The Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel – Alan J. Borsuk
“The school has Mindful Mondays, which start with teacher Holly Skelton on the public address system, giving a message about staying calm and in emotional control. She does some breathing exercises and offers some positive thoughts. Many staff and students wear mindfulness T-shirts, especially on Mondays. “Keep calm and breathe on,” the blue T-shirts say. A hall display offers thoughts and art from a seventh-grade language arts class on how mindfulness helps them. Classes often begin with “a mindful minute.” In the eighth-grade math class of teacher Mauria Turkowski, students demonstrate one of those minutes: The students sit still with both feet on the floor and backs straight. A boy stands at the front of the class, tapping a bowl to produce a chiming sound. Another boy stands next to him, slowly compressing and expanding a ball made of plastic pieces. The 20 or so other students sit quietly, many with their eyes closed, breathing slowly along with the chime and the ins and outs of the ball. What does this accomplish? Students offer answers: It helps us calm down. It helps deal with stress. It helps us focus on what to do. It helps us think before we do something bad. It makes school easier.”(more)