What staff have to say about mindfulness with wise minds:
““I have become good at finding a few minutes here and there throughout my day to close my eyes, focus on my breath and let go of my attachment to my thoughts. As a result I’ve been more patient with myself and with others, even during some pretty stressful times that might have thrown me into anxiety at other times. This is rewarding but what I really appreciated this week was the ripple effect it had on other people in my life and the way we interact with one another. When I was more mindful and aware of my intent, the people around me reflected that in our interactions.””
“Incorporating Mindfulness into my flex curriculum has absolutely improved my year. Mindfulness provides me with a meaningful way to use the flex time to help students. I think this is a great opportunity to work on stress management, and develop better relationships with kids around their non-academic areas.”
“I came away from the workshop feeling more mindful and relaxed! The information was interesting and relevant to my work. Erica has integrated her work experience with her reading of current research to find a great balance in her presentation. Overall, a fun, informative, and useful presentation!
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Erica’s workshop on mindfulness is highly informative and engaging! Erica incorporates great use of mindfulness practices into her presentation which makes it easy to see how one can easily implement mindfulness into one’s personal daily practice/and or classroom with students. I found the parts of her presentation about the connection between neuroscience and mindfulness to be particularly captivating. I left her workshop wanting to know more and thinking of ways that I could immediately incorporate more mindfulness into my work with students.”
““The exercises were well implemented, the presentation was well-timed, the presentation was very interesting.”
”I really enjoyed the instruction and demonstration of practices.”
”Excellent scaffolding of the practice. Great use of science vs. practice.””
“I really appreciated the mindfulness morning meeting. This is a practice that resonates heavily with the work we do as teachers.”
What students have to say about mindfulness with wise minds:
What the research says:
Research in this burgeoning field is rapidly expanding, and Oxford University is undertaking a large scale longitudinal study to assess the impact of mindfulness in the classroom. In the meantime, many promising smaller scale studies suggest positive impacts of mindfulness on student and teacher wellbeing, and can be quickly reviewed in Emily Campbell's Mindfulness in Education Research Highlights and Kim Rempel's Mindfulness for Children and Youth: A Review of the Literature with an Argument for School-Based Implementation.
Highlights include:
ADolescents
reduced rates of absenteeism, rule infractions, and suspensions (Barnes, Bauza, & Treiber, 2003)
decreased blood pressure (Barnes, Treiber, & Davis, 2001; Gregoski et al, 2010).
positive impact on problematic responses to stress (Mendelson, et al, 2010).
(LD participants) demonstrated decreased state and trait anxiety, enhanced social skills, and improved academic performance (Beauchemin, Hutchins, & Patterson, 2008)
(Psychiatric facility outpatient adolescents) reduced symptoms of anxiety, depression, and somatic distress, and increased self-esteem and sleep quality (Biegel, Brown, Shapiro, Sherbert, 2009)
reductions in depression (Bluth et al, 2015; Raes et al, 2014).
increases in optimism and teacher-rated classroom social competent behaviors (Schonert-Reichl & Lawlor, 2010)
fewer attention problems and reduction in anxiety symptoms and behavior problems (Semple, et al, 2010)
elementary
Children who were less well regulated showed greater improvement in executive function (EF) (Flook et al, 2010)
improved focus and attention (Napoli, Krech, & Holley, 2005)
improved in their cognitive control and stress physiology, reported greater empathy, perspective-taking, emotional control, optimism, school self-concept, and mindfulness, showed greater and stronger peer relationships. (Schonert-Reichl et al, 2015).
early elementary
(Kindergarten) greater improvements in social competence and earned higher report card grades in domains of learning, health, and social-emotional development, whereas the control group exhibited more selfish behavior over time (Flook et al, 2015)
(Preschool) improved self-regulation. (Razza, Bergen-Cico, & Raymond, 2013)
teachers
significant reductions in psychological symptoms and burnout (Flook et al, 2013; Jennings et al, 2013; Roeser et al, 2013).
increases in self-compassion (Flook et al, 2013; Frank et al, 2015; Roeser et al, 2013)
significant gains in self-regulation (Frank et al, 2015)
increase in focused attention and working memory capacity (Roeser et al, 2013).
decreases in the students’ challenging behaviors and increases in their compliance with teacher requests began during mindfulness training for the teachers and continued to change following the training (Singh et al, 2013)
For full bibliography, see:
Campbell, E. (2014). Mindfulness in Education Research Highlights. Greater Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life. Retrieved from: http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/mindfulness_in_education_research_highlights