As morning recess ends at Bracebridge Public School, a kindergarten to grade eight school in Ontario?s cottage country, the grade fours and fives of room 128 shuffle upstairs to their class, everyone talking in outdoor voices. Most are slow to settle. Back in their homeroom, a boy in a black-and-white hoodie stops at the aptly named Mindfulness Corner set up beside the coat rack.
The spot, outfitted with a table, gives students a place to go if they need a minute to calm down. A poster encourages kids to ?Just be in the moment? and a Post-it reads ?Breathe and smile.? The boy leans over the table and, with his hands on his tummy, takes three deep breaths before quietly completing a finger maze.
Laura Dursley, the school?s new vice-principal, has invited me to sit in on her weekly 11:10 a.m. mindfulness lesson with this class. Alongside learning reading comprehension, mastering decimals and studying the medieval period, these students are getting an education in emotions. Bracebridge PS is one of dozens in the Trillium Lakelands District School Board that are integrating mindfulness in the curriculum as a tool to decrease student anxiety and stress and to increase concentration, attention span, self-regulation, compassion and self-esteem.
Mindfulness is a centuries-old concept rooted in meditation. It was widely introduced in the late-1970s by Jon Kabat-Zinn, an American doctor who developed mindfulness classes for patients dealing with all sorts of physical and mental ailm...