Mindfulness

Mindfulness at Ewell Castle School 

At Ewell Castle School, Mr Bader-Clynes, our Mindfulness Lead and Director of Drama is a certified Mindfulness teacher of classroom-based mindfulness techniques. Having trained with the Mindfulness in Schools Project (MISP), he currently teaches various MISP courses to pupils throughout the School. 

Prep School

In the Prep, we have just introduced an exciting new course called ‘dots’ to Year 1 and Year 2 and are teaching Paws b to Year 5. In the Summer term, we will be introducing ‘.breathe’ to Year 6. 

Senior School

In the Senior School, Year 7 are all taking the ‘Paws b’ course, in Form Time and Year 10 pupils are doing the ‘.b’ course as part of a dedicated Mindfulness class. All these courses are part of the rich tapestry of Mindfulness courses from MISP. All are intended to enrich the pupils’ lives and improve emotional resilience, wellbeing, and self-awareness. 

As the School continues its wellbeing journey, we are investigating other mindfulness courses and initiatives as part of the curriculum and as part of the co-curricular timetable. Years 10 and 11 will get a 16 week Mindfulness course in their GCSE year. For this year there is no Year 11 Mindfulness teaching. However next year the .b course will be taught to Years 10 and 11.

You may have heard of mindfulness or read some of the recent media coverage about it. A great deal of this media interest has arisen because of the growing body of rigorous research evidence regarding the potential benefits of mindfulness for young people. These include randomised control trials and neuroscientific studies. 

According to Professor Katherine Weare, (Emeritus Professor, University of Southampton and Honorary Visiting Professor, University of Exeter) schools who engage in mindfulness are likely to see ‘beneficial results on the emotional wellbeing, mental health, ability to learn and even the physical health of their students. Such interventions are relatively cheap to introduce, have an impact fairly quickly, can fit into a wide range of contexts and above all are enjoyable and civilising, for pupils and staff.’  

The benefits of Mindfulness

The classroom-based mindfulness curriculums we teach are an awareness-raising exercise to give all pupils a taste of mindfulness so that they know about it and can return to it later in life if they choose to do so.