Everybody Present: Mindfulness in Education

by Nikolaj Rotne, Didde Flor Rotne

Overview

Everybody Present illustrates the transformative effects of mindfulness on educators, students, and their classrooms. Using concrete examples, Didde and Nikolaj Flor Rotne present a mode of classroom engagement that reduces stress to make room for thoughtful learning. A working manual addressed to everyone in the educational universe, Everybody Present presents real-world applications grounded in solid research. Stories, exercises, and case studies demonstrate the effectiveness of mindful practices across all areas of education. By exploring the challenges of teaching, Everybody Present will help all educators transform feelings of inadequacy into experiences of abundance.

Everybody Present seeks to create a new kind of culture in our schools: one that counters stress and facilitates learning. It reframes the student-teacher relationship, showing teachers how to supplant antagonism and foster strong relationships by planting seeds of mindfulness in their students and encouraging them to embark on a mindfulness practice of their own.

Everybody Present is intended to contribute to the creation of a culture throughout the educational system writ large, working against stress and victim mentality to set in motion a revolution of silence, allowing each individual the experience of inter-being, inner calm, and joy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781937006433
Publisher:	Parallax Press
Publication date:	06/25/2009
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.56(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.41(d)

About the Author

Nikolaj Flor Rotne holds a MA in Educational Psychology. His wife and coauthor Didde Flor Rotne is a primary classroom teacher and meditation teacher in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh. Together they are the cofounders of the educational consultancy Stillness Revolution. Authors of three books in Danish, the Flor Rotnes are also founders of Denmark's Educational Superstars Program.

Read an Excerpt

Teaching, not therapy
A further pitfall is that we treat the education relationship as if mindfulness were a therapy. The mindfulness teacher is not a therapist, and it is not the intention that mindfulness teaching should become therapy. In therapy, a person's emotional challenges are laid bare often with the primary aim that the therapist should help the person. Education is characterized, on the other hand, as a relation in which the teacher sets up possibilities for learning to talk place. If a teacher has emotional challenges it is important not to invite a confessional mood in connection with mindfulness practice. We sympathize with emotional difficulties not by commenting on them but by listening consciously without making judgements. We do not make inquiries that could be of a more therapeutic character into emotional problems.

Religion
Mindfulness is not a religion but a practice based on research. It is a universal mode for being aware in a way that everyone can practice, regardless of whether they have any religious affiliation or not. We must not blindly have faith in the practice and its effects, but trust our own experiences. In mindfulness we do not work with a super-sensible world or concept of the divine that influences our conduct.

Table of Contents

Introduction
A new way for education

1. Mindfulness combines personal and social change
2. What exactly is mindfulness?
3. To rediscover and restore educational ideals
4. From vicious to virtuous circle
5. Mindfulness as educational practise
6. Research shows how mindfulness creates positive changes
7. How do I practice mindfulness
8. Deep breathing creates inner calm
9. Stress reduction through mindfuness
10. Mindfulness strenghthens competence in relationships
11. Mindfulness and anger management in educational relations
12. Mindfulness culture
13. Mindfulness meeting culture
14. Mindfulness with children
15. Pitfalls with Mindfulness
16. Mindfulness and insight
17. The revolution of Silence
18. Appendix

Editorial Reviews

The Flor Rotnes, a married couple and Danish educational consultants, miss many opportunities to “create a mindful classroom” in this well-intentioned effort. Mindfulness—being “aware of what is happening in our present experiences, with compassion, insight and with an intention to create joy”—has obvious uses in education; to literally have “everybody present” could only lead to deeper learning for students. Still, this repetitious work could have been much stronger if the authors had spent more time unpacking the obvious and laying out the steps to put their suggestions into practice. Instead, too much time is spent stating and restating the importance of mindfulness to the individual (not even necessarily to the student). Even as the authors define their terms, they miss taking the crucial next step to connect those terms to everyday classroom practice. The book is laced with anecdotes and folk tales that the authors attempt to link with their lessons on mindfulness. The one chapter that deals explicitly with children and mindfulness is filled with strong reasoning and age-appropriate exercises. Unfortunately, it takes 10 chapters to get there. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

This will not only help teachers and administrators, but anyone interested in understanding the benefits of mindfulness.” —Dr. Paul Ekman, author of Emotions Revealed

"Everybody Present is a well-crafted and artful blend of clear explanations, research, teaching stories, and practice instructions that beautifully guides school teachers into developing a personal mindfulness practice and implementing it in the classroom.  In the face of the tremendous challenges of teaching in schools today, no teacher should be without!" —Diana Winston, Director of Mindfulness Education, UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center and author of Fully Present: The Science Art and Practice of Mindfulness

From the Publisher