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Marshall County Students Learning Benefits of ‘Mindfulness’

GLEN DALE -- While students in some Marshall County schools are studying to enrich their lives and pass their tests, they're also "taking five" to center themselves and think before they act -- more skills which will help them throughout their lives.

Through the Mindfulness program, students at Glen Dale Elementary and Washington Lands Elementary are developing not just academic proficiency, but basic day-to-day skills to help them keep a cool head under pressure. The program is undertaken in partnership with Youth Services System, Inc.

Amy Tucker, counselor at Glen Dale and Washington Lands elementary schools, said the school district pursued the Mindfulness program due to feedback from students reporting increasing anxiety.

"We were interested in bringing it because so many students report anxiety across the board, and we wanted to give them some strategies," Tucker said. "The teachers were trained in Mindfulness, and the teachers are really the heroes, the implementers. They're willing to provide on a daily basis, the children with two 'brain breaks' each day, which is a form of meditation, a quiet moment. … The children start out learning about their brains leaving kindergarten, and they can tell you about their brains. It's pretty amazing -- they can talk about their amygdala, their prefrontal cortex."

The younger students, impressed by their knowledge of the brain, have a habit of talking about brain anatomy at home, according to parent feedback, which amused both parents and faculty.

Jami Robinson, the parent of a fifth-grader at Washington Lands, said her daughter greatly enjoys the program, especially the 'brain breaks' which provide a brief reprieve from the school day.

"The teacher strikes a chime, and the kids can sit there and concentrate on the sound of a chime, refocus their attention, pay attention to their breathing," Robinson said. "It definitely gets you ready for a test. She also talked about attention spans, how each attention span is different, and use that to get back on task.

"The skills they're learning, the brain breaks, the refocusing, and later lessons they'll learn about gratitude and kindness -- these are life lessons. It's going to help them in every stage of their life, and hopefully they're going back and teaching their siblings, and their parents, and we, as adults, could all use a little more mindfulness."

Parent Susan Harrison agreed, and said that once a culture of mindfulness permeates across the whole school, students who previously struggled with their anxiety can find methods to overcome it.

"The important part is when it becomes a part of the schoolwide culture. My son's in fifth grade, and I can definitely look back to things over the last five years where this could have been applied. My kid is the kid who tapped out of show-and-tell because show-and-tell was too anxiety-provoking. Instead of allowing him to tap out, (possibly) giving him opportunities for a 'brain break' before that, and pushing him a little bit.

"You can't go back and change things, but for other kids, and what teachers are prepared to help talk kids through (it), who are so full of anxiety, they can't do show-and-tell, there might be a different way of handling it."

Washington Lands Principal Julie Sturgill said that students, especially younger grades, report a challenge in maintaining mindfulness, which Sturgill said is a good thing, as that means the students are being stimulated.

"Often, they'll say, 'It's hard for me.' I tell them, it's good that they're doing something that's hard for them. All too often, students nowadays want to opt out if it's too hard. It's good that they're trying to implement some self-control, so it's benefiting a lot of those students who might act out, or be unaware of their self and what they're doing. It brings them back, they're centered, and they're more aware of what they're doing.

Bethany Goddard, program coordinator with YSS, said the program was introduced over the last few months to enhance the abilities of both students and faculty in being mindful of their mental state.

"Our mission is to work with youth to enhance social and emotional skills to reduce risk factors, and this program gave an opportunity to help children in school," Goddard said, adding that the program especially focused on "tier 2" students, those who exhibit risk factors for behavioral problems which may develop into delinquent behavior. Tier 3 students are those who already exhibit this behavior in a clinical sense.

"Our overall goal in our school systems is to bring those students from the tier 2 and tier 3 back to the universal population," she said. "It decreases the risk factors associated with poor decision making, early substance use, and gives a better foundation for students so they're more successful, because they do have those risk factors."

The Mindfulness program spans from pre-K to eight grade. The faculty members said that they were interested, but could not yet confirm that they could, bring the program to other schools in the district. Goddard said that if schools requested their inclusion, it could be done, but it would not be done at the discretion of the district or YSS.

"We're not going to mandate it, because it does require a lot of commitment from the people in their building," she said. "Your teachers, your entire staff, to be committed to the effort. I commend both these schools, because it takes a lot of effort to do that every day, and so you need a school where you have that kind of commitment to carry through. You need to be true to it, and follow through to see it to the very end."

The program was funded through the West Virginia Bureau for Behavioral Health, and through Youth Services System's prevention department.