Mindfulness in the Classroom

Mindfulness is paying attention to your life, here and now, with kindness and curiosity. At my school, children have two 10-minute sessions of mindfulness a day. The practice of mindfulness in our classrooms teaches students how to pay attention and become more aware of their own thinking. This way of paying attention enhances both academic and social-emotional learning. 

In studying second and third graders who did mindfulness practices for 30 minutes twice a week for 8 weeks, Lisa Flook, Ph.D. and her colleagues at the Mindfulness Awareness Research Center at UCLA documented that children who began the study with poor executive function had gains in behavioral regulation, meta-cognition, and overall global executive control.