QuietTime: Teaching TM in Low-Income Urban Schools

In the past year, the David Lynch Foundation (DLF) has helped teach TM to 2,030 students in 19 low-income, urban schools across the country. Overall, the studentswho learned TM reported less drug and alcohol use, less stress and higher academic success in school, among many other positive side effects. 

While the DLF has funded numerous successful Quiet Time programs nationwide, for the first time this year, we launched a Quiet Time program in New York City. This program was instituted in a newly formed charter middle school—the Brooklyn Urban Garden School. Of the 130 students enrolled this past year, 113 have learned to meditate, along with most of the Board of Directors, all the administrators and all the classroom teachers. The initial results have been gratifying. The teachers report changes in individual students with impulse control and anger management challenges and a striking new calmness that now pervades the hallways between classes.

The Quiet Time program at the Brooklyn Urban Garden School is helping a cohort of middle school students experience inner quiet and peace at an early age. It is also proving to be our entry into the New York City public school system, the largest school system in the United States. The New York City Department of Education, which is responsible for over 1.1 million students and over 1,700 schools in five highly diverse boroughs, has an annual budget of nearly $25 billion. In-roads by DLF into the New York City school system would undoubtedly affect school systems in other parts of the country; it is an extremely important arena in which to introduce the Quiet Time program.

Links:

• http://www.davidlynchfoundation.org