Number 62

In this issue…

• Big Questions (an excerpt from my writing on education)

• Learning to Stop, Stopping to Learn

• Upcoming events

The Path of Mindful Living – Educator Retreat July 23 - July 27. Morning Sun Mindfulness Center, Alstead, New Hampshire, USA

Learning to stop, stopping to learn– Educator Retreat August 14 – August 21. Centro Avalokita, Castelli, Italy

• Ongoing events

Happy Teachers Sangha (the Americas)

Happy Teachers Sangha (Europe)

When I published Walking the Teacher’s Path with Mindfulness: Stories for Reflection and Action (Routledge, 2021), times were challenging for educators. I aspired to share inspiration I’d received and lessons I’d learned over many years as a student and teacher. Now I freely share these with you. My book is available to download in PDF form or read online from my website www.mindingourlives.net.  

Big Questions

“Recently, when the class began reading the first complex material in the textbook, I asked them not to look at the problems but to write four questions of their own, three of which they could answer from their reading of the text and one they couldn’t. I copied their questions and asked each student to pick the one or two they found most interesting and write them in their journals, describing the qualities that made these particular questions of special interest. One student, because of his interest in space, chose a question about extending a concept from two to three dimensions. Another picked a question because she “had no idea how to go about answering it.” Others selected a question because it was “slyly subversive to the book and math,” or was “shrouded in mystery,” or “because it made me smile.”

I began the class on questions by giving the class the following words of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke:

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for answers now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

I then asked students to respond to this quoted material in their journals. The students’ responses to Rilke were in the back section of their journals. I didn’t read them but wonder if many were sympathetic. These students will work hard to find answers, but if they’re unable to find them or learn them from someone else, many will let the questions go and move on. Yet this is precisely the approach that enabled Newton and many other great thinkers to come upon their most significant insights. Thus, one of my goals this year is to ask students to consider questions large enough to require living with, questions that I give them and questions they raise themselves.”

Excerpted from “Learning to Stop, Stopping to Learn: Discovering the Contemplative Dimension in Education,” Journal of Transformative Education, Vol. 5, No. 4, 372-394 (2007)

Learning to Stop, Stopping to Learn

This webinar, offered May 22nd with Caromai Bouquet, is a preview of the retreat we will offer in August

Upcoming Events

The Compassionate Heart – Educator Retreat July 15 - July 19. Morning Sun Mindfulness Center, Alstead, New Hampshire, USA. This retreat will be of interest to educators, counselors, and administrators.

Learning to stop, stopping to learn– Educator Retreat August 14 – August 21, Centro Avalokita, Castelli, Italy. This retreat will be of interest to educators, counselors, and administrators.

Ongoing events

Happy Teachers Sangha (the Americas) on Zoom the third Wednesday of most months from 7:00 until 8:30 pm ET

Happy Teachers Sangha (Europe) on Zoom the third Saturday of most months from 9:00 until 10:30 am ET

Check the Wake Up Schools Website for information and Zoom links for meetings. These meetings are intended to support and connect educators who are interested in Plum Village practice in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh. Each meeting has a theme, specifically focused on the educator, e.g., “Free at Work” and sometimes for both educators and their students, e.g., “Rest.”