My boss wrote a little article for our school’s website. Enjoy!

Students learn to pay attention to their breath by picking up a pebble on their natural inhale and putting it down on the natural exhale.

A Peaceful Library: Integrating Meditation and Peace Studies into Lower School Curriculum

During this session, Angela Baccala, Pre and Lower School Librarian at the Key School, will present two units oriented around peace and social justice. In one unit, Angela teaches meditation to first graders, as a way of setting the tone for a peaceful classroom. Then, after sharing of literature on the theme of world peace, the students find their own ways to integrate peace into their lives at school. In a third grade unit, with a focus on dictionary skills, the children explore the meaning of the word “peace” through literature and art. Both units seamlessly integrate peace studies with language arts, technology, and art. Angela will discuss ways to integrate meditation and life skills topics within a variety of disciplines, and how teachers can work together toward such an integrated approach.

This past spring I was interviewed by Erich Strom for an article to appear in the September “Back to School” edition of Scholastic Instructor magazine. The article is entitled Ten Ways to Turn Stress Into Success and features a sidebar called “Mind Over Matter,” where my comments appear.

Of course, Erich had to quote me about my colleagues looking at me “like I was insane” when I wanted to add mindfulness to the first grade curriculum?! Beyond this funny anecdote, Erich outlines some solid ways to “get started at your school.”

Take a look and pick up a tip or two for your own classroom!

Participants practicing yoga at The Key School's Professional Development Institute (2010)

As a part of the Key School’s summer teaching institute: Engaging Minds, Inspiring Ideas, I will be offering a set of two workshops on mindfulness for educators on Friday, June 17th. The morning session will focus on the benefits of meditation and how to develop a personal practice. In the afternoon, we will explore ways to incorporate meditation and other mindfulness techniques in the classroom, with a focus on grades K-8.

If you have no (or limited) prior meditation experience, take the morning workshop or the morning workshop followed by the afternoon workshop. If you have some experience with meditation or have a personal mindfulness practice, you are welcome to join us for the morning session or just take the afternoon.

Please pass this information on to anyone you think might find it interesting and helpful! Thank you!

To Learn More or to Register: https://www.keyschool.org/community/engaging-minds-inspiring-ideas/index.aspx

A Settled Middle School Mind

Middle School students face a great deal of stress in their experiences with peers, at school, during extra-curricular activities, and even at home. This week campers will focus on how to identify stressors in their lives and develop coping skills and strategies. We’ll explore sitting and walking meditation, using labyrinths and mandalas, and other relaxation techniques. Campers will receive a CD of guided meditations, as well as other props and tools to keep cool under the pressure of school life.
Entering Grades 5-8 • Cost: $155

For my first grade students, this sets the stage for a longer unit on peace in the Library.  Our “A Peaceful Library” unit begins with learning to meditate, using the Peaceful Piggy books by Kerry Lee MacLean.  Then, we read a wonderful National Geographic picture book by Barbara Kerley. 

Using Kerley’s photographs in A Little Peace, we take a look at people all over the world engaged in a variety of peaceful activities.   Then, the students brainstorm how they each find “a little peace” at school, so we can make our own “book.”  We go all over the campus and take photographs of our class engaged in their brainstormed peaceful activities.  I put it all into a Photostory and add the song “We Want Peace on Earth” by Robert Alan.  You can watch this year’s slideshow here: A Little Peace Video.

Enjoy! (And let me know what you think!)

**This idea came from my colleague who attended the Peaceable Schools Institute at Lesley University.

My latest blog post also appears as an article on The Shambhala Times!

http://shambhalatimes.org/2010/09/26/back-to-school-back-to-square-one/

The version on the Times also features a photo of my own children. 

Group Calligraphy - Summer Arts Dathun, 2010

While at the Summer Arts Dathün, I rediscovered True Perception by Chögyam Trungpa. His words about art and artful living led me to contemplate artful family living.

What does it mean to live artfully as a family?

How will I guide my family in the coming school year?

What approach might be best?

In what way can this school year be a “fresh start”?

Each year as Labor Day rolls around, families with children begin again. The start of the school year marks a “New Year” for families, teachers, and students alike. So, here we are. Back to Square One.

At this point, we are in a very powerful spot: being in the present, we can reshape the whole future. Therefore, shouldn’t we be more careful, shouldn’t we be more awake in what we are doing in this very moment?  -Chögyam Trungpa

Another school year sets our lives in motion. The lazy, perhaps more carefree days of summertime slip away. We buy school supplies, sign the children up for fall sports, and ink Back-to-School Night on the family calendar. The routine’s
familiarity both comforts us and bores us. Surely this school year will not resemble the last. New teachers, new friends, new subjects, and additional extra-curricular activities, even a change of school – these things will all produce a different year. However, our way of being, our way of interacting with this school year, might be just the same. We might continue with the patterns set during the last school year.

Perhaps your family has a rigorous schedule of soccer practice for your third grade son, while your twelve-year-old daughter joined a competitive dance troupe, and your second grader’s teacher suggests he take speech therapy after school. As parents, we want the best for our children. So, you take on each challenge. You schedule carpools and divide responsibilities, engineering the family schedule to work around each and every activity. You’re doing it all and you feel good about it! But later in the semester… you feel trapped and over extended – just like last year! This is just one hypothetical example, of course. Many different scenarios could run a family dry of their lungta – year after year.

The point is to approach your family’s activities with thoughtfulness, to be mindful of what your family considers to be a priority. This is the same as coming back to your breath during meditation. Being present on the cushion is practice for being present in your family life. Parents who make their mindfulness practice a priority in their lives will find they notice when the family balance is off kilter. Course corrections are always possible if we’re paying attention. Better yet, we must begin carefully. As the school year unfolds, let us continuously keep in mind the words of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche: being in the present, we can reshape the whole future.

Enjoy the school year!

Let's Do Nothing by Tony Fucile

At the start of the school year, all teachers devote time to constructing a classroom ethos (ie., “class rules).  In my library, my co-librarian and I use a consensus model to help the children create their own ”Library Agreements.”  We all agree to “be” a certain way in the library.

During this process the children come up with their own “library agreements” (which are inevitably similar to the rules they may have experienced in other classrooms).  The exercise  gives them ownership of the library’s behavior guidelines.  The children sign the document and we post it for the first part of the year.

Each year, we select a different title to read aloud before doing this exercise.  This year we chose Let’s Do Nothing! by Tony Fucile.  In Let’s Do Nothing!, the main characters try very hard to do “nothing” but eventually realize that “doing nothing” is a physical impossibility.  (We’re always breathing, blinking, etc.)  In these characters’ persuit to “do nothing,” they try “doing nothing” for 10 seconds, acting like statues, and being redwood trees and skyscrapers.  I used these moments in the book to incorporate excersises that promote mindfulness.

When we got to the point in the book where Sal suggested, “Let’s try doing nothing for ten seconds,” I paused and waited a full ten seconds.  Waiting quietly for ten seconds provides the children with an opportunity to notice the passing of time, to recognize one moment, then the next, then the next…  It’s a pause they don’t  frequently get during a regular school day.

Before I read the book, I took the children through some “yoga” postures to prepare them for the story.  I let them know that we would be stopping the story to do three poses: statue, tree, and skyscraper.  We tried all three before we began to read.  Then, at the appropriate point in the story, I stopped reading and we held each of these poses for ten seconds.  Breaking up the book with movement activity and moving along with the story allowed the children to really share the experience of the characters in Let’s Do Nothing!.

We moved from the story of Sal and Frankie trying to “do nothing” into a discussion about all of the “somethings” we would be doing in Library Class this year and how exactly we were going to do those somethings: with respect, responsibility, and attention.

Chris Kelley leading workshop participants in yoga.