The Pennsylvania State University
Nurturing Teacher Mindfulness
to Create a Caring Classroom
Elaine Berrena & Mark Greenberg
Manchester June 2011
Good Morning!
Setting Intention
Mindfulness Projects
•Mindfulness and Teaching – CARE
•Mindfulness and Parenting
•Mindfulness Programs for Children and
Youth
PEACE
Promoting Empathy Awareness and
Compassion in Education
Mindfulness and
Teaching - CARE
Mindfulness and
Parenting
Mindfulness Programs
for Children and Youth
Focus – What is the IT?
(for now lets call it Mindfulness - apologies to all!)
• Qualities to Nurture in Children and Adults!
• Calmness
• Kindness/Compassion (Concept of Interdependence of
all things)
• Clarity/Insight (Awareness/Reflectivity)
• What is an “Educated” Person (Thupten Jimpa)
• be learned (sharpness of mind)
• disciplined and posses the highest integrity
• Is kind and compassionate
Concept of Ubuntu
This is the highest praise, to say you have ubuntu.
“This is a person who recognizes that he exists only
because others exist; a person is a person through
other persons. When we say you have ubuntu, we
mean that you are gentle, you are compassionate,
you are hospitable, you want to share, and you care
about the welfare of others. This is because my
humanity is caught up with your humanity.
Bishop Tutu
From Educating the Heart (Vancouver 2006)
Definitions of Mindfulness
• Mindfulness is: paying attention, in a particular
way, on purpose, in the present moment,
non-judgmentally. --Kabat-Zinn,1990
• Open-hearted, moment-to-moment, non-judgmental
awareness
--Kabat-Zinn, 2005
8
The Concept of Mindfulness
• Awareness of Internal Experiences
– Cognitive
• Thoughts
• Attitudes & Beliefs
– Affective
• Affective Awareness
• Affective Experience
– Physical
• Awareness of External Experiences
– A way of engaging, being active in and
relating to the world
9
What is Interpersonal Mindfulness?
(Teachers/Parents – Duncan, Coatsworth, Jennings, Greenberg)
• Listening with full attention to children and colleagues
• Present-centered awareness of emotions experienced by self and
students during interactions
• Openness and non-judgmental acceptance and receptivity to
child’s thoughts and feelings
• Self-regulation in teaching - Low reactivity and
automaticity in
reaction to normative child and adolescent behavior
• Awareness of and responsiveness to students’ individual needs –
“teachable moments”
• Compassion for self and students
10
Are Mindfulness and Practices the
Same Thing?
Mindfulness
Practices
Meditation
Yoga
Martial Arts
Service Learning
Three Components of Change?
Practices
Dharma
World View
Sangha
Community
Model of Skills Development in Context
Skilled
Practice???
Changing
Habits of
Thought and
Behavior
Self Awareness
and
Generalized
Use of Skills in
Contexts
Context That Supports/Nurtures New Thoughts and Behaviors
Mindfulness in Teaching
CARE
Cultivating Awareness and
Resilience in Education
Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in
Education (CARE)
• Extension of Cultivating Emotional Balance
• Integrates emotion skills training and mindfulnessbased approaches to emotion regulation
• Applies mindfulness to the WAY teachers
–
–
–
–
Teach
Relate to students
Manage classrooms
Model prosocial behavior
• Initial trainings in Denver, Philadelphia and New York
• Now working with teachers in Harrisburg area and
next year in this area of Central PA.
• Yearly Facilitator Training at The Garrison Institute
The Teaching Tree
The Teaching Tree
Technique
Curricula
Classroom Presence
Inner Resources
CARE
Intervention Aims
• Improve Teachers’ Well-being
– Increase
• Mindfulness
• Positive affect
• Efficacy
– Decrease
• Burnout
• Negative affect
CARE Training
• Two 2-day sessions separated by 1 month of
application and coaching
• Emotion awareness
– Didactic lessons on emotion
– Experiential exercises on emotion
• Mindfulness (basic and applied)
• Empathy & Compassion for self and other
– Caring practice
– Deep listening
• Applications of these to teaching through discussion
and role plays
20
Self-Awareness
Body Scan
Mindfulness in Parenting
• A parent, youth and family skills-building
curriculum designed to:
– Prevent teen substance abuse and
other behavior problems
– Strengthen parenting skills
– Build family strengths
• Originally called the Iowa Strengthening Families Program
• Developed by Virginia Molgaard, Ph.D.
• Evaluated by
Richard Spoth, Ph.D.
and others at the:
23
SFP 10-14: Program Format
• 7 weekly sessions (plus 4 boosters)
• Each session 2 hours in length
– Begins with a dinner (recommended)
• Parents and youth meet separately first hour
• Parent Session highly structured and Video
Guided
• Families practice skills and have fun together
during the second hour
24
Mindfulness and
Family-based Prevention
• Extending Mindfulness to Parenting and
Family/Parenting Interventions
– Stress
• Extra-familial (Parent’s lives)
• Family/Parenting stress
• Relationship changes and tensions with adolescents
– Interrupting “Automatic” negative relationship patterns
– Attention to Parent well-being
– Application of skills in challenging situations
• No tests of Mindful Parenting interventions
25
• New “Mindful Parenting” Activities
– Based on our model (Duncan et al.)
– Listening with Full Attention
• Goal: Teach Attention and Careful Listening skills to use in
moment-to-moment parenting interactions
– Short REFLECTION ACTIVITIES (start and end of sessions)
– New Didactic/Interactive Activities
– Emotional Awareness of Self and Child
• Goal: Teach parents to become more aware of their own
emotional states and the emotional states of their youth
– Affective Awareness activities
– Attention to low-level emotions
– Reflections on interrelatedness of moods and attention to escalating
cycles
26
• New “Mindful Parenting” Activities
– Nonjudgmental Acceptance of Self and Child
• Goal: Help parents adopt an accepting, nonjudgmental attitude
when interacting with their youth
– Reflections/activities on attributions and expectations
– Reflections/activities on parenting goals (child vs parent-centered)
– Self-Regulation in the Parenting Relationship
• Goal: Build skills to regulate parental affect during interactions
with their youth
– Reflections/activities bringing Attention to “Automatic Reactions”
and escalating emotions
– Focus on “person specific situations”
– Relaxation and Attention “Stop, Be Calm, Be Present”
27
• New “Mindful Parenting” Activities
– Compassion for Self and Child
• Goal: Increase likelihood of parents’ adopting a stance
of empathy and compassion towards their children and
themselves
– Expand on “Love and Limits”
– Reflections/activities to enhance empathic concern for youth
(difficulties of being an adolescent)
– Reflections/activities identifying positive parenting and
avoiding harsh self-judgments
28
Overall Mindful Parenting
1
0.75
0.5
0.25
-1E-15
-0.25
-0.5
-0.75
Pre-test
MSFP
Post-test
SFP
Control
29
Maternal Well-being
0.4
0.35
0.3
0.25
0.2
0.15
0.1
0.05
0
Mother Symptoms
MSFP v.C
Global Mental Health
MSFP v SFP
30
What Can Mindful Practices Do
• May Have Quite Different Outcomes
Depending on the Practices (Breathing, Yoga,
Compassion Focus, Attention Focus)
• May Depend on the Population
• Having a clear theory of change is critical and
this needs to be contextualized
Suggestions
• Short mindfulness practice first thing in the morning
• Use breathing on your way to school
• Set intention for the day in the car or walking into
school
• Use breathing to address tension
• Walking and standing mindfulness practice during
class
• Bring mindfulness to everyday tasks
• Form a group to practice mindfulness