Greg Toppo

USATODAY

Millions of school children may soon be breathing deeply, regulating their emotions and finding their inner calm. Mindfulness is coming to a school near you.

On Monday, the startup ClassDojo, which makes a classroom communication app, said it had formed a partnership with the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence to bring mindfulness lessons to children, not just in U.S. schools but worldwide. The new mindfulness curriculum began rolling out to classrooms on Monday. Short videos and guides for home and school will be released over the next few weeks.

Teachers in about 90% of U.S. elementary and middle schools already use the company’s materials — about one in three U.S. students ages 5-14 have learned about ideas like “growth mindset” and empathy through its videos, the company said last week, and the materials have been translated into 35 languages.

Marc Brackett, a professor at the Yale Child Study Center, said few classrooms are teaching these skills, but that students could benefit from them.

“In many ways, it's easier to teach children these skills because they’re more open” than adults, he said. “They’re much less judgmental about taking a breath.”

Recent findings suggest they could use a little help controlling stress: A 2013 survey of students by the American College Health Association found that about half experienced "overwhelming anxiety" in the previous year; nearly one-third felt so depressed in the previous year "that it was difficult to function."

A February 2014 survey by the American Psychological Association found that 27% of teens experienced "extreme stress" during the school year; 34% said they expected stress to increase. Actually, the survey was the first to find that college students were facing more stress than their parents.

More recently, a 2016 WebMD survey found that 55% of parents rated their child’s stress as "moderate to high."

Chris Frank, head of research at ClassDojo, said the new videos introduce a character known as “The Beast,” a stand-in for kids’ powerful emotions. Students are encouraged to “embrace the beast” but work through the emotions with mindful breathing and a series of brief, yoga-like poses.

He said the company began exploring mindfulness after reading media accounts of schools that implemented mindfulness programs and got promising results.

“We knew that that was something our teachers would be really interested in,” Frank said.

He called mindfulness “an idea that’s starting to pick up steam … it seems like it could really produce a lot of impact for not much effort.”

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