Why is mindfulness important?

Weekly time with Buddies is one way we help children develop kindness, empathy, and caring. 

In a world where violence, discord, and disrespect are in the news on a daily basis, it is imperative that we give children (and ourselves) skills in becoming calm, kind, controlled and responsible.

To help our faculty become even more effective teachers in this area, Director of The Inner Resilience Program, Linda Lantieri, spent a day with us on Monday.  She urged the Parker faculty to continue to hold on to the courage to teach to the whole child - with compassion and collaboration front and center.

Linda gave us methods and practices that go beyond what we do with Responsive Classroom, daily calm breathing, self-reflection, and time outdoors.  To help children (and ourselves) be "in the moment," mindful and empathetic, she recommended daily activities such as building an increased vocabulary around emotions, writing gratitude journals, finding "pin-drop" moments and founding peace corners.

We know through research that children with well developed social-emotional skills do better at pretty much everything in their lives, so it behooves us to teach these skills explicitly.  Linda helped us learn a framework and techniques to build our own and our students' emotional intelligence.