Stephanie Hernandez

Mindfulness Practice            

Working in a school setting, the term SEL is thrown around alot in conversation. As school social workers, we use SEL to help guide our practice when working with students in areas of self-awareness, decision making, and social awareness. Focusing on the social emotional part/experiences of a student helps the social worker get a holistic viewpoint of the student. However, a new term that I recently heard at my field placement is mindful practice, this year all staff members at my field placement are required to attend professional development on mindful practices. Researching more about the topic I noticed the similarities of mindful practice and SEL, adding mindful practice as a support for SEL. “Mindfulness and SEL each prescribe certain practices and psychoeducation (which means discussion of psychological concepts that helps students better understand and regulate their internal life and behavior).” The goal of mindfulness practice is to train adults in acquiring skills to then teach to their own students. The 3 main skills to learn are: emotion regulation, attention control and self-awareness.

            Emotion regulation, is how one responds to emotions and how that respond impacts our well-being. Learning how to respond in a mindful way can help our emotion regulation. Attention control, in practicing mindfulness, one learns to select and object of attention and to hold a connection to that object, and to come back to the object when one is distracted. This skills is helpful for students to be successful in academics, and goal-directed behavior. Finally, self-awareness includes present moment awareness of the body and emotional cues. These 3 skills combined will allow students to create mindful habits for dealing with difficult situations. Mindfulness practice is a new technique that is still being researched and implemented in schools. There is still much to be learned from it but the benefits so far have been positive in decreasing negative student behavior, promoting self-awareness and contributing to academic success.

http://www.mindfulschools.org/foundational-concepts/integrating-mindfulness-social-emotional-learning-programs/