Meghan Conway

[[File:

|thumb]] Welcome to my personal page.

Please check out [[]] and [[]].

To return to Fall Spring 623 click here.

My biographical information

A SUNY Brockport graduate with a degree in health Sciences, business, and a concentration in general and inclusive education (grades 1-6). I started my career as a special education teacher in the 6th grade. After a year of experience I transferred schools and become a teacher of Health and Family and Consumer Sciences. This is my second year teaching Health and Family and Consumer Sciences, which is now a blended course at my school. Also, I am currently a graduate student enrolled in the CDIT program at SUNY Albany, and am in my final semester. I hope to use my degree in the future to teach teachers how to effectively use technology within their classrooms.

My personal information

I enjoy spending my time hiking, running, camping, or traveling with my two dogs Riesling and Kaela. I am a BIG Pittsburgh Steelers fan and attend their games as often as I can. I also enjoy reading, especially when it is somewhere warm and sunny.

My Topic/Purpose

This mini-course will focus on how mindfulness can change a classroom environment. Learners will look into how the brain changes when practicing mindfulness. Learners will also recognize how it results in a healthier mental state. Lastly learners will understand age appropriate mindfulness activities for an elementary, middle school, and high school classrooms.

Needs Assessment

Part I: Intent Studies suggest that mindfulness techniques calm the mind and body, and reduce the negative impacts of stress. The result of these benefits is that mindfulness keeps students engaged, academically on track and decreases unwanted behaviors (Semple,2017). Despite these known benefits teachers are receiving limited training and are undereducated about mindfulness. The lack of training and education have resulted in teachers not understanding how mindfulness changes the brain, and how to effectively implement it into their classrooms. The lack of teacher education then results in students having limited knowledge about mindfulness.

Initial impression: -There is a lack of understanding of how mindfulness changes the brain -Teacher who would like to implement mindfulness are unsure how to -Students have limited knowledge about the benefits of mindfulness In order to validate or correct these impressions information needed to be collected from both teachers and students, regarding their understandings of mindfulness in the classroom.

Part II: Gather Information

In order to assess the need for this mini-course on mindfulness, a survey was sent out to 13 teachers who taught grades k-12. Another survey was given to 22 students to assess their understanding of mindfulness. I think understanding students misconceptions will help teachers understand the best activities for students within their classrooms.

Link to Survey Questions

Teacher Survey: Pre-filled link to survey

Student Survey:Pre-Filled link student

Part III: Survey Results

'

Learning Outcomes/Objectives

Learners will be able to

• Understand how mindfulness changes the brain
• Understand age appropriate mindfulness activities for the classroom for students K-12th

Resources

Semple, R. J., Droutman, V., & Reid, B. A. (2017). Mindfulness goes to school: Things learned (so far) from research and real‐world experiences. Psychology in the Schools, 54(1), 29-52.