"A Mindful Approach to Leading During the Pandemic"

This post is a link to a second article I wrote for the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP) in September, 2020. The role of a school leader is challenging enough under normal circumstances but during the COVID-19 Pandemic we're confronted with new challenges, both professionally and personally. Mindfulness practices, more specifically a daily meditation practice, can help us confront these challenges with skill and clarity. In this article I share the RAIN meditation practice developed by Tara Brach and how it can be a useful tool during these unprecedented times.

Read here: "A Mindful Approach to Leading During the Pandemic," September, 2020

A Mindful Approach to Leading During the Pandemic Meditation can help leaders navigate the tumult of our current crisis.

By Josh Way

Whether you are a teacher, an administrator, or a parent, the last thing you want to hear during challenging times is “Just look at the bright side.” While well-intentioned, the unsolicited optimism is often dismissed as a verbal meme to skip as we scroll through our day. For those who feel like we’ve been thrown into the tornado of online learning or the social media octagon of school reopening debates, a ray of sunlight might be hard to find, but a lesson in personal and professional fulfillment can also be hiding in plain sight.

In times of turmoil, subtle insights about ourselves can arise to help us see how habitual patterns actually get in the way of navigating challenges like the one we’re currently facing. If there is the slightest desire to walk away from this time stronger than we were before, the mindfulness practice of meditation can help leaders navigate the tumult of our current crisis.

The COVID-19 crisis has challenged schools by shining a bright spotlight on all of the imperfections in our system. From gaps in our most basic systems like family communication to gross inequities of marginalized student groups, issues that we used to “have conversations” about are now front and center demanding action. Progress will not be realized by just overcoming these setbacks; we need to fully recognize them as shortcomings, investigate them deeply, and accept them as barriers to progress toward our collective mission as educators. We can’t move what we don’t see.

Be Present With Emotions

Times like these can be hard because they also force us to confront areas in our personal lives where we have been stuck. Bad news can send us into what psychologist and meditation teacher Tara Brach calls a “swirling vortex of reactions.” With a mindful approach, these uncomfortable moments can actually be our greatest teachers.

Take planning, for example. Many of us are accustomed to long-term planning and preparation. It’s what has made many of us successful, it’s given our parents confidence in us, and garnered acclaim from our colleagues. However, now that school calendars have changed and we wrestle with classes being in-person, online, or blended, all of that comfort and preparedness goes out the window, giving way to worry and panic. If we sit with that emotion, we might discover something about ourselves. Maybe we discover we’re exhausted. That’s OK. Maybe it’s insecurity in learning a new system. Perhaps it’s a blow to our ego. We’ve been the leaders in our learning community, and now we feel like everyone will see us as incapable. Whatever it might be, these insights about our own internal dialogue can help us if we’re willing to pause, sit, and listen.

Why would “sitting” with these negative emotions appeal to anyone? Leaders in the mindfulness community argue that by not confronting those hidden emotions, they will continue to rest in the shadows of our personality and wreak havoc. The good news is we don’t need to fix them. By simply bringing them into our awareness without judgement, these emotions begin to lose their power over us.

RAIN Mediation Practice

Brach teaches a framework for practicing meditation that guides the practitioner to sit with difficult emotions. Rather than resisting or casting the experience aside, this practice calls for non-judgmental awareness and acceptance.

The framework uses the acronym RAIN: Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Nurture. While sitting in a relaxed, upright position, free from distractions, practitioners are invited to place awareness on the breath. As thoughts and emotions naturally arise, Brach suggests following these steps:

1. Recognize what is going on. Give the emotion a name. “This is worry,” for example.

2. Allow the experience to be there, just as it is. Don’t try to fix anything.

3. Investigate with interest and care. Be curious about the feeling by asking, “Where does this show up in my body?”

4. Nurture with self-compassion. Send a message of care to the emotion.

This practice takes time and these insights might not occur instantly. Yet, through intentional practice they will eventually come out of the shadows and won’t seem so intimidating. For a beginning meditator, start with short amounts of time, but be consistent. With practice, when the wave of fear or insecurity arises during Zoom meeting when asked a question we don’t have the answer to or asked for a plan that we haven’t developed yet, we can be skillful and fully authentic in our approach.

Josh Way is a middle school principal in San Diego Unified School District and a certified meditation instructor.