Your Morning Mug of Mindfulness

         How is your emotional cup?

Is it full? 

Empty?

Does it have a hole? 

Is it broken? 

Have you misplaced it?

         How is your students' emotional cup?

Have you even noticed?

How might you be able to tell the different between a full cup and an empty cup?

When a student is engaging in attention seeking behaviors we do not often (if at all) ask ourselves "is this a sign of an empty emotional cup?" Our students do not always go home to a place where there cup is filled. A good number of our students most likely, after a long day at school, go home and have their cups drained. 

What do you notice when you spend time asking yourself the 'why' behind a behavior? Often we notice the behavior and we are upset about the behavior and we react. Reflect before you React. 

Can you fill your students' cup?

Or are you draining the cup?

How is your cup looking today? 

What is your calm?

How do you show students that you care about yourself?

Looking at our self-care and calm can help us to fill our own cup, which then allows us to pour into students and fill their cups.

Your calm will help students co-regulate to create their own calm. Your behavior, attitude, and demeanor matters. Students are learning more about calm from your behavior than they ever will when tell them to calm down.

Empty emotional cups can lead to burnout and breakdown. 

Mindfulness can help us support a fill cup for ourselves and our students. 

Below is a mindfulness practice to help you fill your empty cup. This mindfulness focuses on visualizing an empty cup, taking controlled deep breaths, and repeating words to fill the cup up.

This mindfulness encourages you to look at a picture of a cup or visualize your favorite cup. I like the idea, when you are able, to hold your favorite cup. In the mindfulness it talks about feeling the weight of adding to your cup. What if you had the actual weight of a cup in your hand? This might help ground you more in the mindful experience.

Mindfulness

What words do you need to hear this week to help fill your cup? 

The more we work on filling our own cups the better we will become at filling the cups of others.  

After you try this mindfulness yourself consider adapting it for your class. This would probably work best for 5th grade and above.

Talk with students about how they feel and if they feel drained or empty and if they need help with a mindful pick-me-up. Maybe have mugs for them to hold or simply print a mug for them to look at as they practice this mindfulness. If you print a mug, after they practice the mindfulness you can let them color the mug and later you can refer back to the mindful mug and remind students to take time to fill it up. Positive self-talk matters. Help students replace the negative thoughts with positive thoughts.