

Instead, Tarleton and Agee visited her classroom and gave her feedback, informed by what they had learned in Mindful Schools training.īut, Tarleton and Agee say, despite the differences in school culture and student body, mindfulness has worked in both schools. Rose Park’s Driver did not have the formal support of the principal or training.

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USN and Rose Park are, in some ways, very different schools: For instance, at USN, middle school tuition is more than $20,000 a year. At Rose Park, about 64 percent students meet the requirements for free or reduced lunch.Īt USN, Greenfield asked teachers all to start off their days with mindfulness practice for at least the first six weeks of school. The non-profit, which also offers online trainings, said they would - but only on the condition that USN partner with a local public school and help foster mindfulness there. Agee and Tarleton connected with Lynn Driver, an art teacher at Rose Park Magnet Middle School who was involved in Mindfulness in Nashville Education. Greenfield asked trainers from Mindful Schools to come to Nashville and train all of his middle school teachers in the fall of 2010. “When you shake the snow globe, it’s really hard to see what’s going on in the present moment clearly,” she said. University School guidance counselor Helen Tarleton illustrates mindfulness by shaking a snow globe. “It’s not about clearing your mind it’s just about becoming aware,” said Mary Agee, the University School’s mindfulness coordinator. Mindfulness might conjure up language like “emptying the mind,” but an important component of mindfulness is that the “clutter” doesn’t disappear.
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Organizations like Mindfulness in Nashville Education and Alignment Nashville bring together area teachers from private and public schools together to exchange resources and ideas about how to improve students’ social and emotional learning. In 2012, the district was one of eight nationwide to receive a $250,000 grant to expand social and emotional learning from the NoVo Foundation and the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning ( CASEL). And Metro Nashville Public Schools is the only urban school district in Tennessee to have a director of social and emotional learning. USN was the first school in the Southeast to work with Mindful Schools, a California-based non-profit that offers mindfulness training to teachers, focused especially on urban schools. Proponents say it makes it easier for students to learn and teachers to teach.īecoming Aware: A Nashville State of Mindīoth public and private educators in Nashville have been focusing on “social and emotional learning,” based on the belief that students need skills to help manage emotions and relationships in addition to the academic skills they learn in class. Several studies have shown that it decreases behavioral problems and raises student achievement on standardized tests.

USN teachers and students say mindfulness has helped students cope with academic pressures during tests and quizzes, and manage emotions about at-home pressures, such as divorce.
