UPWORTHY
By James Gaines
BALTIMORE — Robert W. Coleman Elementary School has been doing something different when students act out: offering meditation.
Instead of punishing disruptive kids or sending them to the principal’s office, the Baltimore school has something called the Mindful Moment Room instead.
The room looks nothing like your standard windowless detention room. Instead, it’s filled with lamps, decorations, and plush purple pillows. Misbehaving kids are encouraged to sit in the room and go through practices like breathing or meditation, helping them calm down and re-center. They are also asked to talk through what happened.
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PBS also reported on nearby Patterson High School’s successful partnership with the Holistic Life Foundation and mindfulness research with children by Johns Hopkins University. Research connects location-based crime and unemployment rates to higher student drop out and absenteeism rates.
Mindfulness research revealed how parts of the brain stimulated by strong emotions, like fear, show less activity through meditation, while other parts of the brain associated with maturity become active.