At BodiMojo, we are inspired every day to create and engage our community of adolescents, healthcare professionals, teachers, partners and parents in forwarding the well-being of our youth through mindfulness, compassion and self-care.
Despite current arguments describing mindfulness in schools as a passing fad, overwhelming evidence demonstrates that teens and adolescents enjoy much happier, more fulfilled and more productive lives when taking part in mindfulness based practices and programs. It’s our job at BodiMojo to continue to offer the tools, technologies and resources to our community in order to continue the conversation around mindfulness in classrooms. Together as a community, we can help K-12 students learn the life-long skills they need to enjoy life in today’s fast paced society and give teachers the tools to maintain a happy, cohesive classroom.
What can you do as a parent, healthcare professional or teacher to continue the mindfulness conversation and programming in schools?
Talk about the positive outcomes of mindfulness based programs on children and teachers, and the evidence supporting those claims with your community. We’re happy to offer you some discussion topics and related research to get you started:
Discussion Topic #1: Practicing mindfulness helps teachers become better teachers.
Mindfulness-based teacher training initiatives increase teachers’ sense of well-being and teaching self-efficacy, as well as their abilities to manage classroom behavior and establish and maintain supportive relationships with students.
- Take a look at this study from 2012 illustrating the positive outcomes of three mindfulness-based teacher training initiatives.
Discussion Topic #2: Practicing mindfulness improves students’ ability to learn.
Mindfulness education enhances K-12 students’ working memory, attention, academic skills, social skills, emotional regulation, and self-esteem, as well as self-reported improvements in mood and decreases in anxiety, stress, and fatigue.
- The same 2012 study cites 14 different studies that support this claim.
- Greater Good, the University of California Berkeley’s online publication, explores four different studies supporting this claim.
To stay up to speed with mindfulness in classrooms, we suggest checking in frequently with the websites listed on our resources tab. A few popular sites are listed below:
- Center for Investigating Healthy Minds
- Calm Classroom
- The Compassionate Mind Foundation
- American Psychological Association: Stress in America Survey (2014)
Did we miss a study or topic that you would like us to list? Feel free to let us know in the comments! We always love to hear your feedback.
Photo Credit: © Dreamstime 2015
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