In partnership with Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville, Kentucky, The University of Virginia has launched the Compassionate Schools Project, a program they tout as “the most comprehensive study ever undertaken of a 21st century health and wellness curriculum.” WMRA’s Kara Lofton reports.
At Cane Run Elementary School in Louisville, Kentucky, Meghann Clem’s classes start with the sound of a bell, but not the kind you might think.
MEGHANN CLEM: Miss Clem is going to ring the bell and I want you to listen to the sound of the bell until it is all the way finished and you can no longer hear any sounds of the bell. Try to put all of your thoughts on this one sound and when you’re all the way finished listening you’re going to sit up on your bottoms, look at Miss Clem and you’re going to smile.
[Bell rings]
Clem was one of the new teachers hired by the Louisville Metro School District to begin implementing the new “practical living” curriculum developed by faculty at UVA’s Curry School of Education.
PATRICK TOLAN: There’s not a health curriculum out there that has an integration of self-control and stress management, and personal, social relationships, nutrition and physical health and ability with self-care and care for others.
That was UVA professor and principal project investigator Patrick Tolan.
I asked him why compassion was the focus of the study.
TOLAN: Compassion is a critical part, it allows one to relate yourself to others while also taking care of yourself as a very valuable thing to do, it allows you to be focused on doing the best you can without it having to be a you against others.
The six-year study has a budget of $11 million, most of which is going to training and hiring new teachers such as Clem. The curriculum, which was fine-tuned in the past year, fits with Common Core and state standards for health and physical education.
Tish Jennings is one of the UVA professors who worked on curriculum development for the study. She said their intention is to try to teach children the seamless integration of health ideas with healthy practices.
TISH JENNINGS: If you want children to understand nutrition better, rather than just telling them these are the food groups and you should eat this or you should eat that it’s really more about how does your body feel when you eat this thing and what does hunger feel like…when you’re full what does that feel like?
Jennings is quick to point out that this curriculum is not what she calls an “add in” program like bringing in a yoga teacher once a week, which can be difficult for a school district to sustain, but rather is designed to be a complete program overhaul that, if successful, might replace traditional health and PE curriculums. Once completed, curriculum materials from the study will be freely available online for anyone who’s interested to use.
TOLAN: At the first level what it will do is it will help the kids be able to understand themselves better and control themselves better. And what we mean by control themselves is a couple of things, that they can focus more in class and when they need to focus and they can also, when they get upset or when they have a conflict, or they are feeling stressed they can take and make use of their emotions and understand them, but not be ruled by them. So we hope that’ll lead to better behavior in classrooms, more kids paying attention and what’s called “on task” meaning they are doing what they are supposed to be doing.
At Cane Run, Clem is six-weeks into the new school year.
CLEM: From the start of day one of the school till now, I’m already seeing pretty big changes in a lot of the ways that they are handling their own behavior and their own self-regulation. I had a student just the other day come up to me and say, “Miss Clem, I put my hand on my belly and calmed myself with the breathing you taught me when I was upset earlier.” And that’s just one of many stories that the students come up and tell me on a regular basis that they are using these tools that we’re learning in the Compassionate Schools Project in their daily routine.
While mindfulness and compassion training may improve behavior and academic performance, investigators are also hoping it will help children become more physically healthy. Jennings.
JENNINGS: For example, if a child is coming to school and they’re not healthy, they are distracted by strong emotions because they are living in a context that’s very challenging, all of those things that impact their health and well-being. If they don’t learn to cope with them or they aren’t given skills to help them overcome the adversity they are faced with, learning math is really low on their priority. Really just getting through the day is all they can do.
This year six schools, three control groups and three experimental groups, are participating in the project. That number is expected to increase to 50 schools by 2019.