The St. Paul Education Regional Division has decided to suspend a recently implemented program titled Mindfulness in the Classroom.
While the program was being newly introduced to schools across SPERD, Ashmont Elementary School had already been running it for seven years prior to the expansion.
“We saw the success that we had in Ashmont, so it seemed like a natural flow,” said superintendent Glen Brodziak, when speaking on the response recently received from some parents. “The whole project is centred around mental health for our students.”
The first new schools to try the program were St. Paul Elementary, Glen Avon, and New Myrnam. Linda Mullen, Ashmont’s relaxation coach, would be administering the lessons, with the students’ regular teacher present.
“I felt really excited, and pleased for the opportunity for something really valuable to be available to more children,” Mullen, who has a master’s degree in education, said about the expansion.
The program was to consist of 15 lessons, each lasting about 15 minutes in duration. These would be administered two to three times a week over a six-week span.
According to a letter of information that was later sent to parents, mindfulness involves slowing down from busy, full times, and stepping away from books, pencils, and technology. This is meant to help the individual pay attention to the present moment, and focus on things like breath, thoughts, sensations, and emotions.
“(It’s about) letting ourselves know that the quietness we find inside is something that we can tap into anytime that we have anxieties or big emotions, worries, or just need to rest,” Mullen said.
Brodziak went through a few lessons himself, in order to get a sense of the program.
“There is one specific lesson called test taking,” he said. “You are trying to practice the situation of taking an exam. In this particular lesson . . . you imagine yourself going into the classroom, picking up the pencil, picking up the exam . . . And then when you finish the exam, it’s about getting to that place, and having that feeling that, ‘Listen, I’ve done the best I can, and now the exam is over and I’m done with it.’”
The program includes other lessons of pause and visualization meant to deal with body awareness, being kind and caring on the playground, as well as ideas of giving, generosity and gratitude.
A few days after the program’s rollout, however, SPERD received some negative feedback from parents who disapproved of the lessons. Though the negative portion of the feedback was small – roughly two per cent of applicable parents – it was enough to grab SPERD’s attention.
Mullen herself was not anticipating any sort of negative response to the program.
“Not at all,” she said. “I’ve worked with Ashmont Elementary for almost seven years now, and it’s gone really well. It’s never ever been any kind of issue at all.”
Some of the negative feedback had to do with worries about the program containing a sort of religious affiliation.
“You Google ‘mindfulness,’ you might see the word Buddhism in there,” Brodziak said. “That did come up.”
“Unfortunately, some people think that maybe there are some religious connotations to it, and there absolutely aren’t,” said Heather Starosielski, chair of SPERD. “It’s completely secular.”
Mullen agreed with Starosielski’s comments.
“Mindfulness in the classroom is very secularly built. So whenever I teach mindfulness, it’s always from that point of view. Always,” she said. “I was kind of surprised that anybody thought that it was trying to do anything different.”
Aside from the worries regarding certain religious affiliations, there were some other concerns.
“One of the things mindfulness might ask you to do is clear your mind and clear your thoughts,” Brodziak said. “One thought out there is that when you clear your thoughts, it could allow other negative thoughts in.”
The early negative feedback was enough to prompt SPERD to send home the aforementioned letter of information, in the hopes that educating parents on the program might quell some of these worries. When the negative feedback persisted, SPERD decided to postpone the program.
Brodziak feels this was the right decision for the time being.
“While two per cent might seem small, it is not small for us, because we value everyone’s opinion,” he said.
Starosielski feels that the main disconnect throughout the entire process was the lack of communication with parents about the program, which is funded, supported, and approved by the province.
“I think part of it comes down to just getting our parents more informed as to what our actual intentions were with the program, and the history of it,” she said.
Moving forward, there are plans to reintroduce the program after an evaluation is conducted. SPERD will be looking at better ways to inform parents about the initiative, and the division also plans to explore the idea of a specific release form that will allow students to opt in or out of the lessons.
Brodziak still believes in the program’s benefits, and is confident that it fits well within their health curriculum.
“In public education, we are bound to stay within the parameters of the School Act, and we have to teach the curriculum,” he said. “The question is, do we send out permission forms for everything that we feel is curriculum related?”
