SIUE Students Bring CALM to Local Middle and High School Students

EDWARDSVILLE - Southern Illinois University Edwardsville psychology students taught the importance of forgiveness to middle and high school students at the Conversation Toward a Brighter Future conference held April 20 and May 2, and hosted by the Mannie Jackson Center for the Humanities Foundation (MJCHF).

Seniors Ashley Monier, of Troy, and Abigail Haloftis, of Waterloo, led a short lesson and interactive exercise on forgiveness using the principles of the Compassion Approach to Learning Meditation (CALM) program. The program is presented under the guidance of Jeremy Jewell, PhD, professor of psychology, and clinical child and school psychology graduate program director.

“SIUE students have various opportunities to become involved in research labs that are supervised by department of psychology faculty,” Jewell said. “These experiences provide students with great applied experience that often also allows them to engage in different community service activities. I’m incredibly proud of my research lab students who have given several presentations this spring on topics related to mindfulness, meditation, coping and forgiveness. SIUE faculty and students are great resources for our community, and I’m proud to be able to help others through these trainings and presentations.”

The Conversation Toward a Brighter Future conference invites student leaders from Madison County schools to share ideas and projects that help foster a positive school climate around the four pillars of the MJCHF—respect, dignity, understanding and forgiveness.

Madison County Regional Superintendent of Schools Robert Diaber, EdD, invited Monier and Haloftis to present at the conference, because of their work with the CALM program that teaches forgiveness to residents of the Madison County Juvenile Detention Center.

“The CALM program educates youth about stress, anger, mindfulness, compassion and forgiveness,” Monier explained. “While each session is impactful, the forgiveness session seems to be one of the most difficult concepts for people of all ages to internalize.”

Monier and Haloftis led conference participants in an interactive exercise where audience members wrote the name of a person they were working to forgive on a brick.

“This exercise demonstrated how the weight of anger and grudges weigh us down, and how learning to forgive can lighten the load they carry, so to speak,” Haloftis said. “We concluded our presentation by encouraging the students to take what they had learned and work to incorporate the lesson into their daily lives.”

The SIUE School of Education, Health and Human Behavior prepares students in a wide range of fields including community and public health, exercise science, nutrition, instructional technology, psychology, speech-language pathology and audiology, educational administration, and teaching. Faculty members engage in leading-edge research, which enhances teaching and enriches the educational experience. The School supports the community through on-campus clinics, outreach to children and families, and a focused commitment to enhancing individual lives across the region.

-SIUE-

Photo: SIUE senior psychology majors Ashley Monier (front) and Abigail Haloftis (back) taught the importance of forgiveness at the Conversation Toward a Brighter Future conferenc

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