Healthy Minds Healthy Schools

HEALTHY MINDS, HEALTHY SCHOOLS is a universal, curriculum-based program for elementary school children aimed at improving children’s social, emotional, behavioural, and academic functioning.Dr. Tina C. Montreuil and Micah A. Tilley’s unique program integrates components of emotion regulation, mindfulness, and metacognition, providing children with practical strategies they can use in everyday life. Comprised of 16 lessons, Healthy Minds, Healthy Schools provides students at the elementary level with practical, everyday strategies to combat stress, anxiety, and depression, and demonstrates the universal need for policy-oriented approaches to school-based mental health. A number of components are integrated throughout, including emotional regulation and expression; mindfulness and metacognition; the link between thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations; acceptance and selfcompassion; goal-directed behaviours; problem solving; and conflict resolution. With guided instructions, personal reflection sections, and group activity exercises, this essential resource equips children with tools to develop improved attention, inhibition, and cognitive flexibility, strengthen their social skills, and enhance their academic performance. This highly colourful and graphically appealing book includes both strategies and activities adapted for children in elementary school. It is an invaluable resource, offering teachers, educators, and other specialists, such as psychologists, counsellors, and social workers, supportive material to teach these valuable social–emotional skills.

What would a school look like if it was designed with mental health in mind? Too many public schools look and feel like prisons, designed out of fear of vandalism and truancy. But we know that nurturing environments are better for learning. Access to nature, big classroom windows, and open campuses consistently reduce stress, anxiety, disorderly conduct, and crime, and improve academic performance. Backed by decades of research, Schools That Heal showcases clear and compelling ways--from furniture to classroom improvements to whole campus renovations--to make supportive learning environments for our children and teenagers. With invaluable advice for school administrators, public health experts, teachers, and parents Schools That Heal is a call to action and a practical resource to create nurturing and inspiring schools for all children.

This book presents general guidelines for integrating mind-body practices in schools, as well as a more detailed recommendations for implementing specific interventions using a three-tiered service delivery model.

An essential guide to help children become more aware of their emotional needs. This book examines a range of everyday topics that might give children’s minds difficulties, for example: when parents don’t seem to understand us; when we fall out with friends; when school feels boring or difficult; when we’re too busy and get overwhelmed; when our phones create trouble; when we feel sad, bored, anxious or fed up with things. As an atlas to a child’s mind, we explore a range of common scenarios encountered by young children and talk about some of the very best ideas to help deal with them. By offering a sympathetic and supportive framework, we encourage children to open up, explore their own feelings and face the dilemmas of growing up armed with emotional intelligence.

20 True Things You Need to Know You can create abundant wellbeing and skyrocket your personal effectiveness. Finally, a psychologist reveals the most important things you need to know to prevent problems, enjoy optimal mental health, and reach life-changing peak performance. If you’ve ever wanted to truly transform your life, this book is the answer. We know “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”—but what provides a psychological edge? Award-winning clinical psychologist Dr Tom Nehmy reveals his most potent insights—his apples—from years of cutting-edge work in scientific research and guiding thousands of people to enhance their lives. By applying what you learn in this book, you will: • Experience abundant wellbeing by focusing on six key factors • Release perfectionism and focus on what really matters • Slam the door on depression and anxiety • Discover simple, powerful techniques to make good decisions—every time • Bust through myths about stress, and use it to your advantage • Learn crucial psychological skills that prevent problems from even starting • Have the courage to seek out challenges and fulfil your potential Clear, actionable habits based on science, wisdom, and knowing what makes people tick. Welcome to your new toolkit for an awesome life.

This book is the perfect starting point for anyone looking to promote and encourage mental health in their school, or evaluate their existing provision, in line with current government priorities. It covers not only the day-to-day practical steps you can take to meet the mental health needs of learners, but also a provides a whole bank of ideas for ensuring you adopt a whole-school approach to positive mental health. Pooky Knightsmith lays out tried and tested tools you can use to evaluate the overall mental health of a school, showing how to improve and support the mental health of staff, and how to ensure that the voice of every learner is heard and valued, including the most vulnerable - and that everyone involved with the school feels safe, healthy and happy. Pooky's simple 'litmus test' framework lays out six practical areas you can explore to implement change within your own school, with explanations, sheets to fill in, tips from loads of school staff, and case examples that break these ideas down into easily digestible chunks. This much-needed book is a jumping off point for meaningful change in all aspects of your school community that will promote, support and strengthen mental health at whole-school level.

In The Power of a Plant, globally acclaimed teacher and self-proclaimed CEO (Chief Eternal Optimist) Stephen Ritz shows you how, in one of the nation’s poorest communities, his students thrive in school and in life by growing, cooking, eating, and sharing the bounty of their green classroom. What if we taught students that they have as much potential as a seed? That in the right conditions, they can grow into something great? These are the questions that Stephen Ritz—who became a teacher more than 30 years ago—sought to answer in 2004 in a South Bronx high school plagued by rampant crime and a dismal graduation rate. After what can only be defined as a cosmic experience when a flower broke up a fight in his classroom, he saw a way to start tackling his school’s problems: plants. He flipped his curriculum to integrate gardening as an entry point for all learning and inadvertently created an international phenomenon. As Ritz likes to say, “Fifty thousand pounds of vegetables later, my favorite crop is organically grown citizens who are growing and eating themselves into good health and amazing opportunities.” The Power of a Plant tells the story of a green teacher from the Bronx who let one idea germinate into a movement and changed his students’ lives by learning alongside them. Since greening his curriculum, Ritz has seen near-perfect attendance and graduation rates, dramatically increased passing rates on state exams, and behavioral incidents slashed in half. In the poorest congressional district in America, he has helped create 2,200 local jobs and built farms and gardens while changing landscapes and mindsets for residents, students, and colleagues. Along the way, Ritz lost more than 100 pounds by eating the food that he and his students grow in school. The Power of a Plant is his story of hope, resilience, regeneration, and optimism.

This book, first published in 2006, presents research about experiences in middle childhood that forecast children's future development.