This book is about Affirmation based pedagogy. Affirmation/Mindfulness based pedagogy for learner-centered teaching can make a difference. Mindful communication is the key to building insight and professionalism when modeling behaviour to students and colleagues. This book offers appropriate self-awareness and communication skills development and understanding of thinking patterns to develop goal-orientation and insight-orientation strategies to enhance understanding of what it means to be successful by analyzing both psychological and sociological theories on approaches to the significance/influence of mental health on overall well-being. Students will develop strategies to consider constructive options that effectively solve problems in daily life. This book offers appropriate self-awareness and communication skills development. It serves to enhance understanding of what it means to be successful by analyzing both psychological and sociological theories on approaches to the significance/influence of mental health on overall well-being. By programming ourselves to be more positive in and out of the class so to our students will develop emotional and cognitive awareness and understanding; bodily awareness and coordination and interpersonal awareness.

Bringing Our Souls to the Classroom

By Rob D'Alessio

Balboa Press

Copyright © 2011 Rob D'Alessio
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4525-3262-2

Contents

Introduction...............................................................ixChapter 1. Affirmations....................................................1Chapter 2. Leadership......................................................17Chapter 3. Visualizing Success.............................................23Chapter 4. ENG3C...........................................................27Chapter 5. Let the dead rest...............................................33Chapter 6. Differentiate...................................................37Chapter 7. Be Kind in the Classroom and the Staff Room.....................41Chapter 8. Positive Thinking Plain and Simple v. Fear......................47Chapter 9. Never hate a computer...........................................51Chapter 10. Perspective Comes the Way it Always Does.......................55Chapter 11. You Can't Punish Students into the Vortex......................67Chapter 12. Mindfulness....................................................79Chapter 13. What am I affirming?...........................................89Chapter 14. Affirmations when the gas light comes on.......................95Chapter 15. Law of Attraction..............................................101Chapter 16. College........................................................107Chapter 17. Luck...........................................................109Chapter 18. Learning from our relationships................................119Chapter 19. Participation..................................................123Chapter 20. The Union (as a professional association)......................129Chapter 21. Stress.........................................................133Chapter 22. Judgment vs. Discernment.......................................151Chapter 23. Religious......................................................155Chapter 24. IDC4O Mindful Healthy Living...................................173Chapter 25. Bringing Our Souls To The Classroom............................181Flow With It, An Afterword.................................................197

Chapter One

AFFIRMATIONS

"The Universe always waits in smiling repose for us to align our thinking with its laws" -Louise Hay-

Louise Hay once said and affirmed, "If I want to live in a peaceful world, then it is up to me to make sure that I am a peaceful person. No matter how others behave, I keep peace in my heart. I declare peace in the midst of chaos or madness. I surround all difficult situations with peace and love." Since she said and wrote that, millions of people have made the same affirmation and marveled at the positive changes in their lives.

One of the most beautiful affirmations that anyone can use comes from Louise Hay from Inner Wisdom-Meditations for the Heart and Soul:

"When I begin to work on myself, sometimes things get worse before they get better. It is okay if that happens, because I know that it's the beginning of the process. It's untangling old threads. I just flow with it. It takes time and effort to learn what I need to learn. I don't demand instant change. Impatience is only resistance to learning. I let myself do it step by step ..."

What are affirmations? On some level, we all know the answer. Many of you have seen the classic YouTube video where the cute little girl is in the mirror shouting out all the things in her life that she loves (http://www. your-inner-wisdom.com/index.htm). We know what a positive affirmation is and we know what positive thinking is but we tend to overlook and underestimate negative affirmations. It's very important that people not hate their jobs. We know this but we may not fully appreciate the amount of negative affirmations we recite when it comes to our jobs. The importance of actually loving one's job is of course especially true for teachers since hating our jobs effects our students and not just ourselves. There are four ways to tell if you need to like your job as a teacher more than you currently do: a) one way to tell if you do not like your job of course is if you genuinely dislike your principal, b) if you know in your heart of hearts that you are underperforming and not doing your best, c) you take twenty sick days a year yearly, and d) you know that students look forward to snow days but they aren't known to log on to the weather network's website to look at the five day forecast calculating the probability of a snow day, but somehow teachers tend to do just that, I know I used to (of course if your intention is purely because you know you will get a great deal of work done in the event of a snow day then it's less of a red flag); but anything that causes you to dread getting up in the morning and to always be counting down the days until the next snow day, PD Day, or holiday is concerning wouldn't you agree? So, do you hate your job?

I am writing this book after ten years in education. I'm by no means a veteran teacher yet but I am becoming an exemplary teacher. That it is something I could have been saying and affirming right from the get-go. Like most teachers, I have had good semesters and bad semesters and down right depressing semesters. In hindsight, it was at times when I thought I was cursed with the most unreasonable and unruly students and subsequently their equally unreasonable parents, that I myself was focusing on problems inside and outside of school. So naturally, they got worse. I say "naturally" but do you know why? It sounds right to say that but how is that natural? At my rock-bottom moments I made the rookie-mistake of focusing on my fears which naturally manifested (I can recall several summers where at the end of July, I would already start thinking about potential problem-students and parents that awaited me in September), and worse, I can recall many times looking at fellow teachers around me that I considered exemplary, and I in turn focusing on my limitations never moving beyond the thought that I was a good teacher or maybe just satisfactory.

In any event, if you are reading this you probably know what positive affirmations are. What you may not know, is how effective education-specific positive affirmations can be. With this book, I intend to promote professional development when it comes to mindfulness. Mindfulness in education is a wonderful solution to 98 percent of the problems in any education system. This involves combining professional development on mindfulness-based pedagogy, affirmations in the classroom, brain research, viewing the union as a professional association, differentiated instruction, coping with mitigating reasons, and becoming open to evolving compassion-based pedagogy. All this together will result in quickly infusing within your students a love of learning. This in turn will make teachers' jobs and lives a lot easier. As you read this, have a highlighter and highlight affirmations you wish to use. I also suggest buying a journal book or doing what I do, and use The Secret Gratitude Book by Rhonda Byrne (there are many other examples, Louise Hay has one too that works well, or use more than one). Write down things you want to begin affirming in your life. As you read this, there will be affirmations that I have listed you may want to use but also other affirmations will come to mind for you or you will find that some of the statements I make...