Imagine you’re working at a school and a kid starts to act up? What would you do? The typical answer is to discipline them. But here is one school helping them develop self-discipline instead, with great results.
Robert W. Coleman Elementary School has been doing something different when students act out: offering meditation.
This room is not a standard detention room. It’s filled with plush pillows and quiet but vibrant decorations. Kids are encouraged to sit in the room and go through practices like breathing or meditation, helping them center themselves. They can talk through what happened if they wish.
The room also offers an after-school program, Holistic Me, where pre-schoolers through fifth graders learn yoga and meditation.
Some are doubtful that energetic kids can sit still and meditate. But they can. “It’s amazing,” Kirk Philips, the Holistic Me coordinator at Robert W. Coleman said. “You wouldn’t think that little kids meditate in silence. But they do.”
Holistic Life Foundation co-founder Andres Gonzalez told Oprah magazine, “We’ve had parents tell us, ‘I came home stressed out the other day, and my daughter said, “Hey, Mom, you need to sit down. I will teach you how to breathe.”
Robert W. Coleman school tells us there were zero suspensions last year and also zero so far this year. Other schools report benefiting from meditation too.
Though Meditation is an ancient practice, programs like these show they still have an enormous impact on modern-day life.
