prism which she's going to explain to our audience so what if prism will prism is the gifted and talented programming at community middle school lessons or plainsboro and what it is is an opportunity for students who want a little bit extra enrichment during the course of their day they self select into the program and they can do a future problem solving project they can do an inquiry project which is like a genius hour where you pick something that you're really interested in and you research it throughout the year and then you presented at the end of the year to your peers and to judges they could participate in national history day we have a maker ambassador grow that works on making and tinkering lots of different opportunities and we also have this group that's going to be in here soon and they are our new you group and that is community problem solving and it's an opportunity for kids to do a long term research project on a problem that's of interest to them and they get to solve that problem and then teach others about the problem why it's relevant why it's important for other people to care about it they have to think about the criteria and evaluate the reasons why it's important to solve in the different ways in which they can solve it and they have to work with the community members they've had to reach out and find funding for different things that they're doing but also to make sure that it's relevant as a solution for the people that they're working with always a motivation to start this so it's funny because i for twenty years as a teacher have wanted to offer opportunities for kids where they get their voices heard and it's so perfect as a teacher when the students come to you with an idea of something that really is they're passionate about and they want to make a difference in the world so this group came to me as seventh graders and they said we're really interested in this one little project that we've been thinking about at the end of prism for all which is sort of like a two to three week orientation the prism where the students learn about the parts of the brain and what it means to be gifted and do you want to continue on with this enrichment opportunity i asked them last year to write on the board what would you tell your teachers if you could sort of like a self advocacy what do you wish they knew about being gifted but you haven't been able to tell them yes and so many of their responses dealt with being very stressed out or wishing that they had time to spend with their friends and that they that they were focused on the grades that they didn't feel healthy that they just wanted time to be kids and so this group of students came to me and said we don't really like to s which is future problem solvers but we want to do community problem solving and we want to focus in on a project about stress and see how we can help other people because they knew it couldn't just be the students that were part of this orientation it had to be a larger audience ok so they came to you when they're seventh graders and they are now the people that we have here are eighth graders so you guys have been doing it for about a year now yeah so were a year and a half into it and they have chosen to do an evolving project so while it's still a community service project and they've done this research and they've looked into databases and they've connected with the han foundation which is goldie hawn the actress and philanthropist has a curriculum called mind up and they reached out to get some resources from them they've been we're working with trisha meili of to be mindful which is a local mindful consultant they've been working with attitudes in reverse and they are mental health advocacy group that brings in therapy dogs so they they've been learning from experts on what are some really good healthy coping strategies so last year they did a whole lot of different programs during the course school day after school they did a wellness fair they created different options for kids that was their focus last year to really harness what are the options that kids have for healthy coping strategies and i can pretty much make a guess that you guys like most of community middle school grover middle school all middle schools and high schools until we're taught a healthy coping strategy or somebody introduces us to a website or to a book that that might not be an option and truth be told as adults we don't necessarily have all the best coping strategies right so it was how do we find the research that supports what's going to be best for people and having it come from the students is really relevant because you can listen to one another and you can understand hey it's really hard being a teenager growing up right now in the world and there's a lot of trauma that people are experiencing and everybody comes to school with different baggage so how do we help people broad spectrum what what different strategies can we teach people outside of kids going to their guidance counselor outside of kids talking to their parents and friends were some really good strategies that the kids could come up with to share out with everyone and so last year they focus on all different kinds of strategies to reduce stress and to help people deal with stress this year it's evolved into a project soley on mindfulness because what we've discovered is that people are running around on autopilot nonstop and constantly trying to get everything done during the course of their day and more and more things that into our schedules and we have on line google calendar is and we have calendars on our phones and we as parents telling us even at forty three parents telling us where we need to be and what things we need to do but we never take time to pause and be present in the actual moment and that's really what mindfulness is and it helps us with that so the kids have been targeting that approach with their students with the teachers with the parents and they've been reaching out with the p d s a as with the school district with the community getting it out there that there are some very simple strategies whether formal or informal mindfulness that everyone can incorporate to help us be in the moment to help us be present right now well so we've got going on here is truly special so what has it been for you as a teacher to experience it with them and what's your favorite part so my favorite parts it's hard because i love when the dogs come in a visit because who cannot feel better during the course of the day or after school when we get to cuddle with different dogs but really the best part is seeing how much they've maturity all the different coping strategies that they've been able to use in their own lives having them come in and meditate during prison time or at lunch when everybody comes in and is all wired he is a middle schooler but then is able to take an energy level down and just relax for a minute and check in and proceed mindfully but it's i just love working with my kiddos you know they're always going to be my kids all my students for twenty years of always become my students and my kids  these guys have a special place in my heart because they've been with me since six greater so i love watching them mature i love watching them have an opportunity to share with the world what they're doing and to have a voice in making change in the world well thank you for sharing your program with us and we're going to move on and talk with some of the students that you've taught so that our viewers can understand what projects you guys have been doing and more about what you hope to do in the future right thank you thank you and we're back with students from community middle school who are partisan new you project we have polite and can assure you and they're going to tell us all about what they've been up to or what events they've been hosting so why don't you dive into telling us all about what you've been up to at community middle school so recently we hosted a wellness fair and we also hosted one last year in which around one hundred eighty people attended and this year the project has evolved and we have focused more into mindfulness which is basically staying present at the moment and paying attention to what you're doing and your actions and this year over two hundred forty people attended so it shows that our focus also had a therapy session with dogs and basically children were allowed to play with dogs and get to know each other and then we also had many other activities such as drum circles and for you which was basically learning more about informal informal mindfulness and playing drums yeah and this year we started something called the panther paws challenge in our school and basically what it is we're putting out sessions to teach mindfulness to all the greens in our school and basically what we've done is we put out what mindfulness is like pock said standing present where in the moment we've taught them the different practices such as meditation we've taught them down there you can perform in their formal mindfulness that is meditation and yoga or you can do informal mindfulness which consists of practices like stop and basically what stop as is stopping t is taking time to observe oh is observing your emotions and pete is proceeding mindfully and we're teaching kids practices like that so they understand that mindfulness can be done anywhere in any situation so that you really are the person that's in control of your own life and with the panther pas we've put our sessions and videos from people on our group on our website and our you well so that people all over the world can not only see what we're doing but they can practice it on their own and people from spain have also shown interest in that so now we know that there are a lot of people from all over the world are interested in what we're doing and we know that we're proceeding in the right direction a lot of the techniques that we have used involve talking about autopilot which is basically when our human brains they go into robot mode and we are teaching them to get out of that and stay present which is basically mindfulness is ministry said and we also use a few other acronyms like so so so over and basically all these techniques are basically guiding us to helping our community and we have also taught and presented at a camp on core and camp new jersey and there that is basically teaching teachers and guiding them to teach their students and their classrooms in using  helped us because as our teacher mentioned before we come into class and that we do that two minute meditation or that ten minute meditation and like she said we go over and bring that rowdy rambunctious class and then we become calm and we'd be able to proceed to do what we need to do and use time affectively and although there are many coping strategies for stress we've seen that mindfulness works the best because it can be done anywhere and there are nobody involved and regulations for what to do and we actually also previously we didn't know what my phone list actually was and as we indulged more into this and we got to know more about it we realized that it's actually a really cool i'm coping strategy it's not only like some meditation but it can use being used in many different ways and anytime you're distressed or are unhappy you can if you use mindfulness and it's a really easy and quick meditation technique that will help you calm down and really think about what you're doing and the reason we've been stressing mindfulness and the importance of releasing your stress and how the manner is because last year as we were doing our research and we came across the fact that over one hundred twenty students in our very own don we don't pee school district were recommended for outside mental health evaluation because apparently many of them have come to the point where they have been contemplating suicide or even other things that are unhealthy for them and after the reality in the way of that stuff and we realize how much more important it is for us as young people to really really not only find ways to cope with our stress but realize how important it is and our life and make sure that we cope with it properly so that these practices continue as we become adults as well and in fact we also have realized that many of the adults and famous actors and actresses and people also use mindfulness like kobe bryant and of rowan free and many other people tennis players to actresses to famous c e o s we have done many research and we try to add in the cool factor so to speak to them i phone this aspect and we came up with many ideas and techniques that you can use when you are just doing your daily routine and going through your daily life like a lot of people in our school at least there's this new crazy this thing which is for being water bottles and it's going all around so we have this thing called the glitter jar which is basically a bottle with good or in it and it represents our mind when you shake the glitter jar it kind of the glitter goes all around and it swirls and then in a few seconds perfume and it's kind of stops and slows down and it sinks so that kind of shows how our mind will also calm down if you just take a moment think breathe and using the stop stop techniques of observe your surroundings and then that will really help you so what you can do is another trick technique you can flip a water bottle and which is going to be a glitter jar and it will basically swirl and you can just watch the glitter stop and then once the good are settled you can flip it again so this is another way we have tried to encompass and use my force to go on with that creative idea realize that eating healthy is something that's obviously a coping strategy but since it's hard to have that self control on days just rest we have discovered something called chocolate meditation and watch how can i take it in pretty much as it is what you do is you feel the chocolate you smell the chocolate chocolate you've got to take in what the chocolate really is and then you put it aside which requires a lot of self control and you meditate for two minutes and just observe your emotions and feelings and then you get to the chocolate so not only are you practicing how to practice but you get a reward at the end and in fact even when you're playing video games you can also use this  you can also use my phone less so maybe when you're playing the game and you're supposed losing the level or you're not able to beat it you can play it you can calm down meditate for two minutes and then play it again we have seen many results where it has actually helped the video gamers and if you use this technique and it can potentially culp your gaming well so i'm sure that this is been a wonderful experience for both of you and i'd like to thank you so anyway i just love to thank you guys for coming on the show and we're going to move on to jonathan and shane you can tell us more about new we're back with jon then and shari'a and they're going to tell us a little bit about  new and how it's affected them as members of the group and also how it has affected our school and the students within it so you guys have to do this for a while now but when she talks about me personally before usually when i started to study for a test i would just kind of freak out sometimes i'm sure i'll have that experience and then does do a bunch of reach out to our students in our school and our community and how educate them on mindful coping strategies and how they can cope with their stress wow so i see that it has helped both of you and also i've heard that what i've seen personally and tell jenny about it that you have has had a large effect on the school and its students so what do you think it has integrated into the school so when we first started last year we did a survey and we realized that over eighty percent of the students were stressed most of the time or all of the time and afterward were afterwards started to parent their pa helped them and it has helped them deal with their stress and cope with it so yeah so i've seen a lot of your projects and what you guys have done and it looks like a lot of fun and you guys have become kind of well known within the school i mean not kind o like really well known within the school and you guys of an event you guys are going to a competition i believe in march so do you want to tell us a little bit about that  you they're working on mindfulness and anti stress and now you guys are you guys were in the newspaper and now it's not really we're in the next school it's well known at competitions and around plainsboro west windsor or princeton area so are you guys did you expect this kind of recognition when you first started or is it coming as a surprise you that it's really taking off when we first started to be honest wanted to help the students deal with their stress and cope with it so in the future they can know coping strategies and deal with the stress that comes in the future spreading a message even when you're young and you guys are prime examples of this so do you have anything to say about why younger generations should start spreading their messages or how we strongly believe in it while the younger generations are the future now as we believe and that's what we want to convey when we do this it's an important message so you guys have an anything else you guys have been recognized in last year we were interviewed by that al jazeera news channel on what we did last year is varying coping strategies and this year as you mentioned we were there was an underscore each team and so you can contact us there and guys also have a website right now yes yes it's a new challenge that we and we post videos and presentations that we do in our school and i can be in community so you don't have to come to our events you can just look at it online on our website so has it been a good experience being part of this group competitions and you plan to continue this with the mindfulness club and high school well that sounds really great i think i will look into that region well i just like to thank you guys so much for coming on the show i'm sure it's going to be known well thank you guys so much for coming on the show you guys are very interesting guests and i hope to see you guys around the word newspapers and hear about that competition  and i feel like just besides like the physical benefits like more flexibility things like that because you have it is somewhat of a stretch and work out also just the mental benefits it's it's