Teenage Wisdom: on school, technology, and mindfulness.

At the end of each school year, I survey my students about what they liked and disliked about my class. The blessing and curse of teaching in the upper grades is that they are brutally honest and quite capable of expressing opinions. Here, I share some of my favorite student comments.God bless middle school teachers. This year was a long, strange, difficult and entertaining trip. Next year, I'm heading back to elementary for the foreseeable future.

• Computers are a great source of distraction in the world today. Doing homework in the computer is like sitting in a classroom with a party going on outside. It takes great self control not to push a button and translate into a stream of social media going on in the next tab. Mindfulness is a great tool to help give you that self control and concentration to work on a computer today.
• What I liked in class this year was the mindfulness practice, it helped a lot to think better and to let stress go, it helped me to calm down, it was a way to also organize my thoughts, ideas and my wide imagination. I really liked to do the service learning project, I liked to help the kids from La Limonada.
• I liked the social justice campaign the  most because it's like community service and it helps learn a lot about the real world. Also because it influenced us to help people later on in our lives.
• I liked the fact that at the beginning of class we had mindfullness. This exercise helped me relax and calm down for the day. I also liked all the videos we had to make. Mainly because I like making videos. What I hated most was that we had to sit straight during mind-fullness.
• I think mindfulness is a very useful tool in education these days. It relaxes the students enabling them to do their best at school. Many people think that this is unnecessary but if you do it correctly, it can help a lot. This helps me do my best in class. I like this technique. Makes me feel more free and better.
• I liked the different ways we practiced mindfulness and how you oriented us to a tranquil world.
• It is true that many people lose attention very easy and mindfulness could help us get the attention back. I have done mindfulness and if you let it it can help you. It is difficult to do mindfulness and we need to learn how to control it. I can get easily distracted doing mindfulness but if that happens try to get your attention back. Even if we want to do mindfulness it can be boring if you are not trying hard enough.
• In my opinion mindfulness is a great technique to rest and clear your mind. When I do mindfulness I feel calm and I can concentrate more in things. Even thought I can't concentrate this helps me become more calm and not think about anything. Mindfulness can help many people with their breathing and their thinking. I think many kids can accomplish their work if they start doing mindfulness. Many kids use technology which can affect them in concentrating. If we use mindfulness we could get better grades. Mindfulness can help many students concentrate.
• Mindfulness is a way to get back to the present and concentrate in it. Technology today keeps us wondering about the present and future. Mindfulness if done well can help you get back in the present and think of today.
• The world is changing all the time. More people own cells and more people are involved with technological objects. We humans I think are meant to do things we like. I think that if we are not doing we will start finding things to distraction on. Aldo there is a way to stay on task. I have come to the conclusion that mindfulness can really help us if we do it well . For example one day I was really stressed out in my house I did what Ms. Fajkus taught me and it really helped me. I think I will use mindfullness in the future.
• What I liked the most about ELE this year was MINDFULNESS, even though sometimes I acted like I didn't like it but actually I thought it was pretty relaxing. I think MINDFULNESS helped students who actually tried to do it. I think MINDFULNESS did help me in every classroom.
• Thanks miss fajkus for a great year. Thanks for giving us many tools for the future. I wish you the best in the coming year.

Awww, reading through these makes me miss those crazy kids. (Kind of.) Have a super summer!