school students

How mindfulness practices are changing an inner-city school

Donna St. George, The Washington Post: At many schools, the third-grader would have landed in the principal’s office.

But in a hardscrabble neighborhood in West Baltimore, the boy who tussled with a classmate one recent morning instead found his way to a quiet room that smelled of lemongrass, where he could breathe and meditate.

The focus at Robert W. Coleman Elementary is not on punishment but on mindfulness — a mantra of daily life at an unusual urban school that has moved away from detention and suspension to something …

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Replacing detention with meditation

James Gaines, Upworthy: Imagine you’re working at a school and one of the kids is starting to act up. What do you do?

Traditionally, the answer would be to give the unruly kid detention or suspension.

But in my memory, detention tended to involve staring at walls, bored out of my mind, trying to either surreptitiously talk to the kids around me without getting caught or trying to read a book. If it was designed to make me think about my actions, it didn’t really work. It just made everything feel stupid and unfair.

But …

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Bringing calm to the classroom

Timothy Iverson, Everyday Mindfulness: I sit on my pillow in a quiet space, surrounded by sympathetic adults. Under me, the cool hardwood floors. Nearby, the tick of a clock. The instructor leads us gently through a tour of our minds, sharing insights to transform our lives. I have not known peace like this for decades. I am learning the practice of mindfulness.

Fast-forward 15 years to a busy middle- school. I step into the hallway between classes and hear a dull roar that I’ve heard before. Turning a corner, I see students shouting and gathering around two girls …

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Meditation matters for special education students

wildmind meditation news

Jeremy Loudenback, Chronicle of Social Change: While meditation has expanded in recent years from a zen-seeker’s path to higher consciousness to a best practice for hard-charging CEOs, it’s now gaining a foothold at a school in Southern California serving students with serious emotional and behavioral issues.

Administrators at the Five Acres School in Altadena, Calif., are testing whether meditation and mindfulness can help students succeed in the classroom. A new mindfulness program implemented there in two semesters over the past year has helped pupils stay in the classroom and minimize emotional outbursts that can derail the learning process, according …

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How mindfulness is so good at connecting well-being to academic achievement in class

wildmind meditation newsThe Mindfulness Pedagogy: There is a rhythm to all complex behaviour. When energy is expended it must be restored (stay with me here). The heart beats and rests, we breathe in and out, we work and rest (please stay with me). Learning is no exception – it is very fatiguing.

It requires tension and the right degree of anxiety to go out and meet the challenge, to adapt, and to accommodate. No muscle in the body can function for more than a few seconds without rest. The secret of any continuous endeavour, any task requiring effort and perseverance, like learning is the secret of rhythmic …

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Why meditation should be implemented in schools

wildmind meditation newsAsha, Bold Sky: The health benefits of meditation are numerous and we all are aware of it. But, have you ever thought about the importance of implementing mediation in schools?

Many studies prove that children who practice meditation are above the average quotient for behavior, emotion and intelligence. Meditation allows them to have a little time to relax and set themselves free of all sorts of tension and stress.

Training and consistency are the important factors required to make mediation in schools a successful effort. Studies show that students who practice meditation in schools have low levels of stress hormone called cortisol, when …

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Meditation being used at Perth school and businesses to target stress

wildmind meditation newsClaire Moodie, ABC News (AU): Teenagers are used to being told that they have to study hard to get ahead.

But one West Australian girls’ school is advocating another, less conventional route to success.

As well as stimulating the mind, Santa Maria College, on the banks of Perth’s Swan River, is teaching the importance of stilling the mind.

The school has been incorporating meditation into the timetable over the past 18 months to try to reduce exam stress and safeguard students’ mental health.

Senior school head Carol Bell said the regular meditation sessions aimed to give the girls the inner resources to cope with …

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Eight tips for teaching mindfulness in high school

wildmind meditation newsPatrick Cook-Deegan, Mindful.org: When I walked in to teach my first mindfulness class at a charter high school in Oakland, no one seemed interested. One student was sleeping in his chair; a few kids were messing around in the classroom.

Everyone looked at me like I was in the wrong place. I was nervous and not really sure what I would do. So I just started talking about stress. I asked students if they ever felt stressed, what they do when they are stressed, and asked each of them to share an experience …

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Meditation should be taught in school

Instruction in the art of mindfulness is emerging in grade schools around the country to help children relax, focus, and help others. But it still has a long way to go to become part of the curriculum nationwide.

On a recent Thursday just after lunch, 20 first-graders gathered in a circle on the carpeted floor of their public school classroom in Santa Fe. Some sat cross-legged and others on their knees, each with one hand clasped in front of them or resting on their stomachs. Their teacher, Katie Norton …

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Why does the Government want to teach mindfulness in schools?

Judith Woods, The Telegraph: Mindfulness. If you’re not yet au fait with the concept, it might be a good idea to familiarise yourself with it now, because you’ll be hearing a lot more about it; from business leaders, academics, politicians and – of course – educationalists.

As Schools Minister David Laws this week told MPs: “We are very interested in promoting this [idea] and we certainly think that it is an area that merits consideration based on the evidence we’ve seen to date.
“My colleague [education minister] Liz …

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