A Mindful Classroom: How teaching kids to manage stress can change their brain's structure

We know stress is real for everyone, in particular students who live with traumatic stress. What changes does that stress have on students' brains and how do those changes look when manifested in behavior? And, how can we help students overcome and/or respond to those challenges?

There is a growing body of neuroscience research that can inform classroom-based responses for and with stressed students. Mindfulness practices such as meditation are introducing students and staff to specific skills for dealing with life's stressors.


People's responses to external stimuli (stressors) tend to revolve around three characteristics:

1. survival responses (these are those like fight or flight)
2. reactive responses (withdrawing, confrontational, or helplessness)
3. conscious responses (being calmly self-aware and alert in the midst of threat)

To help students get to the ability to respond consciously, we need to help students learn that emotions pass and that by creating space between the stimulus and the response, we give ourselves the ability to choose a response. Learning to "surf the urge" helps break the brain's link between the stress of an event and the associated reactive or survival emotion. Surfing the urge requires an understanding of what emotion or feeling they're in.

This feelings wheel can help: Wheel to identify and name feelings

It also requires creating different neural pathways around stressors. One way to do that is through meditation which gives your body the skill to remain calm in the midst of chaos. In general what we practice we become: the more we learn and exercise self-control, the stronger it becomes...and stress inhibits our brain's ability to do that!

There are a growing number of organizations interested in that work:

1. How meditation can relieve stress in schools
2. Center for Wellness & Achievement in Education
3. Mindful Schools  (Room to Breathe documentary trailer) or Healthy Habits of Mind is a free 45 minute film introducing Mindfulness into education featuring Dr. Richard Davidson from UW-Madison's Center for Investigating Healthy Minds.
4. Integrating Mindfulness into Education (edweek.org)

For those interested in the neurological aspect of stress, consider these resources

1. Brain Structures and their Functions
2. Brain Basics