Hello all! I love that you all worked at an elementary school to conduct mindfulness lessons. I love being able to work with kids and I like projects that deal with them at a younger age. I wonder how the experience went working with kids- like did they seem to really enjoy the mindfulness activities while doing them? The classroom behavior rubric was a nice visual to see. It looks like the kids were really engages after seeing your classroom behavior scale! I liked that you included qualitative data as well and I like that one of the teachers hopes to utilize mindfulness strategies in the future. I think that I would have benefited from some mindful breathing or anchor words when I was in elementary school. It certainly is important to know that there were a lot of good positive increases in the kids- I think even if there are no significant results it was still clearly beneficial to the kids and the teacher. Great presentation and research!

Hi everyone! I love that you worked with elementary students! I am going to be an elementary school teacher so I immediately clicked on this study when I saw it. This program sounds amazing! Mindfulness is such an important tool, especially to practice and encourage at a young age. It was also super interesting to see how teachers reacted to the intervention. That’s so great that one of the teachers said they will continue to use the strategies. Since attention was found to be increased after the intervention, the benefits sound really great, especially for students with ADHD. I hope more schools implement these kind of interventions and activities to benefit the well-being of both students and teachers. I love that you included the drawings from the kids, that is so sweet! I loved all of your visuals (especially the student drawings), you had an extremely engaging and interesting presentation. It is clear that you all were very passionate about the topic, great job!

I found your project topic to be very interesting. I also am interested in the teaching field so this topic has a lot of influence on what I plan to do in the future. I think it is awesome that you found significant results in at least two of your categories. I think the significant results of the attention condition are probably the most interesting to think about. It seems as though you really made a big impact on the children’s mindsets and educational experiences through your experiment in the school. Overall you did a great job, and thank you for sharing such a fascinating study.

Yay! I’m so glad you all still got to go to Riverview, and I have to say that I loved seeing the pictures the students drew for you all! So cute! It really seems as though you made an impact on the students’ lives. This study is so important considering the changes that we’re dealing with now as a society. With COVID, now is more the time than ever to start practicing mindfulness as inattentiveness, anxiety, depression and stress levels are soaring to new heights. Even though your study wasn’t significant, I think you all had some incredibly meaningful data, and I would love to see a second version of this study when we’re compeltely in-person. Great job everyone!

Hi, everyone! This was such a wonderful presentation! I was so excited when I saw that you would be teaching mindfulness techniques to elementary school kids because it is certainly something I feel is beneficial to all people, especially those who are young and not as emotionally aware. I think it’s a necessity to teach young children these strategies for coping with big emotions rather than trying to suppress them. Especially right now, with the global pandemic, I’m sure it is so tiring and confusing to be a young child having to process everything going on in our world. What you all did was so important and beneficial, and this is something they can use for the rest of their lives. Also, I thought it was so adorable that a student reported using the mindfulness techniques in order to calm themselves down during a fight with a sibling. Great job, you all!

Hello everyone!
This was a very interesting project that you did. Mindfulness is very important and great to learn at a young age so they can be able to relax and be able to focus more on their environment and can help reduce stress. This is great that you were able to see positive results, I think this should be put in to more schools so it can help students and teachers in the classroom. It seems like the children loved these mindfulness activities and you made a very big impact on their mindset and they will be able to think about this for the rest of their lives and use these techniques as they keep going through the school. Overall, great job! Thank you for sharing this study with all of us.

This was a well-put together, kindhearted study. While as you mentioned the methodology was imperfect, many of the flaws were unavoidable due to the global pandemic. A control group may have still been possible, however. Mindfulness has the potential to be a valuable skill to these students at a difficult time in their lives, and it’s wonderful you were able to provide them with some of these skills at the same time you completed your project!

This was such a lovely presentation! I especially enjoyed the qualitative data from teachers, students, and researchers – it really painted a picture of what this experience was like for those involved in it. Also, shout out to the kid who chose “French fries” as their anchor word!

What would you describe as the function or purpose of this intervention? We don’t necessarily teach mindfulness for mindfulness’s sake, and trait mindfulness is associated with SO many things. How do you hope this intervention will benefit these kids long-term, specifically? If you were to do a longitudinal study with this sample and follow up with these students ten years from now, what would you hope to see?

Hello everyone! Thanks so much for sharing your hard work. I love that the research you conducted studied children at the 1st grade level. I’m very interested in early childhood development and the ways in which children are able to engage in the classroom. I have never thought of mindfulness in children as a technique for behavioral skills and emotional development, but it makes a lot of sense! This project is especially interesting and important during the COVID-19 pandemic. I know your project was set back due to the pandemic, but I think this type of study is especially important at a time like this and I’m glad you were still able to reach a conclusion! I think a lot of children are experiencing a harder time trying to stay engaged during online school. Despite your lack of significance, I really support the idea of more research into this and incorporating mindfulness into more classrooms! I appreciate your hard work despite all your limitations, great job!

Megan, Purnaja, Emily, Amelia, & Haley – Wow, this is simply amazing! I really enjoyed watching this presentation on your experience and research. I absolutely love that you were all so passionate about teaching such important techniques to these students. I think as a society it can be easy to forget or underestimate the big feelings that reside in those little bodies. This experience will serve those students well for years to come. I would love to see the results that could come out of doing the full, 16-week in-person sessions. I think your upward trends would be even more striking and significant. Yet, the results you got form only half that time are still impressive! Apart from the qualitative data, I think your quantitative data speaks volumes. Those teachers seemed so grateful and the students most definitely grew from this experience. Fantastic job!

HI great presentation!

Do you think you would get different result of mindfulness by using participants from middle or hight school? Also are there any other ways that changing this could impact the study?

I loved the presentation, and think mindfulness can be a super helpful tool, especially if taught young. It is awesome that so many kids really seemed to adapt the skills they were taught, such as the anchor words. I wonder if your results would have differed if the kids were a little older, or if they might have been influenced by having to learn virtually, in some aspects.

Hello you all!
I loved this presentation and how enthusiastic you all were with mindfulness teachings! I’ve always been a fan of mindfulness teachings because they’re a simple and effective way of relieving stress and embracing the quality of the present moment. It’s so unfortunate that your study couldn’t be done the way you wanted because of the pandemic but your experiences had to have made up for it. It was so interesting to see how children could benefit from these experiences and teachings the same way many adults do. The fact that they were able to sleep better, focus more in class, and calm themselves in frustration really speaks to the power mindfulness has. Even though the results weren’t exactly what you were hoping for, they’re definitely a step in the right direction. It’s great that everyone who was engaged in the teachings benefitted from what they learned. The children’s experiences were the most memorable and their drawings were so sweet. Thank you so much for sharing you research!

Hello you all!
I loved this presentation and how enthusiastic you all were with mindfulness teachings! I’ve always been a fan of mindfulness teachings because they’re a simple and effective way of relieving stress and embracing the quality of the present moment. It’s so unfortunate that your study couldn’t be done the way you wanted because of the pandemic but your experiences had to have made up for it. It was so interesting to see how children could benefit from these experiences and teachings the same way many adults do. The fact that they were able to sleep better, focus more in class, and calm themselves in frustration really speaks to the power mindfulness has. Even though the results weren’t exactly what you were hoping for, they’re definitely a step in the right direction. It’s great that everyone who was engaged in the teachings benefitted from what they learned. The children’s experiences were the most memorable and their drawings were so sweet. Thank you so much for sharing your research!

Hello everyone! I absolutely loved that you chose to do this! I am so sorry you were unable to receive significant data, but I am so glad you shared your research. Mindfulness, as I am learning, is such an important aspect of our lives. I am hoping to be in the education field, and I am so excited that I am learning more about mindfulness! It is so amazing that you went to Riverview to share some methods of mindfulness with students. I think it is so important for children to develop these strategies that they may carry into adulthood. Covid has created many obstacles, and I think that mindfulness practices will greatly help students overcome some struggles. I loved that you shared comments and pictures from students! It really shows that you made a positive impact on their lives!

I love this topic and presentation! The walkthrough of the intervention timeline at the beginning was very helpful. The bar graphs were a nice touch, while the results were not significant I think it was an insightful study. I love that you included teacher responses in the presentation! You also included responses from the students themselves, it was so interesting to see that the students benefited from mindfulness in their own homes. They used what they learned in the classroom and applied it in their own homes. I love the personal reflections you included at the end of the presentation. Excellent job, I loved your presentation and topic!

Hi everyone! I love your presentation. I really love how you guys taught the kids different mindfulness strategies that they can use forever. I really like the different anchor words. I also think it so important that you start teaching children mindfulness so young because they are so open to learning new things and i think more elementary schools should teach mindfulness to the students. Great Job!

Hi everyone! This was a great presentation! The study was very interesting and appeared to begin possible foundations for better mindfulness awareness in the future. The students appeared to benefit from this study and built many great mindfulness techniques. I had never thought of including the burnout of teachers but the mindfulness techniques appear to have positive effects. It would be great to see this study completed again when schools return to in person instruction.

Hi Megan, Purnaja, Emily, Amelia, and Haley! I loved this presentation and topic! I am becoming a teacher and would love to teach 1st grade, so this topic automatically interested in me. I think it is so great that the teachers loved hearing about these strategies and that they plan on using them in the future. It was also pretty cool to hear that the students were also using mindfulness outside of school. I believe that mindfulness is a great strategy when students are starting to feel frustrated over something they do not know. Mindfulness could be something that I teach my students in the future.

This is a very ambitious project! It is great that you went out into the community and worked with children to make a change in their lives. I have to admit that I was thinking that working with mindfulness with such young children might not be effective, but based on the comments you have from the children it certainly seems like many of them got something important out of this. Congrats!

Hi everyone! This presentation was really interesting and I love how you were able to work with elementary school students, especially with COVID still happening! I think this is a really great time to be teaching and practicing mindfulness because there are so many changes happening as COVID continues. I loved the quotes and drawings from the students:)

Hi everyone! I found this presentation to be so informative and what a great way to teach children such a resourceful skill! As someone who deals with anxiety I personally use the mindfulness technique a lot, which I do through meditating. Hearing that both the teachers and students liked this strategy must have made you guys feel so accomplished! Im curious to see if they will share this technique with others, overall I think you impacted a lot of people by this topic!

Hi everyone! This was a very informative presentation! As someone who is studying to be a special education teacher, I found this to be very helpful. One question I have is, do you believe that the way this was set up could be applied in a classroom for children with disabilities, more specifically, children who have attention difficulties such as ADHD or ADD? Mindfulness is something that is very important for both teachers and students to have as it can build trust and understanding, leading to success. Great job!

I love this topic! Even though your results weren’t significant y’all did an amazing job with this project. I believe teaching mindfulness techniques to kids is extremely important and I incorporate them into my job as well. It was great to see that all of the outcomes were heading in your predicted direction and I believe if time and the circumstances allowed you to complete all 16 sessions the results could’ve been stronger. Overall this was a great project!

In my abnormal psychology class, we have talked about mindfulness for teenagers and young adults but not first graders. I found this topic very interesting. I think that mindfulness is another habit that should be encouraged in the crucial developing ages. For yall to make the effort to try and teach this practice to such young children guides others to do the same! I liked seeing how it was over the course of two weeks. Assessing the teachers’ own mindfulness is important as well because that can be molded by the students. All of your experiences and data were so interesting and well presented!

First off, I love this project and found it super interesting! As someone who doesn’t know much about mindfulness, this presentation was super helpful and informative. It taught me a lot the impact of mindfulness has on students. It’s something that I will definitely incorporate into my future classroom now! Based off intervention practice you used each week, which one did the students enjoy the most and/or which one did you notice that was the most impactful while you were implementing it?

Great job guys, this was amazing and super informative!

Hi everyone! Awesome job on your presentation! I really loved your topic that you went with and the research that you conducted! Since I now work with kids, this really did spark up my interest because mindfulness is so important, especially for them regulating their own emotions. I enjoyed learning about the different mindfulness lessons that you had for them each week and how in depth you went on receiving teacher data as well! I think I will definitely start incorporating mindfulness tactics on my kids once school has slowed for me. This was really informative and you guys did such a great job!

Hello! I loved hearing about this project it was so cute! I think that this was an awesome idea and has the potential to help a lot of families, kids, and teachers. I wish it could be a regular program in elementary schools. While you didn’t have any significant findings, I think that you could with a larger sample size and with reports from the kids and maybe even their parents. This was so cool! Thank you for sharing! I would be interested to see this study in a non- COVID impacted setting.

Great work! I thought it was awesome that you decided to use what you learned in school to help your local community. While the data was not extreme, it was all positive. In the bigger picture, you exposed many kids to mindfulness which is a great skill to have in the future. With more time and practice, the results would be more significant but it’s amazing that you guys were able to teach so much in the time you had.

Hi everyone!! Really great presentation, I really loved learning about your topic and think teaching children mindfulness is a great idea which can be so beneficial to them. Teaching children mindfulness is important because as I saw in your presentation some children actually took into practice what was being taught in class. Hearing that they took what they learned in class and practicing it outside of class to help them when they became frustrated or tried calming down was great to hear. This was a really great and informative presentation!

I really liked the topic and enjoyed the presentation. I loved that yall taught mindfulness to young children especially because I feel like this is a very important thing for them to learn. The children would be able to take this with them as they grow up and continue their academic career. After listening to this presentation, I will use more of these techniques myself.

This was such a sweet project! I’m glad that you all seemed to really make an impact on the people that participated in your study. I remember late in my elementary school, our gym teachers attempted to teach us yoga, which no one in the class took seriously. Do you think that teaching mindfulness would have had a different reaction from the class? And did any of the kids seem to struggle with the activities? If so, how did you try to keep them engaged?

Overall, lovely project! I think that seeing both the students’ and the teachers’ reactions really shows how important this study is, and what a great job you did.

I am currently studying to become an elementary school teacher so your study was very intriguing to me! I am sorry that you ran into many limitation due to Covid-19, but that is still exciting to see an increase in almost all of your measures. I hope to see a research team try to replicate this study in the future and follow your original plan- it would be awesome to see if they result in any significant data. I wonder if the influence of mindfulness skills would differ between grade levels- perhaps younger children are more impressionable and likely to follow the skills and tips than older elementary students? Age could be an interesting factor to consider. I really enjoyed learning about your study and I love that you included the visual with all of the students anchor words! It was a great idea to incorporate the students into your presentation, and it was fun to read. I plan to incorporate aspects of mindfulness into my future classroom. Thank you for sharing your research!

I am in the 5-year elementary education program here at UMW so this study is especially appealing to me! We spent a lot of time talking about the importance of mindfulness as a classroom management strategy. I know that you all had several limitations to your study due to COVID-19 which is a bummer, but honestly I couldn’t think of a better time to implement this kind of program for our kids that are undergoing so much stress and anxiety. Did you all consider implementing the lessons in a virtual format in the fall? What were your hesitations in doing so? I wonder if you would have found more significant results if you had been able to implement your entire program. Great work!!