Mindfulness: Helping Teachers and Students Build a Calm, Compassionate Classroom

Our children and teens are in need of help. Students are stressed, overworked and exhausted. They have hectic schedules filled with every extracurricular activity possible, state and federal testing requirements that keep changing year to year, and an increasing pressure to achieve. Much of that tension is coming out in negative ways, such as bullying, increased ADHD diagnoses, depression, etc. Current school-wide programs do not seem to be doing enough to improve the well-being of our students and, in turn, provide a safe learning space for everyone. What can be done to supplement these programs to help achieve these goals? Our children are in need of some sort of intervention and mindfulness in the classroom is a perfect place to start. Mindfulness is a way of paying attention. It has been described as “the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally to the unfolding of experiences moment by moment” (Hooker and Fodor, 2008). Mindfulness has been researched and is proven to be effective with adults in reducing stress and tension. The research on children is still in its infancy, but many studies have already shown that mindfulness can help reduce stress and tension in students also. My paper will review research that has been done on the practice of mindfulness with students and argue that it is a beneficial tool that should be used in classrooms, in addition to current school-wide behavior programs that may be in place, to help students manage the daily stressors they face, thereby creating a more compassionate and calm classroom, which in turn leads to a better environment for learning.