Being a Mindful Teacher Educator: Poetic Responses to Preservice Teachers Becoming

• In Event: Perspectives of International Citizen-Practitioners Respecting and Embracing Responsibility for Enhancing Holistic Well-Being

Abstract

Being mindful involves a special quality of attention, that is being purposeful, in the present moment, and non-judgmental (Kabat-Zinn, 1994). Mindful educators embody awareness of, and agency with, the emotional climate in their learning environments. As a teacher, the locating of ‘self’ plays a critical role in the integration of mindfulness-based interventions formally or informally within a classroom. These moments of exploring ‘self’ are interweaving, and complex. They intersect with the students' own exploration of ‘self’. As a teacher educator, my personal mindfulness practice has been interwoven with my teaching. Illuminated through this embodiment has been the need to support pre-service teachers (PSTs) to consider how they too can benefit from mindfulness practices especially in relation to how one must care for themselves as an educator.

This paper presents a study undertaken over four years with undergraduate PSTs in association to their professional experience placement. This is a significant time integrated throughout initial teacher education studies where time is spent in educational settings, such as schools, to connect theory with practice. This is also a noteworthy time of personal and professional growth for PSTs, underpinned by a vulnerability as one explores what type of teacher they wish to be. To support PSTs navigate this time I have integrated contemplative practices informed by mindfulness mindfulness into my teaching as an embodied practice; allowing for my authentic connections to be made with PSTs to language, practices, and ways of being. My modelling also promotes PSTs journey into contemplative practices and the place of active listening with eyes, heart and head.
Through poetry, a contemplative practice itself, I unpack how vulnerability as a teacher educator, a learner oneself, promotes critical moments of being present with suffering, growth, curiosity and self- compassion. I bounce off and respond to PSTs reflections, sharing, insights, worries, ruminations, anger and moments of tension as a source of curiosity and awareness of their lived experiences of becoming a teacher. In the process of responding through writing, poetry, I am connecting to ‘self’. My awareness is heightened. I express through the flow of the pencil to paper. I let my own thoughts, ruminations, investigations, questions, and wondering flow. I connect to the present. In this process of writing poetry, responding to PSTs critical moments of becoming, I slow down and linger with memories, experiences, and emotions. In my writing, I am seeking what it’s like to live with wellness (Green & Kim, 2019; Bai, Morgan, Scott & Cohen, 2019). At the heart of this practice is compassion and curiosity, expressed externally and internally as part of locating ‘self’ as transitory states. Illuminated is how as teacher educators we can connect to authentic ‘self’ when empowering PSTs to connect with mindfulness practices as a way to cultivate healthy habits of mind and to meet the demands of their jobs with greater resilience and promotion of self-care. Specific attention is made to self-care, acceptance of vulnerability, and cultivation of resilience (Siegel, 2010; Duckworth, 2016), that one is not alone, as indispensable dispositions in the increasingly demanding field of education.

Author

• Narelle Suzanne Lemon, Swinburne University of Technology