Chowan County’s White Oak Elementary School recently was recognized for a program that introduces students to ways to help them better control their emotions and improve academically.
Thoughtful Thursdays, a program that Edenton-Chowan Public Schools Director of Elementary Education Michelle Newsome said is practiced at White Oak and D.F. Walker elementary schools, was honored by Character.org as a Promising Practice. The award recognizes worldwide efforts to introduce the principles of “mindfulness” into the classroom, helping students control their emotions better and freeing them to perform better on their schoolwork.
For the 2024-25 school year, White Oak Elementary School will be recognized on the character.org website along with more than 100 U.S. schools and 40 other schools in Australia, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico, Mongolia, Philippines, and Romania.
Character.org said in a prepared statement that it empowers people of all ages to practice and model the core values that shape “hearts, minds, and choices.” It is known for sharing the work of schools around the world in the field of character education.
“We are extremely proud to recognize the schools and organizations that have developed and implemented a Promising Practice,” said Dr. Arthur Schwartz, president of Character.org. “Each of these programs and initiatives have demonstrated significant impact and strongly aligned with the principles that help schools and organizations cultivate a culture of character.”
The practice honored at White Oak involved weekly presentations to the students on what Newsome describes as mindfulness. Classes pair off, and the teachers switch, presenting the program to students from a fresh perspective.
In post-COVID schools, isolation, time spent without social interactions, and years spent without in-class experience have resulted in higher numbers of serious disciplinary problems, school officials say. Newsome said that Thoughtful Thursdays is a way to approach the problem. And it’s not just the kids who benefit from the program; teachers also have been enthusiastic about it as a stress-reducing tool.
“Our staff members took the training through Mindful Schools because we, as adults, also needed to learn to regulate and be mindful,” Newsome said. “There’s no way we can teach a child how to be mindful if we can’t do it ourselves.”
Newsome said the kind of mindfulness she is teaching at White Oak and D.F Walker is not about “new age spirituality,” even if some of the vocabulary it uses reminds one of that. She said the program teaches kids how to handle their emotions before those emotions can control them.
She said the mindfulness programs are hardly what anyone would call “new age.” She said that one of the biggest struggles students face is learning to regulate their emotions. Whether kids bring problems and tensions from home, have difficult peer interactions, or get frustrated with their teachers, they must learn to “center” themselves, she said.
“A large part of the focus, especially through our collaboration with calm minds and kind hearts, is self-awareness and self-management at this young age,” Newsome said. “Our children need to learn how to be self-aware, how their body feels, what makes them feel that particular way, and then to be able to manage those emotions.
That way, if they don’t perform well on, say, a math test they “don’t throw their desk,” she said.
“Instead, they take a deep breath, give themselves a self-affirmation, and move on,” Newsome said. “Self-awareness and self-management are two of the key competencies that we work on at this level. … It’s about teaching students how to identify and manage emotions and what to do when they’re feeling off. It’s about how to manage emotions and what to do when they are in the ‘red or the green zone.’”
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