One morning before math, the fourth-graders took a little vacation. To soft music, they walked through woods, climbed a mountain and lifted off with imaginary wings, flying over an ocean, a gentle breeze on their faces. One student saw a school of fish; another spotted a rainbow.

“I see it!” the others piped in, their eyes squeezed tight. “I see it, too!”

With the sound of a chime, they were back in their yellow-and-blue school uniforms in a classroom overlooking a blighted neighborhood that has been beset by violence this spring, including two separate slayings of teenage boys at a nearby Metro station.

Like a growing number of schools nationwide, Houston Elementary in Northeast Washington is using mindfulness and other therapies to help children manage the stress they encounter in their daily lives.

[For more of this story, written by Michael Alison Chandler, go to https://www.washingtonpost.com...e7a14000c_story.html]