The Mindful Teacher is predicated on the observation that the pressures on classroom teachers have become so great that few teachers are able to find time for sustained reflection and modification of one's teaching in the company of one's peers.
Mindfulness is a term that is used in a variety of forms in different philosophical and religious traditions. We use the term to denote heightened awareness of the choices that teachers make and their consequences for pupil learning.
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Dennis Shirley, Ph.D.
Dr. Dennis Shirley's educational work spans from the nitty-gritty micro-level of assisting beginning teachers in complex school environments to the macro-level of designing and guiding large-scale research and intervention projects for school districts, states, and networks. Dennis was the first U.S. scholar to document the rise of community organizing as an educational change strategy, and his activities in this arena have led to multiple long-term collaborations and a steady stream of speaking engagements and visiting professorships in the U.S. and internationally.
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Elizabeth MacDonald
Elizabeth MacDonald is a Literacy Coach in the Boston Public Schools. In addition to her partnership with Dennis Shirley, Elizabeth also serves as an Adjunct Professor at Boston College.
Elizabeth MacDonald and Dennis Shirley have founded a seminar for urban teachers called The Mindful Teacher which provides educators with a collegial setting for combining teacher inquiry, collaborative study of contributions to research, and formal meditation practices. Elizabeth MacDonald is an elementary school teacher and teacher leader in the Boston Public Schools and Dennis Shirleyis a professor of education at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College.
The Mindful Teacher is a seminar and support network for Boston Public School teachers funded by a grant from the Boston Collaborative Fellows Program.
The Mindful Teacher is a way to address "alienated teaching." In a nutshell, alienated teaching is that kind of teaching that teachers perform when they feel that they must comply with external conditions that they have not chosen and from which they inwardly dissent because they feel that new reforms do not serve their children well.
To overcome alienated teaching, we propose an alternative conception of mindful teaching, in which teachers struggle to attain congruence, integrity, and efficacy in their practice. Mindful Teaching is not a program that can be purchased, a recipe that can be followed, or a silver bullet that can be fired into your instruction to raise your test scores. It is a form of teaching that is informed by contemplative practices and teacher inquiry that enables teachers to interrupt their harried lifestyles, come to themselves through participation in a collegial community of inquiry and practice, and to attend to aspects of their classroom instruction and pupils learning that are ordinarily overlooked in the press of events.
Thomas Payzant
Professor of Practice, Harvard University, and Superintendent of the Boston Public Schools, 1995-2006
Deborah Meier
Educational reformer, writer, and activist, author of In Schools We Trust
Ann Lieberman
Senior Scholar, Stanford University
Jonathan D Jansen
Author of Knowledge in the Blood: Confronting Race and the Apartheid Past and Vice Chancellor and Principal, University of the Free State, South Africa
Andy Hargreaves
Thomas More Brennan Chair in Education in the Lynch School of Education at Boston College and author of Teaching in the Knowledge Society
This pathbreaking book explores an innovative partnership between an urban elementary school teacher and a university-based teacher educator who used a variety of support strategies to help teachers to become more mindful of the many dimensions of their pupils learning. Written with a nitty-gritty, classroom-level appreciation of the multiple challenges facing teachers today, The Mindful Teacher provides core principles for the renewal of teaching as a vocation and for the flourishing of our public schools.
The Mindful Teacher is published by
Teachers College Press and is available now!
The Mindful Teacher is available from Teachers College Press .
We wish to spark and extend a conversation about mindfulness and its relevance and utility to education. This discussion is organized around what we describe as seven qualities, or, more exactly, seven synergies of mindful teaching.
The seven synergies of mindful teaching
are open-mindedness, caring, stopping, expertise, authentic alignment, integration, and collective responsibility provide important principles for developing and improving teaching. The synergies of mindful teaching are not about preaching and proselytizing, but about the responsibilities of each and every one of us to adjust our own behaviors in light of our highest principles.
To learn more about the seven synergies, simply click on an image to enlarge the text.
The Mindful Teacher is a seminar and support network for Boston Public School teachers funded by a grant from the Boston Collaborative Fellows Program at Boston College. The project leaders are Liz MacDonald, Literacy Coach in the Boston Public Schools, and Dennis Shirley of the Lynch School of Education. The Mindful Teacher is predicated on the observation that the pressures on classroom teachers have become so great that few teachers are able to find time for sustained reflection and modification of their teaching in the company of peers.
To address this problem, The Mindful Teacher provides workshop settings in which BPS teachers explore all of the complicated issues of urban education in a supportive community of inquiry and practice. Workshops enable participants to share the joys and challenges they encounter while teaching and to chart their own personal development as they shape project goals and outcomes. Along the way, teachers keep journals, pilot new teaching practices, and respond to readings.
The Mindful Teacher is predicated on the observation that the pressures on classroom teachers have become so great that few teachers are able to find time for sustained reflection and modification of one's teaching in the company of one's peers. As a consequence, more than fifty percent of beginning urban teachers leave teaching in the first five years--a tragedy of inordinate dimensions when we consider that research indicates that experienced teachers generally help their pupils to learn at higher levels than novices.
You can read how The Mindful Teacher has influenced teacher leaders over the past four years and provided them with opportunities to engage in meaningful and reflective conversations about their practice.
Simply click on an image to
enlarge the testimonial.
Click here to read the Mindful Teaching blog of JT,
one of our Teacher Leaders
