SHED Children’s Campus Teaches Kids How to Find Balance
The educational programs at SHED Children’s Campus in Andover have been evolving since the nonprofit’s beginnings in 1984. With its roots firmly established in the child-centered Reggio Emilia philosophy, SHED branched out in 2011 to identify four additional pillars — community, gardening, nature and mindfulness — central to its preschool, after-school and summer programs for kids age 3 through grade 8. Mindfulness is of particular interest in this article, but it turns out that all the tenets seem to come together organically.
Mindfulness can be described as the state of actively tuning in to the present moment as a way to ease troublesome interference that may be emanating from somewhere else, including ruminations about the past or the future. Practicing mindfulness through traditional meditation, yoga, sensory observation, or simply spending a moment to take acute notice of the act of breathing, can be a powerful tool for easing anxiety, anger, inattentiveness and other challenges — benefits that are crucial to a child’s learning, interactions and healthy development.
SHED Executive Director Linda Shottes Bouchard says the idea to include mindfulness popped up with little effort as the organization brainstormed back in 2011. As the important foundational pillars for children and families in the community were considered, “mindfulness was definitely one of them,” Shottes Bouchard says.
While the Reggio Emilia philosophy puts much emphasis on children as co-leaders in their own development, the role of educators as gentle guides is integral to that process. This ties in with the way mindfulness is seeded at SHED: It starts with the staff fully incorporating it into their daily routine. Shottes Bouchard says that before each administrative meeting, the team gets a dose of mindfulness by lowering the lights and taking a few minutes for some conscious, centering breathing.
This emphasis on integrating mindfulness into the daily lives of educators is how it finds its way into the classroom in a natural way, Shottes Bouchard says. “This is how we approach our environment and what we’re doing. It really becomes second nature.” Teachers fully equipped with their own personal tool kits for coming back to the moment are able to guide children in doing the same when necessary, and kids quickly pick up the skills at SHED to do so on their own.
“In every classroom, there are areas for them to sit and just be,” Shottes Bouchard says. And while teachers will lead mindful activities in their classrooms, such as yoga poses for tuning in to bodily sensations, kids also have the opportunity to self-regulate when they need to. “I think that’s sometimes the yummiest thing to watch,” Shottes Bouchard says, “when you just see that one child who’s sitting. They’ll get into their posture and sit crisscrossed with their arms out. They’re taking their time.”
These mindful skills aren’t just for the classroom. Kids take them along wherever they go, like into the great outdoors. Two of the pillars, gardening and nature, are perfectly paired with a mindfulness practice.
When enjoying their time on the wooded grounds of Phillips Academy, where SHED is located, the kids’ senses are free to take it all in. “Once you have that awareness, the whole world opens up,” Shottes Bouchard says. “You begin to notice the bug that’s crawling up the tree.” Some of the kids have even come to enjoy weeding the many vegetable beds on campus as a calming activity, and the products of calm focus can be purchased when they host farmers markets with goods they’ve harvested and prepared. The public is free to come buy the salsa when it’s in season.
As for the community pillar, Shottes Bouchard hopes that mindfulness is one of the many things that ripples outward as kids head back home or to school with what they’ve learned.