Published On: March 22nd, 2015|

The Telegraph – Eleanor Doughty

“When asked what impact mindfulness has in schools, Richard Burnett of Tonbridge School quotes T S Eliot. “ ’Teach us to dare and not to care. Teach us how to sit still.’ English literature is a wonderful source of unknowingly ‘mindful’ passages.” Burnett co-founded the Mindfulness in Schools Project (MSP) with Chris Cullen, then a teacher at Hampton School in south-west London. He remains a teacher at the all-boys Tonbridge in Kent, where all Year 10 pupils “do” mindfulness, taught by Burnett and the headmaster Tim Haynes. Mindfulness was elected as part of the school day because Burnett believes it to be an important life skill – it is more than just an aid to academia, but something to take on into later life. “The knock-on benefits to wellbeing, mental health, the capacity for empathy and simply for young people to be content and to flourish make it well worth it,” he says.”(more)