A few years ago, one of my colleagues decided to take the plunge and start teaching her students mindfulness. She knew about my own personal practice and subsequent success in teaching it to my students. For years her attitude towards mindfulness was, “I could never do that. My mind is too busy.” I would always shake my head and whisper, “That’s why you need it . . .” When I made mindfulness the cornerstone of my administrative internship project last year, she was one of the first people to sign on. Because she teaches ninth grade, the first thing I spoke to her about was the resistance she was likely going to face. My advice: “Talk to them about it, acknowledge their feelings and prior experiences, explain how this time will be different, and invest some time in creating buy-in. Most importantly, don’t give up. The benefits will come with consistent practice over time.”
I also shared with her my favorite tool for starting the buy-in process: a TEDxYouth talk by AnneMarie Rossi entitled, “Why Aren’t We Teaching You Mindfulness?” It requires a small time investment (about 15 minutes for the video and 5 minutes for discussion afterwards), but soooo worth it. I have shown it to my students every year. The first year we were several months into the mindfulness curriculum already, and I was struggling with resistance. I came across this video on the Mindful Educator Facebook group and thought it was worth a shot. It was. Although it did not convince everyone to participate, their attitudes towards mindfulness softened palpably. The following year I showed it after a few weeks. And this year, it was basically the first thing I did. (I think we watched it on the third day of the school year.)
Heeding my advice, my colleague showed the video to her students right away as well. Their response was both validating and revealing. Right after the video was over, one of her students, in a very genuine and almost awe-struck way, said, “No one ever explained to us before that this could help us—like, for life.”
This response holds so much that can help mindfulness teachers. First is the all-important power of why. Those of us who have experience with young children are all too familiar with the “Why?” phase. We all have a natural curiosity to understand why—about everything. Answering why is probably the most important part of building buy-in around mindfulness. While most of us can probably explain the benefits fairly easily, or even develop an engaging lesson around it, I think it helps for students to hear these things from someone else as well. TED Talks are infused with an ethos that most high school teachers can only dream of. While this particular TED Talk can’t do the entire job, it’s a great place to start.
The second noteworthy element of this student’s response is the “no one ever” part. It tells us that this group of students had prior exposure to mindfulness—and that it wasn’t great. After speaking with several groups of students about this experience (and conducting an anonymous survey), I really understood the importance of skillful implementation. While at one point I thought, “just get them practicing and the benefits will come,” I no longer believe this. The HOW matters. Too many students have come to me with “mindfulness baggage” that makes them really resistant to learning. And some students don’t have the opportunity to learn from an experienced mindfulness teacher, so these negative experiences become their only experiences.
Even when you are a classroom teacher who is able to work with a group of students daily for an entire year, building buy-in takes time. It needs to take time if we want it to last. All things worth building do.
Ms. Hastings 