The Mindful Heart Curriculum

An Introduction to Mindfulness in the Classroom

The Mindful Heart Curriculum is an Irish based curriculum which provides an opportunity for both teachers and students to create and share in ‘A Whole School Approach’ to Mindfulness in the Classroom. 

This new curriculum has been composed over the last 4 years in Ireland by Louise Shanagher, BA and MSc in Psychology, Play Therapist, Mindfulness Teacher and Psychology Lecturer and by Paul McNamee, BA in Psychology is equivalent to the Paws.b curriculum for the Mindfulness in Schools Project.

The Mindful Heart Curriculum helps to promote an environment of calm and peacefulness in the classroom, which promotes the positive implementation of the ‘ Well-being Promotion Process’ as per the Department Circular in July 2018 regarding the introduction and implementation of the ‘Wellbeing Policy Statement and Framework for Practice’ for promoting the well-being of students.

As a Creative Mindfulness for Kids Practitioner and a Mindful Heart Curriculum Practitioner, Leona helps to empower children’s mental, emotional and physical health and well-being by using techniques to reinforce her ethos that ‘everything we need is already within us’.  Leona helps to arm children with their own personal ‘tool kit’ for helping to understand, deal with and overcome the many mental, emotional and physical challenges they are faced with in this current fast paced era. 

This curriculum helps children to adopt a Mindful approach to every- day living.  It helps children to understand that all emotions, all feelings are ok to experience and that there is room for all of these emotions in our hearts.  It helps children to understand that we can and do experience many thoughts, emotions, feelings at any time but that they can use the ‘tools’ in their ‘personal toolkit’ for wellbeing, for coping mechanisms and for stability and health.