in its implications, this original and important work may change forever the views we hold about the nature of learning. In The Power of Mindful Learning, Ellen Langer uses her innovative theory of mindulness, introduced in her influential earlier book, to dramatically enhance the way we learn. In business, sports, laboratories, or at home, our learning is hobbled by certain antiquated and pervasive misconceptions. In this pithy, liberating, and delightful book she gives us a fresh, new view of learning in the broadest sense. Such familiar notions as delayed gratification, ”the basics”, or even ”right answers”, are all incapacitating myths which Langer explodes one by one. She replaces them with her concept of mindful or conditional learning which she demonstrates, with fascinating examples from her research, to be extraordinarily effective. Mindful learning takes place with an awareness of context and of the ever-changing nature of information. Learning without this awareness, as Langer shows convincingly, has severely limited uses and often sets on up for failure.With stunning applications to skills as diverse as paying attention, CPR, investment analysis, psychotherapy, or playing a musical instrument, The Power of Mindful Learning is for all who are curious and intellectually adventurous.