State of Mind in the Classroom

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Thought, Consciousness & the Essential Curriculum for Healthy Learning

Ami Chen Mills-Naim

&

Roger Clark Mills, Ph.D.

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State of Mind in the Class

By Ami Chen Mills-Naim

Copyright 2014 Ami Chen Mills-Naim

Smashwords Edition

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What people are saying about State of Mind in the Classroom …

"Among all the popular education reform strategies I have seen in the past decade, the Three Principles/Innate Resiliency approach may very well be the most promising and durable approach for all students, across all demographic and achievement levels. It's a total game changer for educators and learners alike

— Lisa R. Villarreal, Program Officer, Education, The San Francisco Foundation

This book offers real hope for teachers, administrators, parents, and students who have bumped up against the edges of our current educational system. By sharing the principles underlying effective teaching and learning, and stories earned on the front lines of some of the most difficult schools in America, the authors present a vision for how a simple shift in educational philosophy and understanding could lead to better education for students and a better experience for educators. If you care about the future of education, this book is a true gift!

— Michael Neill, radio show host and bestselling author of The Inside-Out Revolution

I was on the verge of flunking out of college in my first year, when 12 words from a teacher changed the way I saw my life. This book explains how that happened — and how it can happen in any classroom at any moment.

— Dave Nichols, M.Div., community worker and Executive Director, Center for Sustainable Change

"State of Mind brims with the optimism that we can make a difference, for even the toughest of learners. The emphasis on mindsets, on resilience, on Educator, heal thyself speaks to the heart of matters, and sparkles throughout this very practical, well researched book."

— John Hattie, author of Visible Learning and Visible Learning and the Science of How We Learn (with Gregory C. R. Yates), Director, Melbourne Education Research Institute, Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne.

"This book is simply, astonishingly wonderful! There is an amazing lucidity and clarity in the writing. Reading State of Mind brought up so many insights. This book is on my short list of the best Three Principles books written since Sydney Banks. I kept thinking of educators I wanted to send it to."

— Linda Sandel Pettit, Ed.D, Counseling Psychologist, Dean of Graduate College & Director, Graduate Counselor Education Program, Siena Heights University

Not only have Ami Chen Mills-Naim and her late father, Roger Clark Mills, captured the essence of what it means to truly change hearts and minds with research-validated principles and practices, they have managed to do so with a powerful personal message. This message will guide others to trust their own intuition about how to work with young people and children who are ignored or unloved.

"The timeliness of their message is especially important in today's rapidly changing world, where young people struggle to hear and feel the simple message that they are valuable, lovable, and capable of becoming their highest selves. I have personally witnessed the power of state of mind in classrooms and schools. The principles and stories on which this book are based can and have changed school climate and cultures in real and sustainable ways. State of Mind in the Classroom is must reading for all those who want to see our schools change for the better, for all our children and for those who support them in their learning process."

— Barbara L. McCombs, Ph.D., Director at the Human Motivation, Learning, and Development Center, Applied Research & Technology Institute, University of Denver, and co-author of Learner-Centered Classroom Practices and Assessments: Maximizing Student Motivation, Learning, and Achievement

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Preface and Acknowledgments

"Continuous change is fueled by new insights that come naturally when we are not stuck in a fixed frame of reference … People are inherently capable of mental health and resiliency."

— Dr. Roger C. Mills, Realizing Mental Health: Toward a New Psychology of Resiliency

Today, as I write this, is May 3, 2011, the one-year anniversary of my father’s death. A wonderful day to review the few rough draft chapters he initially wrote for this handbook. To read what he wrote, again, is to immerse myself in the indomitable spirit of my Dad, Roger Clark Mills, Ph.D.

His love- and laughter-filled work in schools and communities across the United States, and in the U.K., created much of the bedrock of outcomes and broad body of work upon which this relatively slim book rests. His persistent spirit—which could so annoy the nay-sayers—used to worry me. God forbid we should upset anyone!

These days, I understand that the basic truth he saw and applied to his work is the only truth that will lift us out of the stress, violence and failure that plague many of our schools and neighborhoods, worldwide. That truth was simply this: But for our misguided thoughts, each child is a profound learner and every one of us (children included) is capable of becoming a superlative teacher, a role model of love and understanding, each in his or her own unique, bold or quiet way.

Success in education is every educator’s dream for children. But success in education that then contributes to the tortured state of the world we live in today: one of ecological and economic peril, unhappy materialism, poverty, constant warfare and increasing mental speed, of mental distress in all names and forms—is not success for the human race.

Can an educator’s role, then, take on the already monumental task of teaching content with grace, dignity and caring—to youth who arrive in their classrooms both prepared and wildly unprepared to learn? And, simultaneously, can an educator become a teacher and role model for a deeper wisdom about life—a wisdom that would help to alleviate the world’s many ills? Given the current, ever-changing state of education reform today, is there a simple way?

The answer, inexplicably, wondrously, actually—is yes.

Since my father’s passing, my own understanding of inner wisdom, and what my father and I call here a core of mental health, and healthy learning capacity in every human being, has evolved—along with my view of states of mind. Some of the language my father used in his pre-written sections we both may have changed by now. In many cases, I did change language my father wrote.

But I have also left my father’s words in many instances, because he possessed a down-to-earth way of sharing what he knew that seemed to resonate deeply with teachers, and people in community. I still feel also that the profound simplicity of paying attention to our states of mind—whether we are teachers, parents, principals or kids—is both wildly liberating and effective.

This book is dedicated to my father, and his wife, my second mother, Clytee Lally Mills, who spent almost their entire adult lives helping to transform education, and communities—toward a world in which peace of mind is valued, in which love and wisdom guide decision making, in which individuals overcome their apparent differences and connect on the basis of our shared, invisible inner humanity.

Special thanks go to the Shinnyo-en and San Francisco Foundations, for supporting development of this book; to the W.K. Kellogg Foundation for funding work leading to many of the outcomes upon which this book is based; to the late Sydney Banks for being the strong and steady light that brought the world the Three Principles; and to the many courageous administrators, counselors and educators who have embraced the Principles as the essential curriculum for themselves, and their staffs and students, across the globe. Acknowledgements are also due our editors and cheerleaders: especially Maureen Latta, who conducted interviews with so many insightful educators; Lisa Villarreal, who has been a steady and gracious supporter; Barbara McCombs, Diana Kronsdadt, Dave Nichols, Chini Nichols and all of our family (board members, volunteers, staff) at the Center for Sustainable Change, especially Amy Stewart and Liz Wade. Credit to Barb Aust for coining the phrase essential curriculum. Also, thanks to Gary Whyte for his copyediting work.

Thanks to Barnaby Stamm and the Mount Madonna Retreat Center for allowing me the space and time to write—without having to bother to cook, clean or take regular showers. Thanks to my amazing husband, Barukh, astounding mother, Ching-Chou, and beautiful girls Ali and Tori Elle—for letting Mommy go do her thing from time to time. Thanks to Gabby, for being my supporter and Soul Sister.

— Ami Chen Mills-Naim

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Ami’s Story:

San Jose, Juvenile Hall

When I first walked into the maximum security unit called B-9 at one of the largest juvenile halls in the San Francisco Bay Area, I was happy to see some of the same probation staff—counselors or guards—that had worked at the adult men’s work furlough unit where I also taught. Work furlough was a minimum-security jail that inmates could leave to go to work every day, and return in the evening to submit to drug testing and sleep in giant rows of steel beds in giant dorms.

I waved happily at a counselor I knew, thinking, Hey, there, it’s me!

And I immediately was approached by this very big and well-built fellow (they all looked big to me, actually) who leaned into me and said, with some gravity:

You know, this is not work furlough.

Yes, I said, cheerily (although gathering doubt), Yes, I know, it’s juvenile hall!

The man looked at me like I had just popped in with a chain of daisies on my head to propose that he and I form a quilting bee there in the rotunda. Around us and above us, in two imposing stories, the solid steel doors of the young inmates’ rooms were gray and impenetrable, save for a slim, very thick pane of glass, rectangular, laid out horizontally, and just low enough in each door for a whole cell block’s worth of curious eyes to peek through to where we talked below.

No, you do not understand, he continued. These kids are bad kids. These kids are murderers and rapists. They’re dangerous.

He stood back to better take in my reaction. I was as yet unclear as to what he wanted from me, but it seemed perhaps time to move on.

Well, I’m sure they are, I said. And I’m here to teach their next class! Where do I go?

I taught a class in B-9 for roughly a year and a half. And the counselor, of course, was right. All my students had been accused—and many had probably committed—the most heinous of crimes: rape, assault, assault and battery, assault with a deadly weapon, murder, grand theft. One of my students was accused of killing his father, a case that was highly publicized in the local media.

Seeing Potential in Bad Kids

They came to class in their orange jumpsuits—arms riddled with tattoos—large and imposing, small and skinny, Black, Asian, Latino, white—anywhere in age from 13 to 18. And this is what they did to me: They drew me beautiful pictures with the pens I brought in for them to draw with; they made me cards, macramé rings and necklaces, and wrote my name in graphic graffiti. I believe they may have quilted with me if I could have brought in needles!

They listened intently, silently. They interrupted. They pretended to listen when they were not. They pretended not to listen when they were. They were tough on me. They joked around as often as they could. They asked to stay late with me in the classroom to talk further. And I fell in love with them. I remember the moment, exactly. I call it the moment when the child emerges.

I had brought in the movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray to illustrate what we were learning about the role of Thought in creating our realities. In this movie, a cynical, self-centered weatherman is forced to repeat the same day over and over—so, all that can change in this one day is his own attitude, or thoughts, about it. And the boys were so grateful to be able to see a movie. They were happy, relaxed.

Because of their backgrounds, and our West Coast geography, they did not know what a groundhog was. So, that question, and all these other questions came flying at me: What’s a groundhog?; What does that mean?; Is he under a spell?; What’s happening?; Why is that same song on the radio every time?

They were the easily asked, eager questions of a five- or six-year-old who has not been yet taught to fear learning. They were the innocent, wondering questions of minds open to learning without self-consciousness. Minds that yearn to learn.

What Triggers Positive