By Rona Wilensky ~~~ I have an unusual job. When people ask what I do, I usually say that I bring mindfulness to education. I almost always get a positive response along with the assumption that I must be teaching mindfulness to students. At that point, I find myself backing up and explaining that as wonderful as mindfulness for students is, my self appointed work in the world is teaching (and arranging for my colleagues to teach) mindfulness to educators. My organization has made the decision to only support teachers in bringing mindfulness to their students once they have experienced and practiced mindfulness for themselves. Just as we expect those who teach reading to read and those who teach writing to write, it seems straightforward to expect that those who teach mindfulness to also practice it. It just doesn’t make sense to ask adults to teach what they don’t know. My organization has made the decision to only support teachers in bringing mindfulness to their students once they have experienced and practiced mindfulness for themselves. …