Tampa Bay: Schools use mindfulness to combat agitation in students

Dec 1, 2017, Tampa Bay Times: At 15 local schools, mornings that start with mindfulness help kids ‘de-escalate and reflect’ http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/k12/At-15-local-schools-mornings-that-start-with-mindfulness-help-kids-de-escalate-and-reflect-_163076783 Nearly every morning, the students at Patricia J. Sullivan Partnership School in Tampa practice a few minutes of mindfulness to begin their day, part of a yearlong, privately funded experiment of sorts at more than a dozen public schools across the Tampa Bay area. … "Our kids are agitated," said the school’s guidance counselor, Gerry Nugent. "I firmly believe that starting our day this way has made the day more productive." Two years ago, Nugent needed help. She was three years into her job at Sullivan and still wrestling with the difficulty her students had concentrating and clearing their minds. They were restless, preoccupied with whatever was going on in their home lives. A colleague who practiced mindfulness connected Nugent to Inner Explorer, a nonprofit organization that provides daily audio-guided mindfulness activities to classrooms in kindergarten through 12th grade across the U.S. …. "There’s a calmer kind of atmosphere at school," Every said. "It’s just nice to see that kids are taking it seriously."