Reducing Teachers’ Stress Leads To Higher-Quality Classrooms
Updated: Jan 11, 2022
from UVAToday
by Audrey Breen
“Teachers who regularly use stress-reducing strategies increase their abilities to cope with the demands of the career and are positioned to do a better job educating students, according to results from a program administered by the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education.
Teachers in New York City public schools who participated in “Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education,” or CARE, a mindfulness professional development program, not only felt an improvement in their own well-being, they also improved the quality of their classroom.
…
According to Jennings, this study is the first of its kind to demonstrate that mindfulness-based training can have significant impacts on observable dimensions of classroom interactions.
The study also showed the CARE program directly impacted students, as the students in the CARE classrooms were rated as more productive than those in the control group. CARE teachers made better use of instructional time, resulting in students being more involved in learning activities.
‘The findings definitely suggest that mindfulness-based interventions can have ‘downstream’ effects on the classroom environment and on the students.'”