Mindfulness

I previously stated that in school we have started looking at mindfulness as 'brain break' for the children - and teachers. This website is free and follows short exercises from: yoga; meditation; breathing; reflection; movement. Check it out the children love it and I have found it beneficial my self to regroup my thoughts and bring me back to the here and now.

www.gonoodle.com

Enjoy!

mountain...MOLEHILL

After worrying about section 2 tasks for over a week and not knowing how to start, leading me not to start, leading to panic about feeling behind. I finally started typing, what a fuss I made out of nothing. At the end of the day, this course is all about our own views and our own experiences and way of reflecting on our practices. I can only try, if it isn't quite right, next time I can tweak it. Self belief is a wondrous thing, sometimes I need reminding that what will be will be all we can do is try our best.

Don't make a mountain out of a molehill!!!

Task 2b - Journal Writing Experience

Reflecting on reflecting...

I have found that while writing my journal, it was impossible to stick to one method, for various reasons: time restraints; mood; pace of the day; other key events.

When I say 'other key events', I am referring to the classroom situation where there are 30 children 6 of which have behavioural problems. This means, that when I have managed to reflect on an event another one has started before I have even had the chance to digest what has happened or even managed to acknowledge how I felt about it. This has frequently been the case, so when it comes to 'reflecting on action' (Schon 1987) I have struggled to separate the events to fully reflect.

During the school day, we have started practising mindfulness with the children and doing short yoga videos to calm them down and give them a 'brain break'. This is something I was looking into at the start of the year. I am really bad at allowing my mind to worry about past events and what is to come in the future. I do this knowing I should be enjoying every moment as it comes. I have noticed, that when I am in the present moment, my professional practice is alot stronger. This should not come as a surprise to me really, it has, however, opened my eyes to the importance of being mindful. Whilst practising mindfulness it was interesting to watch the children reflect on how they felt afterwards or during the lesson. Some were shocked at how calm it made them feel, others couldn't understand the importance of it. As with everything it was a learning curve and one both me and the class teacher thought was successful and should be something we try to develop.

Looking through my diary, I have used: description; initial reflection; lists; evaluation and aspects of another view. However, these were not separated onto different days as originally planned. Looking back on my journal it became apparent that different event throughout the day warranted different methods, depending on how I felt and reacted to them. In other words, how important and how much reflection I felt was necessary to help me develop my practice.

Certain events would spark ideas of how to improve or activities that would be good for future lessons. In these events I would simply list ideas on whatever I could get my hands on. At the start of the journal writing process I found gaps, where I hadn't managed to put down on paper the events and my opinions. To try and fix this, I have now started carrying post it notes in my pocket so I can jot things down and then stick them where appropriate when I have time.

I chose more descriptive techniques for larger events that effected parts or some of my day, that way, when reflecting, I could really delve into what my thoughts were and therefore reflect more effectively.

Something quite random I noticed was how my handwriting seemed to be affected due to the nature of the event. High stress levels showed more erratic writing and random thoughts rolling out, then contradicting that entirely were events I was happy with my practice were a lot neater.

Diagrams/ graphs and charts did not appeal to me for reflective use on past or current events but have helped me alot with planning for future events. This is something I will endeavour to develop into my practice.

Journal writing had helped my professional practice immensely but it is still something  I need to work on. Mainly, finding the time, we all have the same 24 hours in the day. I just need to find that 10 minutes even if it is to simply summarise an event or the day into positives and negatives. The days I do the journal writing I am so much calmer and it is easier to leave work problems at work and home problems at home as I have reflected on them, therefore associating each feeling with an event and the opportunity to plan to rectify any mistakes and solidify any achievements.

What have you done today to make you feel proud?

In January, as I was idly scrolling through Facebook, I came across a link to a charity run to support the Stroke Association. This charity is very close to my heart as both my Grandfathers passed away from strokes. I have never been a runner and no matter how fit I am through dancing I have never been able to run for longer than 15minutes. Being the start of the year and all, I figured why not, so I signed up for the 10k! New year new me....

I had the best intentions of training hard and had images of myself looking really toned and flying across the finish line. However, a few illnesses and a car crash later, plus a few excuses it was the day before the run and I had only just managed to get to 5k in training!! I couldn't back out as I had raised quite a lot of money from family and friends. Not only that, I am not a quitter and my main aim in life is to make my family proud, which even if I had walked the whole way round they would be.

On the morning of the run I opened my blinds to, yes you guessed it rain. Relentless rain, that added to my nerves was not a good start to the day. At the location of the run - Heaton Park - there were all kinds of people of different shapes and sizes, someone even dressed as a gingerbread man! They held a group warm up for all the runners which I joined in with, all the while panicking about what was to come. The only thing keeping me going was the smiling, encouraging faces of my family and friends.



As the race started, all I could think about was the rain and how much harder I felt it was going to be in those conditions, in fact once I was wet I didn't care because I thought that it couldn't get any worse. This was until the track started filling with puddles, as we came round one corner, a poor lady had one of those Vicar of Dibley moments, where the puddle is actually a hole, she disappeared up to her knees!

Coming up to the halfway point, I was quite impressed that I had only had to walk twice and one of those times was to walk around a massive puddle and muddy patch. I did start to worry that I couldn't do the second half when at the side of the track I saw my very own cheerleaders, I hate to admit it but as I ran past them a few tears escaped as I realised once again how lucky I am to be surrounded by such wonderful people.

After that, the second half didn't seem as bad but as I got to the finish line I could feel my legs turning to jelly and had to give myself a talking to, to make sure I didn't cry with relief!

I have never been so proud of myself as I have that day. Not only did I make myself proud but I made my family and my friends proud not just because I ran 10k but I did it to support an amazing charity. I am very quick to judge myself and find fault in what I do, there is nothing that can take away what I achieved that day and that feeling of pride and happiness is still pulsing through me 3 days later.