Mindfulness in Schools

Karen trained with Exeter University’s on their academically acclaimed 2 year Post Graduate diploma in Mindfulness Based Approaches. She will complete her MSc research project next year in a study which aims to examine the extent to which mindfulness techniques will increase achievement in teaching and learning inan FE college.

She will facilitate a specially adapted version of the MBSR course to college staff within their CPD programme in order to evaluate how this intervention could reduce stress and thereby enhance mental and emotional wellbeing, increase staff motivation and retention, thereby improving teaching and learning, and achievement.

Karen is well placed to conduct this study as she is currently psychology lecturer at Weymouth College in Dorset and therefore as a teacher of many years understands fully the unique emotional and real psychological cost that stress can take on teaching colleagues. As a psychology graduate her aim is to alleviate this stress and thus help teaching staff restore balance in the learning environment. It is axiomatic that outstanding teaching and learning cannot take place in an environment toxic with stress.

An introduction to mindfulness practice among students has been found to increase emotional resilience, improve relationships both at school and at home

By June 2015, Karen will be one of very few QTS teachers in the UK with a MSc in Mindfulness Based Teaching, grounded in her own research study within an educational setting As such, she is extremely well placed to bring her level of expertise as a consultant to how implementation of mindfulness within the education sector could contribute to a whole school ethos of achievement, through threading teaching of kindness and empathy for self and others implicitly and explicitly throughout the whole school. She draws on her experience as a secondary school teacher, an advisory teacher for Dorset County Council and as a fully trained mindfulness teacher, with an established mindfulness practice.

Mindfulness coaching is a holistic approach, which enables gifted students to manage their anxiety, particularly around exams, while offering coping strategies with attention training to student cohorts who traditionally struggle to maintain academic focus. An introduction to mindfulness practice among students has been found to increase emotional resilience, improve relationships both at school and at home, as well as emotional intelligence generally, leading to the ability to make better life choices. Low emotional intelligence is a real barrier to student achievement in a cyber world of information overload, in which choice points require wise discernment.

She offers mindfulness coaching to schools in an attempt to address a holistic approach to an improvement in mental and physical health and coping strategies in student cohorts who traditionally struggle to maintain academic focus.

Karen’s credentials for teaching are based in experience and academic rigour. However, more importantly is her passion to work with education professionals to increase the emotional integrity of our education system, which lays the foundation for focused teaching and learning.

Don’t worry about what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

Howard Thurman