Behavioral Impacts of a Mindfulness Pilot Intervention for Elementary School Students.
Students sitting in urban U.S. elementary school classrooms are faced with myriad competing factors vying for their attention in the learning environment. Urban students must not only attend to the teacher's planned curriculum, but cope with other indicators of poverty (unreliable transportation, high mobility, malnutrition, poor healthcare) that have been associated with a child's ability to successfully achieve academically (Duncan Brooks Gunn, 1999; Herbers, Supkolf, Heistad, Hinz, Masten, 2012) Circumstances of poverty often means that students have less resources to cope with the stress created by these demands which only results in increased stress and anxiety (Duncan Andrade, 2009) that negatively impacts students' ability to focus, think deeply, and learn and ultimately, influences their academic performance (Shapiro, Schwartz, Bonner, 1998) There is a need for urban students to improve their ability to cope with stress to improve their focus, and, in short, to be more Mindful and find more success in school. A number of innovative strategies have been piloted and employed to improve focus and attention in the classroom, one of them being Mindfulness practice (Napoli, Krench, Holley, 2005) Mindfulness has been used more generally in clinical practice for over 30 years as a form non pharmacologic psychotherapy, and with much success (Carmody Baer, 2008; Holzel et al, 2011) These studies have evaluated on the impact of Mindfulness instruction on both students (Flook, Smalley, Kitil, Galla, Kaiser Greenland, Locke Kasari, 2010; Napoli, Krench, Holley, 2005; Mendelson, Greenberg, Dariotis, Gould, Rhoades Leaf, 2010; Schonert Reichi Lawlor, 2010) and teachers (Gold, Smith, Hopper, Heme, Tansey Hulland, 2010) The application of Mindfulness in the classroom setting has been largely ignored until recently and has become even more recognized as Social Emotional Learning (SEL) and Positive Behavioral Interventions and Support (PBIS) initiatives have been instituted over the past two decades (Sugai Simonsen, 2012) PBIS is "a framework for enhancing the adoption and implementation of a continuum of evidence based interventions to achieve academically and behaviorally important outcomes for all students (Sugai Simonsen, 2012, p. 2) These classroom interventions go beyond academic achievement for children in the classroom and impact everyday psychological wellbeing. The Moos Model of Stress and Coping (2002) of which this study is based describes a pathway of personal and environmental conditions, leading to transitory conditions (including behavior change interventions) leading to cognitive appraisal and coping skills, which ultimately impact health and wellbeing of the individual child. We believe this theory from health disciplines holds true for educational outcomes of our children as well. Mindfulness in the classroom context teaches young people coping and calming techniques that can be used across a student's social ecology to help alleviate stress and cope with stressful situations. The purpose of this study is to present results from a pilot study of Mindfulness in a single urban elementary school. Specifically, we examined the impact of a Mindfulness curriculum on elementary students' prosocial classroom behaviors, emotional regulation, and academic competence. We hypothesized that students receiving the intervention will exhibit increased prosocial behaviors, regulate emotions, and show improved academic performance compared to those not receiving the intervention. Methods This is a community engaged study of the effects of Mindfulness instruction with socio economic and ethnically diverse students in two 4th grade classrooms in a Denver (CO) public elementary school. The school was chosen because of an ongoing instructional relationship with one of the investigators (AMR) and individual classrooms were picked by the principal based on similar student characteristics.