Essay Sample on Mindfulness and Deep and Engaged Learning

Introduction

The use of mindfulness by most of the educators today has led to reduced stress among the learners as well as an enhanced and improved classroom climate. The approach has helped in ensuring that the students have their minds and bodies calm, enabling them to open their hearts and focus their bodies. One of the major significances of incorporating mindfulness into the classroom is that it ensures that emotional and social learning gets promoted in the school (Davis, Dannielle). Through this, the students also become able to have their confidence in life cultivated and also creates a classroom environment conducive for learning. Davis, Dannielle further elaborates that if an educator takes her time to remind the students that checking in themselves and having a reflection on their day could create a very significant influence on the student's lives and in the classroom. Several benefits could arise when mindfulness practice gets incorporated into the curriculum, and some of them include the following. The simplest of all is to note that being mindful in itself is a refreshment. There are also results from psychologists and researchers that mindfulness increases the alertness and focus among the students. The students will also be more interactive as compared to when they are not mindful. Being mindfulness is also a significant factor responsible for understanding and awareness in the emotions and feelings of an individual (Schreiner & Michelle, 19). The resultant effect of mindfulness in a learning environment is that it brings about empowerment and more engagements to learn among the student. The most engaging and effective way through which mindfulness can quickly get introduced to the students is the MindUP curriculum. That is a curriculum majorly based in research, and it offers lessons that are easy to incorporate and the strategies helping the students to build resilience, focuses their attention, developing a positive mindset, and improving self-regulation.

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According to Schreiner and Michelle (19), Learning can be a big deal in modern life where there are imaginary and real violence, general business, constant exposure to media and high pressure responsible for the triggering of the fight-flight-freeze response. Besides, there is a lot of difficulties to absorb and process new information when the limbic system of the human is hyperreactive as it makes engaging the prefrontal cortex extremely difficult. Up to now, we all are aware that we are capable of making profound changes in the functionality of our minds and bodies at any age as a result of neuroplasticity; however, such changes are often made mostly during development. Therefore, the significant difference can get treated when students get helped to learn how they can calm their minds and body through the use of developmentally appropriate mindful awareness practices. Such practices can easily get incorporated into the curriculum, and the difference created is not only in the lives of the students but also in the reforming of education as a whole (Schreiner & Michelle, 21).

It is important to note that besides experiencing mindful awareness during the formal practice sessions, there are also other moments that such a feeling can get experienced and some of them include during the activities of daily life. It is worth noting that mindful awareness can also get cultivated during the events of the day-to-day life and an ideal example is interpersonal mindfulness involving the application of conscious awareness as we interact with other individuals and this also has an important role to play in the educational settings. Living mindfully entails essential practices that are informal, and they involve keeping one's mind open to any possibilities and having the recognition that at any given moment, the level of recognition gets mediated by our emotions, thoughts, and the experiences we have gone through. The significance of such a meta-awareness is that it assists us in living our lives such that we have a continuous reflection on our daily lives and also accept the diverse views by others, the critical qualities in the world of the continually growing communication and global integration.

Engaged learning as defined by JMU is that it is the development of a reflective and purposeful education in creating unity among the campus and community in pursuit of building an application, and distribution of knowledge (Schreiner & Michelle, 15). For engaged learning to be active, commitment gets required in the part of the students, the university and the faculty also need to come up with practices different from the traditional ones that were only experimental and only took place in the community, besides involving guided reflection and exploration. Engaged learning should include but should not be limited to high impact practices of education like internships, undergraduate research, collaborative projects, global education, and across communities. There is also a need to have an engagement advisory group that is key in the coordination of team for engagement at the learning institutions. There should also be a group of leaders clearly defined and executive director to ensure that the processes involved in such a practice meet the international standards and that it is fruitful in the long run.

Works Cited

Davis, Dannielle Joy. "Mindfulness in Higher Education: Teaching, Learning, and Leadership." International Journal of Religion & Spirituality in Society 4.3 (2014). http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&profile=ehost&scope=site&authtype=crawler&jrnl=21548641&AN=99578131&h=WQvydeYTpITt1zC5yeODT5DIAqNYBawuSIlBmT4kN%2FOu5Y9MkdpDorUjslf83d8ajqq6NTOPf5veHHwrM%2BwKDA%3D%3D&crl=c

Schreiner, Laurie A., and Michelle C. Louis. "The engaged learning index: Implications for faculty development." Journal on Excellence in College Teaching 22.1 (2011): 5-28. https://static.apu.edu/static/src/sites/strengthsacademy/downloads/engaged_learning_fac_dev_08.doc