The Benefits of Small Class Sizes

Since September of 2005, Dr. Hind Louali has led Ecole Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a school in Austin, Texas. Combining a multidisciplinary approach to learning and small class sizes, Dr. Hind Louali teaches students about French culture. Small class sizes provide many benefits for teachers and students.

Students are motivated to learn because they know that their opinions will be acknowledged and built upon. Conversely, if they are not paying attention, they cannot rely on large class sizes to shield this fact from their instructor and peers. When they share insight on the material, they will receive more immediate and detailed feedback from their peers and instructor than students in a large class.

Instructors benefit from small class sizes because they can tailor their coursework to their students. When the class is 20 students or less, they can adjust the course to suit their learning styles and interests. They can analyze their students’ assignments more thoroughly to determine what changes to make and how help each student succeed.

What Is Mindfulness Training?

As the founder of Ecole Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Dr. Hind Louali operates a French school in Austin, Texas. Outside of work, Dr. Hind Louali is interested in mindfulness training, a type of meditation that grants many benefits for practitioners.

Although mindfulness training can take many forms, each one aims to induce relaxation in the practitioner. This occurs by paying close attention to the sensations, thoughts, and feelings experienced during your chosen mindfulness exercise. During structured mindfulness exercises, you focus on each part of your body and its associated sensations and emotions logically. During unstructured exercises, you focus on your breathing, with your eyes closed, for any amount of time you wish.

Mindfulness exercises produce benefits over extended periods of time, of at least six months. Mindfulness can help people manage the symptoms of their physical and mental health problems. It helps reduce the occurrence and severity of anxiety or depression. Mindfulness also produces physical benefits, like heightened attention and improved sleep quality.

Three Everyday Mindfulness Exercises

Texas resident Dr. Hind Louali currently runs Ecole Jean-Jacques Rousseau, or the French School of Austin. She founded the institution in 2005, and uses her medical and child psychology background to inform administration and curricula. Alongside childhood education, Dr. Hind Louali is interested in mindfulness as a tool for personal development.

Mindfulness meditation is a self-awareness practice, in which a person focuses on their immediate experiences without judgement. As with other forms of meditation, it can help reduce stress, relax the body, and grow self-compassion. However, mindfulness does not have to be limited to remaining still with one’s thoughts; you can incorporate it into everyday activities, until it becomes second nature.

Mindful breathing: the simplest way to start cultivating mindfulness is to learn to focus on breathing. Instead of trying to clear the mind in a meditative session, it helps to have something to divert attention to. In this case, it can be the sensation of air going into and out of the nose, the expansion of the chest and belly, and the pause between breaths. It can often be surprising to see how much is going on in a simple breath, so becoming aware of that not only slows a racing mind down, but helps to grow an appreciation of the other things the body is doing.

Mindful eating: Since mindfulness engages the senses, shifting one’s focus to physical sensations works well with food. For instance, the colors of a piece of fruit or a bowl of pasta, its weight in the hand, or against the tongue, the resistance in chewing, the changes in taste and softness, and smells, textures, and temperature all create a buffet of micro-experiences for the mind to notice.

Mindful walks: Once you have practiced with the breath and senses in more controlled environments, you can expand your habit to the world at large. A mindful walk in a park or down a busy street gives you chances to hone in on specific sights and sounds. You can teach yourself to respond to stimuli with more self-awareness, and see how your skill has grown.

Understanding Language Immersion

A board member of Think Bilingual, Dr. Hind Louali supports multiculturalism and access to resources that promote bilingual education. Dr. Hind Louali is also the founder of the French School of Austin: Ecole Jean-Jacques Rousseau, an independent private school in Texas that fosters English- and French-language proficiency through a dual-language immersion program.

Language immersion is a way for people to learn foreign languages by incorporating lessons about the culture of the country and using its native dialogue as an instructional tool. Rather than reading from a textbook and memorizing individual words and phrases, it emphasizes conversing in and listening to the language. This facilitates active engagement with it by enabling people to practice using it in everyday scenarios and furthering understanding of cultural significances, which can help people adapt to the language faster and talk more fluently.

There are several types of language immersion programs, including total immersion. In these settings, students speak in the foreign language for the entire duration of the class. There are also partial immersion programs, which focus on teaching about the culture of the country and spend only half of class time on how to speak the language.