April 20-27, 2020: Mindfulness Week 
We are excited to join Mindful City Ann Arbor to encourage the joy and practice of mindfulness through community during this designated mindfulness week. Will you help bring this initiative statewide?  We invite your ideas and participation in making mindfulness activities a focus throughout all our Michigan communities during this April week.

August 5-7, 2020: Summer Training Institute
MC4ME will be holding a repeat and expanded Summer Training Institute for Educators working with youth based on this past years’ success and oversubscribed interest.

October 9-10, 2020: MC4ME Statewide Conference
MC4ME will be hosting its first annual statewide mindfulness conference in Michigan for educators and clinical professionals working with youth.

Last summer, at our 2-day Summer Institute, Teaching Mindfulness to Youth, 40 educators with an established mindfulness practice gathered to learn ways to incorporate mindfulness in their work with youth in the classroom and in therapeutic settings. If this year you have the intention to create a mindful environment with your students in the classroom, we'd like to share two ideas put forth in the workshop: First begin by knowing your “why” and second, be willing to “be authentic”.

KNOWING YOUR “WHY”: The ability to know and articulate your why or intention to teach mindfulness will guide what you think, say and do. Beginning a conversation about mindfulness with your student(s) can be as easy as asking if anyone has ever heard of it and/or know what it means. Your why can become a story to share about what mindfulness is, how it has helped you and hopefully how it may be helpful for them.

BE AUTHENTIC: Before teaching a mindfulness practice to students, educators must first be willing to demonstrate and embody the foundational qualities of mindful awareness in themselves. As we are all human, there will be times your students will see you struggle to be cool, calm and collected. A part of how you “teach” them to be mindful is by allowing your personal growth with the practice (and your struggles to achieve it) to be on display and be modeled right in front of them. Being authentic can lead to deeper relationships with your students as well as many teachable moments. 

REMEMBER: To develop, refresh or deepen your own practice, consider participating in our fall community retreat, and save the date for our 2020 two-day summer workshop, Teaching Mindfulness to Youth.

The authors report on a randomized controlled trial of 40 sixth grade students in a predominantly low-income urban environment in which they examined the effects of a school-based mindfulness intervention (Calmer Choice) on students’ emotional reactivity to fearful stimuli using functional imaging of brain changes. This sample was part of larger sample that also included measures of perceived stress and positive and negative affect. Students assigned to participate in the mindfulness intervention received eight weeks of daily mindfulness instruction for a total of 24 hours of instruction while the active control group of students received training in a computer coding curriculum designed to teach creative thinking, reason and collaboration for a similar duration. Students assigned to the mindfulness intervention condition showed a significant reduction in perceived stress and but no difference in the affect measures when compared to the active controls. Since right amygdala changes were found to be associated with greater fear responses, investigators also assessed brain changes in this area. Significantly lower amygdala activation was found for the mindfulness trained group in comparison to the controls. These students also showed significantly increased functional connectivity between brain regions (amygdala-ventromedial prefrontal cortex) associated with emotional regulation than the control group. These findings suggest the potential value of mindfulness interventions for alleviating stress, as reflected in both the subjective report and objective measures. 

This book offers a wonderful primer for teaching mindfulness to adolescents. It is the first volume in a published series focused on social and emotional learning solutions. Dr. Broderick, the developer of the Learning to Breathe curriculum and researcher at Penn State University, provides a strong case and framework for teaching mindfulness practice to middle and high school students. She interweaves research and concepts of adolescent development together with theory, neuroscience, and educational foundations of mindfulness meditation. She presents this information in a straightforward and concise fashion, making the concepts and practices very easy to understand. Each of the seven chapters in the book provides concrete examples of different meditation practices as well as applications, reflections and activities that can help middle and secondary school teachers embody their understanding, deepen their practice for themselves and safely guide their students. This book is a valuable resource for experienced as well as novice teachers to meditation and other mindfulness instructors who work in schools. We highly recommend adding this resource to your book shelf.

Little Seed's Journey, written by Annmarie Chereso, our colleague from Chicago, was inspired through teaching mindfulness to students and parenting her own three children, to write a book to help kids understand who they are and how they are connected to the world around them. 
The analogy is that we begin as a little seed. When we are taught to be curious and aware, we can stretch and grow while establishing roots that keep us strong and grounded. The illustrations are colorful and spark the imagination, and the story can be adapted for all ages. To engage the reader further, Chereso includes a section with discussion points called, "Questions To Play​ With". She even suggests that students can act the story out.
Tara Brach comments, "This beautiful book will help children remember and trust their natural belonging to this earth, and all of life". We couldn't agree more.

To learn more, visit www.littleseedsjourney.com or click here to purchase.

Grand Rapids Center for Mindfulness
The Art of Mindful Communication: Oren Sofer  
May 10, 2019
Learn more
 
Inward Bound Mindfulness Education (IBME)
Michigan Teen Retreat
Kalamazoo, Michigan
July 21-26, 2019
Learn more

Michigan Collaborative for Mindfulness in Education
Mindfulness Training for Youth Summer Institute
Birmingham, Michigan
August 7 & 8, 2019
Learn more

This article explores the barriers and facilitating factors present as schools have embarked on implementing mindfulness into the school culture using a qualitative case study design. The authors sampled seven schools that were at various stages and progress in their efforts. All the schools had utilized the Mindfulness in School .B program or variation of it. They interviewed teachers, school leaders and staff as well as held focus groups to gain the range of perspectives. Not surprisingly, the authors report that the long-term success of the initiative across all the schools resulted from four major themes: people, resources, time and perceptions. The article provides many interesting comments to illustrate how these themes influenced successful implementation.
 
Critical seemed to be the availability of a person (s) who initially and continually championed the effort within the school as well as at least one another support person from staff leadership. Commitment of time for staff training as well as for embedding it into the curriculum was also a crucial factor. The importance of involving teachers in the process was believed to be essential and staff turnover was a significant barrier. Maintaining enthusiasm over time was recognized as a long-term challenge.  Implementation was most successful when staff shared similar perceptions of what constitutes “mindfulness,” and its value for students.  There was the recognition that the process of transformation of a mindfulness culture in a school takes a long time, with several stops and starts along the way. The authors indicated that these findings support what is known about the broader implementation efforts of programmatic mental health promotion in schools and mindfulness in healthcare settings.   

Stephanie Snider, a social worker in the Troy school district, recently shared this story of the impact that mindfulness was having on one of her elementary school students.
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We have been incorporating Mindfulness within our elementary school culture through the weekly lessons I have been teaching in the classrooms. The other day, my principal received a call from one of our third grade parents, who also happens to be a middle school teacher in our district. She only recently became aware of this initiative through her daughter and shared how thrilled she was to see its impact. She had taken her daughter to the doctor’s office for a check-up earlier that week. As her daughter was about to receive a shot, she noticed her breathing deeply, with eyes closed and hand on her belly. Later she asked her daughter what she was doing. Her daughter explained that she was practicing mindful breathing, using her hand on her belly as an anchor to help her stay focused and in the present. A few days later, the parent noted that she was feeling very frazzled about needing to get several things done. Her daughter, recognizing her mom’s anxiety, suggested that she should ‘practice Mindfulness by focusing on the present moment’. “
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Isn’t it wonderful to see that this child saw the value of applying mindfulness to situations outside of the school that cause anxiety in herself and her parents? Truly, a life skill! Often our children are our best teachers.

The freezing cold did not deter thirty participants from traveling to Ann Arbor to engage in a morning of compassion and awareness practice. In the afternoon, we live streamed the presentation by Natalie Freeburn, a wonderful high school teacher in Saline, who shared her experience in implementing a stress-management elective course for the last three years. Check out her video-recording here.