The Mindful Schools Curriculum for Adolescents: Tools for Developing Awareness

Book excerpt: Copublished with Mindful Schools A flexible set of lessons tailored to the developmental needs of adolescents, based on research in behavioral science. Arguably, no student population stands to gain more from mindfulness practice— with its power to enhance emotion regulation, attention stability, and self- awareness— than students between the ages of thirteen and twenty. In this comprehensive curriculum developed at Mindful Schools, Oren Jay Sofer and Matthew Brensilver provide twentyfive brief (twenty- to- thirty- minute) lessons that supply a framework for mindfulness instruction that can be expanded or condensed according to the needs of students. Each lesson includes a “science supplement” with research findings relevant to the practice, and handouts summarizing key aspects of the lesson that can be distributed to students. Users of the curriculum may also be interested in the instructional resource written from a similar perspective by these authors with JoAnna Hardy: Teaching Mindfulness to Empower Adolescents.