November 18, 2022 – On a recent Thursday afternoon, Connie Clotworthy greets a room full of energetic fourth graders at Valor Academy Elementary School in Arleta, California, about 20 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles.
She begins by leading them in a mindfulness exercise, reminding the 19 students that they have to give their minds a break “on purpose.” She says in a soft voice, “We’re going to close our eyes for 30 seconds.” She tells them to breathe in and out. nothing else. They all do.
After 30 seconds, I ask: “Who was able to just inhale and exhale? Who had a million more ideas?” This is a laugh and some hands raised, in response to the question of success and a little about “a million more ideas.”
Next, Clotworthy brings out her teaching assistants: a stuffed bulldog named Billy and a stuffed owl named Hoots.
She talks about “big emotions”. Holding Billy, she says, “When you get angry, I let our dog start barking and biting,” as she waves the stuffed dog. “And how do we calm our dog down? Breath. Who helps? Hots.”
But the Hoots can only help after Billy calms down, as she reminds them. “Do you think the Hoots would come out if Billy was barking and screaming?” Kids know the answer to that, shaking their heads “No” in unison.
The session ends with a 5-minute meditation and “body scanning,” a guided exercise in noticing body sensations without judgment, done with eyes closed.
Clotworthy is the CEO and founder of Worthy Beyond Purpose, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that launched in 2018. She leads the 30-Minute Meditation and Meditation Program at Valor Elementary Academy and at five other area schools.
After the session, she proudly says, the kids know that Bailey represents the amygdala, the brain region associated with emotional processing, and Hoots is the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s control center responsible for regulating emotions.
Clotworthy and other practitioners like her are increasingly taking classes to use mindfulness and meditation to try to help alleviate widespread mental health problems from The pandemic, isolation, school closures, school shootings, and other issues afflict students of all ages constantly. Study after study found many negative mental health effects of COVID-19 safety measures for children and adolescents.
While the terms “mindfulness” and “meditation” are often interchanged, experts say mindfulness is the quality of “being in the present moment, without judgment,” while meditation describes a more formal practice of calming the body and mind.
Mindfulness is not religious, Clotworthy says, but a way to “stay in the present.” The word, quite simply, “just means paying attention. We teach kids to be in the present.”
Besides helping students deal with stressors, it can be beneficial to society, as promised by the Dalai Lama in his famous quote: “If every eight-year-old learned meditation, we would eliminate violence from the world within a generation.”
school vigilance programmes
Some school vigilance programs, like Clotworthy’s, are small nonprofit efforts. Others benefit from existing national trade programmes.
For example, Headspace, the mindfulness and meditation app, recently partnered with Vivi, a K-12 classroom communication platform.The tenth mattress. Teachers can launch Headspace content through Vivi, says Simon Holland, co-founder of Vivi, to access mindfulness and meditation content designed for kids and teens.
Rosamaria Segura is director of Insight LA’s Insight in Action program, which provides mindfulness and meditation practices in areas you otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford. The program is offered to students in three schools and to teachers and parents in six other schools.
“We’re giving it away for free,” she says. Sometimes it’s a 6-week program, other times a year. Funded by community members with donations.
The students served are “new arrivals, they speak Spanish,” says Segura, and “there is a lot of anxiety and trauma from their trip. We train the students to stay in the present,” with mindfulness exercises.
“Last year, we had a mindfulness garden, outdoors, with elementary students,” she says. The students would enter the park and choose a poster that matched their mood. At first, most of them chose labels that reflected anxiety or anxiety. “At the end of the session, the posters would go into a cheerful and relaxed state. It was incredibly exciting to see.”
What the research suggests
Mediation and mindfulness in adults has long had a list of well-known benefits, such as reducing stress and improving mood. newly, A well-publicized study I found a program called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction that rivals prescription medications in how well it treats anxiety disorders.
Recent research has also found benefits for children and teens, although some experts argue that the enthusiasm outweighs the evidence and that studies need to be more scientific.
Among the recent studies:
- It found eight teachers who led 124 elementary school and low-income preschool students in mindfulness practices for 10-15 minutes per day (3 or more days per week for 6 weeks) students Quieter and more relaxed at the end of the programme.
- In an analysis of mindfulness programs for children and adolescents, researchers claimed that most assessments were not scientific enough, lacking randomization or control groups. in reconsidering From 33 studies and nearly 3,700 children and adolescents, researchers found positive effects of mindfulness practice, attention, depression, anxiety, stress, and negative behaviors, but the effects were small. Positive effects on mindfulness, depression, anxiety, and stress were limited when researchers only looked at studies with active control groups.
Does he work at school?
Some findings from school programs are anecdotal, and some are survey-based.
At Valor Academy Elementary, a public charter school in the LA Unified School District, the differences in behavior are notable, says Talar Samuelian, assistant director of culture. She launched the program there in late 2021 with her third and fourth graders, worried about their behavior after the pandemic brought remote learning.
“We’ve had a lot of students with behavioral challenges and problems with self-regulation,” she Says. The third graders missed it all [in-person] First and second grade. There was vile behavior among the girls, and the boys were very indebted in the yards. They missed [developing] Lots of playing skills.”
She says that this year the students are much calmer. Among the benefits, she believes, is that it “helps increase the sense of belonging”.
One thing surprised Samuelan. I assumed some third and fourth graders would be “too cool” to share and backtrack. “Nobody did,” she says. “They were all dumbfounded; all in it.”
At the end of the 2021-2022 school year, Clotworthy surveyed 400 students who participated in her program at four schools. My findings: “91% of the students could correctly identify and describe the functions of the amygdala and prefrontal cortex,” up from 10% before the sessions began.
“We start with these teachings so kids know where their emotions live, how to identify them, and how to stay ahead of their outbursts,” she says.
The vast majority of children — 88% — say they have new ways of dealing with these big emotions, such as breathing techniques. And 85% say they know how to listen to the body and feel the emotion coming before it erupts. Nearly 60% told Clotworthy that they had fewer problems since her classes began. Teachers tell her that children have a longer attention span in the classroom and greater emotional maturity.
Headspace’s own research found that 30 days of Headspace led to a 32% reduction in stress, while 8 weeks of use led to a 19% reduction in anxiety symptoms and a 14% improvement in focus.
Indira Esparza Galliana teaches at the Prius School on the campus of the University of California, San Diego. The charter middle and high school is for low-income students striving to be the first in their family to graduate from college. The daughter of immigrants graduated from school, returned to teach there, and now serves as a member of the board of Vivi Educator, an unpaid position, to launch the VIvi Partnership.
Galeana has tested the Vivi-Headspace in one of its 12 advanced positionsThe tenth First-class government classes and a ninth-grade ethnic studies class. She says the feedback has been positive. Students embrace learning to meditate; One says it was comforting and another says it made him think a lot. “I think it just goes to show that they have a lot on their minds at the moment.”
Teacher’s point of view
“Mindfulness is a natural human condition,” says Patricia (Tish) Jennings, PhD, professor of education at the University of Virginia. “Young children tend to be very alert,” and are naturally able to focus on the present moment.
Jennings is internationally recognized as a leader in mindfulness in education and has taught mindful awareness practices to children and adults for more than 40 years.
“I started doing this with the kids in my Montessori class in 1981,” she says. At the time,” I didn’t call it mindfulness or meditation. I would say, “We’re learning to calm down, to focus our attention.”
Basically, Jennings says, what is known is that practice really helps kids self-regulate. “It helps them pay attention, it helps them calm down. Self-awareness and self-management are really important.”
She led a team that developed a mindfulness-based professional development program to improve teacher well-being and student engagement, and has written or edited books on mindfulness in schools.
Students take note
As the Mindfulness and Meditation session at Valor Academy concluded, Clotworthy asked the students for some ideas about mindfulness and meditation, including how it helps them.
“I loved meditating because my body felt calm when meditating,” says Kaylee Garcia, 9, with dark brown eyes and hair, who listened intently during the session and participated fully. She compares it to a break.
Jaden Martinez, also 9, says he sees mindfulness a bit like subtraction. When you just breathe while mindful, he says, it can help you get rid of all those random thoughts—put them out, basically—and just be in the moment.
Clotworthy says some students say they taught the techniques to their parents.
At Valor Elementary School, the mindfulness lesson is on Thursdays; One girl offered, “I wake up and realize it’s Mindfulness Day and I’m excited to come to school.”
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