Inspiring Writers Through Mindfulness and Poetry is intended for those writing instructors who believe that students emotional lives are valid and welcome at school. The curriculum seamlessly integrates reading and writing tasks with mindfulness practices, so teachers with limited time can help students meet academic standards and build creative thinking skills, while at the same time fortifying their inner reserves and sense of community. Teaching self-awareness, emotional self-regulation, self-compassion and empathy not only prepares students to build more optimal relationships with themselves and their peers, but also with the craft of writing. Each lesson is centered around a poem and includes a short, guided awareness practice, text-dependent questions, and basic and intermediate level poem-writing worksheets that replicate the structure of the original work. A brief section on current research in neuroscience and positive psychology, as well as extension activities are also included.
Acknowledgments
Foreword by Dr. Amy Saltzman
Introduction
CHAPTER 1: Becoming a Mindful Educator
CHAPTER 2: Building Resiliency
CHAPTER 3: Anatomy of a Mindful Writing Lesson
CHAPTER 4: Creating a Practice Community: Give a Little Love by Charlie
Fink
CHAPTER 5: The Gift of Attention: The Summer Day by Mary Oliver
CHAPTER 6: Belonging to the Natural World: Excerpt, Song of Myself, Section
2 by Walt Whitman
CHAPTER 7: Why Practice Mindfulness?: Keeping Quiet by Pablo Neruda
CHAPTER 8: Self-Compassion: Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye
CHAPTER 9: Welcoming Difficult Emotions: The Guest House by Rumi
CHAPTER 10: Acceptance: So Much Happiness by Naomi Shihab Nye
CHAPTER 11: Befriending Oneself: Love After Love by Derek Walcott
CHAPTER 12: Working with Habits: Autobiography in Five Short
Chapters by
Portia Nelson
CHAPTER 13: Compassion: Saint Francis and the Sow by Galway Kinnell
CHAPTER 14: Forgiveness: Revenge by Taha Muhammad Ali
CHAPTER 15: Joy: Everything is Waiting for You by David Whyte
CHAPTER 16: Celebrating Our Successes
Appendix
Author Biography
Laura Bean has an MFA in Creative Writing and spent ten years practicing meditation and teaching writing at the college level in Kyoto, Japan. Her work has been featured at a mindful youth conference sponsored by the Center for Mindfulness at UC San Diego, in UC Berkeleys Greater Good Science Magazine, and mostly recently, in the Coalition of Schools Educating Mindfully (COSEM) anthology entitled Educating Mindfully: Stories of School Transformation Through Mindfulness.
