Mindfulness in the law classroom - part 1

A level and BTEC law students are a stress ridden bunch. Its usually only a few month in to their qualifications that they start to feel the full weight of exactly what it is they are doing and as they get further through it only gets worse. These qualifications will have a very real impact on their future prospects. They realise that two marks one way or the other in an exam really can make the difference between securing that prized solicitors training contract and going to the job centre.

As a teacher I know that students need to be taking their studies seriously from day one but, at the same time, I am wracked with guilt about the impact this has on their lives. I feel very responsible that they feel the pressure in such an acute way and so I decided that I had to build in to lessons some coping techniques to help them deal with the stress of being a student in an increasingly competitive world.

Mindfulness

I know I'm a little late to the party with the idea of mindfulness meditation in class but it took me a while to understand enough about how mindfulness works to know how to incorporate it into my teaching. The college employs a fantastic student support worker called Anastasia who came and taught my A2 students and myself in a full length session and this was the overview of what she told us. I'm still reflecting on exactly what we were told but the overwhelming take away for me was that we have to do something with this.

The theme of the session was the assertion that feeling overwhelmed with stress is not a fore-drawn conclusion and we do have a choice. To illustrate this Anastasia first of all she showed us this video below with details all of the horrible things that stress does to your body.

Anastasia then went on to explain the concept of 'neuroplasticity' which is a recent discovered ability for the human brain to change and adapt over time. Our brains are not fixed and we have the ability to train our brain in the same way that we build and sculpt our bodies through exercise. Essentially, the more anxious we become and the more we worry about things the better we become at worrying, but we can train our brains to worry less by practicing mindfulness. The video below shows the impact of mindfulness on our brains.

The session plenary was a five minute guided mindfulness meditation which is focusing on breathing in order to try to prevent being bombarded with constant sporadic thoughts. The aim is to reduce the feelings of stress by letting go of all other thoughts and just focus on the 'now'. It is easier said than done.

I was so proud of my learners because they all gave it a go, whether or not they bought in to the idea. I have to admit that, although I closed my eyes and stayed still I listened to the students the whole way through but I didn't hear a single noise from them. At about 4 minutes in I had a look around and they all had their eyes closed and were perfectly still.  I don't think I've ever been so proud of them.

The best part about the session was feedback I received from students afterwards. I had several students tell me that, for a few moments at least, they felt really at peace and in the 'now' for the first time in months. They achieved a momentary escape from the stress they usually feels. This was enough to make me a convert and over the next few weeks I'm going to make a plan as to how to embed these practices further into my teaching.

Why am I repeating myself..? Why am I repeating myself..? Why am I repeating myself..? Why am I repeating myself..?

I've said it on many occasions but, as teacher, we have more tasks to do than we have time to do them. I would doubt that anyone would dispute this notion. I think anything that will save us some time in the future is worth investing in in the short term.

As a post 16 teacher I teach the same things to the different groups so I end up saying the same thing several times over. There might be some modification in the way that I do things from group to group but often the basic instructions on how to do a task will stay the same. This is especially true with BTEC subsidiary groups when setting them up to do assignment work, it is important that each group gets exactly the same instruction which fits within the BTEC rules so I'm limited on what I'm allowed to say.

I can end up saying the same thing six times in one week and once I realized this I also acknowledged that it is utter madness. You'll set up the assignment to the class and then little Wasim, who is late because he had a dentist appointment will come in and I'll start up and say it all again!

Quite simply put, I don't have time to do anything more than once and that is why I took the step of recording myself giving instructions which I need to give out more than once. I know a lot of people fight shy of voice recording because it is very embarrassing (I don't disagree!) and those who do try it end up spending hours doing take after take to get it exactly right (I've done this too!) Perfection is not necessary, as far as I'm concerned as long as you're not interrupted and you don't swear on the recording then it is more than good enough. You wouldn't practice in front of the mirror if you were going to say something to a group 'live' so why practice when you're going to record yourself saying it?

So you have two options, if you have time, record yourself before hand and then just play it back to the group or alternatively you can record it whilst you say it to the first class and then play it back to class two and three, the late kid, the kid who wasn't paying attention and the kid who forgot what she was supposed to be doing. Then you can do something else whilst they are listening.

The only thing you've now got to do is work out what to do with all that extra time you've bought yourself.

A little thank you is always nice

I was given a college core values award in briefing on Friday morning. I'm not sure exactly what I did to get it, but it was still nice to know that the things I do don't go unnoticed.

Theft and the happy teacher

In order to make ends meet when I was a lowly paralegal I used to tutor A level sociology and law students. It has probably been the most valuable learning experience I have ever had, both in my subject area and also in pedagogy.

I charged a small but reasonable sum for my time and my services became quite popular, I was getting so many referrals that the decision to leave the law and pursue teaching was almost out of my hands, either the law or the teaching had to give and I hated the law side and love the teaching so it was very simple.

I figured out how to plan a lesson almost on my own and I look back on these plans and they're pretty basic. Students must have noticed a huge difference between what they did with me in our sessions and lessons they had at college and I'm sure the main reason why they got a lot out of it was because it was one to one.

The one thing I didn't understand or realise was that resources are not going to be original. I discovered websites like TES resources and Resourcd pretty early on, but I always thought that I had to hide the fact that I was using these things. I used to make great chunks of notes from the textbooks to make it look like I'd come up with it all and, granted it reinforced my own subject knowledge, but it was not a productive use of my time. It would take me as long to prepare for a session as it did to actually teach it,

Its taken me a long time to realise that taking a ready made resource, whether it's a worksheet, an activity or a presentation, is not cheating, it's common sense. As long as I am carefully checking the resources, tailoring them to my students and removing any other college's proprietary branding then I would be mad not to when the thing that I need already exists.

My message is mainly for new teachers, you have more things to do that you have hours in the day, you'll need to find as many short cuts as you possibly can and using someone else's resources in your lesson is somewhere that you can legitimately do this. It's not cheating and its not wrong. You're freeing up your time to do more important things like giving brilliant personalised feedback when marking student work, creating innovative differentiation strategies and maybe, just maybe, doing something for yourself like going home on time or having a lie in.