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The issue of how to teach kindness to children, and

the question of the appropriate training for a teacher to then teach this,

is a huge question, and really, really important.

In our own work before, we bring the kindness curriculum to the kids,

we have the teachers go through a ten week curriculum themselves,

that includes teaching them mindfulness and kindness practices.

So that they actually have an interior experiential sense of this themselves,

which we think is absolutely critical.

If they don't have that internal taste, it's very difficult for

this to be sustained in the classroom after the formal training ends.

Regarding the issue of how to get teachers to do it, and

the fact that teachers today, in particular in our culture,

are indeed just extremely burdened and very, very busy.

And in our own experience, many teachers,

when we talk about them doing a ten week training, they just

start getting stressed out at the very prospect of doing it.

And it's a very, very serious problem and challenge.

What we've found is that the most effective way of doing this

is to work with the highest levels of school systems and

have teachers be given release time to actually undergo this kind of training.

So that it actually doesn't add to an already overworked schedule.

But they can actually accommodate it in their schedule by being

given time off in order to undertake this kind of training.

And we have been blessed by having very visionary leadership

in the Madison school district, the Madison public school district,

and they have enabled this kind of release time to occur,

at least on a partial basis.

In order for us to more effectively bring this to the teachers.

So this is going to be a huge issue going forward.

I think that ultimately schools of education will need

to incorporate this into training of teachers in ed schools.

And this is something that it's just starting to happen, and

I think will happen with increased frequency.

But one of the things that I think school districts

will actually realize is that it is penny wise and

pound foolish not to provide time for

teachers to do this kind of training for a few reasons.

One is that I was given access not too long ago to data from our own

local school district on the amount of money that the school district spends

on certain kinds of healthcare costs for teachers and staff.

And I was particularly interested in the single category

of antidepressant medication for the staff and teachers.

The amount of money that's being spent, and

I think that the Madison public school district is quite

an enlightened school district compared to some across the country.

But I think that the if we had those data nationally,

I think we'd be collectively shocked by how much money we're

spending as a nation on anti depression medication to relieve stress,

depression and anxiety among the teaching profession.

And it's also the case that teachers leave the profession at unprecedented rates.

And the amount of resources that are wasted in training and

then to have them leave so soon after is really problematic.

And so I actually think that these practices can help teachers to do their

job in a way where they can change their relationship to the stresses around them.

That can ultimately result in decreased healthcare costs,

decreased prescription drug costs, decreased absenteeism among the staff.

And those are all promissory notes at this point in time, that's just speculation.

But if, in fact, once we have evidence, if it does show that,

every school district in the nation is going to want this.

And then it's going to be like gay marriage, and

the whole thing's going to change very quickly.

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I think the most important advice I can provide to educators

who are interested in incorporating these sorts of methods in their classroom,

is really to begin their own personal practice to

cultivate these kinds of qualities in themselves.

There's no substitute for that.

I think in many ways the most important strategy for

teaching these kinds of methods to children is simply to embody them oneself.

And a lot of the learning then gets done implicitly.

If the teacher is really present, if the teacher doesn't get frazzled,

if the teacher is kind, if the teacher expresses gratitude,

those are just communicated osmotically to the child and

get right under the skin and are powerful exemplars.

And so I think that the most important message is

to invite teachers to take this on.

And again, I know that sometimes that can sound like yet

another thing that they, quote, have to do.

And [COUGH] my approach is to be very gentle and

very gradual, and to start this very,

very simply with really small chunks to set

oneself up for success and not for failure.

[COUGH] And so even if you begin to practice for

three minutes a day, that's wonderful.

And we all can afford three minutes a day.

And so, once it begins, it can take on a life of its own and

then grow organically in that way.

I think often, when someone hears that they're being told to practice 45 minutes

a day, and they do that once or twice, and then realize there's no way they're

going to be able to continue that, they have these failure experiences.

I think that's just completely unnecessary.

I think you can start very, very gradually,

very simply with really bite-sized chunks and they're very doable.

[MUSIC]

The practices that I recommend for teachers would include simple mindfulness

and kindness meditation practices that can be done in a completely secular way.

These are practices that are readily available.

There's a plethora of information available on the Internet.

There are many groups around the country that are teaching these kinds of thing.

And so one can begin very simply with these.

For children, it's a little more complicated, because there aren't that

many curricula that are well established that have been published.

And certainly, I don't know of really any curriculum that's been well researched.

And so there, I think, we're on much shakier ground,

but there are a few out there that people are using and

certainly school systems can explore them.

But that's really why we're

doing the kinds of work we're doing with our own kindness curriculum.

Not so much because we feel that our curriculum is necessarily any better than

any other curriculum, it's just that we need to start somewhere.

And we need to collect hard-nosed evidence to see if these curricula really

are having the kind of impact we imagine they might be.

[MUSIC]

When I first began the kind of work I do, the environment,

the culture around me, the Zeitgeist, was just totally unreceptive to this.

And yet, I started meditating when I was in graduate

school, and I was convinced from my own experience that this was valuable

even though people around me did not value it.

And so my decision was to just be very quiet about it and

not talk about it, but to keep doing it,

and I found the benefits to continue.

And, eventually, the world changed.

I think that teachers may be in situations where it's a little like that.

They may begin to try these things and

find their principal or administrators are not terribly receptive to this.

And [COUGH] my advice in those situations, sometimes they can be very difficult,

but my advice is just keep doing it, and don't necessarily talk about it.

It's not so important to talk about it, it's more important to just be it.

And through ones demeanor and through ones presence, you can communicate

the fruits of these practices without having to talk about them explicitly.

And in many ways, that's a better way of communicating

it then talking about how valuable mediation might be.

We often get so excited about it in the beginning, that we want to talk about it,

we want to share the results.

We want everybody to be doing it.

But the best way to get everyone to do it is to actually stop talking about it and

just to be it.

[MUSIC]

"On the Benefits of Mindfulness Practice for Teachers" by Richard Davidson

Teacher SEL: Programs, Possibilities, and Contexts

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