Listen to the Ocean Roar!
Student Perspectives on a Mindfulness Intervention
Picture a dark stage, an audience holding its breath. A spotlight comes on and illuminates a girl with long, pink hair and a cowboy hat covered with silver sequins that flash in the light. She’s standing on a white wooden 4’ x 4’ cube, holding a jar filled with water and a small spiral seashell in her hand. She drops the shell into the water and watches it sink slowly to the bottom of the glass.
Then she says:
“I think the anger jars would still be useful in a classroom setting… It’s just satisfying to watch the shells go… I think they’re pretty.”
The spotlight disappears, leaving a brief after-image on the eyes of the audience. Then the spotlight shines on a boy with short hair that sticks straight up off the crown of his head, wearing sunglasses and a red t-shirt. He is sitting cross-legged on a white cube.
He says:
“Mindfulness breathing is a solution that can help you with stress, and will help you to calm down when you are upset, or nervous, or you need to concentrate.”
The spotlight shuts off and the sound of birdcalls and monkeys hooting and rushing water suddenly fills the air. The spotlight reappears over the dark curly head of a girl in a pink and purple hoody.
“…[I enjoyed the] mindful listening because I find it the most um, personally, the most calming and soothing and it makes me feel good,” she says.
The scenario above is imaginary, but the quotes are from actual elementary and middle school children who participated in a mindfulness intervention.
It’s important to understand the first-hand experiences of children with mindfulness. Although rarely presented in research, student opinions can help improve the quality of mindfulness interventions in schools.
“I think it has [helped] because it kind of gets you to zone in with your mind and it helps you focus on whatever you are doing,” said an 8th grader in a focus group about an 8-week mindfulness intervention that was incorporated into their classroom activities (D’Allessandro et al., 2022).
“Mindfulness Breathing makes you concentrate on school work,” wrote a fourth grader in a reflective journal (spelling corrected) after 27 mindfulness sessions during their literacy class (Keller et al., 2017).
Analyzing qualitative data from interviews, focus groups, or journals, can be thought of as “having a conversation with the data” (Merriam, 2009, p. 178). It’s a transition from the impersonal world of numbers and statistical equations to the very personal world of words and sentences. After the interviews from participants have been carefully transcribed, the analytical mind can be left behind.
“Like shells upon the shore, you can hear the ocean roar.” (Simon & Garfunkel, 1966)
Participants in a study are like shells upon the shore. To interact with a shell, a person has to hold it up to their ear, listen carefully, and then they can hear the ocean roar (Keller, 2016).
When participant responses are read aloud, they take on the quality of a dialogue in a face-to-face environment — like students in a classroom.
Responses can be arranged, transported from the white screen of the computer into a virtual chat room so that it seems like participants are conversing with each other.
As you read their conversation, arranged as if it were a dialogue between 4th graders, 6th graders, and 8th graders, you can imagine them now in a classroom. Summer is fast approaching, so the windows are open and the day is hot. Some students sit up straight in the front row, trying to catch the eye of the teacher. Others are hoping not to be noticed, shrinking into themselves to make themselves as small as possible. Others sit at the back, legs sprawling out of their seats, bluffing self-confidence and looking for approval from their peers.
(All of the quotes below are from D’Allessandro et al., 2022 and Keller et al., 2017.)
“[Mindfulness] helps me be less hyper throughout the day.” (6th grader)
“Mindfulness is to help you calm down so when you’re hyper you can do mindfulness. To do mindfulness all you have to do is calm down have a blank mind. Think somewhere really pretty and breathe. If you set your mind to it everything around you disappears. Then you’re in that happy place of your dream. But you get too excited, you lose focus. So you try again and you’re much better.” (4th grader)
“I noticed that after we do mindfulness activities, um, I notice the atmosphere is a little quieter… [and the class] a bit more organized…” (6th grader)
“Mindfulness is silent breathing not heavy breathing.” (4th grader)
“Mindfulness is being quiet. Mindfulness is eating, tasting, hearing, and feeling quietly.” (4th grader)
“When we started doing the mindfulness activities at break, our class like didn’t fight as much as we used to. Then as soon as we stopped doing them as much, everybody started fighting over every single thing.” (6th grader)
“My thoughts and experience are that I feel calm and my experience is that some of the kids in my class don’t like mindfulness class at all.” (4th grader)
“I prefer to be mindfulness because it makes me happy. And I’m glad it makes me happy… The important thing is breathing calm. Mindfulness is very important to be because breathing calms me down. Mindless I don’t prefer because it’s messing around and talking and don’t paying attention. And it’s not participating in the mindfulness.” (4th grader)
“It is hard to focus sometimes on the body scan — a bunch of people here laughing, and I’m usually more focused on who’s laughing or something.” (8th grader).
“It makes me mad when people talk when we are breathing. I don’t like when the people in mindfulness don’t want to breathe with the rest of us.” (4th grader)
“When I go to school in the morning, I feel already really exhausted and then when we do the body scan in the morning, I feel like I just want to go back and sleep for the rest of the day and when I feel really, really tired, I don’t feel like doing things.” (8th-grade student).
“I don’t really want to continue. I don’t like it because it’s boring.” (8th grader)
[I’m] probably not [going to keep practicing on my own] because it’s boring and I want to get out of this mindful class stuff. I do not like anything but mindful eating, and barely that. (4th grader)
“The breathing one we did today, we had to breathe in for 6 seconds and then hold it for 6 seconds and then breathe back out for 6 seconds. It’s sort of hard because I can’t even breathe in for 6 seconds.” (6th grader)
“I didn’t really like it cause when I put the shell in [my anger jar], it started floating and it didn’t sink and then my group was like ‘oh your anger is not gonna go away.’ It made me feel sad.” (8th grader)
“I don’t think we should really keep it cause it doesn’t affect me in any way, it just makes a little calmer but I just go back to how I was before.” (8th grader)
“Mindfulness is calm. It is also a little boring). It is fun a little when I am there.” (4th grader)
“…Background noise would be helpful. Having the room like dead silent gets kind of awkward and uncomfortable for me…” (8th grader)
“I feel like when we do it in the morning, it’s the beginning of the day, we’re already kind of useless when we are already calm. I find, like personally, I find that doing it in the morning makes me more tired. Because I’m adding like, it’s relaxing me even more which is kind of like shutting me down a bit.” (8th grader)
“I wish we had it like first-period cause then I’m like all tired and you just feel better.” (8th grader)
“Mindfulness is to breathe to calm down when you’re tired.” (4th grader)
“I feel like it helps me like to relax and stuff but it’s becoming like for me, I feel like it’s kind of annoying cause like it’s becoming more of a routine. So, like every time I come and like okay, we are doing the mindful scan or listening or whatever. So, I kind of like doing it like once in a while.” (8th grader)
“The past weekend I had to do this thing in front of people, and I was really anxious, so I would just do the mindful scan to calm myself down and do the breathing. And before going up, I did the breathing to be calmer.” (8th grader)
Another student described how mindful breathing during homework improved their success at arriving at the correct answers: “Like if you do the breathing exercise in the middle like if you’re having trouble, I find that it kind of helps me focus and helps me find the answers better.” (6th grader)
“The other reason to be mindful is when you are taking a test.” (4th grader)
“Mindfulness helps you play sports because it calms you down and it makes you not think about what’s going to happen.” (4th grader)
“…I feel as though, as a class, because we are doing something together that we are all sharing that experience. Whether its mindfulness or not, just doing something together has been a positive — has had a positive effect on our community feel.” (8th grader)
“The pleasant experiences during mindfulness class is fun and cool. And calm because we have group work and that’s fun. Cool is for kind of fun cause some kids don’t listen. Calm is for, when we breathe calming. I also like the kids in my group, they’re awesome to have around.” (4th grader)
D’Allessandro et al., 2022 offered 3 recommendations for mindfulness interventions:
1. Balance entertainment and education: While the majority of the 51 6th and 8th graders enjoyed the activities in the mindfulness program, a third of the teachers reported student negativity towards it. Therefore, the aspects of mindfulness that students enjoy should be kept and further developed, while reasoning for activities that seemed “pointless” to students (e.g., the body scan and keeping their eyes closed) should be explained.
2. Flexible program delivery: Students liked having choice about what activities “would benefit us the most” (8th grader) and expressed preferences regarding the setting (e.g., outside), background noise, lighting, and time of day. Student opinions should be honored and mindfulness practice should be offered at flexibles times instead of on a fixed schedule.
3. Encourage mindful living outside of the classroom. This might be fostered by incorporating mindfulness activities into homework (e.g., brush your teeth or tie your shoes mindfully today).
Keller et al., 2017 offered these recommendations:
1. Explore game-based treatments. Students who are sensation-seeking, easily bored, and resistant to mindfulness might benefit from gamification of practice (e.g., regulating energy levels to navigate through the game world and overcome challenges) that could increase their motivation and engagement.
2. School-wide implementation. Students enjoy practicing as a group. If the whole school commits to practicing 10–15 minutes/day, this minimizes interruptions and brings calm to the collective environment.
3. Mindfulness can be integrated into the curriculum. Mindfulness serves as a protective factor, helping students preserve or improve positive attitudes toward academics and teaches students to calm down during stressful activities (e.g., taking a test in a subject where the student has experienced failure).
Both studies show that it is important for teachers and interventionists to “listen to the ocean roar” — listen to the opinions of students about mindfulness training. Students who enjoy mindfulness are more likely to benefit from what mindfulness has to offer.
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