Mindfulness

  • Why English Teaching Still Matters: Insights from the 2025 NATE Conference

    What does it mean to teach English with creativity, care, and courage in 2025? At this year’s NATE (National Association for the Teaching of English) conference, I joined a passionate group of teachers, academics, publishers, and educational innovators, some seasoned, others just starting out, to explore that very question. In this new blog post, I reflect on five powerful lessons from a day filled with poetic metaphors, Generation Alpha pedagogy, and mindful creative writing. From Clare Lawrence’s unforgettable lentil metaphor, to conversations about inclusive teaching for a post-2010 cohort, to the joyful solidarity of English educators nationwide: this was a conference where research met emotion, and practice met possibility. I also had the pleasure of leading a mindful creative writing workshop, inspired by my book The Mindful Creative Writing Teacher (Gilbert, 2025), and saw first-hand how freeing and transformative creative writing can be when rooted in reflection rather than performance. If you care about teaching English in ways that centre imagination, identity, and student voice, and want to explore this further, take a look at our MA in Creative Writing and Education at Goldsmiths. 🔗 MA info: https://www.gold.ac.uk/pg/ma-creative-writing-education/ #MindfulWriting #NATE2025 #CreativePedagogy #EnglishTeachers #TeacherCommunity #FrancisGilbert #MindfulCreativeWritingTeacher

  • Five things I’ve learnt training to be a mindfulness teacher

    Earlier this year, I completed the Breathworks mindfulness teacher training—a rigorous and transformative journey rooted in compassion, embodiment, and lived experience. As part of the training, I led the Mindfulness for Stress course at Goldsmiths. It taught me something simple but profound: mindfulness isn’t something you explain. It’s something you do—together. The course invites people into a shared practice. Week by week, breath by breath, we learn not to escape stress but to meet it differently—with gentleness, attention, and care. I’ve seen how powerful it is when people turn toward themselves with kindness, not judgement. That shift—toward noticing, softening, and storytelling—transforms more than you might expect. Mindfulness isn’t about fixing or improving who you are. It’s about showing up for your experience, fully and kindly. This work has changed me. It’s helped me listen to my body, soften my inner voice, and meet difficulty with presence instead of resistance. If you’re curious about mindfulness, teaching it, or simply beginning to practise, I’d love to connect. Feel free to reach out—or just pause for a breath, right here. #Mindfulness #Breathworks #MindfulTeaching #Wellbeing #Embodiment #Compassion #FrancisGilbert #Goldsmiths #MindfulLiving

  • Four lessons I learnt from the late Canon Christopher Smith

    A short article on the lessons I learnt from my late godfather, Christopher Smith.

  • a classroom

    Teaching Mindfulness in an Unmindful System

    A case study of a mindfulness teacher, Beth, and her experiences of teaching mindfulness to 11- to 16-year-olds in several English schools

  • Mindfulness and Creative Writing

    How mindfulness can be used by creative writers to develop their practice and pedagogy

  • representation of mindfulness (that looks suspiciously like it came from the mind of AI)

    Mindfulness and English Teaching

    Is English a mindful subject? How can mindfulness help English teachers teach their subject? I argue that awareness of the present moment can help learners appreciate the qualities of literature.