MEDITATION: THE RIGHT WAY TO GO

As I walk out of class, I immediately hear all of my classmates yelling down the hall. I let out a sigh and turn towards my locker, when another student runs into me almost knocking me down. As I turn to see who hit me, I realize that I am in the center of a crazy fight. Everyone is screaming, yelling, my head is pounding and I can’t her myself think. When I close my locker, the booming bang was just a raindrop in the hurricane that was the fight.

Unfortunately, this is just a regular transition break at Noe Middle School. For a while now, staff has been trying to come up with a solution for the fights, hatred, bad grades, and more. One way that Noe could try to solve these problems is through meditation.

When I reached my next class, my teacher rang the bell for meditation. My class’ 10 minute meditation flew by. When my teacher rang the bell again, signaling that meditation was over, all the students were calm and ready to learn. Nobody was talking, I could even hear a pin drop and the clock tock.

Relaxation

A few years ago, Visitation Valley Middle School in California started meditation during the school day. Their principal started meditation has calmed many of the students and shielded them from the outside world. A young lady who attends Visitation Valley shared a terrifying experience she had on the way to school and how meditation helped her through that tough time. She explains that when she was on her walk to school she heard a gunshot. When she heard the gunshot she was “frozen in fear”. She later tells how when she got to Visitation Valley, the meditation was similar to a force that had blocked the experience she just had. Quite a few students at Noe suffer from PTSD from outside experiences they have had, and for them, meditation can also be their shield and their friend to block their experiences and help them focus and learn.

Behavior

At Noe, we have students get in fights all of the time. Many people consider Noe a “bad school” with “bad students”. However, our school just needs to improve our student’s attention span. According to forbes.com, meditation can increase attention. One study in 2004 showed that children with ADHD who participated in meditation two or more times a week had better at

tension shown at school along with other benefits. Another study in 2003 displayed that boys diagnosed with ADHD, who participated in an eight-week long meditation session had significantly improved concentration. With students at Noe having better concentration, it will be easier for the teacher to help the students obtain needed information, which they may have otherwise lost.

Many Problems

Meditation does have its downsides however. When trying out meditation in my Language Arts class, many students did not actively participate in meditation. Instead they proceeded along with their conversations, preventing many students in the classroom from being able to meditate. There are also many different types of meditation and not everyone may concur on one particular type of meditation to do. For example, there are body scans, guided meditation, or a teacher may just put on music and let the students meditate. Furthermore, teachers will need to know how to teach meditation prior to invigilating students during meditation.

Truancy Rates

Despite that, meditation sessions could help lower truancy rates at Noe Middle. After Visitation Valley Middle School started to regularly participate in meditation twice a day truancy rates were cut in half. The principal at Visitation Valley also explained how there were fewer suspensions after the school began meditation. Forbes.com explained that one study found that meditation helped boost student’s memory during exams and helped to reduce anxiety. According to the Huffington Post, researchers from the University of Illinois and George Mason University took a study on student to see how they were affected by meditation. The researchers took a study on selected students and had them meditate before the professor gave a lecture, while other students did not. After the lecture, all of the students took a quiz on the topic talked about. The students who got better grades overall-were the students who meditated.

Conclusion

In closing, I strongly believe that in the 2017-2018 school year, Noe Middle School should take up meditation. Many benefits will come to the school and the students if we meditate, not only academically but mentally. Such as, having a kids being able to deal with problems such as PTSD and ADHD better. Also, lower truancy rates and suspensions. Meditation can be the change, and it starts with us.

#AllieSenn