According to Jennings, when these kids act out in the classroom teachers have a hard time implementing effective strategies for managing the difficult behavior. “Teachers often have problems managing their own behavior when they get upset by challenging student behaviors,” she says. “When this happens, they may resort to punitive and harsh responses, which can lead to power struggles and derail learning. This kind of response may also reinforce the kids’ defensiveness and the perception that the teacher is trying to hurt them.” Jennings and her colleagues created a professional development program, called CARE for Teachers (Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education), in collaboration with the Garrison Institute, with a goal of helping teachers be more mindful so they can better promote student social-emotional well being and academic learning. “We do activities with teachers that help them become aware of their emotions and of how these emotions are altering their perceptions of certain situations,” says Jennings. “Teachers learn to recognize their physical signals of stress and then stop, take a breath, and calm down so they can respond thoughtfully to the situation instead of automatically reacting.”
Poverty stresses kids out. Mindfulness can help. In a pilot study of CARE, Jennings and her colleagues found that teachers reported improved well being; reduced stress; improved self efficacy, emotion regulation, and mindfulness; and improved ability to support autonomy in the classroom. “When teachers get stressed out they resort to being over-controlling and that’s not a good way to promote learning,” she says.
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The team will include in its study approximately 256 teachers and over 5,000 students in 32 public elementary schools in New York City.
Mindful Kids Another big city—Baltimore—is the location of an intervention to teach kids how to be more mindful. In this project, Greenberg, Tamar Mendelson of Johns Hopkins University, and partners from the Holistic Life Foundation recruited 97 inner-city 4th and 5th graders to participate in an intervention designed to help them deal with their stress. “Poverty stresses kids out,” says Greenberg, “and if these kids don’t learn to manage their stress, they are more likely to perform poorly in school, drop out of school, become affected by depression and mental health problems, abuse drugs and alcohol, and engage in risky sexual behaviors.” Greenberg’s intervention has three components: yoga-based physical activity, breathing techniques, and guided mindfulness practices. “While the word ‘yoga’ may conjure images of wellheeled suburbanites and superstars doing downward dog pose in designer outfits, the practice is becoming popular among a wider variety of people, and we think it can be extremely useful for highrisk children,” says Greenberg. In a pilot study, Greenberg and his colleagues partnered with yogis at the Holistic Life Foundation to teach kids active yoga poses, breathing techniques, and mindfulness and relaxation techniques. According to Greenberg, at the end of the study the kids were at lower risk for developing anxiety and depression, which the team concluded based on student reports of lower rates of intrusive thoughts and of rumination—or continuing to cycle the same strange thoughts in your mind—as well as improved abilities to regulate emotions.
According to one teacher who participated in the pilot study, “CARE has given me the tools and skills to be more calm and centered. In a particular situation, I can act in response to what is needed in the moment, rather than react to it.”
“When we started the program in West Baltimore, the kids thought yoga was the little guy from ‘Star Wars,’” says Atman Smith, one of the Holistic Life Foundation yogis. “Now they see that yoga is the true meaning of the word ‘respect’—it helps you to see the light in people.”
With a successful pilot project behind them, Jennings and her colleagues now are embarking on a new project—funded with a $3.5-million grant from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) at the U.S. Department of Education—to determine the efficacy of CARE. Specifically, they will use teacher selfreport questionnaires, observational ratings of teachers and classrooms, teacher reports on students, and student school records to test the direct effects of the CARE program on teachers and classrooms as well as on students’ behavior and academic achievement.
The Penn State-Hopkins team now is conducting a larger study that is funded by the National Institute for Drug Abuse. In this new study, the team is studying the effects of yoga on 5th and 6th graders and will take a more comprehensive look at its effects by examining children’s own reports of their feelings and behavior and teachers’ reports of their students’ behavior. The team also will use computer-based tests to examine the students’ cognitive abilities and inhibitory control as they relate to school success. n
Summer 2012