We are pleased to share a guest post from fellow teacher Dan Del Duca. Dan has harnessed his practice to bring awareness to his experience and to his students. As the school year begins, enjoy Dan’s reflections and join C4SC for upcoming events,
The practice of sitting and counting your breaths while practicing mindfulness can be pretty mundane and uneventful. Sometimes I keep moving positions and find I am not really comfortable. I find my mind wandering and sometimes I feel the ten-minute practice is doing little good. The room I meditate in is simply a room with a rug, chairs, tables, and a window looking out at the trees.
Then suddenly one morning, you have a mindfulness practice that makes an amazing difference in how you see the world. I want to share my story to show the positive power of daily meditation and how it changes the way your brain works and how you observe the world.
I work as a science teacher in an elementary school. My days are usually fast paced and busy. One of my students was using the 3D printer in the makerspace to print fifteen games pieces for a board game he had invented. The printing of the pieces took over an hour and my student and I were both pleased with the results. As one might predict in an active classroom, students like to pick things up and take a look at them. I noticed later in the afternoon, that one of the fifteen game pieces was missing. My mind had all kinds of stories to explain the missing plastic game piece. I wondered whether I would have to print out the piece again. I was frustrated that I could not find the piece anywhere around the 3D printer.
The next day early in the morning I practiced my ten minutes of mindfulness in the quiet makerspace. I felt I had a rhythm and a calm during the practice, despite the anticipated stopping and starting of my meditation. The ten minutes of silence ended peacefully as I began to look around the room. Early morning light was stretching across the rug and as I looked across the room I saw the small game piece glittering in the sunlight. This was the same game piece I was not able to find the previous day. The discovery was amazing and I realized once again the power of a mindfulness practice. Daily mediation allows you to slow your reaction time so you are able to really see what is in front of you. In the brief moment, I was not worrying about the future or looking back into the past. I was simply living in the present moment. When practicing mindfulness, I see the world in front of front of me more clearly.
Center for Self-Care 
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