Combating U.S. Public Education’s No. 1 Enemy With Teacher’s Guide to Mindfulness NASHUA, NH – An unprecedented number of teachers across the country say the are losing the everyday battle inside the classroom in their effort to educate our children. The foe? Bad behavior.
According to a 2012 report, Primary Sources: America’s Teachers on the Teaching Profession, published by Scholastic and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 62 percent of teachers surveyed* cite behavior issues as a common and destructive distraction to the classroom environment. Overall, 64 percent of those 10,000 educators surveyed – across all demographic and geographic boundaries – said they need more professional development and training to “meet the needs of students with behavior issues.”
The translation: Our school systems are failing at providing any meaningful approach to success in the classroom through professional development. While there are no simple solutions to this escalating problem, New Hampshire author and educator C. Lee Guerette has developed a step-by-step guide for educators, giving them an invaluable tool kit with proven results. “Cognitive Yoga” is an innovative handbook combining timeless educational philosophies with real world educational strategies for classroom control. Guerette distills more than 30 years of personal and professional experience and development into an easy to follow manual, packed with lessons and exercises for creating an educational environment that engages and empowers students and teachers in the classroom, lessons that intuitively transfer into everyday life skills.
For educators, “Cognitive Yoga” is a journey toward heightened understanding of students’ real needs, while providing a road map for transforming any classroom into an incubator of mindful experience, instead of a battleground.
“Learning requires a quiet core, a joyful attitude and an active body. Throughout human history, people have learned by doing. If today’s student population can be classified as disrespectful, disruptive and distracted, then we need to first address the environmental problem of chaos in the classroom. A classroom setting that is pervasively calm and emotionally safe begins with emotionally intelligent classroom management,” says Guerette.
“Cognitive Yoga,” is drawn from two primary resources: the philosophy of mindfulness, a premise of Advaita Vendata is widely accepted and practiced within mainstream psychology; and the 6seconds Emotional Intelligence model, a movement to increase understanding of the vital nature of social emotional learning, an effective driver of innovation and change.
The book guides teachers through the process of encouraging thought and cooperation in the classroom through acknowledgement of how human emotion, impulse and instinct drive how we think and learn. Key to understanding the link between intellect and human emotion, impulse and instinct, is the practice of individual awareness, which demands that students take personal responsibility for how they engage and interact with their teacher and classmates in an environment of true collaboration.
“Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is the foundation for all other learning. Teaching students to regulate emotions and work together makes it possible to learn well,” says Guerette. “We can no longer afford to be a competitive society where some win at the expense of others. In order to have respect for diversity and combine their talents, students must understand themselves, empathize with others and collaborate. SEL is the science of creating a transformational environment for our students.” For more information go to www.cognitiveyoga.com.
Guerette is available for free introductory lectures, consultations, workshops and professional development courses. For interview requests contact C. Lee Guerette at firstname.lastname@example.org or call 603-888-2355.