Monday at 3:40pm, 30 minutes before our extended day dismissal, I taught my fourth mindfulness lesson to my students. For one minute we sat with our eyes closed doing mindful breathing, and I asked them to notice their thoughts. The room was quiet, and the students actually closed their eyes. Until....zzZZZZZzzzzz...sghghgh...zzZZZZzz from the right side of the room.
It's really distracting to find your breathing when one of your students is snarfling his way through the exercise. Why wouldn't they do it right, dang it??? I'm trying to give them these amazing tools and they aren't taking is seriously! Don't they SEE???? I WANT THEM TO BE PEACEFUL! I needed them to peaceful. I expected them to be peaceful. And when that wasn't the reality, I grew immediately uneasy in the face of their silliness. Of course, that immediately wound its way into an inquisition over my own lack of skill as a mindfulness teacher, and all hope was lost. I would never make it in my future profession, and I might as well quit now.
OR.
I could remove my expectations. Before all teachers in the audience immediately switch off their computers in fear that they might be monitored by their admin, who would surely report them for reading such blasphemous material, hear me out.
In education, "high expectations" is a buzz term that gets thrown around a lot. In fact, if you ever suggested you had anything other than the highest expectations of your students, you would probably be immediately fired and sent from the school with a note pinned to your chest that no one was ever to hire you again.
This is an uncomfortable bedfellow to the mindfulness tenet in which it is believed that any expectations are, in fact, the root of our suffering. Suffering is wanting, or worse, expecting life to be different than it is. It is our thoughts, not our reality, that create our misery. So I either have to compartmentalize these two belief systems, both of which I ardently ascribe to, or find other some way to remove the cognitive dissonance that is reeking havoc on my mental well-being. Is there a way to hold expectations without loading them with so much emotional energy? To set the bar, and strive for it, without it becoming the sole focus of our experience?
I hope so. I want my students to know where the bar is so they know what to work towards. I want my students to believe I don't think it's okay if they sit through an hour long class period without doing any work or if they snap back at me at a simple request. I think it's my responsibility to teach them those things and to hold that bar high. But I need to do that without emotionally attaching myself to the outcomes. Here's the bar, kiddos, go for it and I'll tell you when you haven't made it BUT I'm not going to get mad about it when you don't. And I'm holding the bar there because I truly believe it's in your best interest. Hold the bar, but don't get too attached to whether or not they make it.
It's so dang hard.
Back in the classroom, I tried to let go of my need to "perfect" mindful behavior. I chose to ignore the snoring. Miraculously, so did the other five highly wound adolescents in the room with me. When we opened our eyes to talk about our experiences, I turned to Amari. "All I ask is that you try this out, for real. If you don't want to do that seriously, you are welcome to wait in the hallway while the rest of us try." But he stayed seated. And we talked about how it made us feel- calm, focused, relaxed. The way I strive to be in any given moment, but I'm not going to chastise myself, or them, when we haven't hit our mark.
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