AISD CP&I Action Research Project

Welcome to my Action Research Project as part of Austin ISD's Cultural Proficiency & Inclusiveness Cohort 3. My name is James Butler and I'm the SEL Mindfulness Specialist for the Austin Independent School District. This is an ongoing journey and exploration where I seek to answer the brilliant question by Dr. Angela Davis, "In a Racially Unjust World, What Good is Mindfulness?"

Angela Davis & Jon Kabat-Zinn sat down for an insightful conversation titled, "Mindfulness & the Possibility of Freedom" and that's where my title question came from. Below is a blurb from an article about the conversation.

"'In a racially unjust world,' Davis earnestly asked Kabat-Zinn, 'what good is mindfulness?' He responded by noting how the heightened awareness enabled by mindfulness practice can progressively uproot the greed, hatred and delusion that cause so much collective suffering. Davis, however, was not satisfied with his response, emphasizing that racism is not simply a set of personal attitudes, but a whole system. How can practices focused on personal habits of mind generate lasting systemic change?

Near the end of the evening, Davis offered an answer to her own question. She noted how mindfulness might become a revolutionary force if embedded in social movements that target oppressive systems. But what forms can that integration take? What does a true mindful revolution look like?"

I see mindfulness in the schools as a way to address oppressive education systems from the inside. I believe that mindfulness coupled with Restorative Practices, teaching about implicit bias and cultural responsiveness is a powerful way to integrate in order to truly change how our education system is and has been operated.

Angela Rose Black was featured in an article on mindful.org and the title of the article was, "Disrupting Systemic Whiteness in the Mindfulness Movement."

She is the Founder/CEO of Mindfulness For The People. From her site: "Mindfulness for the People LLC is a Black-owned social change agency dedicated to bridging racial justice and collective wellbeing through techniques of mindfulness, compassion, and self-compassion."

She also authored several intriguing research articles while getting her doctorate, including one titled, "African American Women's Perceptions of Mindfulness Meditation Training and Gender Race-Related Stress."

Reading her article from mindful was a especially insightful as a white person leading the mindfulness moment in AISD. It has definitely helped motivate me to, as her site states, "radically re-imagine the mindfulness movement" in AISD. I'm currently trying to acquire funds to bring Dr. Angela Rose Black to Austin ISD for trainings.

Representation Matters. One thing that I have noticed about the mindfulness movement is the severe under representation of people of color practicing mindfulness, leading mindfulness, being featured in mindfulness publications, etc.

Many of us have seen the Time Magazine special feature on mindfulness on the racks at the grocery or bookstore. Time missed a golden opportunity to feature a person of color on the front cover to greatly combat this issue.

Calm has an amazing deal for educators with a FREE lifetime subscription to their site & app. However, at the end of each mindfulness session that you do on the app, an image with a quote appears and they overwhelmingly feature white people. I've contacted them numerous times about this issue and they said they were working on it. During February & March, White people were featured 32 times, People of Color were featured 11 times, and nature scenes were featured 13 times. NOT. OKAY.

If we want mindfulness to truly be for all people, we must represent people of color in the movement. I'm constantly trying to represent students of color in our monthly mindfulness newsletter, but it shouldn't be as time intensive of a practice as it is currently.

I've been reflecting on my privilege for some time, and in August 2017, I wrote about my privilege and shared it on social media. I even had a chance to read it at an open mic night. Much like this research project, it's an ongoing exploration.

Back in 2009, I volunteered as a HS English & Math teacher in the rural village of Mangetti, Namibia in southern Africa. Namibia was just 19 years independent when I arrived, and living in the bush 2.5 hours away from the nearest city, apartheid ways of living still existed and racism was very much alive. This is a blog post about the time when I moved from the comforts of a ranch home with electricity to a mud hut without electricity or running water because the White owner of the ranch home told me I couldn't have Black people over to the house.

I've been an educator for 16 years (that photo is my first kindergarten class at Winn Elementary back in 02-03) and mindfulness has been a key part in my adult life. It's helped me deal with PTSD to helping me understand my own implicit biases and how that awareness transformed me as an educator. It was a difficult moment when I realized that the percentage of my early childhood students that I had on some type of behavior contract was disproportionately greater for students of color. Self-awareness gained through mindfulness and learning about implicit bias and unjust discipline rates helped me see beyond student behavior to the root of what was causing the behavior. Sometimes those problems are surface level and sometimes they are products of systemic oppression. One of my goals as the SEL Mindfulness Specialist is to help foster that type of awareness in our teachers, school and district administrators.

Mindfulness is being implemented in one way or another on all 130 AISD campuses to support the social and emotional learning & growth of our students and staff. In my role as the SEL Mindfulness Specialist, I support teachers, staff, students, families and admin with implementation of mindfulness practices in classrooms, schools, and departments.

During PDs, I've recently added a section where we briefly discuss mindfulness, bias and a restorative approach to discipline. It could be an entire PD, but I'm working on that for next year with a Culturally Responsive Mindfulness PD.

Below are ways that we're attempting and will continue to try to answer Angela Davis's question in AISD: "In a racially unjust world, what good is mindfulness?"

"Between stimulus and response there is space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." --Viktor Frankl, Neurologist & Holocaust Survivor

"In a racially unjust world, what good is mindfulness?"--I believe that if our teachers can become stronger at responding rather than reacting, they'll have a greater chance to catch themselves from reacting to any biases they might have and responding appropriately to the student. And regular mindfulness practice can help us strengthen our response time. This is something that I teach to Pre-K students through AISD staff every time I share about mindfulness.

Last school year, news broke about a school in Baltimore replacing detention and suspension with meditation. I did some research and reached out to some principals in AISD about doing something similar. The school in Baltimore is lucky enough to have a non-profit run their Mindfulness Room, but I thought mindfulness strategies and mindfulness rooms could be used by the schools to replace punitive consequences. Becker, Rodriguez, Andrews, and the Elementary Disciplinary Alternative Education Program (EDAEP) have all utilized this model with several more in the process. I'm still working on data collection, but the anecdotal stories have been incredible.

"In a racially unjust world, what good is mindfulness?"--I believe that if our schools have spaces and utilize them properly and safely, it can help restore relationships that have been damaged at the schools or that have been damaged for generations. It also provides staff members with concrete strategies on what to do during difficult situations. One very important factor: Mindfulness should be practiced throughout the school regularly in order for a Mindfulness Room to be successful. Kids and adults need to have some type of regular practice for these practices to be effective during escalated times.

Next year, the plan is to create a Culturally Responsive Mindfulness PD with support from fellow CP&I Cohort members. We'll use a lot of what we've learned from Zaretta Hammond's, Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain to create the PD and also use stories of success regarding culturally responsive mindfulness from throughout AISD.

"In a racially unjust world, what good is mindfulness?"--I believe that all people, regardless of race or ethnicity, will be able to enjoy benefits of mindfulness such as increased self-awareness, stronger response time and calm. The dominant narrative of the mindfulness movement saying "You must always sit still with your eyes closed" isn't culturally responsive and can lead to unsafe discomfort in some. I'm noticing a trend of schools that serve large percentages of students of color having a harder time with mindfulness implementation. I have learned that incorporating movement, music, and art are a few ways to create more levels of comfort surrounding mindfulness. I look forward to sharing helpful tips like that and so much more in the Culturally Responsive Mindfulness PD.

Email: james.butler@austinisd.org