Complete the Children’s Yoga Course at Atma Darshan Yogashram in India and a week long training at The Holistic Life Foundation at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY, to integrate yoga into the school and help students better cope with stress.
During my Fund for Teachers fellowship, I learned best-practices for sharing yoga tools with young people from professionals with a long track record of success. I have gained a toolbox of breathing exercises, mindful yoga movements and relaxation strategies that I can now share with the students and educators in my school building. Because I was able to experience yoga in its birthplace, India, I was able to learn tried and true methods that have worked for centuries with youth.
My instructional practices will change drastically as a result of my fellowship learning. I have learned the importance of incorporating time for reflection and self-awareness into yoga. For example, after each yoga exercise students need an opportunity to pause and assess how that yoga exercise has impacted their body, mind and breath. I have also learned the proper pacing and teaching sequence to help students master the yoga tools, so that they can incorporate them into their daily lives.
The greatest personal accomplishment of my fellowship is being able to learn and experience yoga in its birthplace. This has allowed me to understand the true meaning and practices of yoga without the westernized interpretation, which normally only focuses on poses. Because of this authentic learning experience, I was able to build my knowledge of stress relieving yoga exercises for youth such as breathing, meditation and relaxation tools, such as yoga nidra.
My experience will positively impact student learning because now I am able to teach students breathing exercises, mindful movement and relaxation techniques that they can do any time, any place. My experience has allowed me to hone in on which yoga tools are most successful at helping students to manage their stress and remain in a learning ready state. I will teach these key yoga strategies to students in a sequenced way so that they can master them and incorporate them into their daily lives.
I will share what is being taught to students in my yoga class with my colleagues and offer them strategies for how to incorporate these yoga strategies into their classrooms as well. In this way, students will have multiple opportunities throughout the day to calm down, relieve their stress and get ready to learn through consistent practice of breathing, mindful movement and relaxation. I will also teach my colleagues yoga strategies that they can use to manage their own stress as teachers.
I imagine celebrating my students' new learning by equipping them to teach yoga themselves. By the end of the year, I would like the students to be leading yoga class for themselves, their families and the teachers in our school. The feeling of competence they will have when sharing this practice with others will be a great celebration. I also hope to share our accomplishments in yoga with our new friends in Baltimore and India so students can feel connected to a global network of young yogis.
In the U.S. there are often barriers to accessing yoga and wellness programs for under-served youth. Typically, yoga programs are offered in more affluent neighborhoods. This is a great disadvantage to under-resourced communities who do not get the opportunity to learn these calming and stress-relieving practices. Perhaps our yoga class will begin to take on this access challenge by offering yoga to our parent community and bringing yoga to the communities where our students live.
My fellowship has made me feel more connected to a wider yoga community that is dedicated to sharing yoga with young people regardless of their age, race, gender or socioeconomic status. I am proud that our local school community is now a connected part to this larger movement dedicated to supporting all kids' social, emotional, physical and cognitive health through yoga and mindfulness practices.
FUND FOR TEACHERS ©