Harmony means Empowerment through Mindfulness
Story appeared in the 2017 issue of QMS Connections Magazine.
BY AMY MCKENDRICK, JUNIOR SCHOOL COUNSELLOR
All living systems are connected, interwoven together, interactive and interdependent.
“I like to tell students they are becoming “feelings detectives,” and that my job is to give them tools to help calm their bodies.”
Yet, the degree to which these relationships are in harmony with each other is dependent on a productive balance between each and the well-being of all. What is true of life is also true of our sense of self, and our attitude of the world. As the Junior School Counsellor at Queen Margaret’s School, my work begins with sharing mindfulness with students in an effort to cultivate harmony within themselves and amongst their peers.
The programming I have im ple mented at QMS this year encompasses several dimensions of mindfulness. It starts with helping students connect with the sensation of their breath and the experience of stillness and quietness within themselves. With practice, they can learn to rest in this calm place, and to adopt an attitude of curiosity to their thoughts and feelings. Through the use of guiding metaphors, such as “clouds in the sky,” students learn to take a step back from their thoughts and feelings, observing them from a safe distance. I like to tell students they are becoming “feelings detectives,” and that my job is to give them tools to help calm their bodies. Only by opening a space where students can feel their feelings, will they hear the important messages their feelings are sending them.
These activities of self-awareness and reflection are opportunities to normalize the difficult feelings and thoughts we all have. While the emotional and social benefits to the practice of mindfulness are well documented, it is the young people I speak with who convince me of the difference mindfulness makes. From speaking to students, I know they are endeavoring to observe and understand their thoughts, feelings and reactions. Through practice, they learn to foster a capacity for respectful commu-nication and com passionate action for both themselves and those around them. Simply put, mindfulness is about learning from the inside out and it is a powerful tool for creating harmony in ourselves, our relationships, and beyond.
Harmony is an Attitude of Curiosity
Curiosity. Inquisitiveness. Interest. Wonder. Imagination.
“If teachers can keep the flame of curiosity burning in children, then pretty much everything else will follow from that.”
In BC, coding is the new buzzword in education. With recent revisions to the provincial curriculum to include instructional units in computational thinking and effective group collaboration, a shift is taking place in schools. It is a tidal movement from an industrial educational model to a platform of learning which engages students, captures their imaginations and encourages them to pursue their “what ifs” down Alice’s proverbial, and programmable, rabbit hole.
At its most basic, coding refers to the creation of instructions to have a computer complete a task, whereas computational thinking is an approach to design and problem solving that forms the foundation of coding and other applied skills. When students are coding, they need to problem solve continuously, developing an agile intellect adept at dealing with swiftly changing parameters. Curiosity is a necessary component of coding’s algorithm.
This year, students in Grade 8 and 9 were partnered with buddies in Grades 4 and 5 for a video game project. Senior School girls interviewed younger students to learn more about their lives, hobbies, past times, passions and interests. They then researched, wrote, and programmed digital games tailored specifically to their “buddy”. These personalized video games piqued the curiosity of everyone involved, especially the Grade 4 class which wanted the opportunity to delve further into programming.
QMS IT Technician Mike Potter was asked to work with these eager students to build a foundation for future programming initiatives. “To help create links in their minds about how things work, and deconstruct the process, I was intentionally vague in my instructions,” explains Potter. “This enabled them to formulate their own questions and discover the answers themselves.” George Loewenstein, professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, claims in his research that curiosity is peaked when a subject has a good guess, but is not quite sure about the answer. Providing a learning space for students where they could reflect upon and question the use of technology in the world around them, fueled their curiosity.
“I’ve been into coding for a while,” shares Grade 4 student Jakob Buttner-Danyliw. “But working with Mr. Potter on the Tinker software was one of the best learning experiences I’ve ever had. Not only was it fun, I had tremendous success!” This success spread throughout the classroom, energizing the students and creating an atmosphere of camaraderie.
“Coding projects tend be group oriented,” explains Sarah Fortune, Senior School teacher. “It’s different from individual learning and involves a tremendous amount of trial and error as a group.” Potter agrees. “Students are happy to share their knowledge and skills as a way to assist everyone in working through problems.”
The hope is that this group learning style, and the acquisition of computational thinking skills, will continue to inspire the next generation to be inquisitive life-long learners.