More and more these days, teachers are engaging students in mindfulness practices, which research suggests helps develop executive functioning, self-regulation skills, and social and emotional learning in students.  But how to get started?  Here are a few tips: Begin your own personal mindfulness practice before you share it with students.  Setting aside even 5 or 10...Read More

A school teacher was on his way to a new teaching appointment in a far-away land, and he’d been traveling on foot all the way, and was getting quite exhausted from his journey, when unexpectedly he came to a river that he had to cross.  As there was no bridge in sight, he hired a...Read More

Mindfulness practices in the schools seem to be thriving, with millions of kids being introduced to it in one form or another.  Along with its popularity, there’s been some push-back from parent groups about whether or not mindfulness violates the separation of church and state.  While it’s true that mindfulness emerged from Buddhism (in particular...Read More

As part of the kick-off for my new book Mindfulness in the Classroom: Strategies for Promoting Concentration, Compassion, and Calm, I’m going to be producing some videos which get at different aspects of mindfulness, both for adults and for children and adolescents. This first video looks at the three key elements involved in mindfulness: focus,...Read More

Hesiod was a Greek poet who lived and wrote during the time of Homer (between 750 and 650 B.C.E).  From his writings we have one of the first developmental theories, not about the individual stages of life, but rather about how humanity develops over time.  He believed there were five ages of humankind, four of...Read More