Stillness in Classrooms

http://www.theguardian.com/university-of-melbourne-partner-zone/2015/oct/06/imagine-if-we-taught-stillness-in-classrooms

Meditation education is having a real and positive impact on student learning and their wellbeing, writes the University of Melbourne’s Professor Lea Waters
Still waters … meditation is a way to help students enrich their education.

Imagine if we taught stillness in class

In our warp-speed world, stillness is a rare experience.

Parents are working longer hours and children’s lives are fully timetabled. Being “busy” has become the new social currency. It carries status. People marvel at those who are busy. The greeting “hello” has been replaced with the question “keeping busy?” It seems if you’re not busy, you’re not important.

Our addiction to being busy is having a detrimental impact on the wellbeing of children and teenagers. One in four young Australians experience symptoms of mental illness and mental illness accounts for over 50% of ill-heath statistics in 15-25 year olds. Children have forgotten how to be still. Their hearts, minds and bodies are always racing. What would happen if we taught stillness in schools and how do we go about doing this?

What would happen if we taught stillness in schools and how do we go about doing this?
Meditation education is proving to be an effective way to teach stillness in schools and is having a real and positive impact on student learning and wellbeing. The act of slowing down provides students with the opportunity to observe and understand how they think and feel. This enriches traditional academic education by showing students how they think and not just what to think.

Meditation is on the rise with schools bringing it into classes, sports fields, exam preparation, choir, school drama productions, school camps and academic learning. Meditation is the deliberate act of regulating our attention through observing our thoughts, emotions and physical sensations.

It can conjure up images of a yogi sitting in the lotus position chanting, but there are a wide variety of secular meditation practices that teach students how to focus their attention.

Self-observation exercises can be as simple as sitting, walking, eating, listening and learning with full attention.

Mindfulness-meditation is one for the more popular practices being taught at schools and involves a three-step mental process where students are asked to 1) focus their attention on a particular object (e.g. their own breathing), 2) notice when their attention has wandered away from the object and 3) bring their attention back to the attentional object.

Students engage in this practice with a stance of non-judgment and open curiosity which allows them to identify patterns in their thoughts and feelings, leading to a clearer mind and a more peaceful heart.

Groundbreaking research on meditation in schools is bringing together the three fields of psychology, education and neuroscience.

I led a team of researchers at the University of Melbourne who recently conducted a meta-review of meditation education that included 15 studies combining almost 1800 students from Australia, Canada, India, United Kingdom, United States, and Taiwan.

The results showed that meditation is beneficial in the majority of cases and led to higher optimism, positive emotion, self-concept, self-care and self-acceptance as well as reduced anxiety, stress, and depression in students. Meditation was also associated with faster information processing, greater attentional focus, working memory, creativity and cognitive flexibility.

The meditation programs that were the most effective were those that encouraged regular practice, those that went for a term or longer and those that were delivered by teachers (as compared to an external meditation instructor).

Our addiction to being busy is having a detrimental impact on children and teenagers, says Professor Lea Waters.

The meta-review found a strong case for infusing meditating into the culture of schools and making it a core part of teacher training. Schools can investigate the many youth-meditation programs that have been developed in countries such as Australia (Mindcapsules), Canada (Mindful Education), India (The Alice Project), Israel (The Mindfulness Language), United Kingdom (Mindfulness in Schools Project, DotB), and United States of America (Mindful Schools, MindUp, Learning to Breathe).

The idea of learning being supported by stillness and focused attention is an attractive and practical prospect for education and it is no surprise that meditation education is on the rise as a way to care for both the minds and hearts of our students and to provide some much needed down-time in a young person’s day.

Professor Lea Waters is Director of the Centre for Positive Psychology and Gerry Higgins Chair in Positive Psychology, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne

Education, Episode 4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIAEiE7EAjgPublished on Jan 19, 2013
An excellent six part series which examines modern life and considers the impact of our relentlessly changing world upon key values that used to make western society something to aspire to.
Each episode is packed with pearls of wisdom and a lot of food for thought.
Concepts are well presented with rational arguments and good examples – helping to justify the often disappointing new realities it reveals.
After consideration, even if this series is only half-true … we can ill-afford inaction.

Join Pria Viswalingam for the new six-part documentary series, Decadence, as he considers whether we are now completely bogged down in a mire of meaningless self-indulgence, and whether we do really need iPods, plasma screen TVs, Brazilian waxes and self-navigating 4WDs to achieve happiness. He asks if family incomes have never been higher in the western world, property values are soaring, if conspicuous consumption and material wealth have never been so evident, why are we so unhappy?

We always wish

I thank Ajaytao for these words of wisdom and want to reblog them and write some thoughts about my own life.

Turning 80 this year I can say that I have had a good life. Even now at this advanced stage in my life I can still enjoy life and do not find it too hard to cope with age related aches and pains. Do I wish I could have changed something in my life? Oh yes, I wished I could have changed not having had to grow up in Germany during wartime and the difficult postwar years. Of course these are things we cannot change. But WW II for sure turned me in an antiwar person for the rest of my life.

False advertising, propaganda, and outright lies, these are the things I am very sensitive to. Blame my childhood experiences. I learned early on that you cannot believe everything a leader might tell you. We lived like paupers after the war. I went to school till I was eighteen, but I did not apply myself. I never learned to study hard. Probably I could not see any sense in it. At eighteen I started secretarial work. A few years later came marriage and children and migration to Australia.

Ever since I left school (and during my school years as well!) I had very little money to live on. However I was never desperate for more money. Throughout my life my motto was I have to make do with the little money I have. It turned out that somehow it was always enough. My husband and I are very good savers. We paid off our house with a building society loan. The first few second hand cars we bought on hire purchase. Apart from that we never went into debt. When we travelled overseas we used our own saved up money.

Do I wish I could have changed my past? Sure I would have liked to grow up without the deprivations of war. I would have liked my father to be home all the time. I would have liked my parents to live together after the war. These are things I definitely could not have changed. What could I have changed? Study hard, go to university, end up in a profession I would have loved to work in? Well, it was not to be. I did not have the guts to study hard.

Even though we were rather poor the first few years in Australia, I did not feel poor. I was happy having a family and I enjoyed the easy going Australian lifestyle. How much did I change over the years? Maybe not all that much. I am probably basically still the person I was when I came to Australia aged 25. Some major changes in my education would probably have been possible before I even entered high-school. I was just easy going at school, always got good marks without much effort; except towards the end of my school career at commercial school, which I hated!

I remember as a teenager I spent hours dreaming about a wonderful person who would come along and give me some guidance. I never did get to know such a person, except in my dreams! But I was very happy later on with romance and married life and children. Well, I must say, I am quite happy with the way things turned out to be in my personal life. Still, one thinks sometimes how things could have been somewhat different.

Former student runs Global Poverty Project presentations in schools

http://education-news-update.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/former-student-runs-global-poverty.html

The following was published on the 16th May 2013.

Akram Azimi, a former Warwick Senior High School student and the 2013 Young Australian of the Year, will be visiting schools across Australia in Term 2 on behalf of the Global Poverty Project

How Akram spends his time at schools is up to teachers to decide. It could be in the form of a one-on-one mentoring session, a group workshop, or an inspirational speech.

In 1999, 11-year-old Akram Azimi and his mother arrived in Australia from Afghanistan as asylum seekers. With limited English, Akram struggled to academically, failing English in both Years 8 and 9.

Many teachers assisted Akram by spending extra time with him before and after school and during recess and lunch. One teacher in particular, Andrew Bell, took on the role of mentor to Akram and coached him in History, English and Australian culture.

It was through this mentoring that Akram was able to turn his academic results around and amazingly, achieve the highest Tertiary Entrance Rank in his school.

Akram is living proof of the importance of mentoring, in helping young people reach their potential, and now Akram wants to inspire students to achieve academic success and develop positive attitudes.

The Global Poverty Project’s presentation has been seen in over 150 schools to an audience of over 10,000 students.

“This presentation is incredibly informative,” says Akram. “In a world where we are constantly exposed to negative stories, it offers schools the opportunity to complement the national Civics and Citizenship curriculum with a uniquely positive narrative of how the world is becoming a better place.”

“This presentation is an exercise in global citizenry that equips students with the knowledge and tools they need to become change-makers.”

“Our sense of self-esteem comes from service to others.”

“This presentation gives students the chance to discover global issues and their self-worth. I highly recommend every school student in Australia see this presentation.”

To book your presentation with Akram please contact Ashlee Uren, Youth and Schools Coordinator for the Global Poverty Project, by telephoning 0431 923 003 or by emailing ashlee.uren@globalpovertyproject.com.

Reflections

Post W W II

I am thinking back to what our education was like in Germany after WW II. We had hardly any school books. For a long time very few new books could be printed because of shortages due to the war. The stock of books in school libraries was also very limited.

A lot of the teachers did not return from the war or had not been trained adequately because of the war. The majority of our teachers were women teachers. I remember however two very ancient male teachers: They were most likely in their seventies. Modern history lessons were not allowed to be taught. We dwelled on ancient history, however no books on that subject were available. We were also taught physics and chemistry without having access to any books. Biology? Yes , it was taught, but again no books what so ever. As I remember, there were a few basic books for English, French and Latin from the school library.

What puzzles me now, is how in the whole of Germany there was a totally anti-militaristic mood. Germans had had absolutely enough of all the fighting. Germans were longing for peace and prosperity. Nobody wanted to experience any war activities ever again! War toys for children were forbidden. No German child in those days was encouraged to play war games, and the children who had seen with their own eyes what war was like, did not long to play with toy guns and the like.

Is this, how Germans prospered soon after the war, by neglecting to spend any energy on the build-up of war-machines as well as armies? As we know, the East German Republic went a rather different way and did not prosper the way the West German Republic prospered. Now I am asking myself, why spend huge amounts of money on the build-up of war-machines and armies? Should not an adequate police force be sufficient for every country? But here we are. The sale of weapons is as good a business as ever. Even ‘weapons of mass destruction’ are still being produced. And we have no guarantee that there is adequate control over who can use them at what time and under which circumstances. Why contemplate using them at all? I do not understand. Why build them? It does not make any sense to me.

When I was a teenager in postwar Germany, America stood for FREEDOM and Prosperity. We did not see the USA as a country who would need to fight wars. Why has the picture changed so much? Who’s fault is it? As a teenager in potwar Germany I and my whole family were desperately poor. But I believed in the good of people. I believed that people could live peacefully together, that people did not need to fight wars, that people could prosper. Somehow I still wish to believe all this despite the reality that tells me, people are a long way from achieving this kind of peace all over the world.