Mindfulness for Munroe Elementary

My name is Amy Schirm and I am the school psychologist at Munroe Elementary, the most highly impacted urban elementary school in Denver, Colorado. Munroe Elementary is located in a highly impoverished neighborhood with high rates of crime, domestic violence, gang involvement, etc. Living is this type of neighborhood is highly stressful for families and especially children. Moreover, these factors make the already difficult job of teaching even more challenging and draining for our teachers, resulting in burnout and secondary traumatic stress. 

To help myself personally cope, I have a long standing yoga practice and have more recently begun practicing mindfulness. Mindfulness means maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment. It is also a set of techniques and methods for systematically developing this awareness. The practice of mindful awareness has a variety of well-documented impacts, including a reduction in toxic stress, an increase in emotion regulation, and an improvement in sustained attention, focus and executive functioning.

I began utilizing mindfulness with a handful of students and then began sharing these practices with my whole school (students, staff, and parents) last year. Teachers have found that these practices have created profound shifts in the culture of their classrooms and in students abilities to self-regulate, demonstrate self-awareness and practice compassion towards themselves and others.  Students are utilizing these practices to help themselves sleep better, calm themselves down when upset, and to treat their peers with more compassion and understanding. 

To improve my personal practice and learn how to teach these practices to students I completed the Mindfulness Fundamental's course and the Educator's Essentials course through Mindful Schools. Mindful Schools, since 2007 has reached 300,000 students worldwide and has been working on collecting a wealth of research to illustrate the effectiveness of mindfulness practices in the schools. At the heart of Mindful School's philosophy is that in order for teachers and other school professionals to bring mindfulness to children, they first must develop a personal practice and begin to embody the teachings. 

So now to my proposal. Mindful schools is currently offering site licenses to a few select schools, which means that EVERY staff member would have access to the Mindfulness Fundamentals and the Educator Essentials courses FOREVER! These site licenses WILL NOT expire and therefore over the years every staff member at the school could receive these trainings and have ongoing and unlimited access to the materials. The cost of the site license is $1,500, and unfortunately due to significant budget cuts at my school last year as a result of declining student enrollment, we do not currently have the funds to pay for the license. I have experienced the power of these practices first hand and have seen the shifts taking place in my school. The teachers, students, and families that I work with are amazing and I can't think of a community more deserving of these practices. Your support and contribution would support an entire community for years to come. Please consider helping our staff, students, families, and community!!! 

"I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples." -Mother Teresa