Dive Brief:
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Feeling stressed or overloaded are universal emotions: Adults and students alike can find themselves overcome with frustration and even anxiousness at times. In the classroom, however, there are tools educators can use to help support students when these emotions fly.
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Teaching students mindfulness or deep breathing techniques mixed with positive activities like free play or hands-on learning can be helpful approaches to reducing anxiety — and giving students some tools of their own, said Joshua Aronson, an associate professor of applied psychology at New York University.
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“Reducing stress and increasing wellness and joy, I believe, will need to become more a central aspect of daily life in schools — not just something teachers do for the students before exams, but something all members of the community engage in, something woven into the culture and daily routines,” Aronson said.
Dive Insight:
Aronson, who leads the Mindful Education Lab at NYU, points to small steps that can be woven into the curriculum to help center students and educators. For example, building in transition times before class starts can help ease everyone into the same space. He's seen the effect spread throughout a classroom after just five minutes of mindfulness.
“I could count the number of engaged students, and there was no contest,” Aronson said. “Students could pay attention for the full hour.”
Julieta Zemla, an elementary school classroom teacher who is pursuing her master's at Columbia University’s Teachers College while interning with the Mindful Education Lab, has adopted some techniques of her own with students.
For students in the moment of a panic attack, for example, she uses tools such as breathing cards and has a “peace corner” where they can sit if needed. She also favors an activity book, “Sitting Still Like a Frog,” which includes mindfulness exercises for children.
“I could tell when students needed a moment in the peace corner or were frozen,” Zemla said. “Over time, students would use these, and it would make mindfulness concrete for kids.”
Aronson said he has concerns that mindfulness has become controversial in schools, but he maintains that these tools not only help ground students in the moment, but help them strengthen their skills as learners.
“Fundamental to any academic behavior is to be able to sit there quietly and focus on something,” Aronson said. “To not be making that part of the curriculum after all the good I've seen is sort of a tragedy.”
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