Fewer tests, more play: Qatar asked Finland to open a progressive school in Doha — and it’s a huge success

 

DOHA, Qatar – My daughter Annie is probably worse at spelling than her Canadian friends. She also spends less time in class. At school, she is encouraged to daydream.

In fact, in her first year of classes in our new country, she was utterly unconvinced at first that the place I was dropping her off each day was even a school. Most of her time was spent playing, she told me, somewhat confused. Math was taught using skipping ropes. Besides lunch and recess, the schedule included “long break,” “breakies,” mini break” and “golden time.” The principal would put on puppet shows.

When I first enrolled Annie and her sister Jane, then 5, in a school in Doha, it was an act of desperation. My family had just moved to Qatar — a tiny country in the Persian Gulf perched atop some of the world’s largest gas reserves. Qatar’s staggering wealth has spurred a flurry of development, so much that Qataris have been eclipsed by expats, who account for 90 per cent of population. Families flock here for work, but face long waiting lists and punishing entrance exams to secure school placements.

It was no different for us. When we first arrived, about a year ago, I knew my daughters didn’t stand a chance of getting admitted to Doha’s most prestigious schools. Luckily, we stumbled onto a solution: Qatar’s ruling Sheikhs had invited Finland, famous for its progressive approach to education, to open a satellite school in Doha – with both teachers and textbooks imported from Scandinavia.

It felt like a bit of a gamble. The Qatar-Finland International School was an experiment, really, the first “export” of a child-centric educational program that eschewed standardized testing and rigid curriculum in favour of play-based learning. Hence the skipping ropes.

But I was intrigued by Finland’s approach. The country has routinely ranked among the top countries on the Program for International Student Assessment, ironically a standardized test that measures the educational outcomes of 15-year-old students in 65 developed countries around the world.

Finland’s success has been especially remarkable because it’s happened relatively quickly — 30 years ago the country ranked dismally compared to its OECD peers. And because neither a child’s social background nor their innate ability seem to be a huge factor in Finland’s academic prowess; it has one of the slimmest achievement gaps in the world.

It has also made school fun. Jane, my youngest daughter, had her first real introduction to addition and subtraction by playing “shop” with play money. She’s learning her alphabet phonetically. Each sound corresponds to a dance. In science class, the kids made paper airplanes, launching them from the second floor balcony. Once a week, the principal would convene an assembly – but instead of giving a dry speech about, say, the importance of using seat belts, he performed a puppet show on the topic with “Mr. Fox.”

The other day, the school proudly posted its latest educational acquisition on its Facebook page. It wasn’t a book, or anything technical. It was a table hockey game. “Imagine how great it will be to play with friends during break!” the post exclaimed.

All this has gone over poorly with a few parents.  One mother, whose family was from London, pulled her child out because she worried he wasn’t “learning anything” at his new school. But every day, my children looked forward to going to this school. So do others.

And learning does happen. I saw profound improvements in my children’s abilities over the course of the year. The play-based approach to education also made a big difference to children who had struggled in previous school settings.

Natalie Browning moved to Qatar from Maryland. Her son, Elijah, was diagnosed with ADHD. He wasn’t admitted to other schools because he couldn’t pass their entrance exams. It was incredibly deflating: “Elijah’s super smart, but he couldn’t pass an assessment. It felt so wrong to put a kid under the microscope like that,” she said. Her daughter, Ivy, was in a British-based Pre-K. One day the teacher had divided her students into two lists on the blackboard: “Good kids and naughty kids.” That was it.

She described the Finnish school as “an answer to a prayer.” Elijah’s Finnish teacher has never treated his ADHD as a problem. In Finland, students with learning disabilities are typically placed in regular classrooms but receive extra support, if needed. They are also given individual learning plans, to set them up for success on their own terms.

“His teacher thinks he’s smart and that means the world to him. She respects him and helps him discover what he is good at,” Browning said.

Children aren’t tested on how “good” they are once they’re in class, either. By the time my daughter hit first grade in Canada, she had tests two or three times a week in spelling, math or geography. I dreaded these more than her. Sunday nights were often spent drilling her on how to spell “Wednesday,” something she’d remember the following morning for her test, but by Wednesday, she’d inevitably forgotten.

I just didn’t see the point. Neither do the Finns.

This may mean that Annie will be spelling Wednesday wrong for a while yet, but when I asked her teacher whether this was a cause for concern, he was non-plussed. Children’s ability to spell develops naturally, he explained, in tandem with their ability to read. He dismissed spelling tests in primary grades as little more than gimmicky memory tests.

Finland credits this rejection of standardized testing as one of the biggest reasons for its success. While my kids weren’t being tested, though, their abilities were being constantly assessed. Their teachers scrutinized their work throughout the year — not to decide whether they would pass or fail — but to understand how their skills were developing and how to help them.

In Canada, I felt like my child’s report card from public school was written in code. In Finland, it was plain English. There were no letter grades. Instead, they praised Jane for her “exceptional ability to look at matters from someone else’s point of view” and “noticing if someone needs a friend.” Parent-teacher conferences didn’t focus on grades either but on how each child could be best supported to thrive.

The absence of standardized testing was liberating for students, but equally so for teachers. “The ability to learn about a student rather than see what they already knew was really striking,” said Maria Mataia, an Australian mother whose son, Manini, attends the school. “They’re more interested in his ability to learn rather than seeing what he already knew.”

The other thing that sets the Finnish system apart from its peers is those teachers. In Finland, teaching is considered a highly prestigious profession. All teachers must hold at least a Master’s Degree and it’s a job that commands the equivalent respect of a doctor or lawyer. In the classroom, Finnish teachers have a huge amount of freedom compared to their Canadian counterparts.

In Manini’s class, the teacher would structure each day according to her students’ energy levels, rather than a strict lesson plan. “If they seemed tired, she would give them more breaks. The day wasn’t about getting through a set curriculum. There was a lot of flexibility,” said his mother.

But here’s the best sign of an experiment (or gamble) gone right: Virtually all of the families who enrolled in the Qatar-Finland school – including mine – are returning.

This year, there will be new students as well. Jo Livingstone is a teacher who was born in Montreal and moved to Doha a few months ago. Her sons gained admission to a British school and the Finnish one. Unable to decide, she posted her dilemma on Facebook and asked her friends, around the world, to help her decide.

“Everyone votehttp://www.montrealgazette.com/news/fewer+tests+more+play+qatar+asked+finland+open+progressive+school+doha+huge+success/11341813/story.htmld Finish,” she said, somewhat surprised.

 

WHY CHILDREN FIDGET: And what we can do about it

 

A perfect stranger pours her heart out to me over the phone. She complains that her six-year-old son is unable to sit still in the classroom. The school wants to test him for ADHD (attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder). This sounds familiar, I think to myself. As a pediatric occupational therapist, I’ve noticed that this is a fairly common problem today.

The mother goes on to explain how her son comes home every day with a yellow smiley face. The rest of his class goes home with green smiley faces for good behavior. Every day this child is reminded that his behavior is unacceptable, simply because he can’t sit still for long periods of time.

The mother starts crying. “He is starting to say things like, ‘I hate myself’ and ‘I’m no good at anything.’” This young boy’s self-esteem is plummeting all because he needs to move more often.

Over the past decade, more and more children are being coded as having attention issues and possibly ADHD. A local elementary teacher tells me that at least eight of her twenty-two students have trouble paying attention on a good day. At the same time, children are expected to sit for longer periods of time. In fact, even kindergarteners are being asked to sit for thirty minutes during circle time at some schools.

The problem: children are constantly in an upright position these days. It is rare to find children rolling down hills, climbing trees, and spinning in circles just for fun. Merry-go-rounds and teeter-totters are a thing of the past. Recess times have shortened due to increasing educational demands, and children rarely play outdoors due to parental fears, liability issues, and the hectic schedules of modern-day society. Lets face it: Children are not nearly moving enough, and it is really starting to become a problem.

I recently observed a fifth grade classroom as a favor to a teacher. I quietly went in and took a seat towards the back of the classroom. The teacher was reading a book to the children and it was towards the end of the day. I’ve never seen anything like it. Kids were tilting back their chairs back at extreme angles, others were rocking their bodies back and forth, a few were chewing on the ends of their pencils, and one child was hitting a water bottle against her forehead in a rhythmic pattern.

This was not a special needs classroom, but a typical classroom at a popular art-integrated charter school. My first thought was that the children might have been fidgeting because it was the end of the day and they were simply tired. Even though this may have been part of the problem, there was certainly another underlying reason.

We quickly learned after further testing, that most of the children in the classroom had poor core strength and balance. In fact, we tested a few other classrooms and found that when compared to children from the early 1980s, only one out of twelve children had normal strength and balance. Only one! Oh my goodness, I thought to myself. These children need to move!

Ironically, many children are walking around with an underdeveloped vestibular (balance) system today--due to restricted movement. In order to develop a strong balance system, children need to move their body in all directions, for hours at a time. Just like with exercising, they need to do this more than just once-a-week in order to reap the benefits. Therefore, having soccer practice once or twice a week is likely not enough movement for the child to develop a strong sensory system.

Children are going to class with bodies that are less prepared to learn than ever before. With sensory systems not quite working right, they are asked to sit and pay attention. Children naturally start fidgeting in order to get the movement their body so desperately needs and is not getting enough of to “turn their brain on.” What happens when the children start fidgeting? We ask them to sit still and pay attention; therefore, their brain goes back to “sleep.”

Fidgeting is a real problem. It is a strong indicator that children are not getting enough movement throughout the day. We need to fix the underlying issue. Recess times need to be extended and kids should be playing outside as soon as they get home from school. Twenty minutes of movement a day is not enough! They need hours of play outdoors in order to establish a healthy sensory system and to support higher-level attention and learning in the classroom.

         In order for children to learn, they need to be able to pay attention. In order to pay attention, we need to let them move.

http://www.balancedandbarefoot.com/blog/the-real-reason-why-children-fidget?ncid=newsltushpmg00000003

When Mindfulness Meets the Classroom

A five-minute walk from the rickety, raised track that carries the 5 train through the Bronx, the English teacher Argos Gonzalez balanced a rounded metal bowl on an outstretched palm. His class—a mix of black and Hispanic students in their late teens, most of whom live in one of the poorest districts in New York City—by now were used to the sight of this unusual object: a Tibetan meditation bell.
“Today we’re going to talk about mindfulness of emotion,” Gonzalez said with a hint of a Venezuelan accent. “You guys remember what mindfulness is?” Met with quiet stares, Gonzalez gestured to one of the posters pasted at the back of the classroom, where the students a few weeks earlier had brainstormed terms describing the meaning of “mindfulness.” There were some tentative mumblings: “being focused,” “being aware of our surroundings.”
Gonzalez nodded. “Right. But it’s also being aware of our feelings, our emotions, and how they impact us.”

 

Arturo A. Schomburg Satellite Academy is what is known in New York City as a transfer school, a small high school designed to re-engage students who have dropped out or fallen behind. This academy occupies two floors of a hulking, grey building that’s also home to two other public schools. For the most part, Gonzalez told me, the kids who come here genuinely want to graduate, but attendance is their biggest barrier to success. On the day I visited, one of Gonzalez’s students had just been released from jail; one recently had an abortion; one had watched a friend bleed to death from a gunshot wound the previous year. Between finding money to put food on the table and dealing with unstable family members, these students’ minds are often crowded with concerns more pressing than schoolwork.
Still holding the bowl, Gonzalez continued with the day’s lesson. “I’m going to say a couple of words to you. You’re not literally going to feel that emotion, but the word is going to trigger something, it’s going to make you think of something or feel something. Try to explore it.”
The slightly built, 30-something
Gonzalez, who wears a wide smile and a scruffy beard, first learned about mindfulness from his wife, a yoga teacher in schools around the city. His students referred to him by his first name, and Gonzalez addressed them just as informally—greeting them in the morning with a high five and a “Sup,” or “How you doing, bro?” or even “Hey, mamma.” He told me he strives to make school relevant—explaining what a “motif” is by comparing it to the hook of a rap song, for example—and believes in the value of hands-on teaching, emailing students individually to check in when they don’t show up.

“First, sit up straight, put your feet flat on the ground. Let your eyes close.” Gonzalez demonstrated as he instructed. Most of the 15 or so students followed suit—though a few scribbled surreptitiously to finish overdue assignments. Gonzalez tapped the bowl and a rich, metallic sound rang out. The class fell quiet as the note reverberated.
“Take a deep breath into your belly. As you breathe in and breathe out, notice that your breath is going to be stronger in a certain part of your body. Maybe it’s your belly, your chest, or your nose. We’ll begin with trying to count to 10 breaths.”
There was silence but for the hiss of the 5 train pulling into the station, the clunk of garbage cans, the faint siren of a police car.
“If you get lost in thought, it’s okay. Just come back and count again. Whether you get up to 10 or not doesn’t really matter. It’s just a way to focus [your] mind.”

* * *

It may not be the typical way to start an English class, but Gonzalez’s students were familiar with these five-minute mindfulness exercises—from counting breaths and focusing on the sensations of breathing, to visualizing thoughts and feelings—that he uses to help train their attention, quiet their thoughts, and regulate their emotions.
Jon Kabat-Zinn, the biologist who first coined the term “mindfulness” in the ’70s, defines it as a state of mind: the act of “paying attention on purpose” to the present moment, with a “non-judgmental” attitude. But mindfulness is really a secular philosophy and set of techniques adapted from thousands-of-years-old Buddhist meditation traditions—ones that only recently landed in mainstream Western consciousness. It was Kabat-Zinn who first formally brought mindfulness into a medical setting; he developed the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, which used specific exercises to help patients dealing with chronic pain and is now widely applied in other therapeutic contexts, and founded the Center for Mindfulness at UMass Medical School.

 

This strong base of research, along with a growing body of supporters, are fueling the momentum behind mindfulness. And as Gonzalez demonstrates, it’s now spreading to schools, where it could potentially have an impact on students’ well-being; a quarter of American adolescents suffer from a mental disorder, according to a 2010 Johns Hopkins study.
The first major effort to use mindfulness in schools began in the UK in 2007 with a series of fixed lesson plans delivered in classrooms across the country. Interest in the movement has picked up pace since. This past July, Oxford researchers announced plans to launch a large-scale, seven-year, $10 million study on mindfulness in education next year. More than a dozen similar initiatives have sprouted in the U.S., grassroots programs that train teachers in mindfulness and generate their own curricula. Among the two largest are MindUP and Mindful Schools, the California-based nonprofit that trained Gonzalez, which continue to spearhead the country’s steadily growing, but piecemeal, mindfulness-in-education movement. Since its founding in 2010, Mindful Schools has trained thousands of teachers through its online programs, most of them in California, New York, and Washington, D.C., who are said to have a total reach of 300,000 students.
After Gonzalez and his wife signed up for one of their six-week courses—Mindful Schools’ training is open to any educator or mental-health professional who wants to teach mindfulness to young people—he was able to convince his school administrators to help him pay for a year-long certification program. Through a series of online lectures, weekly breakout sessions, monthly meetings, and two week-long summer retreats, Gonzalez worked on his own mindfulness skills, honing his ability to control his attention and regulate his own emotions while receiving specific guidance on how to teach those same skills to the youth populations he’d be working with. Gonzalez also received training about the biology of the nervous system, child development, and the neuroscientific basis for mindfulness’s effects.

Not all mindfulness programs are in schools like Gonzalez’s, where large numbers of students have been identified as disordered or disruptive, or struggle with mental-health problems and unstable living situations. Middlesex School, a prestigious boarding school in Massachusetts, requires that all incoming freshmen take a mindfulness course. The program, which was founded by an alumnus who used mindfulness to cope with both sports-related performance anxiety and T-Cell lymphoma, has proven popular among students. A vast majority—97 percent—of students surveyed in 2014 said they would recommend the course to others, reporting benefits ranging from better sleep and diminished stress to increased focus on schoolwork.
Education reformers have long maintained that there is a fundamental connection between emotional imbalance and poor life prospects. As Paul Tough argued and popularized in How Children Succeed, stress early in life can prompt a cascade of negative effects, psychologically and neurologically—poor self-control and underdeveloped executive function, in particular. The U.S. education system’s focus on cognitive intelligence—IQ scores and academic skills like arithmetic—undermines the development of equally vital forms of non-cognitive intelligence. This type of intelligence entails dimensions of the mind that are difficult to quantify: It is the foundation of good character, resilience, and long-term life fulfillment. It is this part of the mind that mindfulness seeks to address.

* * *

Efforts to implement mindfulness in classrooms haven’t always gone smoothly. Some parents and administrators have challenged its use in schools based on its religious roots—and in at least one instance even managed to shut a program down. As mindfulness is used more routinely in the medical sphere, these belief-based critiques are becoming less common. But the lack of evidence demonstrating the long-term academic impact of mindfulness has raised concerns about its role as an educational tool. Given the inherent nebulousness of mindfulness as a concept, and the grassroots status of the movement, these concerns are understandable.
Qualitative evidence touting the benefits of mindfulness in the classroom—like Mindful Schools’ encouraging survey results and uplifting anecdotes fromparticipants—is easy to come by, and several short-term research studies onelementary- and middle-school students have shown positive results. But serious questions remain about the overall efficacy of such programs on non-subjective measurements of well-being and academic performance, such as test scores, graduation rates, mental-health referrals, and overall life outcomes.

The mindfulness-in-education movement has a lot in common with, and in many ways complements, the social-and-emotional-learning movement.

The lack of rigorous, robust, and long-term studies on mindfulness is what makes people like the Penn State University psychologist Mark Greenberg cautious. Greenberg works with the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning—one of the groups at the forefront of the two-decade-old social-and-emotional-learning (SEL) movement. The mindfulness-in-education movement has a lot in common with, and in many ways complements, SEL, since both aim to teach children how to build self-awareness, effectively handle their emotions, and empathetically manage their relationships. Unlike mindfulness, however, which takes more of an inside-out approach by helping students to slow down, intentionally focus their attention from moment to moment, and build compassion, SEL works from the outside in, teaching children a set of skills like how to mediate a conflict, or how to verbally express and explain their emotions to improve communication. Research shows that SEL programs alone have boosted kids’ academic performance, as well as benefitting them socially and emotionally—but many believe mindfulness should also belong in the SEL toolkit.
Linda Lantieri, who helped found the SEL collaborative and has been working on these issues for decades, argues that the best approach to education combines mindfulness and SEL skills rather than treating one as a sufficient replacement for the other. While Greenberg agrees with Lantieri, he is a sober voice amidst the hype and enthusiasm about mindfulness, earning him the fond title of “curmudgeon” in some circles. “We don’t know if these effects last,” Greenberg told me. “Right now the promised benefits far exceed the actual findings.” He is also concerned that mindfulness is just one “flavor of the month” that may detract attention from SEL programs supported by more substantial evidence. (Greenberg recently co-authored an impressive longitudinal study that followed hundreds of students as they progressed from early childhood through young adulthood and found that poor social-emotional skills in kindergarten helped predict negative outcomes across multiple domains of education, employment, criminal activity, substance use, and mental health.)

Mindful Schools is aware of these criticisms, and is beefing up its research efforts. In 2012, the group worked with a University of California at Davis research team to conduct a randomized controlled study of three elementary schools in Oakland, California. They sent in outside mindfulness instructors for 15 minutes, three times a week, to teach some classrooms but not others, and reported that mindfulness improved students’ behavior and ability to focus, as well as teachers’ sense of well-being—though the research design had several main points of weakness, mostly involving the challenge of measuring children directly rather than through teacher assessments. Mindful Schools’ new research director told me that the group is eager to conduct more studies that are even better-planned, focusing more on the efficacy of the kind of integrated training Gonzalez received. The field is so new that techniques evolve rapidly, constantly going through phases of trial-and-error—so it remains to be seen whether current or future findings can convince skeptics of mindfulness’s effectiveness.

* * *

Back in the Bronx, after a minute or two of the day’s mindfulness exercise, his own eyes also closed, Gonzalez ran through a list of emotions: Happy. Sad. Excited. Mad. Bored. Loving. Worried. Jealous. Silly. The second item on this list seemed to especially resonate with an 18-year-old at the front of the classroom, a young woman with dark skin, shimmering pink lip gloss, and perfectly plucked eyebrows. Sitting up straight with her hands in her lap, her composed posture belied the challenges she faced shortly before transferring to Arturo A. Schomburg two years earlier.

“I didn’t know anybody. I was very depressed. I didn’t want to be in school,” she told me in a hushed voice at the end of class. Shortly before transferring to this school, her favorite big brother had been hit by a car. She said she’d watched him fall into a coma, and sat by his side until his heart stopped; soon after that, she’d seen one of her friends get shot in the head and bleed to death in the street. During the quiet minutes set aside for mindfulness exercises in class, she would often cry.
Now, she writes in perfect, neat script as she fills out a worksheet to accompany the day’s mindfulness exercise. But she told me she wasn’t always so eager to participate. “I used to write, ‘I hate this, I don’t want to do this.’ I ripped those papers up,” she said. But one day when she was in a particularly dark mood, something clicked. “Argos told me to close my eyes. Then he said, ‘Connect to your breath.’ He always used to say it, but I never really did it until then.” Gonzalez told me that his Mindful Schools training had specific segments dedicated to working with trauma.

“At times all the roles blur—teachers, therapists, social workers.”

“I noticed that I could feel [my breath] in my chest,” she told me, “And at that moment, I felt so relieved. The only thing I could think in my mind was, ‘I’m ok.’ And, I don’t know—from that day on, it just didn’t hurt anymore.” She told me she hadn’t been in fights the way she once used to. Her four other brothers are in jail, and she is convinced it’s because they didn’t get the mindfulness training she now has. “Your emotions drive you mad,” she said, but escaping them is possible by “focusing on now.” (Our conversation also benefitted from the fact that I myself have some knowledge of mindfulness; I discovered it during a year off from college as I struggled with anxiety and depression.)
Another student told me she was skeptical about mindfulness but admitted that it could be helpful. She told me that she initially refused to do the exercises, sitting defiantly while others participated. Some of the tasks—like tapping your thumb to each finger individually, to narrowly focus attention on your fingertips—did nothing but irritate her. Eventually, though, she realized she was alone in her resistance, and she began to go through the motions, largely because she likes and respects Gonzalez. She was also struck by a movie Gonzalez showed them that compared two jails, one that trained prisoners in mindfulness and one that didn’t. The prisoners who learned mindfulness were much happier and more successful when they got out. Still, ultimately, she maintains that she doesn’t see the point.

* * *

Beyond the issue of scientific evidence, bringing mindfulness into classrooms raises other questions: How does it fit into the traditional teaching model? Could any teacher teach mindfulness, or does it require a significant personal investment? Is opening teachers up to dealing with their students’ emotional and psychological needs, in addition to their academic ones, encouraging a blur between teacher and therapist?
Gonzalez doesn’t think so. “My intention as a mindfulness instructor is to give students some very simple and basic tools so they can learn to self regulate. That’s the beginning and end of it.” When a student is dealing with emotional trauma, Gonzalez said he’s been taught to keep his advice general—to remind the student that everyone suffers and feels pain, but that life is a gift to be treasured.

Mindful Schools has found that a majority of the teachers it has trained experienced lowered stress and higher job satisfaction.

The clinical social worker at Gonzalez’s school—a large man with a warm baritone voice—thinks mindfulness supports the school’s overall SEL mission. “At times all the roles blur—teachers, therapists, social workers. Especially in a school like this. If you don’t address the noise in a kid’s head that they bring in from the outside, I don’t care how good a teacher you are, you’re not going to have much success.”
He was convinced that Gonzalez is on the right track; and that all teachers should get something akin to mindfulness training, given that they must deal with undiagnosed mental conditions on a regular basis. While they are not therapists, they “can at least ease some of the stress in the moment. Long enough to have somebody intervene.”

Greenberg’s view about the teacher-as-therapist issue is also clear: “Teachers teach many things that are therapeutic. They are managing children’s behavior all day long, but that doesn’t make them therapists, that makes them good teachers. Some of the same ideas we teach in therapy are also applicable to all people.”
Beyond helping his students, Gonzalez also thinks mindfulness helps him to cope with the strains of teaching. He believes he now draws clearer lines in his relationships with students—giving them the skills to help themselves, rather than feeling that he needs to be the one to heal them—and copes more healthily with the trauma the job exposes him to, whether directly (in a previous teaching job, he said a student once stumbled into his office bleeding from a stab wound) or indirectly through working with a grieving student.
Gonzalez ultimately thinks that mindfulness may go furthest if applied to teacher education as a way to help prevent burnout—a major issue, given that 20 percent of teachers in high-poverty schools leave within their first year. Greenberg agrees. One of the ongoing research projects he and his colleauges are involved in is the Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education (CARE) program, funded by the U.S. Department of Education, that focuses on the well-being of the teacher and instructs teachers on emotional awareness, techniques for emotion regulation, and ways to apply these skills to teaching. Greenberg and others suspect that mindfulness specifically tailored to teachers and their struggles—stress and time management, for example—and incorporated into their initial training might do as much or more to improve classroom performance than trying to teach children directly. In its annual surveys, Mindful Schools has found that a majority of the teachers it has trained experienced lowered stress, more connection with students, and higher job satisfaction.

By the end of Gonzalez’s morning class, the quiet, focused tone had long faded. Several students stood up from their desks, leaning over each other, laughing, knowing that personal challenges await them outside the classroom, just as they always have.
Over the chatter, the student with the glossy pink lips told me that hearing Gonzalez say the word “sad” triggered a flashback to all of those overwhelming memories of grief and pain she has been working to move beyond, but that it was okay. “Those feelings are there, but they won’t kill me,” she said. “I still have my days where it’s not easy, but mindfulness helps me a whole lot. Honestly, I feel like if I’d had this before, it would have been easier.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/08/mindfulness-education-schools-meditation/402469/

Meditation as part of school day

At first glance, Quiet Time – a stress reduction meditation strategy used in several San Francisco middle and high schools, – looks like something out of the om-chanting 1960s. Twice daily, a gong sounds in the classroom and rowdy adolescents, who normally can’t sit still for 10 seconds, shut their eyes and try to clear their minds.

The practice of meditation in schools deserves serious attention from parents and policymakers. An impressive array of studies shows that integrating meditation into a school’s daily routine can markedly improve the lives of students. If San Francisco schools Superintendent Richard Carranza has his way, Quiet Time could well spread citywide.

Cleansing Troubled Minds

What’s happening at Visitacion Valley Middle School, which in 2007 became the first public school nationwide to adopt the program, shows why the superintendent is so enthusiastic. In this neighborhood, gunfire is as common as birdsong – nine shootings have been recorded in the past month – and most students know someone who’s been shot or did the shooting. Murders are so frequent that the school employs a full-time grief counselor.

In years past, these students were largely out of control, frequently fighting in the corridors, scrawling graffiti on the walls and cursing their teachers. Absenteeism rates were among the city’s highest and so were suspensions. Worn-down teachers routinely called in sick.

Unsurprisingly, academics suffered. The school tried everything, from counseling and peer support to after-school tutoring and sports, but to disappointingly little effect.

4 Ways Start Kids Meditating 

Now these students are doing light-years better. In the first year of Quiet Time, the number of suspensions fell by 45 percent. Within four years, the suspension rate was among the lowest in the city. Daily attendance rates climbed to 98 percent, well above the citywide average. Grade point averages improved markedly.

About 20 percent of graduates are admitted to Lowell High School – before Quiet Time, getting any students into this elite high school was a rarity. Remarkably, in the annual California Healthy Kids Survey, these middle school youngsters recorded the highest happiness levels in San Francisco.

Reports are similarly positive in the three other schools that have adopted Quiet Time. At Burton High School, for instance, students in the program report significantly less stress and depression, and greater self-esteem, than nonparticipants. With stress levels down, achievement has markedly improved, particularly among students who have been doing worst academically. Grades rose dramatically, compared with those who weren’t in the program.

Less Stress, More Passion

On the California Achievement Test, twice as many students in Quiet Time schools have become proficient in English, compared with students in similar schools where the program doesn’t exist, and the gap is even bigger in math. Teachers report they’re less emotionally exhausted and more resilient.

The research is showing big effects on students’ performance,” says Superintendent Carranza.

“Our new accountability standards, which we’re developing in tandem with the other big California districts, emphasize the importance of social-emotional factors in improving kids’ lives, not just academics.

That’s where Quiet Time can have a major impact, and I’d like to see it expand well beyond a handful of schools.”

While Quiet Time isn’t the final solution for a broken education system, it’s a game-changer for many students who otherwise might have become dropouts. That’s reason enough to make meditation a school staple, and not just in San Francisco.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=92&v=U0PhA_BPp0Y

Dengue advisory

Dear All

An alert has come through from ISOS/Control Risk in relation to an increase dengue  cases in both rural and city areas f Vietnam. The information is below.

In Brief
A significant increase in dengue cases has been reported in several parts of Vietnam. The disease is spread by mosquitoes, and is present in both rural and urban or city areas. Dengue can cause a range of symptoms and has no particular treatment. Some people, especially those who have been infected with dengue before, get a more severe form that can lead to fatal complications. There is no vaccine.

Advice

• When outdoors, wear clothing that covers most of your body (long sleeves, long pants, socks).
• Use an effective insect repellent that contains DEET, Picaridin, PMD, or IR3535.
• Ensure windows are covered with fly-wire. Use "knock-down" insect spray to kill mosquitoes in your room.
• Choose air conditioned accommodation if possible.
• Seek medical attention if you develop a high fever, especially if you suffer "rigors" (shaking) or a rash.

More Detail
Dengue activity continues to increase in many states. Nationally, around 25,000 cases have been confirmed since the beginning of 2015, higher than that observed for the same period in 2014. At least 12 cases have been fatal. Frequent heavy rainfall may be contributing to the persistence of the outbreak.

Dengue is consistently present in Vietnam.

 

Here is the life cycle of the dengue mosquito so that you have a good idea about the time for clearing away standing water.

 

Some control strategies taken from WHO:

 

Individual and household protection

Self-initiative for source reduction in homes and community. See "Environmental management"

Clothing that minimizes skin exposure during daylight hours when mosquitoes are most active affords some protection from the bites of dengue vectors and is encouraged particularly during outbreaks.

Repellents may be applied to exposed skin or to clothing. The use of repellents must be in strict accordance with label instructions.

Insecticide-treated mosquito nets afford good protection for those who sleep during the day (e.g. infants, the bedridden and night-shift workers).

Where indoor biting occurs, household insecticide aerosol products, mosquito coils or other insecticide vaporizers may also reduce biting activity.

Household fixtures such as window and door screens and air-conditioning can also reduce biting.

Safe use of insecticides

All pesticides are toxic to some degree. Safety precautions for their use – including care in the handling of pesticides, safe work practices for those who apply them, and appropriate field application – should be followed.

WHO Pesticide Evaluation Scheme (WHOPES) has published specific guidelines on use of insecticides, safety procedures, quality control and guidelines for testing.

http://www.who.int/denguecontrol/control_strategies/en/

5 Back-to-School Rules for Cell Phone-Carrying Kids (and 1 for Parents)

Ed Yourdon via Compfight cc
 

Whether your kid is heading to school toting a brand-new device or is already a cell-phone pro, it's important to make sure everyone is on the same page about what "responsible use" means. You can keep an eye on kids at home (kind of), but at school, they're on their own. As with any kind of boundary setting, these conversations can be tense. Fortunately, there are only five rules for them to remember -- and one for you, to show that you're all in this together. (Tweens and teens can also play our animated, interactive Digital Compass game to pick up digital-citizen skills.)

Here are our key guidelines for cell-phone carrying kids:

1. Respect the school's rules. Some schools permit students to use their phones at certain times: between classes, at lunch, on the playground, even occasionally in class. Abusing this privilege could jeopardize your classmates' freedom. They'll be mad at you, and your parents could rightly suspend your phone use.

2. Pick up when it's Mom or Dad. Ugh, it's the parents calling again. Well, guess who's paying for your phone? When your mom, dad, or caregiver call, it's probably very important, so don't send it to voicemail.

3. Ask permission before downloading anything. Even if you have your own app store account,get sign off on any apps you download. If something has in-app purchases, those costs could wind up on your parents' bill -- so they need to know what extra charges a download may incur. They also need to make sure it's age appropriate and reasonably good for you.

4. Don't flaunt it. Owning a cell phone is a privilege that not every kid has access to. It's OK to be proud of your phone -- it's an expensive piece of equipment for which you've been given responsibility -- but showing off could make other people feel bad. Also, it could get stolen.

5. Use your phone for good, not evil. You'll see all kinds of misbehavior and mischief regarding phones in school. Set an example for others by being respectful and responsible with yours. Ask permission before taking someone's picture. Take a moment to consider whether a text or video could hurt, annoy, or embarrass someone else. Turn off the phone when you're supposed to. Don't let the phone be more important than someone standing right in front of you.

And here's our essential rule for parents:

Don't text your kid during the school day. Unless it's a real emergency -- like, you're going to the hospital -- resist the urge to text your kid during the school day. Kids have survived for many, many years without talking to their parents while they're at school -- and they need to be allowed independence. And if your kid texts you, make sure he's not breaking any rules to do so.

https://www.commonsensemedia.org/blog/5-back-to-school-rules-for-cell-phone-carrying-kids-and-1-for-parents?utm_source=082815%20Teen&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=weekly

How can I encourage a reluctant reader?

: kimberlykappel via Compfight cc

Kids may express reluctance toward reading for a variety of reasons. Often, adult guidance; variation in style of writing, text length, and subject matter; and well-chosen books are just the ticket to attract reluctant readers.

As with anything kids would rather not do, forcing them, comparing them to other kids, and using other negative reinforcements backfire. There are many ways to encourage kids who are reluctant.

Here are some ideas:

• Encourage reading for fun. Wimpy Kid author Jeff Kinney says that sometimes adults focus so much on getting kids to read they forget about the fun. But kids who are having fun will read.
• Go graphic. There are many high-quality graphic novels that draw in readers through illustrations, short-form text, and engrossing story lines.
• Seek out sports. For kids who'd rather be physically active than read a book, consider books about teams or by athletes, such as You Never Heard of Sandy Koufax?! by Jonah Winter about the famous lefty; Hothead by Cal Ripken Jr.; or other books about sports.
• Think big print. The Here's Hank series by Henry Winkler features a dyslexic hero and a large, easy-to-read typeface.
• Let them follow their interests. You may not love Captain Underpants, but if that's what your kid wants to read, put aside your judgment for the greater good.
• Find characters who reflect your kid's experience. Kids like to see themselves in the stories they read. Look for books with characters and situations that mirror their experience -- for example, kids of color or with divorced parents or who live on a farm or who love dogs. Whatever helps kids identify with the story will keep them more engaged.
• Look for different reading opportunities. Reading is valuable no matter what the format: Pokemon cards, product labels, game manuals, recipes. Mix in shorter-form material with longer stuff.
• Get techy. Ebooks and storybook apps that offer some multimedia along with the narrative can be entertaining and educational and may draw in kids who are turned off by text alone. Use them alongside traditional reading.
• Fact-check. With their amazing stats, incredible images, short-form text, and start-anywhere formats, books of facts such as Guinness World Records and Ripley's Believe It or Not entice kids who'd rather not tackle longer stories.​
• Take turns. With a book your kid has chosen, take turns reading a page (or two) to each other. Ask questions along the way.
• https://www.commonsensemedia.org/reading/how-can-i-encourage-a-reluctant-reader?utm_source=082815+Ages+2-6&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=weekly