Tag: Children

The Engine in These School Buses Could Improve Kids’ Test Scores

Posted on by robbie

Each weekday for most of the year, hundreds of thousands of school buses criss-cross their way through America. Every school day, the hulking monoliths transport nearly 26 million children, or about 55% of the student population, and travel over 4 billion miles annually. This makes the national school bus fleet the largest form of mass transportation in the U.S. — bigger than that of commercial buses, trains and airplanes combined. 
The yellow school bus might be one of the most iconic and ubiquitous symbols of childhood, but intertwined with that nostalgia is an ugly reality. For almost as long as school buses have been around, the children inside of them have been breathing in toxic fumes that can have dire consequences not just for their respiratory health, but for their brain development as well. 
In a new study, researchers from Georgia State University compared the standardized test scores of kids who rode old, dirtier diesel buses to those who commuted in buses with engines that had been modified, or retrofitted, to filter out up to 95% of harmful pollutants. Looking at test results from 2007 to 2015, they found a significant increase in English scores and smaller, but notable, gains in math scores  among bus-riding kids whose districts retrofitted their bus engines. 
For cash-strapped school districts, buying newer buses that adhere to the government’s stricter diesel regulations, enacted in 2007, can be out of reach, even with the medley of rebates and grants awarded each year under the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act and through the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean School Bus program. 
But there is another solution that is often overlooked, say the researchers — a fix that not only protects young brains but is also a cost-effective way of decreasing absentee rates and improving test scores, which in turn increases lifetime earnings.
Diesel retrofits are engine modifications that can filter out up to 95% of harmful pollutants. At an average cost of $8,000 per engine, it’s a much cheaper option than buying newer buses that burn cleaner, ultra-low sulfur diesel, which can run a school upward of $130,000 apiece (the price jumps to about $360,000 for a propane-fueled or electric-powered bus). Currently, only an estimated 40% of all fleets run on the lower-emission diesel technology; the majority are still spewing known carcinogens. 

‘LIKE A BRAIN FOG’

Though the respiratory dangers from emissions of diesel fuel have long been known, researchers are just beginning to understand the impact on the brain, which can have both short- and long-term effects. Particularly worrisome are the microscopic soot particles, known as particulate matter, that when inhaled can burrow deep inside a person’s lungs and enter the bloodstream. For kids, whose internal systems are much smaller and still developing, the effects are even more pronounced.
The evidence that soot and other toxins in high-sulfur diesel lead to lasting brain effects is building, said Jimmy O’Dea, a senior vehicles analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit research organization. 
“The scientific literature is really showing, with study after study, nearly every organ system in the body is at risk from higher exposure to particulate matter,” O’Dea told NationSwell. “Everything from the lung diseases that you might typically associate with bad air quality to heart and neurological diseases are being found to increase health risks from more exposure to these pollutants.”

school buses
Until 2007, school buses ran on older diesel technology laden with pollutants that have been shown to trigger asthma in children and affect their cognitive functioning.

Initially the Georgia State researchers set out to only look at students’ aerobic health using data from Georgia’s statewide fitness assessments. But at the time, Wes Austin, one of the study’s co-authors, had been sifting through other research on the effects of air pollution when a study linking it to dementia caught his eye. “I just happened to have a lot of state education data sitting around, so it didn’t seem like too much of a stretch to look at test scores too,” he said, adding, “but I didn’t think the study would go where it did.”
Austin described how the cocktail of toxins in diesel exhaust can cripple a young mind. “There’s a same-day effect, where carbon monoxide and other things that decrease your blood’s oxygen level can make you feel a little bit out of it, like a brain fog,” said Austin. “But in the long term, particulate matter PM2.5 is small enough that when you breathe it in, it passes through your nasal cavity and into your brain, and leads to white-matter lesions and inflammation.” 
The result, he said, “interferes with your neurons’ ability to communicate properly.”

DIESEL DINOSAURS

Unlike other behemoth diesel-burners on the roads, such as commercial trucks and mass-transit buses, school buses have been slow to embrace new technology. Between 2012 and 2018, for example, the EPA awarded $39 million in rebates to replace nearly 2,000 buses across the country; this year, it’s on track to replace an additional 473 buses. Considering that there are more than 470,000 school buses on the road, that’s little more than a drop in the proverbial bucket.
“It’s a question of funding and school districts making it a priority,” said Allen Schaeffer, executive director of the Diesel Technology Forum, a nonprofit advocacy group. He noted that even as alternative-powered buses are getting more attention from the media and from the government — a new bill to replace old diesel buses with new electric ones was recently introduced in the Senate — 95% of school buses continue to burn diesel fuel. “It’s still the overwhelming dominant technology,” he said.
Though Americans by and large prefer cars that run on gasoline, the historical choice of diesel for school bus fleets made sense for two reasons. “First and foremost was safety,” Schaeffer said. “If a school bus gets rammed by a car, the risk of fire would be greater with gasoline than diesel because diesel is less likely to ignite under those kind of circumstances.”
Second is simple economics. When deciding where to put their dollars, school districts often don’t prioritize transportation, even as the proliferation of school choice and charter schools have caused bus routes to get longer and more children outside of districts are accommodated. And, as Schaeffer pointed out, applying for state and federal rebates to upgrade diesel buses is a competitive process.
With limited funds, schools often deprioritize transportation, he said. “They’re asking themselves, ‘Should I spend the dollars to get them to school in a fancier bus? Or should I spend the dollars in the classroom or to reduce the ratio of teachers to students?’ Those are the kind of questions that these districts are looking at.” 

SMALL INVESTMENT, BIG IMPACT

Austin and his fellow Georgia State researchers looked at that question too. They found that paying for diesel-engine retrofits — in lieu of shelling out for brand-new buses — is a highly cost-effective way to preserve brain and lung health and improve academic achievement.
The research team carried out back-of-envelope calculations regarding the costs and benefits of bus retrofits. They looked at data from an earlier study that linked smaller class sizes to improvements in test scores and higher lifetime earnings. Reducing a classroom by seven students was found to cost about $870 per student. In contrast, the Georgia State researchers estimated that retrofitting a bus costs roughly $122 per student rider.
“Reducing class size by hiring more teachers is expensive,” said Austin. In fact, his study concluded that to see the same test-score gains, a district would need to spend anywhere from three to five times as much on class-size reductions than it would on bus retrofits. What’s more, the researchers found that “if a district retrofits its entire bus fleet, the effect on English test scores would be slightly larger than the effect of going from a rookie teacher to one with five years of experience.”
Diesel school buses were built to last a long time, as Schaeffer pointed out, and eventually the older, dirtier pre-2007 models still on the road will break down or be phased out. But until then, schools have a relatively cheap win-win available: the chance to improve overall student health and boost their chances for lifelong success.
More: The Diesel-Chugging Yellow School Bus Finally Goes Green
 

Kids With Autism Are Learning About Much More Than Just Music in This Program

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For many people, music is a balm for the soul — but it can be life-changing for kids with autism.
Kana Kamitsubo-Markovic and Sasha Markovic, both music teachers, opened the Queens-based Hug Music in 2014. Hug Music offers a music therapy program called Musicreative that works specifically with kids on the autism spectrum.
Music therapy teaches various musical techniques to address the physical, emotional, cognitive and social needs of an individual. As a subfield of music therapy, Musicreative works with both visual as well as auditory clues, creating an intellectual and emotional outlet by stimulating both hemispheres of the brain and working to improve the social relationships of people with autism.
Most music schools for children focus solely on the technical aspect of learning about music. While Kana’s Musicreative method is widely praised, Hug Music is still the only music therapy school in America to incorporate such techniques into their programs.
More: The One-of-a-Kind Oregon Festival That Is Friendly to the Environment and Music Lovers Alike

A Dream Curriculum for Immigrant Students

Posted on by robbie

Searching for a better life, Miguel Gonzalez’s family brought him to Dalton, Ga., from Guerrero, Mexico, as a child.
“My whole life in this country has been uncertain as far as my immigration status,” says Gonzalez.
Despite this, Gonzalez thrived. He attended college, landed a job as a teacher, and in 2012, became a “Dreamer” through the Obama administration’s establishment of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.
Now, Gonzalez tries to help kids from similar circumstances through the Newcomer Academy, an English language program for Spanish-language students grades six and up.
As politicians negotiate the future of DACA, these children need a place to process their feelings about their immigration status. Watch the video above to see how the Newcomer Academy and teachers like Gonzalez go beyond simply acclimating immigrant children to the American school system by creating an environment where they can feel successful and thrive.

Born Into Rehab: Giving Life to West Virginia’s Tiniest Opioid Victims

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In the rear of the Cabell Huntington Hospital maternity ward is a medium-sized, unlit room. Occasionally, its darkness is pierced with a scream that nurses can only describe as a kind of cat call.
The patients inside suffer from seizures and are hyper-sensitive to bright light. Sometimes, their bodies cramp, stiffening like a board. Other times, they’re fidgety. And the thumb sucking… it’s never ending — unusual, even for newborns.
These babies are the youngest victims of America’s heroin problem. Exposed to opiates while still in the womb, they suffer from Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome, or NAS.
In the U.S., the number of babies born with NAS increased by more than 300 percent between 1999 and 2013, according to a report released in 2016 by the Centers for Disease Control. In Huntington, W.V., the problem is exponentially worse. CDC findings reveal nearly 33 cases of NAS per 1,000 hospital births — the highest in the nation. But anecdotally, Cabell Hospital nurses report witnessing more than 100 per 1,000 babies, nearly 16 times the national average.
To be clear, these babies are not born addicted to opiates. Rather, their brains were exposed to opioids in utero, damaging how they’re formed and similar to how alcohol affects brain development in children born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.
It’s well documented how FAS impairs childhood development. In sharp contrast, medical professionals have been able to recognize the symptoms and diagnose NAS for decades, but they continue to be perplexed by what happens to these newborns as they age. Many doctors and nurses say they simply don’t know.
“We have so many babies that are being born prenatally exposed to illegal drugs. That’s been a well-documented problem in our community and in our region,” says Robert Hansen, director of addiction services at Marshall University in Huntington. “The question becomes what’s happening to these babies after they withdraw from those drugs, and what’s going to happen with their moms? What’s going to happen to the children as they grow and develop and enter the school system?”
Where Huntington sees a crisis, it also sees a solution. As community leaders do their best to mitigate the opioid epidemic that has gripped their city, members of the medical community and local university are partnering together to care for these newborns by launching the first-of-its-kind childcare program to study the long-term effects of NAS. The hope is that their findings will be used to inform future educational initiatives.

AN END TO THE SUFFERING

The reason why Huntington has such a high number of babies born with NAS is largely due to its location. The city straddles three state lines — Kentucky, West Virginia and Ohio — and has one of the only large hospitals in the region. Mothers are more likely to give birth there than anywhere else in the area.
Two years ago, the CDC released a report revealing that women aged 15 to 44 were filling opiate prescriptions at a higher rate than normal. Because of the opioid epidemic in this part of Appalachia, Cabell Huntington Hospital is overrun with drug-exposed babies.
There’s just not enough beds, says Sara Murray, nurse manager in the Neonatal Intensive Therapeutic Unit at Cabell Huntington Hospital. Her unit only has 15 beds, but during the first week of November 2017, nurses were caring for 19 babies with another expected at any moment.
Newborns with NAS remain in the hospital longer — up to 100 days, compared to three to four days with other babies — making overflow inevitable. The extended hospitalization got Murray thinking.
“They were staying for long periods of time, and we just felt like there was something that must be missing in caring for them, thus causing them to stay so long,” Murray says.
In response, Murray and two coworkers, Rhonda Edmunds and Rebecca Crowder, opened Lily’s Place, a NAS clinic that would serve as overflow for the hospital.
Lily’s Place is only the second facility in the U.S. that exclusively cares for NAS babies. It’s modeled after a program in Kent, Wash., that, according to Edmunds, “needed to also be in Huntington.” Since opening in 2014, the facility has cared for more than 300 babies. First Lady Melania Trump and other influential politicians have said that the unique program should be a model for the entire nation.
The care provided to newborns at Lily’s Place mirrors what they’d receive at the hospital. To ease withdrawal symptoms, nurses rely on methadone, an opioid that satisfies the physical cravings of opiate dependency, but doesn’t provide the high that heroin or prescription painkillers do.
Though methadone has been controversial for adults in recovery —  many view it as a substitute for another drug — treating newborns with methadone is widely accepted within neonatal units.
“Any parent will tell you in here that withdrawal is very painful,” says Sarah Murray, who runs the Neonatal Intensive Therapeutic Unit at Cabell County Hospital. “We don’t want the babies to suffer that pain, so we get them through the acute withdrawal.”
By the time each infant goes home from Lily’s Place, it’s been weaned off all opioids, including methadone.
Despite its success in providing overflow for the hospital and counseling and caregiving services to parents of babies with NAS, Lily’s Place faces tremendous difficulties. Funding is a continual problem. The majority of women who give birth to opioid-exposed babies are on Medicaid. With national healthcare on unstable ground, public and private donors could be needed in the future to finance the cost of treating a newborn with NAS, which carries a price tag of more than $60,000, according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse.
Because of health insurance and Medicaid complexities, Lily’s Place can only accept babies born to West Virginia residents; those born to mothers from out of state cannot be transferred from Cabell Huntington Hospital to Lily’s Place. For now, the hospital’s maternity ward continues to be overrun.
The clinic has tried to solve this by offering other states guidance on how to open up similar programs, but there have been no successful takers, as of yet.

A STEP INTO THE UNKNOWN

The long-term effects of opioids on the babies that leave Lily’s Place or the hospital is anyone’s guess.
“There needs to be a lot more research done about what the children need. That start[s] out with neonatal abstinence syndrome, and really, across the country, there hasn’t been enough research to answer that, so it’s very variable,” Marshall University’s Hansen says. “Some children who start out with NAS may not need much support and services. Others will need different [things]. We just don’t know yet.”
In January 2017, Hansen reached out to Suzi Brodof, owner of a shuttered daycare facility, to discuss what to do about Huntington’s newfound fame as America’s heroin capital.
More specifically, he wanted to talk about babies with NAS.
“I went to a meeting and there were about 30 other people from all different organizations in the community. We all wanted to help because we were concerned about what was going to happen to all these babies that are being born to moms who are addicted,” Brodof says. “Everyone went around and said what they could offer. When it got to me, I said that I have a building that was built to be a childcare center, and if we want to still use it in some way for children, I’m willing to contribute that to the cause.”
Brodof had contemplated turning her building into an office complex, but stopped due to the fact that everything inside was miniaturized.
“We didn’t want to just convert it to some other use if we could use it for something for children,” she says.
Educators estimate that 500 students with NAS will be entering the school system in Huntington alone, but didn’t provide proof of that number. “The concern is that the teachers are not prepared,” Brodof says. “They don’t know what to expect or how to handle them.”
That’s where Brodof’s new childcare facility, River Valley Cares, steps in. The childcare center, which opens this year, is studying NAS children in a controlled environment in conjunction with researchers from Marshall University. One nursery room, for example, has a two-way mirror that researchers can use to observe child interactions without intruding.
The hope is that the program will provide the first-of-its-kind research on how toddlers with NAS interact with other students and how they work in learning environments.
If successful — and it will likely take years to conduct the research — River Valley Cares will be able to give teachers, parents and educators the tools needed to figure out how to manage children with NAS.

A PERSONAL SOLUTION

Ryan Navy, a 26-year-old pastor, adopted a baby boy with NAS after a parishioner in his church, New Heights, relapsed on heroin.
“She was clean for, I think, two years. She was doing well,” Navy tells NationSwell. “Three or four weeks before this baby was supposed to be born, she relapses and started shooting up heroin again.”
This story isn’t uncommon in Huntington. But neither are the examples of city residents demonstrating their belief that it takes a village to raise a child — especially when those children are afflicted with NAS. In many instances, mothers can’t manage a newborn while going through opioid withdrawal themselves and the baby ends up in foster care.
Navy’s New Heights congregation is well known for fostering NAS children. The church has about 18 foster families, Navy says, and a fellow pastor has adopted “two or three kids.”
“I can’t even keep track anymore,” Navy says with a laugh.
The good that results from this village mentality extends far beyond Huntington’s newborns. When Brodof went to that first meeting with Hansen, she immediately recognized the benefit of the community banding together.
“Until we all came together last January, none of us really were interacting,” she says. “We were all doing good things for children and families, but we realized once we all came to the table that we would be able to be much stronger if we worked together.”
Additional reporting by Kayle Hope
Correction: A previous version of this article stated that bright light causes babies with neonatal abstinence syndrome to have seizures. A previous version of the video stated a factual error regarding medical information. NationSwell apologizes for the errors.

These Orphans Are Growing up to Be Community Leaders

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When Mun Maya Rawal, 24, travels to rural Nepal to check in on children orphaned by the 2015 earthquakes, it’s personal.
“I was an orphan just like you,” she says, sharing with them where she came from and what her life is like now: an independent young woman working towards a master’s degree in psychology.
Rawal is one of the first graduates of a program for Nepal’s poorest children established by two Americans, Bruce and Susan Keenan. Since 2000, the Keenans’ nonprofit, Himalayan Children’s Charities (HCC), has provided more than 200 children with care, education and mentorship. In March 2016, its first group of university students graduated, four of whom are currently enrolled in master’s degree programs.
“[It’s] really inspiring for these orphaned kids to see someone, from the same background, standing in front of them showing what the possibilities could be for them,” says Bruce.
Bruce and his wife, Susan, first met Rawal in 2003. She is a close friend of Nari and Chet, orphaned sisters whose schooling the Keenans started sponsoring in 1999. The Nepalese siblings asked the Keenans to help Rawal, too.

In Nepal, poverty is a crushing cycle. Poor children lack access to clean drinking water and food. They cannot attend school or see a doctor if they need to, and many are swept into child trafficking rings or forced into early marriages.
Almost half of Nepali women under the age of 49 are married before their 18th birthday. If a woman is widowed, she is often forced to get remarried out of financial necessity and give up any children from her first marriage. These kids end up living in overcrowded, underfunded and under-regulated orphanages where abuse often occurs. Worse yet, some grow up on the streets.
Determined to change the trajectory of Nari, Chet and Rawal’s futures, the Keenans started HCC, which runs several programs offering orphaned and abandoned children a loving home environment, quality English-language education (through university), and innovative mentorship and leadership training. The organization continues to mentor its students even after graduation.
“Most Nepali institutions and charities stop support when the kids turn 16 years old and finish 10th grade,” Bruce explains. “To think that these kids can then get a good job or contribute back to society, just doesn’t really work.”
After completing 10th grade, Rawal lived in HCC’s youth home in Kathmandu, known as Khushi Ghar, or “Happy Home.” Today, she works as a Program Coordinator at HCC Nepal. She has reconnected with her mother and hopes to help take care of her in the future.
“Without HCC, my life would have been hell,” Rawal says. “HCC has provided me with each and every facility that I needed.”
Another such graduate is Khil Bahadur Thapa, who came to HCC as a precocious fifth grader. At the time, he was living in a rural orphanage whose staff recognized that he was already smarter than the village teachers. Knowing that he’d greatly benefit from a more rigorous education, they contacted HCC.
“We look for children that are motivated to learn,” says Bruce.
Thapa, who has a degree in public health from one of Nepal’s leading universities, now runs HCC programs for orphaned children living with relatives in rural communities devastated by the 2015 earthquakes, and often runs health workshops and screenings in these communities.
“Though I’ve already graduated from the program, it’s not the end,” Thapa says. “It’s now the beginning of the new life – the life of giving back.”

The staff at HCC gives students individual attention, teaching each one how to budget, cook, clean, communicate, build strong relationships with their peers and help them focus on education and career planning. It’s a stable, loving environment where children thrive. There’s another key expectation from the HCC staff: community service. Children volunteer at orphanages, in rural communities and at local schools.
“My hope for these kids is that they’re happy, well-adjusted, living fulfilled lives and that they’re able to contribute back,” Bruce says. “We really encourage them to stay in Nepal and give back to their local community.”
By emphasizing service, Bruce and Susan hope to magnify the impact of their organization and disrupt Nepal’s cycle of poverty.
To accomplish this, the HCC family is actively growing a worldwide community of support that’s dedicated to making a difference in the lives of children in Nepal. Youth ambassadors like Rehna Sheth, a senior in high school from Alpharetta, Ga., whose family supports two girls at HCC, are helping to fundraise and spread the word about HCC’s work.

“When someone supports HCC, they are changing the life of a child, and this child grows into an adult dedicated to helping others and giving back to the community,” Susan says. “These kids are redefining what it means to be an orphan in this culture; they are a force and leaders helping to change the paradigm of inequality in Nepal.”

Himalayan Children’s Charities is transforming the lives of orphaned and abandoned children in Nepal by breaking the cycle of poverty and creating a generation of leaders giving back to their communities. Its mission is to provide care, education and mentorship to an additional 5,000 at-risk children in Nepal by 2020. 

What to Do During ICE Stops

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President Trump and the Department of Homeland Security are strictly enforcing immigration laws. Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly recently said, “There will be no, repeat no, mass deportations,” but by law, anyone living in the United States without permission, is at risk. Even a clean criminal record doesn’t ensure protection.
“There’s effectively no prioritization,” says Andre Segura, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants Rights Project. “We’re going to see people who would not normally be detained, be detained.” Only DACA recipients (illegal immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children and were given work permits under a 2012 Obama administration program) are excluded.
If you witness immigration officers questioning someone, or are stopped yourself, here’s what to do:
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Additional reporting by Hallie Steiner

Ideal Learning Made Real

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Trust for Learning has a simple motto and a singular mission: Ideal Learning Made Real. The organization, which funds and advocates for early education, promotes innovative programs that engage small children both emotionally and intellectually. The goal is to equip all kids, no matter their socioeconomic background, with the tools necessary to become self-motivated, critical-thinking problem-solvers.
Watch the video above to see how Trust for Learning is fulfilling its mission.

One Man’s Plan to Green the Coal Industry, Spotlighting Urban Blight With Public Art and More

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A Curious Plan to Fight Climate Change: Buy Mines, Sell Coal, The New York Times
The lines in the so-called war on coal were drawn long ago: Sierra Club lawyers, on one side, clashed with Republican legislators and energy companies on the other. Tom Clarke, owner of a chain of nursing homes, set up a lonely camp in the battlefield’s middle ground. His nonprofit is buying up mines at bankruptcy proceedings, then selling the coal bundled with carbon offsets from tree-planting.
The Art of Breathing Lights, Albany Times-Union
At sundown in upstate New York, the blight is aglow with light. For the next two months, as part of a massive public art project, hundreds of vacant clapboard homes in Albany, Schenectady and Troy are being lit from inside with LED lights. Pulsing as if they were slowly exhaling, these abandoned houses refuse to be ignored.
The Children Who Saw Too Much, RYOT
Whipped with a belt buckle by his abusive stepfather, 17-year-old Ryan grew up believing all adults deal with their problems through aggression. At least, until he attended the nation’s first summer camp for children marred by domestic violence, where he learned, amid the Northern California pines and Klamath River rapids, about a different emotion: hope.
 

Mindfulness at Work: 7 Places Where Employees Benefit from Meditation

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Mindfulness, the practice of being awake to the present moment, is now in vogue in American workplaces as varied as Google, Goldman Sachs, Aetna and General Mills. Backed by scientific research of the cognitive benefits of ancient Buddhist meditation, corporate types thinking of productivity and the bottom line quickly trained their workers how to focus using mindfulness. Outside of finance, tech and manufacturing industries, NationSwell found seven more workplaces where you find employees reaping the benefits of meditating on a regular basis.

1. Concert Hall

Where: Tempe, Ariz.
After studying mindfulness for four decades, Ellen Langer, a professor of psychology at Harvard, is renowned as the field’s mother. Her concept of mindfulness differs from the common practice, in that she believes no meditation is necessary to change the brain’s chemistry; instead, she achieves mindfulness by existing in a state of “actively noticing new things,” she tells NationSwell.
As part of her research, she once split the Arizona State University Symphony Orchestra into two groups and instructed each to play a piece of music by Johannes Brahms, which she recorded. Langer asked the first group to remember their best performance of the familiar piece and try their best to replicate it. She told the other group of musicians to vary the classical piece with subtle riffs that only they would recognize. Langer taped both performances and played them side-by-side for an audience. Overwhelmingly, listeners preferred the second one. To Langer, it seemed that the more choices we make deliberately — in a word, mindfully — as opposed to the mindless repetition, the better our end-product will be. The most important implication for Langer came later, when she was writing up the study: In America, she says, we so often prize a “strong leader to tell people what to do,” but as the orchestra’s performance proves, when an individual takes the lead instead of doing what someone instructs her to do, a superior result is the likely outcome.

2. Primary School

Where: East Village, New York City
“The research is pretty conclusive: when kids feel better, they learn better. One precedes the other,” declares Alan Brown, a consultant with Mindful Schools where he offers mindfulness training to the private school’s freshman and sophomores. Brown incorporated a serious practice into his life at a week-long silent retreat, after “jumping out of my skin, reading the toilet paper, doing anything but to be with your own thoughts and with yourself.” He now teaches kids how to be attuned to themselves and recognize feelings that may be subconsciously guiding their lives, like when they’re hyped up with sugar or are stressed out about a test. (Solutions: spending a moment in a designated corner calming down, breathing through a freakout to restore higher cognitive functions.)
As someone in the caregiving profession, Brown reminds himself and his fellow teachers they need to adopt mindfulness practices as well. With them, “the way I interact with others comes from a place of much greater compassion for the kids: clearly this young person, who is not a fully-formed, self-regulating adult, is probably trying their best and probably has some really significant hurdles outside the classroom. I’m not going to let that get to me.” If teachers expect similarly enlightened behavior from their kids, Brown adds, they have to know, “You can’t teach what you don’t have in your own body” and better embrace a meditative practice to see the results at every desk.

The UMass Mindfulness in Medicine program teaches the benefits of meditation to their staff members.

3. Hospital

Where: Shrewsbury, Mass.
Modern mindfulness was formalized in 1979 at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where Jon Kabat-Zinn created an eight-week meditation routine to reduce stress for the hospital’s chronically ill patients that’s now replicated worldwide. Back on the medical campus where it all started, a new mindfulness program is being offered this summer for the people on the other side of treatment: the physicians, nurse practitioners and care managers.
The Mindfulness in Medicine program works to combat the frequent feeling of dissatisfaction about a lack of patient interaction among doctors. Instructor Carl Fulwiler gives lectures about the clinical research on meditation’s benefits, teaches 90-minute workshops for busy staffers and leads full-blown courses for a dedicated few. His teachings focus on how to avoid burnout with strategic pauses; by taking a breath immediately prior to seeing a patient, doctors can focus solely on the interaction. “Often they’re thinking about what’s the next thing they have to do or the documentation. They’re not even hearing a lot of what the patient is saying,” Fulwiler observes. With mindfulness, they can see what “might be contributing to a bad encounter, what’s preventing us from being empathetic, compassionate and more efficient in our style of communication?” The whole interaction may be over in three minutes, but having that time be meaningful is vital for helping the healers themselves feel the rewards of a demanding job.

4. Government

Where: Washington, D.C.
Change rarely comes to our nation’s capital, but that’s okay in Rep. Tim Ryan’s mind. A meditative practice equipped him to deal with legislative gridlock and partisan bickering. The seven-term Democrat representing northeastern Ohio practices mindfulness in a half lotus position for roughly 40 minutes daily — a regimen he began after attending one of Kabat-Zinn’s retreats in 2008, after which he gained “a whole new way of relating with what was going on in the world,” Ryan tells The Atlantic. “And like any good thing that a congressman finds — a new technology, a new policy idea — immediately I said, ‘How do we get this out?’” Ryan first wrote the book “A Mindful Nation,” exploring the ways mindfulness is being implemented across America, and today, in sessions of the House Appropriations Committee on which he sits, the representative advocates for more funds to be deployed to teach meditation tactics. The money may not be forthcoming just yet, but that hasn’t stopped mindfulness from gaining more new converts like Ryan every day.

5. Police Department

Where: Hillsboro, Ore.
Last month, Americans watched videos of officer-involved shootings in Baton Rouge, La.; St. Paul, Minn; and North Miami, and they read about the five cops who died in a sniper attack in Dallas. While those crises were deeply felt by civilians nationwide, they were only a glimpse of what cops encounter regularly. “Law enforcement is a profession that is deeply impacted by trauma. On a daily basis, we bump up against human suffering,” says Lt. Richard Goerling, head of Hillsboro Police Department’s investigative division and a faculty member at Pacific University. “It doesn’t take very long for police officers’ well-being to erode dramatically,” he adds, ticking off studies that track early mortality and cardiovascular issues among public safety professionals.
Through the organization Mindful Badge, Goerling teaches several police departments in the Portland area and in Northern California how mindfulness can better cops’ performance: sharpening their attention to life-or-death details, cultivating empathy and compassion that’s crucial for stops and searches and building resilience before encountering trauma. The theory goes that once an officer receives mental training, he can sense when a stressor in his environment is activating his flight-or-flight reactions and then check those instincts. “If a police officer is in their own crisis,” Goerling suggests, “they’re not going to meet that person in a way that’s totally effective.” The lieutenant is aware mindfulness isn’t a cure-all for “a landscape of suffering,” but he believes it’s a first step to changing a “broken” police culture that takes its officers’ health for granted.

6. Athletic Competition

Where: San Diego, Calif.
BMX bikers may not seem like a group that’s primed for meditation, but when an elite biker stuttered with anxiety at the starting line, his coach James Herrera looked into any way to solve the problem of managing stress before a high-stakes event. Herrera soon got in touch with the Center for Mindfulness at the University of California, San Diego, and he signed up his seven-man team for a small study into the effects of meditation on “very healthy guys who are at the top of their sport,” lead author Lori Haase tells NationSwell. Over seven weeks, the bikers practiced a normal mindfulness routine, but with extra impediments like having their hands submerged in a bucket of icy water to teach them to feel the sensation of pain, rather than reacting to it cognitively. As the weeks went on, their bodies seemed to prepare for a physical shock, without an accompanying psychological panic. In other words, participants’ bodies were so amped up and hyperaware that they didn’t need to react as strongly to the stressor itself compared to an average person. The study didn’t test whether it made them faster on the course, but it seemed to suggest that reaction times could be sped up by using mindfulness to slow down.

7. Military

Where: Honolulu, Hawaii
Like cops, members of the military have much to gain from situational awareness. A couple seconds’ of lead-time for a soldier to notice someone in a bulky jacket running into a public square could prevent a suicide bomb from taking out dozens of civilians and comrades abroad. But that’s not all mindfulness is good for in a service member’s line of duty.
Before soldiers even leave home, they must deal with leaving family and putting other aspects of their lives on hold. To prepare soldiers for deployment, University of Miami neuroscientist Amishi Jha offered mindfulness trainings at an Army outpost on Oahu to soldiers heading to Afghanistan. To fit the program into an already crowded training regimen, Jha drastically cut down the standard 40-hour model to an eight-hour practice scattered throughout eight weeks. Despite the stress of leaving that could sap the mind’s attention and working memory — “everything they need to do the job well when they’re there,” Jha notes — the mindfulness trainings prevented their minds from wandering. Tentative research Jha’s still conducting suggests those benefits persist post-deployment. Her session was just like boot camp, Jha found, only for the brain.

MORE: How Meditation Is Bringing Calm to San Francisco’s Toughest Schools

Can Nemo and Dory Revolutionize How We Teach Math in America?

Posted on by robbie

There’s one reliable way to quiet unruly kids: turn on a Pixar animated film. Teachers using class time to watch a movie is usually viewed as lazy, but a new online curriculum hosted by Khan Academy taps into children’s enthusiasm for these animated films to teach STEAM subjects (science, technology, engineering, arts and math).

Pixar in a Box, as the virtual curriculum is known, contains interdisciplinary lessons that parallel real design challenges facing Pixar’s animators. The classes, which are narrated by Pixar engineers, lend credence to teachers’ arguments that school lessons will be applicable to students’ eventual careers, even if the tough math problems don’t seem relevant now. Concepts like patterns and randomness, for example, could end with students crafting their own computer-generated dinosaur skin models, and a class on weighted averages and Pascal’s triangles results in a model character from Monsters, Inc.

Underlying each lesson are the principles of project-based learning: tying theoretical concepts to real-world problems. In doing so, Pixar in a Box’s creators believe students will be more engaged, as they pursue projects they care about rather than being forced to complete assignment after assignment. “A lot of time, when kids ask the question, ‘When am I gonna use this stuff?’ teachers don’t have a good answer,” says Tony DeRose, a Pixar senior scientist. “We want to give them authentic content that they can teach in the classrooms, showing how we addressed creative challenges we faced in the studio.”

In Pixar in a Box: Season 1: Rendering, students learn how technical artists at Pixar use ray-tracing and other mathematical algorithms to calculate pixel color and generate the final frames of a film, as seen in “UP.”

So far, teachers have reported that their students love the collaboration, which gives them an easier way to illustrate the Common Core curriculum. (Pixar employees also enjoy being a part of the program: “Now my parents will finally understand what I do,” is sometimes heard in the offices.)

Brit Cruise, the curriculum’s lead designer, says the collaboration with Pixar is also changing the way Khan Academy makes content. Normally, most of their lessons are one-off modules, but this curriculum ties several concepts together into an interactive narrative experience of how something gets made. He sees the collaboration with Pixar not only as “a chance to make something which I could send back to my younger self,” but also as a way to inspire millions of students to pursue STEAM careers in which they entertain (and teach) the next generation.

MORE: Investing in Future Innovation: This Visionary Program Gets Students Hooked on STEM