How the Iron Fist Brought Zen to My Classroom

It's time for testing in our state. We're trying to create these positive and zen environments for the students so as not to overly tax them in order to reduce stress. Students are given peppermint candies to have during the test. Some of us are using essential oil diffusers to wake up the mind with essential oils. I even have my Himilayan Salt Lamp going to help remove negative energies in the room. Sitting in here right now I have never felt so very zen.

Now... I teach Science for the first hour of the day. It's quite a bit of reading and the curriculum lesson itself, I thought, was a bit heavy for the students. So I wanted to do something different, especially since in Literacy they're all taking the Reading portion of the exams. I didn't want to burden and tax them with excessive reading and processing when I was about to ask them to do this on a state exam.

As I drove to school that morning wracking my brain for what I could do it hit me. No, literally... a fist of iron just cracked my skull. In theory, when Danny Rand does his "tai chi" he centers his body so that his chi is strong. Then he uses that chi's potential energy to energize his fist, which then produces kinetic energy and knocks out Luke Cage! Sure, there's magic, blah blah blah, but there it is!

So I had this whole explanation worked out. I had appropriate clips chosen, even showing him doing the whole "calm face" to summon his chi and the fist glow. It was so cool. So then I gave the kids a quick rundown of chakras and calming the body and how when our chakras are out of alignment it can cause problems in our body. So by meditating and doing tai chi, we can center ourselves, store our potential energy to then push out into the world.

I put on some Tibetan bowl music, we meditated with spines straightened to try to align out chakras. Then we all stood together and practiced tai chi! Ended with a little more meditation and then they left.

When I saw some of my students for testing an hour later, they said they still felt good. At the end of the test, there were only 10 minutes left in class and a few of them asked me to put the music back on. They were quiet, focused, etc. So lovely.

I know it all sounds crazy, but we're going to debrief tomorrow and it hopefully put them in a better frame of mind to be successful with their stressful forward exam. GO MARVEL!