Beginners Mind is one of the seven key attitudes of mindfulness introduced to us by Jon Kabat-Zinn. When I taught in the classroom, I intentionally picked one mindfulness attitude to focus on each month, not just for me but the students too. We taught lessons on it, we noticed when we were practicing it and we built a reinforcement system that supported the skill in real time.
Eventually, the practice expanded to the whole school. Adults in all environments could reward students for practicing the skill, not just the classroom. Amazingly, recess and referrals to the principal was where we saw the biggest impact. Recess monitors handed out tokens when they noticed students practicing it on the playground. It was seen. It was shared and it mattered.
That focused practice was grounding for me. Teaching the material brought an even deeper understanding that I didn’t know was possible.
So what is Beginners Mind? It’s having curiosity, looking at something as if it is the first time again even if you have experienced it time and time again, it’s noticing things you may have not seen before. It’s allowing yourself to see something differently, being open to what you may have missed the first time around, and asking questions instead of making assumptions.
This practice became especially helpful during Principal directed PD on topics that I already knew. Or at least thought I did!
“Ugh, again. There are so many things I could be doing right now and I have to sit here and listen to something I could be teaching. Why? This is SOOOO annoying.”
Those were the thoughts circling in my head. I was a bad participant in the meeting and contributed to the “we don’t want to be here” energy. I left frustrated and I didn’t learn anything.
But then I started to practice the Beginners Mind attitude and everything shifted.
I was present in the PD, I picked up a new tidbit here or there, and I was reminded of a strategy I had stopped using in my classroom and wanted to start doing again.
The biggest impact, I left feeling happy, present and connected with my colleagues. My energy was better for when I left school and went home and that opened up more possibilities for me outside of school.
Beginners Mind isn’t naive to reality, instead it changes how we show up for reality.
Can you think of a time when you could have used Beginners Mind to shift the challenging behaviors in your classroom? Can you become more curious about the root of the challenging behaviors? Can you ask questions about what might be impacting the behavior?
Modeling Beginners Mind for our students, shows them that we are all here, ready to learn and we can start fresh, everyday.