What do you get when you mix Academy Award-winning actress Goldie Hawn, Alexandria Superintendent Morton Sherman and a nonprofit foundation that offers an educational product using research from neuroscientists? The answer: MindUp, a mindfulness program crafted by a California-based nonprofit organization known as the Hawn Foundation. Sherman is the chairman of the nonprofit foundation.

"The MindUp program is without cost," wrote Sherman in an e-mail response to questions. "The Hawn Foundation pays for the training and related expenses for the MindUp program, which [helps] kids focus, pay attention and gain skills which mirror what successful adults do naturally."

In areas where the foundation has already established a market presence, a MindUp training session costs $250 plus $35 for each participant. Areas where the nonprofit charges for the training sessions include Schenectady, N.Y., Minneapolis, Minn., and Vancouver, British Columbia. In other areas, such as Washington, D.C., the nonprofit organization conducted a training session earlier this year with a handful of teachers at Jefferson-Houston Elementary School.

"Sometimes when people are at the end of the careers, they think about setting themselves up for a lucrative retirement," said Bill Campbell, who waged an unsuccessful campaign for School Board last year. "You have to be careful about creating relationships with foundations because a program might be free today, but it’s something you’ll get a bill for in the future."

THE HAWN FOUNDATION was created in 2003 by the well-known actress, who burst on the scene in the 1960s as a ditzy blonde in the hit television comedy show Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. Sherman has been a member of the nonprofit organization’s board since he was superintendent in Tenafly, N.J. He helped arrange the Jefferson-Houston training session, and he invited Goldie Hawn to speak at a 2008 convocation ceremony.

"I didn’t really understand why my reading comprehension wasn’t so great or why I mixed up my words, which of course I did on Laugh-In, which made me a big star," Hawn said during the convocation, explaining her undiagnosed low-level dyslexia. "So sometimes those deficits can work for us."

Promotional material for MindUp explains that the curriculum was designed in collaboration with neuroscientists, behavioral psychologists and educators to foster "optimism, gratitude, acts of kindness, awareness of surroundings and being mindful of others."

"I am a volunteer member of this board," explained Sherman in another e-mail. "I don’t receive any benefit from being on this board, not in salary or in any other way except for trying to do good things for kids."

SOME PARENTS AT Jefferson-Houston say their children have benefited from the Hawn Foundation’s mindfulness program. The goal of the program, as outlined in the foundation’s materials, is to provide children with emotional and cognitive tools that can reduce stress and anxiety, sharpen concentration, build confidence and ultimately improve performance in school. Jefferson-Houston PTA President Beth Coast said she realized the potential of the program when her 7-year-old son told her mother-in-law she wasn’t using her hippocampus.

"Sometimes people underestimate what children are capable of learning," said Beth Coast, PTA president of Jefferson-Houston. "Children are sponges, and anything we can do to raise the bar in terms of what’s expected of them is worth it in my opinion."

Jefferson-Houston has been one of the city’s most troubled schools for many years, failing to meet federal standards more than any other school in the division. The elementary school has been in a state of flux since a controversial redistricting in 2000, carving out a student population with the highest concentration of poverty in the city. Recent years have seen a flurry of changes at the school, including a pilot program add middle-school classes, the creation of an International Baccalaureate program and now the Hawn Foundation’s cognitive research training.

"This is a program that’s based on current brain research," said School Board member Sheryl Gorsuch, adding that the board never approved the training session. "It’s something that the principal and the teachers at Jefferson-Houston expressed an interest in, and I support their efforts to implement it."