BY KAMIYA KUMAR
From the lens of peace education, I often struggle with what does peace education look like in schools? Does it mean teaching about the concept of war and peace? Could it mean re-aligning certain structures and systems so that structural violence is contested? Or could it also mean building a sense of awareness and ability to reflect within students so that they commence thinking about their feelings and actions especially in relation to others?
In my current school, I have initiated mindfulness sessions with students of Grade 2. It has been an extremely fascinating process to design these sessions and even more intriguing to see how students respond. We began with the concept of simple vacuum cleaning breadths, where I introduced them to breathing with awareness. It was interesting to see how a few students began to hum with their eyes closed. On asking why they were doing that, they shared that they had seen people meditate while humming. So we started alternating with a few sessions of vacuum cleaning breadths and humming mediation where they could focus on listening intently to their own humming sounds. We discussed in a group what mindfulness meant to them. They said that they had heard of it before but weren’t quite sure of what it exactly meant.
Further sessions involved building focus and concentration by listening to the lasting sound of a bell. Additionally, as we proceeded I introduced the concept of an anchor by showing them a balloon with a string, which indicated that even if it was windy the balloon could not fly away if we were holding on to the string. The analogy was drawn to ones concentration, which could be brought back with mindful breathing if one got distracted. I showed them a video of students in different schools across New York who were engaged with mindfulness as well and their thoughts on whether they found it valuable. After the screening of the video, the students discussed what they thought was interesting about what they had seen. They expressed wanting to visit those schools to learn more about the practices.
As we progressed, I facilitated discussions around what their happy place was and they all drew pictures of what made them happy. An ambit of ideas were shared and illustrated, such as chucky cheese, the beach, American Museum of Natural History, dreaming, books, skyzone, family and friends to name a few. These post it’s were pasted across the class so that instead of a peace corner, the entire class was being enveloped in peace and happy places. An observation I had while conducting these classes was that it was important to ‘talk’ about feelings and emotions such as anger, sadness, loneliness and what they did when they had these feelings. Even though it wasn’t clear on what exactly their coping techniques were, through discussion I tried to re-iterate the significance of sharing and talking about it. My aim is to make an underlying connection of how an awareness of one’s own feelings can help in relating to the feeling of others.
As I continue these sessions, I am learning so much in the process and intend to design the sessions on what students may find most valuable. I am not entirely sure whether any of this is really being internalized, but I look forward to ongoing feedback from the students in case these sessions impact them positively. In the event, if you, the reader have any suggestions or thoughts, would love to hear from you!
TC Public Space 