Mindfulness programs gaining traction as resource for urban youth

"Does anyone else have another four-syllable mantra for us?" Cheryl Nichols, the co-founder of Mindfulness Through Movement, a nonprofit that provides urban youth in 11 Philadelphia schools with mindfulness yogic practices, asks the children.

A thin boy in a red polo shoots up an excited hand.

"I-like-LEG-Os," he hums, and the class follows suit.

Students at Overbrook Educational Center do a mindfulness exercise with Cheryl Nichols, of Mindfulness Through Movement.
Kelan Lyons

Ten seventh and eighth graders sit in a circle in the library of West Philadelphia’s Overbrook Educational Center. The students repeatedly hum a few words—“trust-and-be-kind”—as they touch each of their fingers to their thumbs.

“Does anyone else have another four-syllable mantra for us?” Cheryl Nichols, the co-founder of Mindfulness Through Movement, a nonprofit that provides urban youth in 11 Philadelphia schools with mindfulness yogic practices, asks the children.

A thin boy in a red polo shoots up an excited hand.

“I-like-LEG-Os,” he hums, and the class follows suit.

Fifth-through-eighth graders at OEC — a grade school that serves the largest population of blind and visually impaired children in the district — began mindfulness exercises three weeks ago.

“It’s a powerful tool to help the students … this practice gives them an opportunity to be reflective and prepare for the day ahead,” says Meredith Foote, the school’s principal.

Only about 30 of the school’s 250 students participate in the classes on Tuesday and Thursday mornings led by Nichols, but Foote hopes the exercises can eventually be spread to the entire school.

“It helps me feel peaceful when I go back to the classroom,” said student Brandon Savage.

“I like how it can relax your body,” agreed Ciahnnie Bartley, another student.

OEC’s adoption of mindfulness classes represents a growing number of schools seeking nontraditional services to instill a sense of safety and calm in their students.

Jackie Glace, a third-year second grade teacher at St. Rose of Lima in West Philadelphia, has been doing mindfulness practices in her classroom with Nichols for two years.

“I can see [my students] becoming much more mindful of when they need a break,” says Glace, who keeps a “happiness pillow” in her classroom that frustrated students are allowed to hug for a few minutes in solitary when they feel angry or frustrated.

Though mindfulness is relatively new to educational settings, research has thus far supported its implementation in classrooms. Trish Broderick— a research associate at the Penn State Prevention Research Center — and her team have conducted extensive research on Learning To Breathe (L2B), a mindfulness program that works with adolescents.

In one of Broderick’s studies, students at risk for academic failure in an alternative school were randomly placed into a mindfulness or substance abuse intervention class. The results supported the notion that mindfulness can help students from low-income communities and potentially “prevent maladaptive tragedies.”

“This practice helps people gain some perspective on the stress/problems in their lives so they don’t get so caught up in them … [it] also reduces the physical reactivity associated with stress so it helps to reduce the tendency to spin out of control,” Broderick wrote via email.

Officials are intrigued by these results: Broderick’s team at Penn State has received $1.4 million in grant funding from the US Department of Education to study L2B in public high schools.

Michael J. Baime, the founder and Director of the Penn Program for Mindfulness, claims that mindfulness can be a “very powerful, effective way to manage and cope with difficult situations.”

Baime posits that the diversion of attention in today’s society makes it more difficult for youth to learn. Cell phones, videogames, social media, and other peer influences converge and make students less able to encode information into their memory while they’re in school.

Baime also claims that mindfulness helps students to better manage and regulate their emotions, making their anxieties less of a distraction so that they can divert more attention to what’s going on in the classroom.

“I think… kids can really benefit from ways to be more personally empowered and not so reactive in the face of difficult circumstances,” said Broderick.

But experts Baime and Broderick don’t think that mindfulness is a cure-all for problems facing Philadelphia’s youth.

“No single approach is going to solve everything, but it does seem promising. The way it has entered education, it’s really taking off. I don’t talk to a school anywhere that doesn’t want to do or isn’t doing something with mindfulness with their students,” said Baime.

Nichols stresses that many of the children she works with come from “chaotic environments” in which they lack control, causing stress for elementary school-aged children that many of us never would have to deal with.

“Everyone else can be taken from them,” Nichols says, “but not their breath.”

The Penn Program for Mindfulness can help teachers to inject mindfulness practices into their curriculum. The organization also sends representatives to the classroom to lead mindfulness practices. Interested educational professionals should contact the Penn Program for Mindfulness at 215-615-2774. Unrelated to education, the Penn Program for Mindfulness also works with businesses and corporations for mindfulness training.

Mindfulness Through Movement provides certification to yoga-certified teachers in programs specifically geared towards teaching urban youth. Those interested in registering can do so at http://www.vergeyogacenter.com/workshops-series.html.

A Learning to Breathe mindfulness workshop for teachers and clinicians who are interested in providing this service for adolescents will take place on June 13-14th. Experience not required. Those interested in participating can do so here.