Do You Feel It? The Change in Behavior and Focus?: A Students Perspective (7)

"Whoa, this is cool."
"Check it out, the tables are so open and scattered."
"I love the different types of tables, feels like a cafe."

Yes, these are the responses I was hoping for. Very rewarding when inspiration leads to a well executed plan. Today, our first day back was awesome. For many reasons: Furniture arrangement, classroom design, choice, mindfulness lesson and purposeful conversation are just a few of them. Coming back from a long break is hard. Our focus is lacking, its difficult to get wake up early after sleeping in late for awhile, our mindset is not aligned with learning new stuff. We often forget our mindfulness, because we have been out of our routine.

So today as much for me as for them, I had another mindfulness lesson. We generally talk kindness and mindfulness at the beginning of the class every day but today we spent fifteen minutes, just reconnecting and realigning as a classroom community. The warm up question: What two things upset you, or make you stressful through out most days and how do you cope or deal with them? This sparked a lot of discussion. Mostly, not about complaining or venting, but on their actions in dealing with the stressful situations.

"I yell at my younger brother."
"I throw something, or say something mean."
"I retreat and try not to deal with my frustration."

After about five minutes of reflection- I introduced a video clip by saying- "It is none of their business that we are mad at them. It is our business to deal with our emotions. It is alright and expected, that we will get mad and anxious- it is our awareness and strategies on how to overcome these, that makes us mindful."

This is the video clip I showed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzKryaN44ss

After they watched it, I can't believe how engaged they were, they had purposeful talk discussions at their tables. It was beautiful to watch their expressions and realizations. During a class discussion, we talked about anger and how it alright to be angry, we need to embrace it. But we need to remember to feed the positive, loving, compassionate wolf. Both wolves need to be expressed. We just have to make sure we let our anger and frustration go. Then they wrote in their mindfulness journals: "It is none of their business that we are angry. It's our business and we have to deal with our business. They have their own business to attend to."

After our mindfulness discussion students began their exploration of local Texas flora and fauna. They were asked how turtles, squirrels, and bugs alike and how and why are they different? We have not spoken about adaptations yet, this is the introduction to the unit and I had them use Texas Wildlife articles from Critter Connections Magazine, to really get them thinking about what they see around them. Local flora and fauna. Since the classroom was rearranged into smaller table settings, more meaningful, purpose conversations ensued.

At the end of class I asked them, table by table, what they noticed about the classroom culture.

"It seemed lighter, calmer."
"We don't feel like were having a classroom conversation, but more personal ones."
"I like the new design, you were able to move around more and sit down with us."

Mindfulness lesson, purposeful talk, science and investigation all in a new configuration and together, these set the tone and spirit, for a great first day back.