Simsbury High School graduate Maureen Hudson is taking a different approach to education.
Hudson, a 21-year-old senior at the College of New Jersey, is in the fourth of five years in the school’s urban education program. She’s been recently teaching the concept of mindfulness to preschoolers in Trenton, New Jersey.
Hudson, whose family now lives in Windsor, became interested in the concept of mindfulness when she met a mindfulness teacher, during her first day at the College of New Jersey.
“Mindfulness is paying particular attention to the present moments with acceptance and non-judgment,” Hudson said. “Mindfulness is a process that can be both informal in the everyday experience, sort of bringing attention and awareness to everyday activities that are mindless.”
Hudson said informal mindfulness comes easier once the formal version is practiced.
“Maybe you are really fully experiencing brushing your teeth or taking a shower or being present in a conversation that you may not otherwise,” Hudson said. “A formal practice is intentionally, with the use of some anchor as a focal point for awareness, and really training the brain and the body to be present. The formal practice makes the informal easier. It becomes more natural.”
Hudson joined the college’s mindfulness group, called Circle of Compassion, and became increasingly more interested in including mindfulness in education, because it’s something she said changed her life for the better.
“The most transformative way for me was body awareness,” Hudson said. “It was something I realized I didn’t really have before this process. I think the mind-body connection sounds like a cliche, but I really feel like I experienced that. It really changed the way I saw my body and treated my body and that was really powerful.”
She also said it played a role in her relationships.
“Compassion is also a really key part of mindfulness practice,” Hudson said. “It’s the idea that you can intentionally send well wishes and good things to yourself and other people. I found I was much kinder to myself, and everyone else in my life, once I really devoted myself to this process.”
In education, mindfulness helps act on the belief that a student’s emotional needs are important too.
“Understanding that student’s emotional needs and what’s developmentally important for them really impacts how they take to learning,” Hudson said. “It’s also about that activating the affective domain of the brain and understanding that when we have an emotional response to something, we are more likely to remember it. That’s been a developmental area that’s been overshadowed by cognitive education for decades.”
With her preschool students, Hudson would use techniques, such a breathing exercises and circle discussions, to introduce mindfulness.
“I started each lesson with the beginning sequence of getting our bodies ready, our minds ready, and our hearts ready,” Hudson said. “It was acknowledging and embracing social and emotional into every lesson plan. With mindfulness, the biggest shift was that I wanted students to become aware of their own experience. Students should take ownership of what’s happening to them with their bodies and minds. They have to be in on this plan.”
Hudson plans on traveling abroad in 2018. She wants to either teach in Finland or conduct research at an international school.
