Calming the Mind

I love this idea and wish we could try it here. The article describes different ways of calming children throughout the day and helping them find ways to calm themselves. (I remember this from baby books about trying to help babies learn to comfort themselves if they woke up in the night and thus being about to fall asleep on their own.)

I believe we live in a busy, go, go world that gets easily impressed on our children, from teachers trying to cover test material to parents trying to fit everything in. We have a noisy life with beeps, buzzes, sounds coming from every direction. Five minutes out of the day to calm the mind might be a good thing.

Comments

Jet City mom said…
You might be interested to hear about an unusual club one of the English teachers began at Garfield high school this year.

Garfield's latest club, the Quiet Club, is off to a roaring start. This past Wednesday we had four people. I, Mr. Gish, was there first, eating my lunch (as quietly as I could) and waiting. Soon after, two girls came in, but who weren't quite sure what quiet meant. They tried to keep up a conversation at the whispering level until I let them know that whispering meant they weren't truly being quiet. They caught on quickly though, and true silence was all that was heard from that point. Finally, the co-founder of the club and master quieter, Adrian Randall, came in, nodded gently and sat down. We four, from that moment on, proceeded to get really, really quiet for about seventeen minutes. To consciously sever oneself from noise was wonderful. I rejoined the world relaxed and moving in a different, slower gear. I encourage more people to come and join us and be quiet.

Go softly,
Mr.Gish

It is still going strong and looks to continue next year.
I think it is a great idea.
Some schools also offer yoga in the classroom or as an after school activity- I agree that we need practice to learn to be comfortable hearing ourselves think , or even "not " taking in information for two minutes.
6/20/07, 10:25 PM
Anonymous said…
Don't the students at The New School also have some type of meditation/focus time during the day?
6/21/07, 11:55 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tuesday Open Thread

The speaker list is up for the Board meeting tomorrow; not as packed as I thought with just four people on the waitlist. The majority of the speakers are speaking on high school boundaries (with several wanting to talk about Ballard High). There are only three of us speaking about the Green Dot resolution asking the City to not grant the zoning departures that Green Dot has requested.  It's me, long-time watchdog, Chris Jackins, and the head of the Washington State Charter Schools Association, Patrick D'Amelio.  (I knew Mr. D'Amelio when he headed the Alliance for Education and Big Brothers and Big Sisters; he's a stand-up guy.)
Read more

Breaking It Down: Where the District Might Close Schools

Update 2: an absolutely fabulous interactive map made by parent Beth Day (@thebethocracy on Twitter - she covers Board meetings and is fun to read).   end of update    Update 1: Mea culpa, I did indeed get Decatur and Thornton Creek mixed up. Thanks to all for the correction. end of update   I suspect some who read this post will be irate. Why do this? Because the district seems very hellbent on this effort with no oversight skid marks from the Board.    To clearly state - I do not believe that closing 20 schools is a good idea. I think they hit on 20 because they thought it might bring in the most savings. But the jury is still out on the savings because the district has not shown its work nor its data. I suspect closing schools and THEN leasing/renting them is the big plan but that means the district really has to keep the buildings up.   But this district, with its happy talk about "well-resourced schools" is NOT acknowledging the pain and yes, grief, that is to come fro
Read more

MEETING CANCELED - Hey Kids, A Meeting with Three(!) Seattle Schools Board Directors

 Update 2: So I have seen a message from President Liza Rankin on why she, Director Evan Briggs, and Director Michelle Sarju backed out of this meeting.  In a nutshell: - She says there was no organization to the meeting which is just not true. They had a moderator lined up and naturally the board members could have set parameters for what to discuss, length of meeting, etc. All that was fleshed out. - She also claimed that if the meeting was PTA sponsored, they needed to have liability insurance to use the school space. Hello? PTAs use school space all the time and know they have to have this insurance.  - She seems to be worried about the Open Public Meetings law. Look, if she has a meeting in a school building on a non-personnel topic, it should be an open meeting. It appears that Rankin is trying, over and over, to narrow the window of access that parents have to Board members. She even says in her message - "...with decisions made in public." Hmmm - She also says that th
Read more