Tish Jennings > Quotes

“The hallmark of resiliency is the ability to harness positive emotions when we need to counter the effects of hardship.”
― Patricia A Jennings, Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom

“Congressman Ryan give a talk at the Contemplative Sciences Center at the University of Virginia. He said that we all want two things for our children: We want them to care about others and we want them to pay attention. He pointed out that parents and teachers are always telling children, “Pay attention” and “Be nice.” But he went on to ask, “How often do they teach them how to do those things?”
― Patricia A Jennings, Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom

“The Holistic Life Foundation’s program combines yoga postures, fluid movement exercises, breathing techniques, and guided mindfulness practices. The movement activities are designed to enhance muscle tone and flexibility, and students learn breathing techniques designed to help them calm themselves. Each class includes a didactic component where instructors talk to students about identifying stressors and using mindfulness and breathing to reduce stress. At the end of each class, students lie on their backs and close their eyes while the instructors guide them through a mindful awareness practice. The program has been offered in a variety of settings in school and outside school.”
― Patricia A. Jennings, Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom

“These practices are introduced sequentially, beginning with short periods of silent reflection, extending to longer periods of mindfulness practice, and finally including activities that bring mindful awareness into everyday activities such as standing, walking, and role plays of challenging situations.”
― Patricia A. Jennings, Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom

“Rather than simply training our children’s minds to absorb and regurgitate facts so that they can do well on standardized tests, mindfulness has the potential to promote other valuable cognitive skills, such as creative thinking, perspective-taking, and innovative problem-solving.”
― Patricia A. Jennings, Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom

“The most widely studied mindfulness-based intervention is Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (or MBSR), developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of the Center for Mindfulness (Kabat-Zinn, 2009).”
― Patricia A. Jennings, Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom

“The Niroga Institute also offers a professional development program to prepare teachers and others to teach the TLS curriculum.”
― Patricia A. Jennings, Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom

“Learning to BREATHE (L2B) (Broderick, 2013) program, a mindfulness-based program for adolescents and pre-adolescents designed to promote emotional awareness and improve emotional regulation, attentional focus, and stress reduction.”
― Patricia A. Jennings, Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom

“2001, the program expanded to offer a low-residency, two-year contemplative education master’s degree that is designed for classroom teachers at all levels, pre-K through higher education”
― Patricia A. Jennings, Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom

“The MindUp program (Hawn Foundation, 2011), now available for the elementary grades from Scholastic, covers four units: “How Our Brains Work,” “Sharpening Your Senses,” “It’s All about Attitude,” and “Taking Action Mindfully.”
― Patricia A. Jennings, Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom

“researchers exploring the impact of mindfulness training on children, adolescents, and adults have revealed a wide range of positive outcomes including: improvements in executive functions such as the regulation of attention, emotion, behavior, and relatedness; physiological enhancements in our immune function; elevations in the enzyme (telomerase) that maintains and repairs the ends of our chromosomes; and even preliminary findings suggesting the optimization of the control molecules on our genes (epigenetic regulatory histones and methyl groups) that help prevent certain forms of disease.”
― Patricia A. Jennings, Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom

“Frustrations happen and we begin to get triggered. When this happens to you, you can rely on a brief and very simple exercise to calm your nervous system. Simply take three long, slow, mindful breaths.”
― Patricia A. Jennings, Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom

“Kripalu Yoga in Schools (KYIS) was developed to empower adolescents to learn social and emotional skills such as stress management, emotion and behavior regulation, self-appreciation, self-confidence, and relationships skills.”
― Patricia A. Jennings, Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom

“As part of the CARE program, teachers learn how to balance their work and personal lives in order to continually renew the inner strength they need to do their jobs well. To”
― Patricia A. Jennings, Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom

“Through practice we can strengthen our capacity to incorporate mindfulness into our daily lives until it becomes a habit of mind (Roeser & Zelazo, 2012). Mindful”
― Patricia A. Jennings, Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom

“Another program that evolved from the Cultivating Emotional Balance project is Stress Management and Relaxation Techniques (SMART) in Education, an eight-week, 11-session program that involves after-school or evening sessions for a total of 36 contact hours. With the support of the Impact Foundation, this program was developed by Margaret Cullen, a licensed therapist, MBSR instructor, one of the developers of CEB, and a primary facilitator for CEB research.”
― Patricia A. Jennings, Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom

“Nurturing Activities Self-Assessment In this section, you will discover the things you are doing now to nurture your well-being. In the section “Things I Do Now,” write all the activities you can think of that you really enjoy that you do now. For example, you may enjoy getting a massage, working out in the gym, playing tennis, reading a novel, or just taking a walk in the woods. Next think about how each of these activities supports one or more of the four dimensions of your personal growth and development: physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. Activities that promote physical development include such things as exercise, relaxation, and massage. Those that promote emotional development include fun things with others that make you happy, such as attending a party with friends, seeing an inspirational film, or just sharing a meal with your family. You can promote your intellectual development by, for example, reading newspapers or intellectually stimulating magazines or books, attending courses, or having intellectual discussions with your colleagues. Activities that give your life meaning and help you connect to something greater than yourself give you spiritual meaning. These can be activities done in a religious context, such as attending services, but they can also be purely secular, such as reading an inspirational poem or practicing mindfulness. Next think about things that you are not doing now but would like to do. Again consider how each of these activities supports the four dimensions. This is your self-care plan. Things I Do Now: Activity Physical Emotional Intellectual Inner Life Self-Care Plan: Activity Physical Emotional Intellectual Inner Life”
― Patricia A. Jennings, Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom

“Mindfulness involves three fundamental processes: forming intention, paying attention, and adjusting your attitude (Shapiro, Carlson, Astin, & Freedman, 2006).”
― Patricia A. Jennings, Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom

“This sequence of intentionally engaging in present-moment awareness, becoming distracted, noticing your distraction, and then bringing your attention back to the present is the practice of mindful awareness itself.”
― Patricia A. Jennings, Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom

“The eight lessons5 are: 1. Puppy training: Playing with attention 2. Taming the animal mind: Cultivating curiosity and kindness 3. Recognizing worry: Noticing how your mind plays tricks on you 4. Being here now: From reaching to responding 5. Moving mindfully 6. Stepping back: Watching the thought-traffic of your mind 7. Befriending the difficult 8. Putting it all together”
― Patricia A. Jennings, Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom

“the classroom environment can be a setup for serious stress-related health problems. In a sense, both teachers and their students are “captives”—they can’t leave during class without suffering adverse consequences. Furthermore, the social and emotional dynamics of a room full of children or adolescents can be intense and sometimes chaotic. Under pressure, some students become disruptive, distracted, and even defiant, and teachers may become anxious, frustrated, embarrassed, and hopeless. From this perspective, it’s easy to see why teachers are burning out and students aren’t learning. The stress response is derailing our teaching and our students’ learning.”
― Patricia A. Jennings, Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom

“Interpersonal mindfulness helps us recognize how our behavior affects our students. Our students learn social values primarily by observing and responding to our behavior.”
― Patricia A. Jennings, Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom

“Over time, with practice, you will become more aware of your thoughts and feelings. You will notice which thoughts and feelings tend to capture your attention and which are easier to release.”
― Patricia A. Jennings, Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom

“As you will discover in Chapter 6, mindful attention to the relational senses of your students can help you orchestrate the dynamics of the classroom to promote student engagement and prosocial behavior.”
― Patricia A. Jennings, Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom

“Educators and mindfulness instructors of the Mindfulness in Schools Project developed a curriculum called “.b” (pronounced “dot bee”), which stands for “Stop, Breathe, and Be.”
― Patricia A. Jennings, Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom

“The eighth sense is relational. It is our ability to attune ourselves with another person. When”
― Patricia A. Jennings, Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom

“These programs have been successfully integrated into schools in the US, Canada, and/or the UK; have a clearly articulated curriculum that can be easily accessed and replicated; are based in developmentally appropriate practice; and have some preliminary evidence of efficacy that has been published in a peer-reviewed journal.”
― Patricia A. Jennings, Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom

“Inner Resilience Program (IRP) to help New York City teachers in Ground Zero cope with the resulting trauma (Lantieri, Nambiar, & Chavez-Reilly, 2006). Not long afterward, she began to develop a mindfulness-based curriculum for students in response to requests from teachers, parents, and administrators (Lantieri, 2008).”
― Patricia A. Jennings, Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom

“Developed by Susan Kaiser Greenland (2010), the Inner Kids program teaches the “new ABCs”—attention, balance, and compassion. Through direct instruction, games, and other activities, the program aims to develop awareness of inner experience (thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations), awareness of outer experience (other people, places, and things), and awareness of how these two blend together.”
― Patricia A. Jennings, Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom

“Just as physical exercise builds muscle, mindful awareness practice builds attentional focus and flexibility.”
― Patricia A. Jennings, Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom