Students at HArts practicing meditation.

When I began working with high school students in 1987, I kept hearing the often-repeated refrain made by teachers everywhere that “students just don’t pay attention.” Then it occurred to me that maybe these students they refer to were never taught how to pay attention. There has been this unstated expectation that students would come prepared to school and have the internal controls to tune out or compartmentalize all distracting thoughts and emotions and just “pay attention.”

I view mindfulness, whether one uses a simple breathing technique, guided meditation, yoga movements, or the higher level visualizations taken from Tibetan-style meditation, as a natural and foundational way to teach all people, regardless of age, to learn how to focus and concentrate in a deep and meaningful way.

After becoming the principal of the Humanities and Arts Academy of Los Angeles in 2013, I jumped at the opportunity of having all of the 500 students learn the art of meditation. Before the school year began in the summer of 2014, I approached my entire faculty of 22 teachers and asked how many of them would be willing and able to add mindfulness, or meditation, to their daily practice as educational professionals. After a 15-minute presentation at the faculty meeting, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that eleven teachers, half of the staff, were open to it. We began to have regular meetings. We would open the meeting with a brief meditation and then share best practices.

"Students learn to regulate their emotions and develop skills to deal with their internal battles."

I wanted to see if we could measure the impact of mindfulness on the learning process and if student achievement can be correlated to students meditating. I deployed a pre and post-test on students using a variety of credible surveys that measure Mindful Attention Awareness, Resiliency, and Cognitive and Affective Mindfulness. Preliminary data suggests that continued mindfulness practice does have a positive effect on student achievement as evidenced by increased graduation rates and a decrease in the D/F rate.

Although I don’t view meditation in schools as a panacea, I do believe that coupled with other socio-emotional learning modalities that students would definitely benefit from meditation as it enhances instruction in a more personalized manner. Students learn to regulate their emotions, and develop the necessary coping skills needed to deal with their internal battles as well as the demands that the universe constantly presents to them. One noteworthy anecdote that validates how students themselves see the value and benefit of mindfulness is when a teacher who uses meditation in his classroom was away for a day and the students asked the substitute to make sure that they had their daily meditation before the lesson began.

While students benefit greatly from mindfulness, it is equally important to embed it into staff and faculty meetings. The adults at school sites are in just as much need of meditation to help them cope with the stress and fast-paced demands that the stakeholders (students, parents, administrators, school district, state, etc.) place on them. On occasion we have implemented mindfulness into our faculty meetings to give pause and help the staff relax so that we can better nurture mutual respect and listen deeply when communicating.

Greg Fisher is the principal of HArts Academy, a pilot school in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Greg was accepted into the first cohort of the Los Angeles New Administrators Program (LANALP) in 2014. LANALP is a U.S. Department of Education funded administrator induction program created out of a partnership between the Center for Collaborative Education and the Los Angeles Unified School District. Part of the LANALP requirements is the implementation of a research-based field project at the school site that is geared toward improving student achievement and the teaching and learning process. Inspired by the LANALP Habits of Mind, Mr. Fisher's research-based field project implemented a long time aspiration to instill a school-wide mindfulness program to support his teachers and students. He has just completed the LANALP induction program. His write-up above reflects this continuing journey.