Many of the ways they incorporated mindful breathing into their lives was nothing discussed in class but was based on their own recognition that they now had tools to help them in times of stress or trouble. I had students talk about how they used their breathing techniques to help calm them before a test, to get ready for a sports competition, to control their anger at home, and even to help them sleep. To my surprise, the impact of MindUP far surpassed the daily benefits I was already seeing. While I had previously witnessed the greater level of calm in the room, had felt community flourish in the classroom, and had seen the overwhelmingly responsive approach these kids had to taking a few quiet moments a day to be together and breathe, really studying the impact of mindfulness on my classroom allowed me to have deep, meaningful conversations with my students.Ībove all, I wanted to know how they perceived MindUP, and I wanted to have a better understanding of how they used MindUP strategies. I was able to fully experience the power of MindUP when I completed my masters’ thesis on the impact of mindfulness on focus and attention in elementary students. Using MindUP in the classroom, it doesn’t take long to see the benefits first hand. In addition, teachers who used MindUP felt better about teaching as a profession and their jobs.
Children who participated in MindUP exhibited improved optimism and self-confidence, learned to focus their attention, developed a more positive outlook on school, and decreased levels of aggression and anti-social behaviour. Meant to be integrated into classroom life, research has shown that the MindUP program has had an integral part in developing the overall social and emotional competencies of children. The MindUP program is a comprehensive, evidence-based curriculum structured around 15 lessons that focus the mind, sharpen the senses, and introduce concepts such as perspective taking, choosing optimism, expressing gratitude, and performing acts of kindness. Armed with my chime, and my MindUP manual, I dove into the world of MindUP and never looked back. Knowing little about mindfulness education, I wondered what the impact of taking a few moments a day could have on a child’s social, emotional, and academic well-being. Introduce a bigger, stronger, heavier, faster player into the mix, and suddenly we’re all a lot more afraid of being injured.When I was asked to pilot the MindUP program four years ago, I did so with some reservation. That means our bodies are being pushed to the limit. Every time we go out on the court to play, we are giving it our all. When males play on girls’ teams, girls can get seriously hurt. We would end up with two boys’ teams: one of boys who call themselves boys, and one of boys who identify as girls but dominate and control the girls’ team. If boys get to play on girls’ teams, the team that I love so much would go away. Those are 100 opportunities that girls like me have lost out on – forever. In fact, when the West Virginia law was put on hold for a short time, middle-school girls alone were displaced over 100 times by a boy. Something like this has already happened across the country and even in West Virginia.
"If boys get to play on girls’ teams, the team that I love so much would go away," Taylor Allen says.
0 kommentar(er)
