Peace in Schools

in the 2021-22 school year, pins served 8 pps high Schools. We delivered our for-credit mindfulness elective classes in 7 high Schools: alliance at meek, cleveland, grant, ida b. Wells, lincoln, ida b. wells-barnett, and roosevelt. At comprehensive high Schools, this class is either a semester long or year-long course, depending on the needs of the school. At alliance at meek high school, pins programming is provided as an elective course and a supplementary support for incoming students. At metropolitan learning center (mlc), we provided a weekly mindfulness club for the spring 2022 semester. Key year-end outcomes and impacts for 2021-22: -7 pps high Schools received our for-credit teen programming. -a total of 530 unique students completed our mindfulness elective class, the most in-depth, mindfulness-based course in public high Schools nationally. -81% of students would overwhelmingly recommend the class to a friend. -over 70% of students practiced self-compassion and compassion for others. -for both semesters, over 80% of students found self-talk to be the most helpful component of class. -our mindfulness elective class continued to see high levels of enrollment of lgbtq+ students this fall; the research points to this class being an effective mental health intervention for this population. -96% of students in the elective use the mindfulness tools that they learned at least once/day. in a separate contract through the human resources department, pins continued to serve pps educators, counselors, and school administrators through online program offerings. We offered a mindfulness for burnout course that was offered to all staff across the multiple pathways to graduation network. Pause for Peace, a free three-week community event,received record engagement, welcoming folks new to Peace in Schools and long-standing members of our community alike. Over 3,500 people joined us in interrupting the daily grind each day by taking a pause, whether at work, in their classrooms, or solo on their own time.