Parents and teachers have been concerned with the increase of stress in their students’ lives. Leigh Ann Whittle of Edudemic visited Visitacion Valley Middle School to see their meditation program in action, and featured them in her post, An Effective Approach to Reduce Students’ Stress.
Whittle offers several meditation activities to try, as well as advice on how to implement a meditation program in your setting. Here are Edutopia’s four steps to implementing one:
- Identify Key Problems Determine what behavior problems need to be addressed by meditation – this could be truancy, academics, traumatic experiences, etc.
- Prepare for Implementation Inform yourself with relevant research to convince colleagues and parents of the benefits of a meditation program, and teach the faculty and students basic meditation techniques.
- Determine How Meditation Time Will Be Spent Meditation time is quite time, but not inactive time – encourage students to find what relaxation techniques work best for them, whether it’s reading, drawing, or something else.
- Adjust School Space and Schedule Accordingly Designate a specific space for meditation time, and adjust the school schedule to accommodate your new meditation program.
Meditation isn’t beneficial only to students – give these a try yourself (if you’re not using meditation techniques already), and share with your colleagues!
Image credit: http://tinyurl.com/p67xwe2, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0