As a 20-year secondary public school teacher and 15-year union leader, I found Inside Mindful Teaching deeply inspiring. Dr. Roberta Schnorr’s journey as an educator offered me a renewed sense of hope. In a world where it is easy to become distracted or disillusioned, this book became a light. Drawing on both her mindfulness practice and her experiences in education, Schnorr shows how essential it is to be intentional with our words and actions, and to pair that intentionality with compassion. With mindfulness, we can create teaching and learning environments where we can explore being reflective and vulnerable, and more willing to take risks without fear. The impact of this shift can be profound, not only for our students, but for ourselves. Nicole H., High School Educator (Goodreads, 12/1/25)
We all remember a teacher who really touched us by her or his way of being. Most teachers share the mantra: it is ok to make mistakes, you learn from it. Then you meet a teacher who shares her or his mistakes.
When I read this book for the first time I was deeply touched how Roberta shares her message by sharing her learning steps. In a one-to-one meeting with her students Damien, Misha and Keira. The teaching and the learning is in the day-to-day practice.
This teacher does not just write about values such as vulnerability, authenticity and intention, she invites us into her mind, body, uncertainty, anxiety. To truly see that they are there – and in me – and to see there is a way out. Unskillfulness slowly becomes skilfulness.
I have to read it again and again because this lesson is so deep.
A tree must have solid and firm roots to withstand the storm. Roots are not just for solidity: they also extract nourishment and water from the soil. Roots know how to do that: sometimes searching wide, sometimes penetrating deep.
My deepest gratitude for this book is that it really shares the message: without a firm, stable, continuous personal mindfulness practice and a community to support each other the tree will bend in the wind and will fall. Stay with your practice. learn from your practice. We all accept that a language teacher can only teach language well if he or she has lived in the country of her language, because then he or she has rooted skills (the native speaker).
I see this book as an invitation: don’t run to transform your practice into a curriculum. Stay with yourself. Your home. Your roots. Your intention. And you will discover that your students will pick it up. Just as Roberta’s students are doing. See part four. Which is only possible because there is part one, two, and three. Just like the leaves of a tree are there because of the seeds, the roots, the trunk, the branches. Joost V. Secondary Teacher, Netherlands (2/1/26)
Inside Mindful Teaching by Roberta Schnorr has made me rethink my teaching. I’ve been a teacher for more than 25 years, in various capacities, and I’ve generally been successful at connecting with students and encouraging their learning, but in recent years I’ve been feeling some burnout and a lot of frustration with students whom I experience as difficult. Inside Mindful Teaching has given me hope that I can turn that around, by slowing down, being more attentive to my own feelings and needs, and therefore being able to make more intentional choices about how to show up in the classroom and in one-on-one interactions with students. The book is full of good ideas about how to be mindful when preparing for classes or meetings, when actually teaching or interacting with students, and when reflecting on successful or unsuccessful teaching experiences afterwards. I particularly appreciate the book’s suggestion to stay grounded in my highest and best aspiration as a teacher: what I most want to try to do for my students and for the world through my teaching. It’s the compass that offers me direction when times get tough. Schnorr’s honesty and vulnerability are key to the book’s usefulness for real teachers facing real challenges, and she enhances that usefulness by sharing not only her own ups and downs but also the mindfulness experiences of the teachers-in-training whom she mentored. This book is relevant for teachers at any level, teaching any subject, who want to be the best teachers they can be. -Patricia R. Associate Professor of English (1/5/26)
Roberta Schnorr’s Inside Mindful Teaching narrates an illuminating journey into the unfolding of her own mindfulness practices and their impact on her life as a teacher educator. She chronicles how mindfulness practices slowly began to creep into her teaching and consulting with students with disabilities. She describes how everything shifted as she set the intention of exploring mindful teaching in her graduate special education courses.
Schnorr’s writing is humble, insightful, and candid. Reading her words feels as if you have entered the author’s mind. As she is so present to her own emotions, thoughts and behaviors, her stories come to life on the page. Readers get a real feel for how she grew as a person and as an educator, and for how the students benefited from her newly founded wisdom.
As a former teacher educator, she shares how to translate her own experiences into practices for teachers and their students. She examines conditions that support mindful teaching, and explores the important roles of intention and reflection in this process. Using examples from personal interactions with students with disabilities and stories of mindful explorations in her courses; and offering graduate students’ reflections on their explorations of mindful teaching, Schnorr presents a complex and insightful portrayal of what one educator’s mindful teaching looks like. She acknowledges first hand the profound impact on her fledgling students as they also begin to teach mindfully. Schnorr’s stories and reflections contain many wise insights to guide us on the path of becoming more mindful in our lives and in our teaching. Barb B. Teacher Education Professor (1/22/26)
The author, Roberta Schnorr (RS), is an experienced teacher educator who got interested in applying the Buddhist practice of mindfulness to her teaching life. As a teacher educator myself for 25 years- not in the same field- and a college professor for longer, all I can say is wow. This book blew me away. I should make clear that I know little about Buddhism, but tons of what Schnorr says rang true to me.
Schnorr is remarkably honest about what was going on for her as a teacher educator on what I’ll call an emotional level- even if doing so does not portray her in her best light. That fact seems significant; over the course of my life as a professor, my own observation is that many, if not most, in higher ed in general (not just teacher education) do not see our work as affected by or even connected to our own emotional, affective states. It seems to me that most of us are overwhelmed with what we think of as practical matters, nuts and bolts such as managing our classes, advisees and committees and so on. Who has time to examine our own state of mind as we do the work? To advocate for this seems to be a luxury, not a necessity. But, according to Schnorr, when we teach mindfully, it makes all the difference in the world for our students.
Schnorr illustrates this in this book. Chapters 1 through 4 lay out several teaching experiences of the author herself. She noticed that at times, she knew she missed the mark and at other times she knew she’d done great work with her students. She wondered about this. When she wasn’t particularly successful, what was going on for her? In her non-teaching life, she was already learning about Buddhism, and she became convinced that mindfulness could help her. Her extremely clear beginning chapters set the reader up to grasp the rethinking and subsequent changes that Schnorr made in her teaching of teacher candidates.
Chapters 5 through 12 detail those efforts. In these latter chapters, Schnorr describes how she maintained written and spoken dialogs with each of them over a significant period of time. The excerpts of their written responses to her prompts lead the reader to conclude that the teacher candidates were able to immediately see the relevance of mindfulness to their work as teachers. Crucially, Schnorr’s’ approach made it possible for them to slow down, acknowledge and admit when they were frustrated or bored or angry with their own students or conditions or people in their schools. Once they could do that, they were able to imagine possible solutions and better deal with the situations in which they found themselves.
Especially powerful to me were Schnorr’s discussions about the notoriously awkward parts of preparing teachers. For a few examples, what is the role of “gatekeeping” doing for teacher education, and why does it exist? Is there something better? What should we do about the nice teacher candidate with the decent attitude- who can’t seem to actually do what’s required with her students? What about the shut down one who can’t think through a problem? Or the one who holds her students’ characteristics against them? Teacher educators meet these teacher candidates every day, but humane and helpful ways to guide them are remarkably difficult and time-consuming even to think about, let alone actually pull off. Teacher educators and candidates alike will resonate to Schnorr’s take on mindful teacher preparation and get tons of ideas from this book. It was a breath of fresh air for me. I highly recommend that you give it a read! Long Peng. Professor, Linguistics and TESOL Teacher Preparation (1/30/26)