Mindfulness for the Music Educator

This course provides a venue for learning, discussing, developing and applying mindfulness skills and strategies in the personal and professional life of the music educator. Music educators will engage with the topics of mindfulness, growth mindset, positive psychology and neuroscience to develop methods for maximizing their potential as teachers and raise the quality of their own students’ learning and performance. The course will consist of readings, discussions, writing, and a practical project designed to work for your personal life and for the students and classes that you teach. Students will learn how meditation, focusing on gratitude, deep breathing techniques, living in the now, and a heightened awareness of the senses all elevate one’s daily experience. Students will examine their own habits of thinking and develop positive habits of thought that can impact the trajectory of their day and influence their own students in a positive way.

By the end of this course, students will be able to:

• Demonstrate an understanding and be able to implement elements of mindfulness into your own life.
• Develop a daily mindfulness practice.
• Create an application of mindfulness techniques to the music classroom or ensemble.
• Increase understanding and application of research on the topics of growth mindset and positive psychology into personal and professional life.