To teach kids the quiet arts of stillness, concentration, and awareness, we take time in class to practice these things. We simply sit, letting the mind’s habitual flight settle. This practice is not an purposeless pause or avoidance of time-on-task, but an authentic training of the heart and mind. By sitting still, even briefly, they learn to hold their attention steady instead of scattering it across screens, noise, and the attention of other students, to notice the actual sense of a moment—the slant of light through trees, the rhythm of breath, the first faint shape of an idea—rather than rehearsing what comes next or what others expect. It's important to have a space large enough for 25 kids to spread out (we use a 20-step rule). No devices, no journals, no books, just practice being still. Quietly. And it takes time and patience.
At first they're miserable. Unfortunately, at times tears have been shed, but with time and practice, the point is learned. I learn, too. We all learn and what it takes to get the message across changes each year, especially with the older ones.
Concentration deepens not through strain but through gentle persistence. Short breaks like these eventually evolve into longer periods of contemplation and appreciation. Soon the kids are asking for more and some even practice on their own, outside of school.
From that steadier ground, awareness widens; they begin to inhabit their space and their thoughts more personally, free for a little while from the endless outward seeking of validation. I can tell right away that what they write afterward carries a different weight—less performance, more lived attention—and what they carry into the rest of the day begins to take shape in a quiet confidence that they can return, again and again, to this simple, portable act.
With dedicated, deliberate practice, kids are quick to learn and appreciate. Adults take longer, most never get there. "It takes too much time." This is why kids never learn -- they aren't taught.
Just a few more sentences between classes
Jim Harrison, from "Sitting Around"...
Sitting on a stump I feel a little closer to the idea that I’m a member of just one of possibly thirty million species. Some people don’t like to count bugs because they are frequently obnoxious. A stump or log seems to help me assume. Zen as a glyph for the vehicle of reality, the water that just happens to be contained by a glass and a myriad of other containers. Mistakes are made when students are led to believe that the water pipes, the steel culverts, the plumbing are the river.
Stumps and logs help me forget the world of achievement, disappointment, rewards, the illusion of being right, struggling to hold the world together, and help me shed many of the illusions that the very notion of “personality” is heir to; there is a frequent mistake here in equating personality with “ego,” which is a Freudian term and unfortunately rather Prussian. The point seems to be to rid yourself of vanities in order to understand your true character. In sitting, the host returns to the original mind while the guest dithers. Then the dithering stops.
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