What happens when we give children a chance to develop emotionally and mentally, as well as academically, within the school environment? Traditionally viewed as places of learning, the biggest challenges students face often have little to do with the curriculum. Instead, factors like test anxiety, classroom dynamics, social pressures, as well as bullying, issues at home, and in some cases, trauma, can have the largest impact on how students perform.
Eager to support students in managing their emotional well-being, The Tapping Solution Foundation designed a short, simple program that would be easy for schools to incorporate into their packed schedules. The Foundation then offered that program to Pacific Grove Middle School in Pacific Grove, CA, curious to see what kind of impact it would have.
Before the school rolled the program out to students, teachers were given a training session in tapping. During that training, school staff and teachers were taught how to tap, as well as how tapping impacts the body, relieving stress by lowering cortisol levels in the body.
Once the teachers had been trained, the only change to school routines happened at the start of each school day, when the 11 and 12-year old students come together for homeroom. Instead of jumping directly into the day’s announcements, teachers began each morning’s homeroom with a six-minute group tapping meditation.
During that time, teachers, students and staff did tapping on releasing stress and anxiety, and then ended by tapping on setting positive intentions for kindness, gratitude, and achieving specific academic goals that day.
Within the first two weeks of this daily practice, student social and test anxiety went down, test scores improved, and behavioral issues among students decreased. Teachers, students, and staff also noticed that special needs children were self-regulating better. Bullying also went down as cooperation and productivity went up.
Before long, these tapping meditations had had such an effect on the students, teachers, and staff that tapping became a central part of the classroom culture. When a student was having a bad day, it was common for another student to suggest that the entire class pause to tap with that student. Similarly, students began suggesting they all tap together when a teacher seemed to be having a bad day.
As a result, students are continuing to perform better on all levels – academically, socially and emotionally. Relationships within and beyond the classroom have also dramatically improved. It’s been a huge shift, all from just six minutes of tapping per day.
Thanks to the overwhelming success of the program in Pacific Grove, it has since been expanded, and is now active in schools in Hawaii, New York State, Connecticut and beyond.
To learn more about the work we’re doing in schools and elsewhere, visit TheTappingSolutionFoundation.org website here.
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