What effect will mindfulness training and a weekly class hour have on student character and self-regulation in a fourth grade classroom?

Seminar Title

What effect will mindfulness training and a weekly class hour have on student character and self-regulation in a fourth grade classroom?

Character

4th Grade

Elementary

Other

All Disciplines

Do you wish your students acted their age? Each new school year I am surprised by how many students do not act with respect or character. Our school’s character education curriculum is lacking when it comes to actually instilling character skills into students. My research focused on finding ways to authentically teach character education through student experiences, discussion, and self-regulation. Concepts of community, mindfulness, accountability, and resilience emerged, and implementations I used can be incorporated into many grade levels. If you are longing for more character, empathy, and respect in your students, join this session.

How is it possible to instill character and self-regulation into fourth grade students while under the constant pressure of meeting every academic standard? This question drove my research to find a suitable solution to authentically teach character education to my students. The goal with this research was to create a classroom community of support, empathy, peaceful conflict resolution, and inclusion. Through research, four concepts emerged: community, mindfulness, accountability, and resilience. Further research identified implementations utilizing short amounts of time that could those concepts. The first is class hour, a time dedicated to discussing issues “circling” in students’ minds and a time to celebrate the good things happening in students’ lives. The second implementation is mindfulness training, which research has linked to increased self-regulation, empathy, and focus. These two implementations, paired with a safe classroom environment set up by the teacher, work in harmony to authentically learn and apply important principles of character. Through these implementations, I have witnessed increased discussion and practice of character skills at set-aside times and during instruction time. And, students have increasingly identified both class hour and mindfulness training as beneficial to them outside of our set-aside classroom time. These implementations have had a positive effect on our classroom environment, which has lead to more focused learning times with increased student-to-student support and decreased student distractions. Because of these successes, class hour and mindfulness training will continue in my room, with a focus on greater student accountability and expectation to act with great character, using what we have discussed and learned.