The Mindful Pause

Someone slams a door. We hear the sound, and we react. We turn. We look. We might become angry. We might ask about what is happening. We may run. There is a stimulus, and in the matter of miliseconds, our brain makes a decision, and we react.

Mindfulness tools give us a chance to pause between the stimulus and the response. That pause can be life altering. Really.

Drawing from social thinking training and mindfulness training, we have been using that pause as a moment for values-based reflection before action. 

Here's what that might look like:

Option 1: RAIN - Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Non-identify (Read more about this at https://www.mindful.org/rain-a-mindfulness-practice-for-welcoming-your-emotions/)
           -Walking through "RAIN" with Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird might look like this:          

1. Scout punches her cousin for calling her father an inappropriate and racist name
2. Recognize: anger, frustration
3. Allow: It is okay to be angry. She can sit with that anger. The anger is a guest visiting.
4. Investigate: Why is Scout angry? She loves her father. She feels that Francis is doing her father an injustice. She feels a larger injustice and is saddened and confused. She also hates Francis. She also feels the anger in her hands. In her shoulders. She sets her jaw.
5. Non-identify: Scout is not an angry person. She is angry with a particular person for a particular thing he has done. She has the power to decide what to do now that she has thought it through.
6. Scout w/ RAIN might not make the choice to punch Francis. If she does punch him, she is making the choice, not her anger.

                      

                  
Option 2: Stop, Opt, and Go





Parents and teachers need to model these types of mindful pauses for students to help them see that we don't always have it all together and that we have to work hard to decode our emotions and respond to stimuli.

A week or so ago, I asked the students if some emotions are bad. Some of them said they were. Some of them said they weren't. We are trying to help them move toward an understanding of emotions as data points: Emotions are our bodies trying to label a pattern of responses to a stimulus. It is more useful, perhaps, to put emotions on a continuum from comfortable to uncomfortable than to label them as positive or negative.

David Brooks has written several articles about emotions and neuroscience. You may find them interesting. Among them, is one where he argues that "work by cognitive scientists like Antonio Damasio showed us that emotion is not the opposite of reason; it’s essential to reason. Emotions assign value to things. If you don’t know what you want, you can’t make good decisions" (Brooks, The New York Times, January 2019).

Some of the most important work we do in school is about helping students understand what they value and how their emotions interact with their values and their actions. 

Here, at Seabury, social and emotional learning are not happening on the side of learning. They are happening all the time, not just in advisory or morning meeting, but also during English, Social Studies, Science, and Math--perhaps especially during breaks, lunch, and recess. 

All of our students are learning and growing. All of our students make mistakes and are learning from their mistakes. All of that is 100 percent as it should be. They are in the process of becoming themselves, and we are inspired by their journeys every day.

The North Korea - US Conflict Resolution Summit: A Social Studies Simulation

The students have been studying conflict resolution and peacebuilding largely using a curriculum developed by the United States Institute of Peace. That work has been supported by their study of current events and our work preparing for Model UN.

Several weeks ago, students completed negotiation preparation sheets, detailing the positions of the parties involved in international conflicts of interest to them. Using their research, new information, and a bit of dramatic flair, I developed a conflict resolution simulation.

Each student was assigned a role:
-Lead Mediator
-Senior Advisor to the Mediator
-US Lead Negotiator/Diplomat
-North Korean Lead Negotiator/Diplomat
-US Businessperson
-North Korean Industry Captain
-Chinese Diplomat
-South Korean Diplomat
-Japanese Diplomat
-North Korean Refugee Leader
-North Korean Liberation Leader

We completed the simulation in each social studies class, so two summits took place.

In the end, we had two very different results, but both summits were able to find resolution:

• In one class, the students used South Korea as a bargaining chip with North Korea to denuclearize North Korea and ensure the safety of all Korean civilians.
• In one class, North Korea presented a conflict resolution package that started a series of negotiations that eventually resulted in the removal of sanctions and economic support in exchange for denuclearization.

The students were thoughtfully engaged in learning throughout the simulation. They developed conflict resolution skills, learned about sanctions and their power on an international stage, learned research skills through the questions they asked and answered in order to develop and refine their positions, and engaged in dramatic play.