Teachers and administrators at Brooklyn College Academy, a New York City public school that prepares students for college study, want their meditation room to be a model for other schools across the five boroughs.

Before there was a dedicated room and trained instructors, Lisa Noble started her classes with a mindfulness exercise. Noble, a social studies teacher and mindfulness practitioner who has taken Mindful Schools and MBSR [Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction] courses, said that she got into meditation as a way to deal with the physically and emotionally draining teaching profession.

… Damkina Jeromey, 15, who is now in tenth grade and her second year as a meditator. “At the beginning of ninth grade I was stressed out, always worrying. School is very rigorous because [I go to an] early college high school, so I have a lot of work to do. Also, I go to an extracurricular program called Legal Outreach, and they give a lot of work, too. It was really rough for me in the beginning. Mindfulness really helped me destress and stop worrying too much.”  Jeromey … said mindfulness has helped manage her migraine headaches and improve her grades and relationships with other people.

Noble said she sees mindfulness’s value, especially when it comes to students who are from low-income households or whose families are homeless. – excerpt from article on tricycle.org