Schonert-Reichl – MindUp engaging students

When I began doing this work on MindUP, this mindfulness-based program, it was going to be implemented in kindergarten classrooms up till grade 8.  Well, I went in to it very skeptical.  I thought, ok, really?  I could not imagine kindergarten children even grade 1, sitting still for a few minutes breathing, paying attention to their breath.  I thought this is just not going to work and boy, was I proven wrong.  I felt that they really got it quicker than the older children.  It was like they were more ready for it.  I went and visited a lot of kindergarten classrooms and the children right away had that ability to be in the present moment.  And if you think about young children, they are in the present moment.  You know the idea of taking a mindful walk and looking for things that you could see on the sidewalk – they’re so present.  They pay attention to those things.  So it really was an easy sell for the little ones.  A bit harder sell for the older kids in some ways because they are a bit more skeptical.  

But the one thing about the MindUP program that I think is a real draw for all children is it begins by teaching children about their brain.  So they learn about the different parts of their brain, the prefrontal cortex, the hippocampus, the amygdala and they learn about the functions of those parts of their brain.  And what I think really gets children engaged to learn that they can have control over their brain, that their thoughts – And teachers really love it because they feel like it’s not just taking away from the curriculum, that they’re actually adding to it by bringing all the latest research on neuroscience.