Teaching children mindfulness : a journal article

Rome wasn’t built in a day: School Counsellors’ Perspectives of Teaching Children Mindfulness gives an authentic account of school counsellors’ journey teaching mindfulness to children for the first time.

I am very proud to finally share the efforts of many months of hard work, a couple of years in the making, and a combined team effort. Thanks to the persistence and kindness of Nicole Albrecht, our lead author, this published research can now contribute to the growing body of work in Mindfulness in Education.

Results

There were highlights and lowlights and as the title suggests embedding mindfulness within the fabric of the school doesn’t happen overnight – but is worth pursuing.

Four main themes were identified, however, ‘support’ was seen as a central theme throughout the interviews. Support from senior management within the school, as well as support and engagement from the class teachers, were seen as crucial to the successful implementation of the program in the long term. As facilitators, the counsellors’, also recognized their own engagement and the need to “live the program and apply it to myself”.

An important highlight from the literature review – of research on mindfulness in schools – is the consensus of teachers who teach mindfulness, of the need to have a mindfulness practice embedded into their own lives before teaching children – being a “mindful role model”. This was supported by the facilitators as they reflected on the benefits of more training before they started the program…because it simply isn’t possible to teach directly out of a book.

As for student engagement, they found that by the fourth lesson the students became more engaged and trusted the facilitators. We find that lesson three or four is also the opening point for children taking the Method Eline Snel programs. By lesson four the children are understanding what they are doing in the mindfulness classes. They are becoming more aware of their breath, their bodies, their inner feelings and moods, and they are more curious to explore these sensations. As we encourage an open curiosity with no judgements about the child’s experience, we find that they are by now more open to sharing their real experiences.

In the article, we also provide a brief explanation of the outcomes of the research into the student’s perceptions of receiving mindfulness for the first time. The full article was published by my co-authors. This research was conducted using similar methodologies based on an analysis of the student’s journals. Each student was permitted to journal for about 10 min or so after each lesson in whatever form they liked.

they needed the whole school community’s support to creat a mindful school culture and…learned that not only did they need support, but they also needed engagement…but acknowledged that “Rome wasn’t built in a day”.

The article and journal are also freely available at the links.