A PhD seminar presented at the Isenberg School of Management incorporating mindfulness to cultivate presence as a teacher.

1. TEACHING PRESENCE
Engage, Connect & Inspire In The Classroom
Shalini Bahl, PhD

2. WHAT ARE THE
QUALITIES YOU HAVE
OBSERVED IN
OUTSTANDING
TEACHERS?

3. ROADMAP
1. Presence
➤ What
➤ Why
➤ How
2. Practices
➤ Journaling
➤ Communicating with
presence
3. Insights & strategies to
cultivate presence

4. “
Good teaching cannot be reduced to
technique; good teaching comes from
the identity and integrity of the
teacher.
—Parker J. Palmer

5. WHAT IS
PRESENCE
Awareness, Connection &
Compassion

6. PRESENCE: WHAT
Presence is “a state of alert
awareness, receptivity and
connectedness to the mental,
emotional and physical
workings of both the individual
and the group in the context of
their learning environments
and the ability to respond with
a considered and
compassionate best next step.”
~ Carol R. Rodgers and Miriam B.
Raider-Roth 2006

7. PRESENCE: WHAT
➤ a state of alert
awareness, receptivity
and connectedness
➤ to the mental, emotional
and physical workings
➤ of both the individual
and the group

8. WHY DO WE
NEED
PRESENCE
“If you want to build a ship,
don't drum up people to collect
wood and don't assign them
tasks and work, but rather teach
them to long for the endless
immensity of the sea.”
~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

9. PRESENCE: WHY
Current educational trends -
quantification & standardization
- threaten:
➤ Hospitable school climate
➤ Authentic affective &
cognitive interactions
➤ Genuine learning experiences
➤ Trusting student-teacher
relationships that promote
student motivation,
engagement & achievement

10. ““The quality of these relationships
(between students and teachers) is
not a frill or ‘feel-good’ aspect of
schooling, it is an essential feature of
learning.”
— Carol R. Rodgers and Miriam B. Raider-Roth 2006

11. HOW TO
CULTIVATE
PRESENCE
Awareness of mind, body and
emotions in self & others

12. “The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a
wandering attention, over and over again, is the
very root of judgment, character, and will. No
one is compos sui (master of himself) if he have
it not. An education which should improve this
faculty would be the education par excellence.
— William James, the father of modern psychology

13. MINDFULNESS
“Mindfulness is
the awareness that
arises from paying
attention on
purpose, in the
present moment,
non-judgmentally”
~ Dr. jon Kabat-Zinn

14. TRIANGLE OF AWARENESS
AT T E N T I O N
T H O U G H T S
B O D Y
S E N S AT I O N S
E M O T I O N S
G
entle
Curiosity
N
on-Judgm
ent
Intentional & Moment to Moment

15. – J O H N D E W E Y, A R T A S E X P E R I E N C E 2 0 0 5
“Only when the past ceases to trouble and
anticipations of the future are not perturbing is a
being wholly united with his environment and
therefore fully alive.”

16. PRACTICE PRESENCE: 3 WAYS
Focused
Practices
Presence
Reminders
Integrated
Activities

17. PRACTICE PRESENCE: PRESENCE REMINDERS
Presence
Reminders
KINDPRESENT
CURIOUS

18. PRACTICE PRESENCE: FOCUSED PRACTICES
Focused
Practices
JOURNALAWARENESS
OF BREATH
BODY SCAN

19. PRACTICE PRESENCE: INTEGRATED PRACTICES
Integrated
Practices
MINDFUL
WALKINGMUNDANE
ACTIVITIES
MINDFUL
COMMUNICATION

20. PRACTICE AWARENESS
➤ Your Mind (thoughts)
➤ Your Heart (Emotions)
➤ Your Body (Sensations)

21. JOURNALING
Personal Reflection

22. ➤ I feel most alive as a teacher
when…

23. ➤ What gets in the way of me
feeling alive as a teacher is…

24. ➤What would support me to be
alive and cultivate presence is…

25. ➤Who I am as a teacher…

26. COMMUNICATING WITH PRESENCE
➤ Speaker
➤ Mind (Clarity)
➤ Body (Confidence)
➤ Heart (Credibility)
➤ Listener
➤ Silence
➤ Suspend judgments
➤ Acknowledge with
presence
➤ Constructive feedback

27. GROUP CONTEMPLATION
3 Key Insights
3 Strategies for cultivating presence

29. DOWNTOWN MINDFULNESS
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or email shalini@remindingproject.com