Newark's Mayor Visits a MindUP School

On December 20th Newark’s dynamic mayor, Cory Booker, spent the morning at Oliver Street School. At the invitation of Principal Havier Nazario and Dr. Marc Meyer of The Hawn Foundation, Mayor Booker observed and participated in MindUP activities in second, fourth, and fifth grade classrooms. 

After being greeted by three seventh-grade students, Mayor Booker was whisked away to participate in a MindUP “brain break” with Ms. DaCosta’s fourth-graders. His student chaperons then guided him to Ms. Costeira’s second grade classroom, where Mr. Booker was treated to a fun MindUP lesson on nerve cells in the brain. The children and their special guest actually became neurons and pretended to send various sensory messages to the brain through dendrites and synapses!

A natural in the classroom, Mayor Booker spoke with Ms. Rodriques’s fourth graders about the choice they had to manage their emotions or let emotion take control of them. “You can be either a thermometer or a thermostat. One of the things you can control in this life is how you respond to the things around you. Don’t just get all heated up about what happens, act like a thermostat and guide your emotions,” the Mayor said.

Mayor Booker has been a staunch supporter of The Hawn Foundation’s efforts to bring MindUP to Newark school children. So far, about 400 teachers from 15 schools have participated in the Foundation’s professional development workshops, where educators learn about MindUP and the neuroscientific and social and emotion learning underpinnings of the program as well as experience the MindUP Curriculum first-hand. In Association with Newark Public Schools, The Hawn Foundation will conduct five new on-site school workshops in January and February.