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Genius School Replaces Detention With Meditation

And it's working wonders.

A Baltimore school has come up with a brilliant way to curb kids from acting out in class. Instead of sending children to detention, they send kids to a Mindful Moment Room for meditation.

In partnership with the Holistic Life Foundation, a non-profit organization that promotes wellness, Robert W. Coleman Elementary School introduced a meditation room to help its students “calm down and re-centre.”


The room is unlike any class in the school and is filled with lamps, plush pillows and bean bags. Here, students are taught deep breathing exercises, meditation and mindfulness to calm them, reduce their stress and help them deal with any anger or anxiety.

Impressively, since the Mindful Moment Room was introduced, not one suspension has been issued by the school, Bustle reports.

“It's amazing,” Kirk Philips, Robert W. Coleman’s Holistic Me coordinator, told Upworthy. “You wouldn't think that little kids would meditate in silence. And they do.”


The benefits of meditation and mindfulness are nothing new. In the past, studies have shown that meditation can help kids focus by boosting their attention span. It also helps them destress and get in touch with their feelings.

At Robert W. Coleman, students are already attesting to these benefits at school and at home. “This morning I got mad at my Dad, but then I remembered to breathe and then I didn’t shout,” one fifth grader said.

Another noted: “I took deep breaths to stay calm and just finish the test. When everybody around you is making a lot of noises just trying to tune them out… and be yourself, do your breathing.”

The Baltimore school isn’t the only one to see benefits from introducing its students to meditation and mindfulness. At Minnesota’s Wayzata West Middle School, for instance, Grade 8 teacher Seth Brown begins and ends every class with meditation to calm his students and help them focus.

Speaking of the practice’s positive effects, Brown told CBS News: “[My students] are not all on the same page, so instead of disrupting everyone else, they can use the mindfulness on their own to start breathing and maybe not burst out or pick on the kid next to them, because that’s what teenagers do.”

Learn more about Brown's mindfulness practice in the video above.

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