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Mindfulness and Yoga in the Schools Chapter 3

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Mindfulness and Yoga in the Schools Chapter 3

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This chapter provides yoga and mindfulness techniques that support embodied self-regulation, or the ability to impact one's body when experiencing different situations.    The chapter reminds us of goals as education systems and how we can begin to hand those goals to the students as they are ultimately in charge of their learning.  It lists principals for growth and learning that support systemic goals, but through the growth of individual minds and bodies.

Again, this chapter connects to the first section of this course by providing a system of gaining self-regulation skills through the teaching of specific steps. The principals can guide both educators and students in forming habits of mind that will act or counteract experiences on the brain and nervous systems.

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Mindfulness and Yoga in Schools Chapter 2

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Mindfulness and Yoga in Schools Chapter 2

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This chapter includes methods for supporting children in becoming stewards of their learning through self-regulation and reflective engagement.  The author includes effective ways that schools can provide levels of support to engage children in self-regulation practices and the challenges of disengagement.  It lists ways educators can counteract these challenges through different tiers of support - from whole school down to an individual child.

The first section of this course taught us about challenges students face due to experiences, often difficult changes that become traumatic for all systems of the body. This chapter supports the outcomes of that trauma, as well as ways to support children as they work to regulate their bodies and minds.

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Mindfulness and Yoga in Schools Chapter 1

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Mindfulness and Yoga in Schools Chapter 1

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This chapter claims students are the architects of their own learning.  It includes research that shows through mindfulness and yoga practices, students gain more control of their mind and body and therefore, can better access the education that they are provided.
The first section of this course gave us the foundations of how the brain works in tandem with the nervous system and how those systems can change through experiences.  This chapter and the first section of the course connect through recognizing that if educators invite children into space to practice mindfulness and yoga, they can grow or counteract the functions of their own brain and nervous system

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Reflections on Article: Accounting for the Whole Child

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Reflections on Article: Accounting for the Whole Child

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While reading this article, it occurred to me that asking children to reflect on their own social-emotional health is a good practice.  We put a lot of effort into supporting children as they learn to manage their learning through self-reflection and goal setting, but we aren't spending that same energy on finding out how they feel about their own SEL development.  Children should have the opportunity to determine if they are struggling with peers, feeling out of control at times, noticing there are times throughout the day that seem unbearable, etc.  I appreciate that whole school systems are taking the initiative to grow and support the whole child, as opposed to only supporting the academic child.

We know from the Brain 101 session that the brain requires practice to form connections in the brain.  An adolescent brain, without explicit experiences, does not recognize consequences for actions.  Until the brain makes those connections, the learning will not occur.  Amygdala's are built upon experiences and responds to situations built on those prior experiences.  We recognize that we can change those responses, but with repeated practice and interventions.  Engaging children in self-reflection allows them to take ownership for their own brain health and learn how to engage safely throughout life.

I believe FCPS can take a strong look at some of the studies and research coming out of these school districts that are building capacity around SEL outcomes. Thus far, the data supports schools recognizing the equal importance between social emotional health and content learning.

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There is not nearly enough PLAY throughout the school day.

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There is not nearly enough PLAY throughout the school day.

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Young children learn through play.  All social-emotional skills are practiced and refined through child directed play.  Schools are not incorporating or allowing play to happen nearly enough for children to develop these necessary skills.

FCPS can work to change our mindset to better recognize the importance of building play into the school day. Play can easily be incorporated into all content areas, but will require time and personnel into building capacity across departments and domains.

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Rest time is not built into the school day.

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Rest time is not built into the school day.

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All growing bodies require rest.  Students often are not getting proper rest and allowing their bodies and brains to recover from day-to-day activities.

FCPS can grow it's mindset to include incorporating the option for students to rest while at school during non-instructional times or at selected times throughout the day.

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School cafeteria's selling highly-processed foods and encouraging children to purchase junk food and ice cream to build their budgets.

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School cafeteria's selling highly-processed foods and encouraging children to purchase junk food and ice cream to build their budgets.

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Our food services division has worked harder in recent years to ensure healthier options in terms of fruit and vegetables, but often, the food being served in our cafeterias is not appealing to children.  Cafeteria's make extra funds through the sales highly processed foods.  I have heard cafeteria workers "pushing" chips and ice cream to kindergarten students.  I then watch those students eat chips and ice cream and throw out their carrots and potatoes.

The food services division has a duty to encourage healthy eating by our students. They have a window of opportunity to encourage healthy eating through fresh, appealing options.

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One 20-minute recess throughout a 7 hour instructional day.

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One 20-minute recess throughout a 7 hour instructional day.

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The expectations for content blocks throughout the school day do not allow for more than one recess.  Children require the opportunity to develop their large muscles in order to maximize their learning.

FCPS can look for places to require (yes, require) more than one recess from PK-8th grade to ensure we are truly educating the whole child. Teachers can shorten their recess block by 5 minutes and provide those extra 5 minutes later in the day on non-PE days.

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iStock/PetrBonek

Excerpted from Teach Like Finlan d: 33 Simple Strategies For Joyful Classrooms (c) 2017 by Schedule brain breaks Timothy D. Walker. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton.
Like a zombie, Sami* -one of my fifth graders-lumbered over to me and hissed, "I think I'm going to explode! I'm not used to this schedule." And I believed him. An angry red rash was starting to form on his forehead.

Yikes, I thought, what a way to begin my first year of teaching in Finland. It was only the third day of school, and I was already pushing a student to the breaking point. When I took him aside, I quickly discovered why he was so upset.

Throughout this first week of school, I had gotten creative with my fifth grade timetable. If you recall, students in Finland normally take a fifteen-minute break for every forty-five minutes of instruction. During a typical break, the children head outside to play and socialize with friends.

I didn't see the point of these frequent pit stops. As a teacher in the United States, I'd usually spent consecutive hours with my students in the classroom. And I was trying to replicate this model in Finland. The Finnish way seemed soft, and I was convinced that kids learned better with longer stretches of instructional time. So I decided to hold my students back from their regularly scheduled break and teach two forty-five-minute lessons in a row, followed by a double break of thirty minutes. Now I knew why the red dots had appeared on Sami's forehead.

Come to think of it, I wasn't sure if the American approach had ever worked very well. My students in the States had always seemed to drag their feet after about forty-five minutes in the classroom. But they'd never thought of revolting like this shrimpy Finnish fifth grader, who was digging in his heels on the third day of school. At that moment, I decided to embrace the Finnish model of taking breaks.

Once I incorporated these short recesses into our timetable, I no longer saw feet-dragging, zombie-like kids in my classroom. Throughout the school year, my Finnish students would, without fail, enter the classroom with a bounce in their steps after a fifteen-minute break. And most important, they were more focused during lessons.

At first I was convinced that I had made a groundbreaking discovery: frequent breaks kept students fresh throughout the day. But then I remembered that Finns have known this for years-they've been providing breaks to their students since the 1960s.

In my quest to understand the value of the Finnish practice, I stumbled upon the work of Anthony Pellegrini, author of the book Recess: Its Role in Education and Development and emeritus professor of educational psychology at the University of Minnesota -who has praised this approach for more than a decade. In East Asia, where many primary schools provide their students with a ten-minute break after about forty minutes of classroom instruction, Pellegrini observed the same phenomenon that I had witnessed at my Finnish school. After these shorter recesses, students appeared to be more focused in the classroom (Pellegrini, 2005).

Not satisfied with anecdotal evidence alone, Pellegrini and his colleagues ran a series of experiments at a U.S. public elementary school to explore the relationship between recess timing and attentiveness in the classroom. In every one of the experiments, students were more attentive after a break than before a break. They also found that the children were less focused when the timing of the break was delayed-or in other words, when the lesson dragged on (Pellegrini, 2005).

In Finland, primary school teachers seem to know this intuitively. They send kids outside-rain or shine-for their frequent recesses. And the children get to decide how they spend their break times.

Although I favor the Finnish model, I realize that unleashing fifth graders on the playground every hour would be a huge shift for most schools. According to Pellegrini, breaks don't have to be held outdoors to be beneficial. In one of his experiments at a public elementary school, the children had their recess times inside the school, and the results matched those of other experiments where they took their breaks outside: after their breaks, the students were more focused in class (Pellegrini, 2005).

What I realized in Finland, with the help of a flustered fifth grader, is that once I started to see a break as a strategy to maximize learning, I stopped feeling guilty about shortening classroom instruction. Pellegrini's findings confirm that frequent breaks boost attentiveness in class. With this in mind, we no longer need to fear that students won't learn what they need to learn if we let them disconnect from their work several times throughout the school day.

The year before I arrived in Helsinki, the American researcher and kinesiologist Debbie Rhea visited Finnish schools, and she, too, was inspired by their frequent fifteen-minute breaks. When she returned to the States, she piloted a study to evaluate the learning benefits of a Finland-inspired schedule with multiple recesses throughout the school day (Turner, 2013).

Today, Rhea's research project is up and running in a handful of American schools in several states, and so far the early results have been promising. Educators at Eagle Mountain Elementary School in Fort Worth, Texas, report a significant change in their students, who receive four fifteen-minute breaks each day; for example, they are more focused, and they are not tattling as often. One first grade teacher even noticed that her students are no longer chewing on pencils (Connelly, 2016).

Rhea's research is exciting, and it seems like the national interest in bringing more breaks to American schools is high. However, while the tide might be changing in American education, many U.S. teachers and students lack the freedom to imitate the Finnish model. Thankfully, any classroom, even non-Finnish ones, can tap into the benefits of taking multiple breaks throughout each day.

Initially, I thought that the true value of Finnish-style breaks is related to free play, but I no longer hold this view. I've concluded that the primary benefit of Finnish breaks is in the way it keeps kids focused by refreshing their brains. Daniel Levitin, professor of psychology, behavioral neuroscience, and music at McGill University, believes that giving the brain time to rest, through regular breaks, leads to greater productivity and creativity. "You need to give your brain time to consolidate all the information that's come in," he said in an interview for the education blog MindShift (Schwartz, 2014). But even without scheduled breaks at school, the mind rests naturally through daydreaming, which "allows you to refresh and release all those neural circuits that get all bound up when you're focused," said Levitin. "Children shouldn't be overly scheduled. They should have blocks of time to promote spontaneity and creativity" (Schwartz, 2014).
Timothy D. Walker is an American teacher and writer living in Finland. He has written extensively about his experiences for Education Week Teacher, Educational Leadership, and on his blog, Taught by Finland. While working at a Helsinki public school, he completed his teaching practicum and received his master's degree in elementary education from the United States. He is a contributing writer on education issues for The Atlantic.
There are different ways of offering little brain breaks, which I describe below, but one of the most important things to remember is that they need to happen regularly to benefit our students. In other words, it's wise to schedule them throughout the day. A good start, perhaps, would be thinking about offering a whole-group brain break for every forty-five minutes of classroom instruction-just like many Finnish teachers. But even that timing could be too infrequent for your students. What's important is that you watch your students carefully. If they seem to be dragging their feet before the forty-five-minute mark, it would seem beneficial to offer a brain break right away.

*The names used for students in this book are pseudonyms.

How Kids Learn Better By Taking Frequent Breaks Throughout The Day

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How Kids Learn Better By Taking Frequent Breaks Throughout The Day

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Excerpted from Teach Like Finlan d: 33 Simple Strategies For Joyful Classrooms (c) 2017 by Schedule brain breaks Timothy D. Walker. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton. Like a zombie, Sami* -one of my fifth graders-lumbered over to me and hissed, "I think I'm going to explode!

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Large blocks of instruction while sitting in whole group (30 or more minutes)

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Large blocks of instruction while sitting in whole group (30 or more minutes)

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The expectation that young children can mentally and emotionally engage while sitting still for more than 20 minutes is not aligned with healthy brain growth. The brain requires oxygen to make new connections and the longer children sit stagnant, the less oxygen their brains receive.

Children, especially our youngest learners, require many frequent "brain-breaks" and movement throughout the day.  Teachers should feel comfortable incorporating movement throughout their lessons and begin to let go of the old expectations that children "sit quietly and listen," as we know we can support their academic and emotional growth better through frequent movement.

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"Activity helps the brain in so many ways," said James F. Sallis, a professor of family medicine and public health at the University of California, San Diego, who has done research on the association between activity breaks and classroom behavior. "Activity stimulates more blood vessels in the brain to support more brain cells. And there is evidence that active kids do better on standardized tests and pay attention more in school."

John Ratey, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the author of "Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain," said: "Movement activates all the brain cells kids are using to learn, it wakes up the brain."

"Plus," he added, "it makes kids want to come to school more - it's fun to do these activities."

But not all districts are embracing the trend of movement breaks.

"The bottom line is that with only six and a half hours during the day, our priority is academics," said Tom Hernandez, the director of community relations for the Plainfield School District in Illinois, about 40 miles southwest of Chicago. He said that under state law, the schools provide daily physical education classes and that teachers in the district find ways to give students time during the day to refresh and recharge.

"Kids aren't meant to sit still all day and take in information," said Steve Boyle, one of the co-founders of the National Association of Physical Literacy, which aims to bring movement into schools. "Adults aren't wired that way either."

Mr. Boyle's association has introduced a series of three- to five-minute videos called "BrainErgizers" that are being used in schools and Boys and Girls Clubs in 15 states and in Canada, Mexico, Ireland and Australia, he said. A version of the program is available to schools at no charge.

The program is designed so that three to five times a day, teachers can set aside a few minutes for their students to watch a video and follow the cues given by the instructors. In one typical video, the instructors are college students of all shapes and sizes at the University of Connecticut who do a quick warm-up and then lead kids through a mini workout involving movements from several sports: baseball, basketball and a triathlon. That's followed by a cool-down.

"At the end of the week, kids have gotten an hour or more worth of movement, and it's all done in the classroom with no special equipment," Mr. Boyle said. "We're not looking to replace gym classes, we're aiming to give kids more minutes of movement per week. And by introducing sports into the videos, giving kids a chance to try sports they may not have ever tried before."

Julie Goldstein, principal of the Breakthrough Magnet School in Hartford, Conn., said her school has been using BrainErgizers since the spring of 2015.

It's easy for the teachers to implement, and "easy for the students to follow," Mrs. Goldstein said. She said the program has "helped them focus and bring up their energy level in the classroom."

Scott McQuigg, chief executive and a co-founder of GoNoodle, a classroom movement program used in more than 60,000 elementary schools in the United States credits Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" initiat i ve with helping to bring movement and the health of children into the public consciousness.

"We call this the Movement movement," Mr. McQuigg said. "If we invest three to five minutes for our kids to move in the classroom, we are actually going to optimize the next 45 minutes for learning. That small investment in time has such a big yield for teachers."

GoNoodle, which offers free and paid videos, aims to entertain kids while they are moving, Mr. McQuigg said. GoNoodle and other "brain break" videos can be found on the website for "Let's Move! Active Schools," part of Mrs. Obama's "Let's Move!" initiative.

"We have purposely not gone after this as an exercise program," Mr. McQuigg said. "This is a digital generation that expects to be entertained, and we think we can do more good around getting them to move if they are entertained."

For example, GoNoodle videos have kids running alongside their desks through a virtual obstacle course or following along with dance moves.

Joseph E. Donnelly, professor of medicine and director of the Center for Physical Activity and Weight Management at the University of Kansas Medical Center, said one of the good things about kids being more physically active in classrooms is that everyone is moving at the same time.

"In physical education classes, there is a lot of standing around, a lot of minutes of kids waiting to do an activity, and sometimes kids are only moving for about 15 minutes during a 50-minute class," said Dr. Donnelly, who co-authored a statement on the effects of physical activity and academic achievement in children that was published last year by the American College of Sports Medicine. "If you do movement in class a few times a day, that can add up to at least an extra 60 minutes more of movement per week."

Lindsay DiStefano, an associate professor in the department of kinesiology at the University of Connecticut, said the country is due for a major shift toward appreciating the benefits of physical activity in the classroom.

"In 1961, President Kennedy said school kids needed physical activity to thrive, but in the past 20 years, the pendulum has totally shifted the opposite way because schools are feeling the pressure to have students do well on standardized tests," Ms. DiStefano said. "We are not thinking about the child as an entire person, how physical activity helps them cope with the stresses of school and actually benefits them in the classroom."

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"Activity helps the brain in so many ways," said James F. Sallis, a professor of family medicine and public health at the University of California, San Diego, who has done research on the association between activity breaks and classroom behavior. "Activity stimulates more blood vessels in the brain to support more brain cells.