This unique book offers compelling stories to help you encounter life with mindfulness and find new vigor on your teaching path. Author Richard Brady, founder of the Mindfulness in Education network, shares his experiences in a variety of areas, including motivation, agency and freedom, creativity, nurturing presence and community, and more. Following each story, you’ll find reflections and contemplations that invite connection with your own experiences and ultimately with action. The book can be used by educators of all levels and subject areas, for personal use and for in-service and pre-service education.

 Progressive educator John Dewey, noted that, “We don’t learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.”  Indeed, Richard Brady’s book is a meta reflection on a lifetime of teaching, learning and living. While Brady has many insights to impart, his chosen medium – the story – is noteworthy. Throughout history, stories have been used to entertain, to teach, to inspire, to kindle empathy, and to reveal life’s lessons.  More recently, neurological studies reveal that multiple portions of the brain are activated by storytelling – many more than when information is presented didactically. Through a collection of stories and poems, Brady invites readers into a hall of mirrors through which they can reflect on their experiences even as he reflects on his.

As a reader, you are invited along on one person’s intellectual and spiritual life journey. However, since the book is organized around a series of universal themes (e.g., Catching fire, Living without boundaries, Interdependence), Brady’s stories and poems are transcendent. The reflective questions at the end of each section create a bridge between Brady’s experiences and one’s own life. They invite readers to reflect on the stories, consider their own circumstances, and derive personal meanings and insights.  

As a teacher, you will likely acquire new pedagogical approaches. But you will also gain a new appreciation and empathy for your learners and the context in which deep learning occurs. As a person, you’ll be inspired to resurface the stories of your life and to reflect upon and celebrate the insights they enable. And perhaps you’ll be inspired to compose your own version of the Lessons of your life. 

Jay McTighe

Part I: Catching Fire Student-led Learning; Acceptance and Self-acceptance; What They're Interested In; Food; Parents; Lighting Fires; Vigor 

Part II: Living Without Boundaries New Kinds of Teaching; Risk and Safety; Freedom; Learning Together; Alone No Longer; Together We Are One 

Part III: Seeing with the Heart Beholding; Presence; Stopping; Discovering Myself; Community; Creating Space 

Part IV: Walking my Path The Conditions Are Perfect; Well-being and Happiness; Causes and Conditions; Ripening; Time to Say Goodbye

Sometimes the teacher and the subject matter prove insufficient to kindle a fire. In the early 1990’s an afternoon ninth/tenth grade algebra class was giving me fits. The students didn’t seem to be able to settle down. They finished only half the work my morning group completed. This was very unusual for Sidwell where students placed a high value on success. My first impulse was to blame their difficulties on a clique of immature ninth-graders.  

I wasn’t hesitant to ask friends for advice about personal problems. However, I was an experienced teacher. I should not have been having difficulty handling a class. I should know what to do. I was too proud to ask a colleague for help. By December I was at my wits end. When an opportunity for assistance presented itself, I reached out gratefully for help for the first time. I shared my problem with Marci, a visiting educational consultant. 

Marci asked whether I was sure of my suspicions about the immature students. 

“I’m not,” I answered.  

“Why don’t you ask the class what the problem is?” 

“I never thought of doing that,” I replied. 

I conducted an anonymous survey. The results were surprising. Students responded that they were tired because the class met right after lunch. Reporting this “finding” to the class, I told them I’d do some research over winter break and see if I could find a remedy. 

I spent part of my break at a small meditation center in nearby West Virginia. Rahula, one of the teachers there, was a yoga practitioner. When I asked his advice, Rahula told me about qi (a Chinese word pronounced “chi,” meaning life force energy) and showed me an exercise that brings qi up from the feet.  

Stand on your toes with your hands over your head. Breathe out as you bend down and touch the floor. Then breathe in and slowly straighten, raising your hands back up over your head. Repeat this exercise nine more times, remaining on your toes. 

With Rahula’s remedy, I returned to my challenging after-lunch class. Gathering the students in a circle, I led them in the exercise. We all reported feeling invigorated. The lesson that followed went well. “In the future,” I told them, “we’ll start each class this way. I’ll ask you to take turns leading it. If you’re wide awake and ready for class, participation will be optional.” For the remainder of the year almost all of us joined in this daily exercise. People passing our door peered in its window with surprise. Our opening practice came to be our novel class signature. Best of all, students became more focused on work and more attentive both to me and to one another. This was not my last experience of looking to students for direction.

Have you experienced student-led learning in the classroom as a teacher? As a student? If so, what were the circumstances?

Contemplate a time when someone asked you, “Are you sure?” 

When you asked yourself, “Am I sure?”

Where did these experiences lead?

Parker Palmer

We teach best what we most need to learn.” Richard Brady is not the first teacher to affirm that idea, but his book expands on it brilliantly to illumine teaching and learning from the inside out. Beginning with his own journey as a learner, and continuing with his life-long response to his calling as an educator, Richard reaches into the teacher’s heart and mind with well-crafted insights drawn from well-told teaching stories, and from his own contemplative practice. I’ve been a teacher for the whole of my adult life, so I know one when I see one: Richard Brady is a teacher’s teacher, and this book is a superb distillation of experiences from which all teachers can learn.

—Parker J. Palmer, Author, On the Brink of Everything, Let Your Life Speak, The Courage to Teach, and Healing the Heart of Democracy

Valerie Brown

The true essence of mindfulness is a deep embodiment that is at once manifest in a steadiness, openness, calmness, and centeredness. In the educational setting this is transmitted to students, and everyone benefits.

Walking the Teacher’s Path isn’t just a book, it is an embodied practice of mindfulness through reflection and action.  Each chapter offers readers a path to discover underlying meaning, attitudes, feelings, behaviors, and motivations, unlocking awareness toward more skillful action.  For teachers in particular, Walking the Teacher’s Path serves as a ‘bell of mindfulness’, a way to remember what matters most and support teachers’ awareness resilience, and renewal.

This is a must read especially in the virtual learning environment, supporting teachers in reflecting within and in taking compassionate action in our deeply interconnected world.

—Valerie Brown, JD, PCC, Co-Author, The Mindful School Leader:  Practices to Transform Your Leadership and School

Benjamin Marcune

Mr. Brady's story telling shows a marvelous evolution of both his teaching and life path. I especially appreciate the insight gained from how these two paths compliment and enhance one another. The book inspired me to be more reflective on how my life path is being realized in my classroom thereby making me a better teacher.  This work can be a catalyst for inspiring educators to develop a mindfulness practice, which in turn will be a great benefit to our students and our greater society.

—Mr. Benjamin Marcune, Teacher of Chemistry, Alexander Hamilton Preparatory Academy

Dzung Vo

Richard Brady offers a collection of wonderful stories from his decades of teaching and innovating, and bringing mindfulness, connection, wonder, and joy into education. Each story is a gem and a precious invitation to the reader to reflect and contemplate on your own experience, wisdom, and growth as an educator and as a human being.

—Dzung X. Vo, MD, author of The Mindful Teen: Powerful Skills to Help You Handle Stress One Moment at a Time

Bryan Garman

Richard Brady dedicated his career to helping students discover the inherent goodness dwelling within them, and this book illustrates how those efforts shaped both students and their teacher.  Recognizing that deep learning depends upon healthy relationships and self-discovery, he introduced mindfulness and other wisdom traditions to his math students long before it was hip to do so.  Like his classroom, these stories are filled with a profound gratitude that expands our capacity to live and learn, to reflect on experience, and to act on the values that bring meaning to our lives.  This timely book is an essential read for educators who want a respite from teaching in the pandemic, who want to deepen their practice, or who want to tend to the emotional trauma our students and society face.  Stories can liberate.  Richard Brady’s stories unburden us from tired pedagogies and conventions and remind us that teaching and learning are deeply human—and therefore both flawed and beautiful—experiences.  At once inspiring and pragmatic, he urges us to approach our craft—and our lives—with self-awareness and honesty, patience and purpose, courage and humility.

—Bryan Garman, Head of School, Sidwell Friends School

Terri Dove

Brady’s journey will awaken you to the profoundness of your own. His relatable, thought-provoking, and deeply inspiring stories will move you to view your experiences and practices, in and out of the classroom, in a new softer light. Walking the Teacher's Path is like talking with a trusted friend who helps you clarify and act upon the common and interconnected themes of life.

—Terri Dove, Art Teacher, Richard J. Bailey School, Greenburgh Central School District

Elizabeth Kriynovich

Richard Brady writes with the compassionate wisdom of a true educator.  His book is a nurturing reflection on both teaching and learning that will help his readers feel supported by his experience and also more inspired by their own experiences. Brady offers queries and reflections throughout the book that will help readers connect to and sustain the teacher within.  I am grateful to have taken this journey of reflection with him!

— Elizabeth Kriynovich, M.A., Quaker school educator, President of the Mindfulness in Education Network

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