Is your school incorporating mindfulness practices for students and staff?
While mindfulness is not a substitute for mental health treatment, mindfulness in the school setting can improve student self-regulation, emotional regulation, classroom behavior, cognitive function, and academic performance. Participation in mindfulness practice over time can even change brain structure and neural activity. Despite the many benefits, teachers do not often receive training in mindfulness practices.
Recently, Dr. Kristen Munk RN, NCSN, Dr. Ruth Rosenblum, Dr. Samantha Blackburn, and Dr. Eden Donahue RN, NCSN (NBCSN board member and exam committee chair) conducted an educational intervention project with teachers-in-training to promote mindfulness practices in the classroom.
Following the educational intervention which involved multimedia education regarding mindfulness and opportunities to practice mindfulness themselves as well as practice mindfulness implementation, the teachers-in-training found mindfulness acceptable, reasonable, and effective and planned to implement mindfulness in their future classrooms. School nurses could work with interprofessional teams to conduct such a training in their own districts in order to increase the use of mindful practices for all school communities.
Read about the full project and intervention in the Journal of School Nursing online!