Beware ‘McMindfulness’ – If You’re Going To Embed Mindfulness In Your School, Do It Properly
Don’t be fooled by ‘quick-fix’ solutions for improving children’s wellbeing, says Claire Kelly – they might promise a nutritious meal, but actually deliver sloppy fast food…
- by Claire Kelly
There are those in the west who regard mindfulness as something of a fad – a reasonable response given the evangelical zeal with which some have tried to repackage and ‘sell’ it. Promises such as the ability to transform your life ‘with just one minute’s practice per day only’ add fuel to this perception.
They are examples of ‘McMindfulness’ – high-speed, easily digestible means of ‘improving’ the quality of our lives and ‘fixing’ our problems. For some opportunistic individuals, mindfulness has become a business – but it’s one that can only disappoint those vulnerable consumers who see it as a panacea.
A measure of caution
The origins of mindfulness can be traced back to formal meditative practices developed over 2,500 years ago. Over the past 40 years or so, mindfulness for adults has been extensively studied through clinical research and neuroscience. More recently, evidence highlighting the positive impact that well-designed and well-taught programmes can have on young people is steadily growing. The recent Mindful Nation report [PDF] stated that ‘Emotional buoyancy, coping skills, the capacity to manage difficulties and the ability to form constructive social relationships are all important aspects of children’s flourishing, and there is evidence that mindfulness contributes to each. These positive effects are often apparent three years after taking a course.’ As such, we are seeing a growing interest in mindfulness within both the primary and secondary sectors.
For some, however, this is driven more by a desire to ‘tick boxes’ – getting some mindfulness into school ASAP, by whatever (preferably cheap) means. While it’s wonderful to know that interest in developing mental health and wellbeing strategies is there from schools, there needs to be a measure of caution around how this is done.
What’s the plan?
Firstly, it’s important to be clear about the intention behind any decision to bring mindfulness into a school. The plan for those looking to ‘get mindfulness into their schools as soon as possible’ often looks something like this:
PLAN A 1. Find a local, trained teacher of mindfulness to young people Being a teacher of mindfulness to adults does not necessarily render you a successful mindfulness teacher of young people. The skills and context are different, so make sure you do your research.
2. Once you’ve found someone, ask him or her to come in and teach the curriculum to a specific class or year group This will allow you to introduce mindfulness to some classes relatively quickly, but it will be less sustainable in terms of cost and in embedding mindfulness within the curriculum and culture of the school. You may have a few classes who ‘get it’, but this knowledge will leave with them, and there will be no-one within the school to continue where these classes leave off.
If a school intends to embed mindfulness more fully, however, there needs to be a recognition that this is a long game, and that it needs to be done slowly and gradually if it’s to be sustainable. What’s more, the starting point here needs to be with the school staff, rather than the students. In our work with schools, we often talk of the ‘oxygen mask principle’ – the safety demonstrations you see on aeroplanes routinely advise you, in case of emergency, to put on your own oxygen mask before helping the young people in your care. The same theory applies here. Teachers and TAs have a huge power in terms of setting the tone of the classroom every day, so modelling self-compassion and care is a fundamental starting point for anyone teaching mindfulness to young people. Just as you wouldn’t ask someone who’d never touched a piano in his life to tutor a child in how to play it, a teacher of mindfulness needs their own experiential understanding if he or she is to get the children they teach to buy in to the lessons.
With all this in mind, we therefore recommend following Plan B:
PLAN B 1. As part of staff training, bring in a person who is knowledgeable about mindfulness and education to run an information or taster session for all staff This should inform you all about what mindfulness is and isn’t, explore the research evidence around the benefits for staff and young people and give a brief taste of what a mindfulness practice is like. Even if staff members decide it’s not for them, they at least now have some knowledge of what mindfulness involves and how it might benefit their pupils. Even better, if you’re part of a school consortium, an academy chain or trust, you could offer to host a group session for staff from affiliated schools. This might then result in a ready-made group of like-minded teachers who can work together to embed mindfulness in their schools and share good practice.
2. If there is sufficient interest generated by the taster, and if the school is interested in taking things further, we would suggest that a core team of staff take part in an eight-week mindfulness course You can find out more about these courses here.
3. If, by the end of the course, there are staff keen on being trained in how to teach a classroom-based mindfulness curriculum, they will possess the experience needed to both model good practice and support the pupils through their own learning. Two staff trained to teach mindfulness to young people will be able to support each other and work together to develop a sustainable programme – having more than two is even better.
Yet no matter how it’s introduced into schools, mindfulness should not be seen as a universal panacea – and nor should it be seen as a clinical intervention intended just for those who are having a ‘tough time’. The ‘light-touch’, well researched, classroom-based mindfulness curricula currently being taught very effectively in around a hundred UK primary schools (plus approximately 400 secondary schools are intended for all children. They help them access a set of skills that will help them navigate their way through tough times and enhance their experience of the good.
They may also help them develop the skills needed to increase concentration, to employ metacognition (thinking about thinking – a crucial skill for learning), and support the cognitive flexibility required for effective decision-making and creativity. But this takes time to learn, and even longer to embed properly in school. I’d therefore encourage you to see the limits of that urge to speedily ‘tick the mindfulness box’ – and instead invest in a 3 to 5-year plan.
Calming thoughts
Some of the evidence for mindfulness’ effectiveness, as recently published in Mindful Nation UK report [PDF] by the Mindfulness All-Party Parliamentary Group
• There is promising evidence that mindfulness training has been shown to enhance executive control – arguably the most important prerequisites for child development, in children and adolescents
• Children with the lowest levels of executive control and emotional stability are those likely to benefit most from mindfulness training
• One of the most rigorous studies looked at the impact of an eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course (MBSR) on 102 children aged 4-18 with a wide range of mental health diagnoses, which reported significantly reduced symptoms of anxiety, depression and distress. There was also evidence of increased self-esteem and sleep quality
• At a three-month follow-up, those who practised more showed improved clinicians’ ratings of anxiety and depression, compared with those who did not
• One evaluation of a small study of children with learning difficulties showed significantly improved academic achievement, as well as social skills
• Mindfulness also showed improvements for those with ADHD, as well as decreases in impulsiveness, aggression and oppositional behaviour
Claire Kelly is the Director of the Mindfulness in Schools Project; for more information, visit mindfulnessinschools.org or follow @dotbschools
