Yellow Bird’s project is part of the department’s agenda to foster community and research partnerships with northern California Native American communities.
The P-16 Council is a consortium of several North Coast K-12 school districts, the college/university community, education offices, family-based organizations and parents to maximize students’ lifelong learning potential.
Yellow Bird, whose research includes indigenous peoples’ land, political and cultural rights, will center his curriculum on “mindfulness practices,” which are used by a growing number of K-12 schools across the U.S. to buttress concentration, memory and self-management. These practices, which include meditation, are credited with curbing school dropout rates, improving attendance and heightening interest in learning.
“Neuro-imaging of the brain reveals that important, positive changes take place in patterns of brain function following meditation,” Yellow Bird said.
The formal title of the professor’s training course is “Using Mindfulness Approaches to Enhance Academic Performance and Promote Pro-social Behaviors and Thinking Among Native American High School Students: A Mindfulness Empowerment Project.”
The project includes educational mentoring contacts between HSU social work graduate students and their Klamath counterparts in connection with Yellow Bird’s spring semester Mind-Body Social Work course. “It focuses on evidence-based research and professional practice that employs holistic, therapeutic mindfulness approaches in professional contexts,” Yellow Bird said. “Mindfulness practices deal with student stress and behavior as well as improve academic performance.”