Don’t you just love fall? I know it’s the cliche favorite season for everyone ever, but I can’t help loving it. Some things I’m currently obsessed with during this beautiful autumn:
I finally started a (somewhat) regular meditation practice! I’ve been doing lots of reading on how to use mindfulness in the classroom, and everything I read suggests that the teacher needs to practice mindfulness before she can teach it to her students… So I decided I would try to get in the habit of meditating for ten minutes when I get home from school. So far so good! It’s a reasonable amount of time, I only make myself do it on the weekdays, and I’ve started to really look forward to it. After a crazy-busy day at school, it’s pretty nice to just sit around for ten minutes doing nothing but breathing. I use the app called Heartfulness, and I did splurge a few months ago and buy a meditation cushion. (It’s really just a pretty floor cushion from Pier One.)
On a similar note, I discovered some new podcasts that teach about mindfulness, meditation and the like: Tara Brach‘s podcast, Zencast, and The Mindful Podcast. My favorite is Tara Brach – her voice practically puts me to sleep it’s so peaceful, and I love her talks about life and happiness and Buddhist philosophy.
In my teaching life, I’ve been trying to figure out how to have a more meaningful choice/play time for my kindergarteners. Technically I’m not even supposed to have play time in the schedule. There’s no room for it in our master schedule, which we’re expected to comply with except on special occasions like field trip days. How awful is that? Kids should be allowed to play just for play’s sake. But I figure if I can make play time a demonstrably productive learning time, it’ll be easier to convince administration of its importance. After all, kids really do learn a lot while they play – but I want to make it seem obvious that free play time is a meaningful part of the day. I heard about this book and got super excited because it seems like it was written just for my predicament — Choice Time: How to Deepen Learning through Inquiry and Play by Renee Dinnerstein. I follow her blog, which is all about the importance of play and choice in the early grades, and can’t wait to start reading the book.
A couple song obsessions this season: I’m on Fire by Town Mountain, Midnight on the Interstate by Trampled by Turtles, and Buckets of Rain by Bob Dylan (happy Nobel prize!)
I’m also slightly obsessed with the artist/author Dallas Clayton lately. I first heard him interviewed on the Real Talk Radio podcast (Play, Art and Power of Encouraging Others), and loved everything he said. Now I’m following him on Instagram for a daily dose of inspirational art.