"When I first started doing it nine years ago, there were a handful of people figuring out how to take mindfulness practices and integrate them into school settings," said Daniel Rechtschaffen, a therapist, educator and author of The Way of Mindful Education: Cultivating Well-Being in Teachers and Students.
Carin Winter is the founder and CEO of Mission Be, Mindful Education and as of April 2016 has successfully brought mindfulness into over 42 schools from Big Sur, California to Harlem, New York- scaling their impact to over 32,000 students in the first two years.
In a British Columbia study, published last year in the Mindfulness Journal, Dr. Kimberly Schonert-Reichl found that middle schoolers exposed to a range of mindful education exercises -- breathing, attention, emotional control and self acknowledgment -- showed significant improvements in attention, concentration, empathy and compassion.
In a British Columbia study, published last year in the Mindfulness Journal, Dr. Kimberly Schonert-Reichl found that middle schoolers exposed to a range of mindful education exercises -- breathing, attention, emotional control and self acknowledgment -- showed significant improvements in attention, concentration, empathy, and compassion.
"They struggled with, 'Is it O.K. to go there?' " Although mindful education may seem like a New Yorker caricature of West Coast life, the school district with possibly the best experience has been Lancaster, Pa., where mindfulness is taught in 25 classes a week at eight schools.
To learn more about Mission Be's Mindful Education programs in schools, parent workshops and teacher trainings, go to our website at www.missionbe.org.org
It's often conducted by Diana Winston, one of the nation's best-known teachers of mindfulness meditation and director of mindfulness education at UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center (www.marc.ucla.edu).
The government also has been mindful of education, subsidizing university education in the West for thousands of youths on the condition that they return for at least five years to work at home.
Mindful that improving education ranks atop most voters' wish lists, the four leading contenders for the presidency have each weighed in with their ideas, enough so that it is possible to compare how teachers and students might fare under their administrations.
At the same time, we must be mindful that parental education is only one of many facets of family socio-economic background that influence both the development of Cognitive Skills and the capacity of the education system to reduce those early differences.
She is certified in EMDR, a trauma treatment, as well as a national speaker and expert in special education, mindful awareness, LGBT+ youth, self-compassion, compassion, empathy, self-empathy, assessment, and gifted individuals.
