Teachers cant add more minutes to a school day, but with mindfulness they can add depth to the moments they do have with students in their classroom.Compassionate Critical Thinking demonstrates how to use mindfulness with instructional effectiveness to increase student participation and decrease classroom stress, and it turns the act of teaching into a transformational practice.Many books teach mindfulness, but few provide a model for teaching critical thinking and integrating it across the curriculum.The purpose of this book is to show teachers how to create a classroom culture of compassionate critical thinking.
When students feel a lack of meaning and purpose in their school lives, they resist learning. Using a Socratic style of inquiry, Rabois changes the classroom dynamic to encourage self-reflection, insight, and empathy. Vignettes capture dialogue between teacher and students to illustrate how mindfulness practices elicit essential questions which stimulate inquiry and direct discovery. What bigger mystery is there, what more interesting and relevant story, than the story of ones own mind and heart and how they relate us to the world?

Ira Rabois recently retired from the Lehman Alternative Community School, a public secondary school in Ithaca, NY, where he taught English, Philosophy, History, Drama, Karate, and Psychology for 27 years. He earned a B.A. from the University of Michigan, a M.A.T. from SUNY-Binghamton, served in the Peace Corps, studied Zen and Japanese martial arts for 40 years with Hidy Ochiai, and took classes in meditation and Buddhist psychology at Namgyal Institute for Tibetan Studies, The Omega Institute with David Loy and Robert Thurman, healing meditation with the Consciousness Research and Training Project, and Proprioceptive Writing with Linda Trichter Metcalf and Tobin Simon.

Foreword

Preface
Mindfulness, Creativity and Natural Thinking
Heart, Empathy and Mindfulness
Socratic Questioning and Compassionate Thinking
Integrating Mindfulness into Your Classroom
Mindfulness as Practice for Teachers

Introduction
How the Book is Organized
Notes on the Inclusion of Student Voices in the Book

Chapter 1: Begin with Mindfulness
What is Mindfulness? How Do You Practice It?
Why Practice? Different Uses and Forms of Practice
Mindful Speech
The Heros Journey
Using Imagination and Visualization to Teach

Chapter 2: How Does the Brain Shape Experience?
The Geography of the Brain
The Emotional Areas of the Brain and How To Pay Attention Emotional Pathways and What We Pay Attention To

Chapter 3: Emotion and the Quality of Your Mental State
A Philosophical and Buddhist Inquiry into Suffering
What Is Anger?
Should I or Shouldnt I? Anger and Kindness.
Joy and Fear.
Understanding and Letting Go of Anxiety
Greed and Human History

Chapter 4: Emotions of Opening and Approach
What is Empathy and Compassion?
What is Love?
What Attracts One Person To Another?

Chapter 5: Compassionate Critical Thinking is a Process Of Mindful Questioning
Questioning and Beginning the Process of Critical Thinking
How Does Inner Silence Assist Thinking?
The Role of Self-Reflection in Compassionate Critical Thinking

Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Appendix: Further Resources
About the Author
Index