This is the third in a four-part series in which we consider what innovation in the classroom will look like going forward. Thank you to today’s contributor, FFT Board Member Jonas Zuckerman. With over 25 years in education, Jonas is dedicated to building the capacity of educators and providing disadvantaged students a high-quality education by closing equity gaps.

As we emerge from the coronavirus pandemic, American education is facing significant challenges, including the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on historically underserved populations. While we know that the pandemic has exacerbated already existing opportunity gaps, we are still assessing the full magnitude of the impact, partially due to disruption to statewide assessments. At the same time, schools and districts do have local data and are able to use that data to identify student needs. It is critical that schools focus post-pandemic efforts on serving all students, and work to mitigate the impact of the pandemic and school disruptions.

There is also no doubt that the pandemic has changed classrooms and schools, and some of these changes may be part of the solution moving forward. Teachers and schools want to come back to a better future that will permanently close the equity gaps, and there are some opportunities coming out of the pandemic that may have a positive impact.

For example, due to the pandemic, investments have been made in infrastructure, including expanded internet access in rural and urban areas. While there is still not equitable access to the internet, an essential in today’s world, there is better data on the precise nature of the situation including which areas do not have reliable internet service. This thorough understanding of the problem is necessary in order to make change.

Similarly, there has been an investment in hardware devices, which is also essential for an equitable educational system. These, and other investments, were made possible by unprecedented funding provided to schools by the federal government, almost $300 billion across three stimulus bills.

It is also important to note that much of this funding will be available to schools for the next few years, until 2024, as we know that recovery will not be immediate. As a requirement tied to this funding, schools will need to address “learning loss” or “learning disruption” that occurred due to the pandemic. Specifically, schools are required to focus on learning loss, and they must do so in consultation with stakeholder groups. In an even more direct attempt to address equity gaps, Congress required schools to not just address learning loss generally, but specifically to focus on historically underserved populations, including racial and ethnic groups, students with disabilities, students experiencing homelessness, students from low-income families, and other specific student groups. There is a clear and direct mandate from Congress to ensure that schools are attending to the students who need the most support, and it will be the responsibility of schools and districts, with support from states, to fulfill this mandate.

Schools are also required to use evidence-based strategies in their efforts, and there is ongoing research around what the best strategies will be. One specific recommendation for a post-pandemic evidence-based strategy comes in a new report issued by TNTP, in partnership with Zearn, titled “Accelerate, Don’t Remediate,” which offers strong evidence that the best way for schools to help students get back on track is through “learning acceleration,” ensuring students have access to high quality, grade level curriculum and that targeted help is built into the grade level assignments. This report demonstrates why the practice of remediation, or utilizing curriculum from lower grades, is not effective at helping students recover from learning loss. The federal funds provided can help schools both adopt high quality materials and provide professional learning so teachers can implement them effectively in classrooms. This is one example of the type of evidence-based strategy that will need to be implemented post-pandemic, and it is informative because it challenges conventional wisdom about what practices are best. In this case, the remediation strategy has long been used, but this evidence shows it is not effective. In order to move to an equitable, post pandemic world, we will need to continue to challenge conventional thinking about what practices work best, as we cannot utilize the same strategies that created the inequitable system and expect to see different results.

The global pandemic has irrevocably changed the educational system and it is up to all of us to work to ensure that the new system is truly equitable and just.

This is the second in a four-part series called “Fellow Voices” in which we turned to our grant recipients for their insights into what innovation in the classroom will look like going forward. Thank you to today’s contributor, Kari Baransky.

Teaching in this post-pandemic world has been, to say the least, challenging.  There are many times when I think about and question my skills as an educator. Am I doing the best that I can for the students that I teach? Am I creating lessons that help students improve their social skills as well as meet content expectations? Am I being supportive to my colleagues during this trying, ever changing, challenging time?

After asking my students what they miss about their “old” lives, several students were concerned about not remembering how to get along and socialize with their peers. Others were just worried about missing out on the connections that they had built before the pandemic changed their lives.  I wanted to find ways to support the psychological well being of my students.  I researched brain development and how the brain changes when met with adversity.  

After searching for any type of research on SEL and how I could apply it to my students and colleagues I found Richard Davidson’s work.  He spoke about  the four pillars of the science of training the mind: awareness, connection, insight and purpose.

• Awareness is to be self-aware. How many times have you blindly been going through the motions of your day and not realize the impact that you could have had on others? Davidson stated,  “If your mind is distracted, it exacts a toll on your well-being,” 
• Connection is the key to successful relationships and having a positive outlook on life.  
• Insight is the ability to recover from adverse situations. 
• Purpose is having a sense that life has meaning and is linked to faster recovery from negative events. 

Davidson has hoped that people will make cultivating well-being a part of their daily life, like brushing their teeth. “This is a kind of mental hygiene.”  This statement hit home with me because we go through the motions of our lives never taking the time to take care of our own mental stability. I downloaded the meditation app to start to plan a way of introducing the power of meditation to my students and colleagues.  I know that in order for students to embrace something new, it needed to be quick at first.  The app has a variety of meditations for specific purposes, some are less than two minutes, perfect for the middle school student.  Davidson cited research suggesting that meditation can change their underlying brain function. People that have practiced meditation show changes in key brain connections that help with emotional regulation and a quicker recovery from negative experiences. 

Watch Richard Davidson’s TED Talk “How mindfulness changes the emotional life of our brains” here.

I continued my research and found the Learning and the Brain Foundation that offers research based professional development.  This foundation does not endorse a single research company or specific ideology.  Having a variety of researchers agree upon a concept is reassuring for the direction that I am going in. Be on the lookout for information on ways to implement this great research about brain development through meditation and mindfulness, I am excited to share what I find out this summer with my Fund for Teachers Innovation Grant.

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Kari Baransky teaches math at Washington Middle School in Meriden, CT. With two colleagues, she used a Fund for Teachers grant to research & analyze restorative practices that are used in schools in three European countries to optimize a preventative approach to behavior issues leading to the improved behavior systems and increased empathy among middle school students. See images from their fellowship and read their summary here.

Kari offered the following resources for more learning on the topic of supporting the psychological well being of students:

1. Richard Davidson’s address to the Harvard School of Public Health on training one’s mind to improve well-being
2. The Emotional, Social Brain in Schools online institute – July 12-16 
3. Dec. 2007 Forum recording with Neuroscientist Richard Davidson, The Heart-Brain
4. Social-Emotional Learning and the Brain: Strategies to Help Your Students Thrive by Marilee Sprenger

The flatlands of Oakland — where most of my students live — have often been described as a war zone. Nearly every student of mine has lost at least one family member, classmate or friend to gun violence. My students face discrimination for their race, gender, country of origin, religion, immigration status, and usually a combination of these. I have students who are refugees and immigrants from Yemen and Iraq, Burma and Vietnam, Guatemala and El Salvador. Additionally, because of the pervasiveness of gun violence, racism, poverty, and grief in our city, experts estimate that 30 percent or more of Oakland children suffer from PTSD, my immigrant students are now in a state of heightened uncertainty and fear with deportations on the rise. What’s more, my students belong to a generation that is increasingly suffering from tech addiction.

It’s not hard to see why I designed my Fund for Teachers fellowship around the need for more mindfulness, social-emotional learning and focus-building activities in our school. My two-week fellowship at the Penland School of Craft mixed the arts, writing, and mindfulness with an innovative movement program in the peaceful Blue Ridge Mountains. My time spent there also allowed me to build my own practice of slowing down to live more fully and intentionally so that I can help my students do the same.

Why Penland and not a more standard mindfulness program that attracts many Fund for Teachers Fellows? Why not Thailand or Japan? I was more interested in going to Penland because it combines mindfulness with the arts and writing. I also believe we need to build bridges between rural America and urban America, between a red state and a blue state. Another benefit of this particular workshop is the way Penland embraces the word “craft.” This was clear when I read the school director explain why his institution changed its name from “Penland School of Handicrafts” to “Penland School of Craft” in a recent blog post.

[minti_blockquote]”The word craft,”he wrote, “suggests process, skill, commitment, and perfected attention.” The director added that those values are what the school promotes for the world. “They suggest an ideal, not something specific.” Penland’s values are the same I hope to instill in my students. My time at the rural artist community helps me do that.[/minti_blockquote]

My days were spent immersed in a clay workshop and evenings I participated in “movement” courses. I also conducted field research by talking to artists and other educators about the creative process, even those who are in different workshops than mine. Most of my action research, however, took place in Catherine White’s “Woodfiring & the Expressive Hand” course. In that intensive course, I made all types of pottery and discussed the creative process. It is here that I experienced one of my most profound lessons. “That badness becomes part of your goodness,” was a quote from my teacher that I inscribed in the foot of a bowl that I’d apparently “ruined.” Instead of throwing it out, I looked at the unintended grooves and found a way to accentuate them because they looked like the Penland mountains. I want my teaching to evolve like my learning. I want to be more daring with my lessons, turning them into something good — even better — if they fail to go as expected. I want students to also learn this way.

Now, with distance learning, the way that my FFT fellowship helped me with mindfulness is even more important. I am partnering with several teachers to provide mindful literature lessons to my students. Just this week, we did a nice lesson on embodiment. We did a full body scan to focus our awareness on our own body. We then wrote poetry based on Elizabeth Acevedo’s poem “Afro-Latina” in which we explored how she came to love parts of her body and identity that originally caused her shame and learned to love her mixed heritage. The partnership with the ceramics teacher is on hold due to distance learning! However, I am using ceramics in my own life to continue to center myself so that I can be more present with my students.

This fellowship allowed me to be a “newcomer,” which is what my most recently enrolled students are called in my English Language Development class. I was a newcomer in the ceramics studio and to a special vocabulary that wood firers share. All but one of my classmates had had years of experience with clay. My teaching is consequently transformed because I felt the need to create safe spaces for students to question and make mistakes in an environment similar to the one I experienced on my fellowship. Lucy Morgan, who founded Penland in the 1920s, said this about her school: “I’ve never known a place where one experiences such a feeling of liberation, of a taking for granted that mistakes are a normal part of the learning process; of tolerant acceptance of people as they are, yet faith in their desire and ability to grow.” We must build similar environments for all learners, especially English learners.

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This was Lisa’s third FFT fellowship. With her first grant in 2008, Lisa traveled to Japan to research its high schools, teenagers and media; in 2015, she studied multiculturalism in Australia, New Zealand and Tonga, where she explored with a journalist Sydney’s minority populations with multimedia storytelling. You can read more about that experience here.

Lisa Shafer is passionate about delivering an equitable education to all students and giving them the opportunity to voice their opinions through journalism, debate and public speaking. Armed with a Master’s degree in journalism from the University of Michigan, Lisa currently teaches English at Skyline High School in Oakland, CA. Prior to that, she taught journalism at Oakland’s Media Academy of Fremont High School and worked as a professional journalist at several newspapers, including the Toledo Blade, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Contra Costa Times. She started teaching in 2001. 

 

Preschool teachers have to be flexible, but Dianna Langdon (Park Early Childhood Center – Ossining, NY) is taking that necessity to a whole new level. She used her FFT grant to obtain certification as a registered children’s yoga teacher and now incorporates the practice daily to unite four-year-olds’ minds, bodies, thoughts and actions while also fulfilling state standards requiring preschoolers’ physical, social and emotional development.

Two weeks of instruction at the Bhodi Tree Yoga Resort in Nosara, Costa Rica, equipped Dianna to weave yoga and mindfulness into classroom instruction in English and Spanish to include the large percentage of students from Latin American countries. She also leads staff development sessions that empower all of the preK teachers and assistants to incorporate breathing and movement exercises that reduce student stress and increase healthy practices.

“My prekindergarten students now enjoy much needed opportunities throughout their learning day for movement, which helps increase their attention and stimulate their cognitive ability,” said Dianna. “Students are also developing mindful habits through the use of new meditative strategies I’ve learned such as mindful minute, guided visualizations, and affirmations.”

Despite their high energy level, the young yogis look forward to the chance to  relax together, according to Dianna. She leads some exercises, then students use their creativity to dream up and share their own poses (pictured). They also share thoughts about feelings, hopes and worries. “We even use yoga breathing strategies to support ourselves at other times during the school day and to modulate our energy during learning,” Dianna said.

Ultimately, she envisions daily yoga sessions developing in her students the principle of ahimsa, or non-harming.

“By teaching my students this principle and encouraging them to think about it in other areas of their lives, we will all go into the world outside our classroom with a focus on kindness toward the other.”

Namaste.

For more stories about teachers pursuing mindfulness strategies with their grants, read about the work of these Houston teachers, as well as the impact of these Fellows who learned under experts at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Massachusetts and a Buddhist monastery in France.

Today mark’s the third annual Mindfulness Day, but an increasing number of FFT Fellows use their grants to incorporate mindfulness into EVERY school day.

Deborah Howard and Judith Fitzgerald (Naubuc Elementary – Glastonbury, CT) spent a week this summer at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Stockbridge, MA.

“When we arrived at Kripalu, we were bubbly, excited and couldn’t stop talking, much like our students on the first day of school. Then, we immediately cringed when we noticed the ‘Quiet, please’ and ‘Enter mindfully’ signs posted everywhere,” said Deborah. “Through the techniques we learned and practiced, we can now help our students learn better emotion regulation leading to less stress and reduced impulsiveness.”

Although strangers prior to their fellowship, Shannon Kephart (Roberto Clemente Community Academy High School – Chicago) and Jodie Lang (Mary T. Murphy Elementary – Brandford, CT) both sought mindfulness practices at the same Buddhist monastery. Shannon teaches Algebra to special education students with various learning and emotional disabilities while Jodie teaches fifth graders at a Title I school. Independently, they observed students lacking focus, patience and cognitive flexibility. At Plum Village Mindfulness Retreat Center in Bordeaux, France, the teachers learned how to bring mindfulness into their own lives through learning sessions, meditations and the integration of mindfulness into daily chores on the working farm.

Shannon says her FFT fellowship completely shifted her mindset about how best to work with students to help them achieve as much success as possible.

“It has given me a new approach for helping students overcome anxiety, low confidence, and concentration difficulties and feel more connected to their school and schoolwork,” she said. “Often, students’ emotions and anxieties get in the way of them being willing to work and put in their best effort. By practicing mindfulness, students can begin to build their comfort level with themselves and grow into the strongest, most courageous, and thoughtful learners possible.”

Additional FFT Fellows research strategies for implementing yoga into their classrooms, like this team from Hinojosa Early Childhood/PreK in Houston who completed Yoga for Classroom Teachers training in the United Kingdom to promote teamwork, healthy living and improved concentration. See how other Fund for Teachers Fellows pursued mindfulness education by visiting our Project Search and enter the key word “mindfulness.”