filled with 21 students who had just
received word that their friend had
taken his own life to this day I
struggled to articulate what we
experienced together in that classroom
and as time goes on one thing becomes
increasingly clear to me as a teacher
and that is it does not matter if you
guys can check off all the boxes on the
rubric of academic achievement if at the
end of the day you find your life so
overwhelming or bereft of meaning that
self harm seems like a viable or even
desirable option the transition from
childhood to adulthood
has always been difficult and awkward
but you guys face novel challenges you
live at a pace and in the midst of a
complexity that is unprecedented and
when we continue and we as adults
continue to demand that you perform at
the expense of your well-being without
equipping you with the tools to cope we
artificial means of escaping your
anxiety even if those means are self
destructive wanting to escape your
anxiety is something I am very familiar
with when I was a sophomore in college I
was in the middle of class and I got up
out of my chair I walked out of the
classroom I withdrew from school and
shortly after I was on a plane to the
other side of the world to live in a
Buddhist
Sterry and I’d convinced myself that
this is where I was going to go to
escape all of my problems and it didn’t
take very long for my romanticized idea
of living in a Buddhist monastery
clashed with the day-to-day reality and
soon I found myself even more anxious
there and then I was here one night I
opened my journal and I wrote I traveled
almost 7,000 miles but my mind did not
move and this came as a shock and
disappointment
because I had hoped that my mind would
move away from the nagging sense of
emptiness and anxiety that I felt I
didn’t find peace in the Buddhist
monastery but I did find I did uncover
really an important life realization and
that is that the world is a big big
place but it’s not big enough for you to
escape yourself and the real journey is
not travelling to some faraway place the
real journey is learning to explore the
places close to you and within you that
often remain hidden from sight I came
home from the Buddhist monastery with my
tail between my legs and I had to start
over and a part of that process was
beginning a practice called mindfulness
to better explore my anxiety and it did
not take long before I saw the
transformative effects of that practice
mindfulness broadly conceived is the
process of attending moment to moment to
your present experience non-judgmentally
and in the last two years I have as now
as a teacher and well-being coordinate
I have tried to share this process of
attending to president experience with
students I’ve been in many classrooms
around the school and I’m always trying
to find ways to help students become
more mindful of how they eat sleep and
move I ask students to pay closer
attention to how they talk to themselves
about their own experience and if that
voice in their head leads them to a
better place or if it’s ultimately life
negating I asked students to attend more
closely to their relationships and if
they surround people surround themselves
with people who add value to their lives
and if they in turn add value to the
lives of those around them and last I
asked students to become more aware of
their overall sense of meaning and
purpose and with my own students I asked
them to articulate their personal
philosophy and then to break it down
into three words or less and write it
down on a piece of paper put it in your
backpack put it on a nightstand put it
on your bathroom mirror so that everyday
you have a reminder to gauge your
thoughts your words and your actions
with what you believe to be most
valuable meaningful and true and last I
have introduced a number of students to
the basic practice of mindfulness of
breath and I want to take a minute or
two and allow you to experience what
that might be like so if you all could
sit up a little bit in your chairs in a
posture that is attentive but not tense
I just want you to take your left hand
and put it on your chest and your right
I want you to take a moment and just
and I want you to notice where your
breath is most vivid for you maybe it’s
at your nostrils or in your throat maybe
I want you to notice the quality of your
shallow or deep maybe it’s fast maybe
the reason why we start with the breath
is because it doesn’t matter how far
from yourself you think you’ve drifted
your breath always invites you back home
to the present moment and as I’ve
learned since practicing mindfulness the
present moment is where we experience
joy happiness in connection put your
hands down if you want conversations
surrounding the aims of Education almost
always focus on the question of what
knowledge is of most worth and as
teachers were charged with the task of
equipping you with the necessary
knowledge to be college and career-ready
and this is a very important goal but in
our concern with knowledge we cannot
forget about wisdom because wisdom is
understanding why our lives are
important and worth living and we are
wise in proportion to the amount of time
we can spend living in the present
moment it’s my hope that all teachers
all educators all schools start taking
students need for wisdom as seriously as
they take students need for college
admission and future employment it’s
been six years since I walked into that
classroom but I still return to it it’s
uncomfortable as that might be because
it’s a reminder to me as a person and
more importantly as a teacher that my
job is not just to equip you with
knowledge it’s to help you become aware
of a reason that excites you and pulls
you out of bed in the morning
mindfulness is not a panacea but it is a
promising place to start helping young
adults reclaim their sanity and their
well-being thank you [Applause]