Mindfulness in Schools and Education with Alan Brown
Alan Brown is a Dean at Grace Church School in New York City, where he also leads the 9th-12th grade mindfulness program as well as the parent mindfulness program.  Alan has taught in both public and private settings as a humanities instructor, and has worked with many other schools andp districts as a trainer for GLSEN (the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network).  In addition to his academic degrees in the humanities from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Chicago and a Fulbright Fellowship to Italy, Alan holds additional certifications in teaching mindfulness, positive psychology, and yoga. He works with schools as well as with families to help bring mindfulness into the lives of youth and their caregivers.

What follows is a summarized transcript. Listen to the audio to get the full conversation.

Interview with Alan Brown
How did you get started with a meditation practice (Mindfulness Schools recommended I talk with you)

Alan got started by way of his Yoga practice and Yoga teacher training, in which he started to get more familiar with meditation through a sitting component. He got more familiar then with the contemplative practice.

At the time he was working in high schools, he was then teaching in a particular high-anxiety, high stress high achieving school population. He realized this makes so much sense, both in terms of how he was feeling, he found himself craving a lot more stillness. And of course with the kids spinning their wheels and going nuts and feeling this would be helpful practice for them too.

It wasn't really until he wanted to share this practice with his students that he felt he had to learn to deepen his own practice first.

Just out of curiosity, what type of yoga were you practicing?

Vinyasa Yoga (also called flow or "breath-synchronized movement")

So you were already doing an already more deep type of yoga practice then say power yoga. 

Yes, in his practice although 100% movement based, it was already contemplative, and exploring the inner landscape.

 Were there aha moments, or particular experiences that you had that convinced you what direction to go next with this?

In terms of what he's doing now, for Alan who loves teaching. With mindful schools he did their yearlong training program. And their yearlong program really emphasizes the teacher's personal practice as an intervention in the school.

The notion that your presence, your ability to be non-reactive, to find calm, and show up in that way for your colleagues, peers, the people you work with, talking to, is already something of importance already. That was huge for Alan.

So his first Aha moment in his first retreat, they weren't allowed to talk about the kids. When they came out of silence. The premise was, let's just talk about our personal practice. As caregivers and educators, they're really in a rush to talk about how this will work in a classroom, or how you can do this with other people. You can't poor from an empty cup. 

That was a big moment for him, and continues to resonate as his sort of philosophical alignment to what he's doing. You bring a calm and steady presence first. Then I can also share our practice with you. But that comes from a place of trying to create a certain energy in my own person, in the room, and work from there.  

Yes, like Ghandi said, you have to "Be that change" first if you want to affect others . 
So then when you got to this meditation practice, how did you end up utilizing "Mindful Schools"?

His interest at the time was with stress specifically. Working with a population with 11-12th graders that he teaches and works with, getting ready to go to college. All  this cultural baggage associated with this stage, the amount of uncertainty and anxiety. The heaviness of judgement and expectation that they're feeling.