Mindfulness for
students and
the adults who
lead them
School administrators
have complex jobs.
Mindfulness offers
strategies and
practices to help
leaders manage and
care for themselves,
so they can manage
and care for others.
Mindfulness has been spread-
ing like wildfire for a number of years. An
internet search shows more than 75 mil-
lion hits for “mindfulness,” 35 million hits
for “mindfulness in education” and 700,000
hits for “mindfulness for education leaders.”
What was once an unknown concept
and practice for many people in the western
hemisphere has grown to a movement af-
fecting organizations from Sesame Street to
Wall Street. Companies such as MindUp,
founded by Goldie Hawn, and Mindful
Schools based in Emeryville, Calif., offer
school and district-wide training programs,
and curriculums to promote mindfulness in
schools. Both groups report to have reached
close to 1 million students with their mind-
fulness programs.
While the value of mindfulness in schools
has been studied and written about, less has
been researched about mindfulness and
school leaders. What is mindfulness, where
did it come from, and what are the implica-
tions for educational leadership?
Mindfulness: Thousands of
years in practice
Although it is often associated with east-
ern religions, the importance of mindfulness
has long been recognized in western cul-
tures. William James in his book “Principles
28
Leadership
of Psychology,” published in 1890, wrote:
“The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a
wandering attention over and over again,
is the very root of judgment, character, and
will... An education which should improve
this faculty would be the education par ex-
cellence (quintessential). But it is easier to
define this ideal than to give practical in-
structions for bringing it about.”
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines
mindfulness as, “the practice of maintaining
a nonjudgmental state of heightened or com-
plete awareness of one’s thoughts, emotions or
experiences on a moment-to-moment basis.”
The four foundations of mindfulness are:
• Mindfulness of body.
• Mindfulness of feelings.
• Mindfulness of thoughts.
• Mindfulness of phenomena, or how we
interact with the world around us.
Mindfulness can be practiced using a va-
riety of techniques, such as visualization, in-
tentional breathing, yoga, muscle relaxation
and meditation. It can be done individually
or in a group, and be part of a short term or
ongoing program.
Interest in mindfulness burgeoned in the
1960s and ’70s as a result of popular and pro-
fessional attention. In 1975, Dr. Herbert Ben-
By Edward Thompson