Closing the School Year with Purpose: Mindful Rites of Passage

We explore how to end the school year with mindful intention and purpose by creating powerful rites of passage that help students recognize their growth, learn from challenges, and prepare for summer with confidence.

• Experiential mindfulness activity for you, the listener, to help all teachers acknowledge their own accomplishments, learn from challenges, and recognize personal growth
• Creating conscious endings for students that transform an academic year closing into a meaningful rite of passage
• Guiding students to re-contextualize mistakes and identify their new capabilities and responsibilities
• Helping students create summer support systems with identified go-to people for different needs (fun, advice, safety)
• Developing "streak buddies" and activity plans to maintain positive habits during unstructured summer time
• Teaching the balance of strong moral values while holding space for growth after transgressions
• Implementing simple celebration rituals that honor the journey shared between teachers and students

To learn more about these practices, visit innerstrengtheducation.org where you'll find additional resources and information about conscious classroom approaches.

Chapters

• 0:10 Welcome to Conscious Classroom
• 1:27 Opening Meditation for Educators
• 12:30 Self-Review Without Judgment
• 15:44 Creating Student Rites of Passage
• 18:38 Summer Support Strategies
• 21:38 Teaching Ethical Growth and Forgiveness
• 25:16 Making Meaningful Endings Matter

Transcript

Amy: 0:10

Welcome to the Conscious Classroom podcast, where we're exploring tools and perspectives that support educators and anyone who works with teens to create more conscious, supportive and enriching learning environments. I'm your host, amy Edelstein, and I'll be sharing transformative insights and easy-to-implement classroom supports that are all drawn from mindful awareness and systems thinking. The themes we'll discuss are designed to improve your own joy and fulfillment in your work and increase your impact on the world we share. Let's get on with this next episode. Hello, my name is Amy Edelstein. Welcome to the Conscious Classroom podcast. I can't hardly believe it, but here we are at the year's end yet again. Somehow, those long days of February have passed, and here we are in June. School will be out in a few weeks, and the summer, though welcome, welcome will also pass quickly.

Amy: 1:27

In this podcast, I want to talk about ending the year well. How to end the year well, how to support your students with the contemplative practices that we've been doing all year in order to create that sense of a real rite of passage order, to create that sense of a real rite of passage of accomplishments, of resolutions, of growth and moving on. And let's start with a short practice ourselves, to drop into that experience of completion, recognition of growth and acceptance. So take your best mindfulness posture. If you're driving, then please just pause and wait and do the meditation at some other time. And do the meditation at some other time and allow yourself to really sink in, no matter how busy you are, how much is on your to-do list. Just, metaphorically, close all the doors to your meditation space, surround yourself with a field of stillness and depth and dimensionality, purpose and potency. As you settle in, rest in your heart, letting your shoulders drop, letting the muscles of your face soften, allowing the breath to be an anchor and create stillness and calm, let your attention shift from your thoughts and feelings and sensations to that field of knowingness, that expanse of awareness, that bigger context in which you situate your life, allowing yourself to see from all directions without moving or straining or stretching. And now, as you rest here, bring to mind three things that you did well this year, things you created, relationships that you navigated, situations you supported, students you inspired. Allow that objective recognition. Come to the forefront of your experience, feel a smile on your face as you remember what you've done well and the positive pride and acknowledgement, while you remain humble, finding that perfect balance so that all of the momentum of the things you did well can continue to nourish you and support you and give you strength.

Amy: 6:31

And now shift your attention to what you learned this year, situations that maybe weren't so smooth, where your emotional stability was a little more rocky than you'd wish. Recognize how you came through in the end and how you might be able to let go of fear, conflict, guilt, shame, anger, resentment sooner. How you can center yourself in your trust for yourself so that if you tip off balance, you right yourself more quickly, remembering those childhood toys, the weebles that wobble and don't fall down. Notice how you can let go sooner Out of care for yourself and the whole situation and how you're getting your fingers all sticky with conflict doesn't help in the end in the end. And how, even if you have to engage in disagreement that creates friction because of values, because of greater care, you can do so with an open heart. Allow those learnings to seep into you so that they become your own, and when you start the next school year you'll be starting from a different level. And in this final part of our three-part contemplation, reflect on where you grew, like children who grow out of their shoes, who grow taller than their pants, who stretch beyond the shoulders of their shirts, beyond the shoulders of their shirts. We also grow out of limited ways of seeing, limited assessments of our skills, limited beliefs in what's possible. As the meditation keeps you anchored and steady, where did you grow? How have you become a more full person? What have you learned? What have you left behind? What old ways of thinking and feeling and responding simply no longer fit, so that you're truly a different person than you were before. On the next few breaths, allow your breath to deepen, filling your whole body, oxygenating your cells and letting the breath carry with it that deeper and wiser self, letting your whole body adjust and internalize and coalesce around your accomplishments. And on your next two breaths, really exhale any residual self-doubt, any lack of resolution, any insistence that you're not ready to leave behind those things that no longer fit. And now we can bring our attention back. Thank you.

Amy: 12:32

As educators teachers in and out of the classroom we're often looking at what we could do more. We're often working hard to catch up of self-reflection, internalization and ownership of our own growth and development are an essential, foundational part of our teaching. Our ability to continually renew and inspire gets transmitted from our own constant renewal and inspiration. Growth and learning inspires. Whether other people see it or not, we become inspired. We pay attention to that edge, that frothy edge that is always bringing forth intimations of greater degrees of happiness, positivity, optimism, wholeness, goodness, creativity, love.

Amy: 13:50

The purpose of self-review is not to go over what wasn't done well, it's to internalize the lessons learned without further judgmentalism. And when we do that, then we can embrace this graduation sense of rite of passage Really looking at what are the accomplishments that they've made, having them draw or create a vision board, an accomplishment board board, an accomplishment board, using the contemplative practice to do that mindful breathing and to identify where they feel stronger and identifying, when they remember their accomplishments, how that lands in the body, how that makes them feel tall from the inside, and how students practice this art of recontextualizing mistakes. Even if a student needs to go to summer school, even if they need to repeat a grade, so important that they embrace that from a position of strength, openness, possibility, letting go of disappointment, letting go of embarrassment, what are the new capabilities and responsibilities that they have now that they're older, that they've graduated their grade? Get them to list them and acknowledge to the class what's the next step after where they are now, and you can do this as you go from fourth to fifth grade and, equally, do it as you go from 11th to 12th grade. Can they vote? Can they drive? Can they work? Do they have deeper responsibility around the house for a job, for college? How did they grow into those new capabilities and responsibilities and get them to articulate? How will they show and demonstrate this new stage of capacity? You can do timed sessions of mindful contemplation and then timed sessions of identifying these things. And then timed sessions of identifying these things, and especially the sharing out in front of the class, can help them internalize lessons learned, even for the shyest ones.

Amy: 17:31

And as they go into their summer with its openness, have each student create a little booklet decorated on their phone in their notepad, so it's always with them, or a physical one, that they then take a picture of who are their go-to people for the summer? Who do they want around them for fun? Who do they want around them for advice? Who do they want around them for play? Who do they want around them for play? Who do they want around them for encouragement? Who do they want around them to feel safe? Who do they want around them when they need help.

Amy: 18:28

Make sure each student goes into the summer not feeling adrift and fearful of no structure, but feeling that they have that sense of support. And then have them make a second little kit, which is what are they going to do for fun? And especially get some promises for what to do around boredom, how to stay off social media, what new friends do they want to make? Is there a hobby or art that they want to do, and where are they going to do that special activity? Do they have a spot on their back porch or in a corner of their room, or do they go to the rec center for it? Challenge them to have some streak buddies. Maybe those streak buddies are for exercising every day, being outside, learning a new language, doing art, doing something fun, making the most of their time. They can come up with a little emblem and they can share that emblem with their friend and figure out how they're going to track their streak and time counts for when they make sure that they've been outside and played or learned something or made art or made music.

Amy: 20:18

And again bring them into their contemplative practice, bring them in with a thought bubble of all the doubts or fears that they want to let go of all the concerns and shame from the past year, of things they didn't do well or times they got in trouble or quizzes that they didn't succeed at. Allow them to let that all go and remind them that the learning from mistakes can be with them for the rest of their lives Learning that they needed to study more instead of going out with friends or scrolling on social media. Learning that they like to read instead of waiting to the last minute to read that English book. Learning that they can make new friends if an old friend moves away. And then, finally, to really cement their rite of passage, have them write an essay or create a poem, even a fun one, a limerick or a haiku or a spoken word.

Amy: 21:41

What are their commitments and promises now that they've grown and learned? What are their commitments to themselves, what are their commitments to their friends, what are their commitments to their family and community, and what are their commitments to the world as a whole? Children can think about their relationship to the whole world, how they want to walk softly on the earth, how they want to care for the creatures in the natural world the trees and the flowers, the animals, the birds, keep expanding their field of care and do a nice long love and kindness practice caring for their school community, adults and youth, caring for themselves through success and little bumps, caring for their communities in specific ways and caring for the world as a whole ways. And caring for the world as a whole, young people can develop a deep sense of morality, of right and wrong and as teachers of contemplative practice, we want them to be able to have that strong ethical framework while holding the dichotomy loosely. So young people can also become very righteous and they can hold grudges for slights and those grudges, sadly, in this day and age, can escalate with social media and with the availability of weapons. So let's be real about the seriousness of teaching our students how to have a deep, deep moral center and yet how to hold out the possibility for change for someone who is transgressed. Through the contemplative practice you can teach. Just as we have grown and learned from our stumbles and mistakes, we wish you to grow and learn from your mistakes, emphasizing the possibility of constant growth and change. And as we grow and change, we're no longer the same person who made that mistake. So teaching them really the science of human development. So we're not just asking them to not hold a grudge, which is very hard to do, when we're also asking them to develop their sense of right and wrong.

Amy: 25:16

Put time and thought into your conscious endings. Have celebrations, have food, have fun and, as much as possible, connect with each and every student. You've been through something together and the summer break marks an ending of that period, even if you have the same students next year. This year has come to a close, students next year. This year has come to a close, making a conscious ending of it, really reinforcing intentionality, focus, directionality, so that the students are always learning. They're always learning from everything that happens and every moment that happens and every marker and bookend. You're elevating their experience, creating a book of life for them, and through that they're going to learn not just how to navigate this transition into the next grade, but they're going to learn how to navigate transitions which really seem to be so hard for adults.

Amy: 26:39

In our culture.

Amy: 26:42

People are very afraid of change, in part because we don't have markers and ritual and life passage.

Amy: 26:54

Put some time and thought and creativity into creating this rite of passage as you come to the end of the year. It's not too late, even if your students finish next week, you don't need fancy equipment or slide decks or preparation. Bring your heart to it, bring your care to it, care to it and put time into allowing the students to learn the lessons of life that they've passed through over this year and to make the most out of their time that they spent with you. This will help them remember you, it will help imprint a positive memory of your classroom onto them and as that happens, you can also really feel your own sense of accomplishment deepen as you see how much they've changed and grown and learned and how proud they are of the journey they've been on. Thank you for listening to the Conscious Classroom. I'm your host, amy Edelstein. Please check out the show notes on innerstrengthfoundationnet for links and more information and if you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with a friend and pass the love on. See you next time.