Workshop Brings Yoga Program to Lower School Classrooms

Across the country and throughout the nation’s educational system, from preschool to graduate school, increasing numbers of teachers and administrators are recognizing that yoga, breath awareness, and mindfulness activities are beneficial to their students' mental health and well-being. Over the past few years, many Shore faculty members have incorporated yoga and mindfulness into their classroom practice with great success, reflecting the school’s deepening focus on social-emotional learning. Now, after a summer workshop led by first grade teacher Laurel Fitzpatrick, even more students will benefit.

More than a dozen teachers and teacher assistants from Pre-K through Grade 5 took part in the intense session in early September, which immersed experts and novices alike in the Yoga 4 Classrooms approach, an evidence-based yoga and mindfulness program for schools that promotes social, emotional, and physical wellness. Like most yoga that is practiced in the United States, Yoga 4 Classrooms draws on thousands of years of traditions in Asia and Africa, and represents just a small sampling of the practices and philosophy that have been passed down through yoga’s history. “I feel it’s important to acknowledge that we all owe a huge debt of gratitude to the people and cultures that originated what we know as yoga,” said Fitzpatrick.

The program is unique in that it presents its concepts and activities in purely secular, kid-friendly language, without making reference to the spiritual traditions that gave rise to yoga. “Yoga 4 Classrooms is anchored in developmental science and research,” she told teachers. “In elementary and middle school-age children, the brain’s center of self-regulation or ‘executive function,’ the pre-frontal cortex, is just beginning to develop. The science shows that mindfulness and yoga can create new pathways in this region of the brain to help kids better regulate emotions and behavior. In a society where issues such as anxiety and impulsivity are everywhere, this is really important work for us to do. The presence of self-regulatory abilities early on is one of the biggest predictors of future success and, more importantly, well-being.”

As children move through elementary and middle school, mindfulness can be a powerful tool, allowing them to deal with adversity more skillfully, and also enhance their understanding of the world and themselves. Mindfulness practice can also help children academically. A recent study found that fourth and fifth graders who took a four-month meditation program demonstrated improvements in cognitive control, working memory, and math test scores. Other studies have shown that mindfulness can be especially helpful to children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and also reduce children’s aggression, anxiety, and stress.

Workshop participants immediately understood the connection. “There’s so much pressure on children to perform,” observed Kindergarten teacher Keisha Myrie. “But they’re still kids; they’re stressed out. They need a way to take a step back from all that.”

Technology was cited as another increasingly prevalent challenge for kids. “There’s less downtime for children,” said Fitzpatrick. “They live in a highly scheduled, often competitive world. But unlike adults, kids have no way to opt out. They don’t have the ability to control their environment when they’re stressed or overwhelmed. What they need, as a result, is tools that allow them to notice their own emotions, regulate them, and be able to respond in a way that’s positive and constructive.”

Yoga 4 Classrooms features 67 yoga and mindfulness-based activities—detailed on color-coded, kid-friendly reference cards—which are divided into categories such as “Let’s Breathe,” “Loosen Up,” and “Imagination Vacation.” The activities were specially chosen for their suitability for classroom spaces and schedules, and include a mix of yoga postures, brain-boosting movements, breath exercises, visualizations, mindfulness activities, creative movement, and community-building games.

Importantly, Fitzpatrick told workshop participants, there is no “right” or “wrong” way to do yoga in the program. “The philosophy of Yoga 4 Classrooms is ‘no fixing or correcting.’ It’s not about forcing children to do specific poses or activities. It’s helping them find something that works. Kids can opt out or do things their own way. The philosophy of yoga urges us to let things be the way they are—we don’t want this to become yet another thing kids are doing right or wrong.”

Seen as part of the growing emphasis on social-emotional learning at Shore—a movement that has also brought “Responsive Classroom” methodology into the Lower School—Yoga 4 Classrooms perfectly meshes with a host of practices that are already innate in the culture of the school. In the Responsive Classroom model, students learn and practice a set of social and emotional competencies—cooperation, assertiveness, responsibility, empathy, and self control—alongside academic skills; the combination allows them to do their best work, and be their best selves.

Yoga and mindfulness, too, are about being truer to who we are, without judgement. “I think about yoga as a gift that we give to the children in our classrooms,” explained Fitzpatrick. Just like Morning Meeting and Closing Circle—core elements in the Responsive Classroom methodology—helping students create a calm, focused space of their own enables them “to find a much better place to make decisions and engage with their classmates and the world.”
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    • Laurel Fitzpatrick led a yoga sequence in her first grade classroom.

    • Students quickly caught on to the simple poses.

    • Teachers practiced a yoga pose during the summer workshop.

    • Fifth grade teacher David Lund and Pre-K 1 teacher Beth White browsed the Yoga 4 Classrooms card decks.

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