68 • PART II: MINDFULNESS IN EDUCATING FOR SELF-REGULATION AND ENGAGEMENT
and social capital, we tell them what we (e.g., the school district curriculum team, the
state, and the education department) think is important to know and learn. More, their
coaches focus on showing them how to perform and the critical skills needed to win the
game. In choir, band, and orchestra, the students play the songs we give them, perform-
ing how we tell them to—all to the exact and external manifestation of what others think
they should be. Of course, there are so many teachers, like my mom, who value and
encourage inner seeing and knowing, as well as foster constructive creativity within the
context of teaching a rigorous curriculum. Nevertheless, we all appreciate that, in some
classrooms and schools, the preceding description rings true. It is no surprise that our
students lose a sense of their personal value as they are praised for, and their attention is
turned to, their appearance, performance, and compliance over and over again for much
of the day, almost every day. A felt sense of who they are and what they want to know
and learn, along with an organic excitement about learning, can be lost in the centrifugal
forces of expectations and societal trends. Ironically, this external focus on achievement,
appearance, and social capital can appear as if the student is overly self-involved. It is
important to make a distinction here. For many students, self-involvement is not an inter-
nal, embodied, integrated involvement. Rather, it is a fear- or anxiety-based, externally
motivated focus. We want our students to have an inward focus on the self. We want
them to be self-aware, self-knowing, and emotionally competent. This relationship with
and connection to the self is one which involves compassion, kindness, and a healthy
form of self-love and love of learning that actually expands students’ capacity for empa-
thy and connection with others.
So how do we shift the focus and self-value inward in an integrated and healthy manner?
How do we create opportunities for students to experience their thinking (e.g., cognitive
processes), to be in inquiry about what works best for them, and become architects of their
own attentional focus and effort? Mindfulness practice offers a set of tools to help students
turn inward, seeing and valuing their individual experience, allowing them to integrate
who they are inside with who they are being outside. The results of this type of integration
are self-regulatory.
Many of the quotes I have placed at the introduction of the chapters in this book
come from the hundreds of quotes my mother used as journaling prompts when teaching
her seventh-grade and freshman English classes. In the pile of dog-eared book pages, col-
orful quote lists torn from magazines, and hand-drafted notes-to-self, I found this quote,
“Learning to listen to [and see] ourselves is a way of learning to love ourselves.” I added to see
in order to highlight the mindful part of each of us that can see, or witness, our thoughts,
feelings, and actions. Ask yourself, when the voice in your head is talking, “Who is listen-
ing and seeing?” This is the mindful part of you, and it is present in each of us. This mind-
ful witness has the capacity to notice all of the wide range of experiences in our lives. The
mindful witness notices when we are attending or not, being rude or hurtful, having fun
or checking out, and engaging in or ignoring our own self-care. The mindful witness is a
powerful aspect of the self to access.
Take a moment and consider the people you really care about. You likely take the time
to earnestly listen to them. You compassionately see them in all of their victories, failures,
and times of emotional stability, as well as the times they might feel as if they are falling
apart. This process of mindfully attending to, or seeing, those you care for is one of the many
ways that you show them that you love and value them. The challenge is to be able to see