It is absolutely necessary to pay attention to the present circumstances of students. Boasberg’s proposal calls attention to the inherent difficulty embedded in his words and within the school system. Boasberg and the Denver Public Schools 2010 Denver Plan: Strategic Vision and Action Plan address the concerns of the individual student, but my experience demands […]
Early Childhood Education (ECE) programs and even kindergarten are not required by DPS. This is especially true of populations at the fringe of the dominant culture – ethnicity, income, and neighborhoods are factors that impact the “whole child” before they enter the school building for the first time, and each day thereafter. Many students attend […]
Several Denver-based yoga studios and groups offer classes specifically for children and/or adolescents: Between the Bones, a movement and dance group operating at the Sixth Avenue Church of Christ, offers Storytime Yoga, Girl Power Yoga, and Peaceful Warrior Yoga; Yoga For the People matches volunteer instructors with nonprofits who help at-risk youth; Yoga for Young […]
As I’ve worked one-on-one reading and writing with first through third graders, I’ve noticed that after a point the student begins to squirm. Some students squirm right away, others’ threshold isn’t reached for upwards of 10 minutes, but each student invariably squirms. I admire their struggle to persevere once they’ve reached this point. I, too, […]
As I continued to research methods for teaching children after I had begun my experiment, I received a book I’d requested from the library: Smart Moves: Why Learning is Not All in Your Head, by Carla Hannaford. Hannaford’s book became a valuable tool: it changed the shape of my experiment. In the final stages of […]
My question, in it’s various forms, essentially is: how does five minutes of yoga before reading and station rotations impact the behavior and productivity of third graders? I hypothesized that third graders would respond positively to yoga by participating with enthusiasm and by succeeding in following directions during independent reading and station rotation (i.e. they […]
I consulted whatever text I could find on yoga for children: during the project’s short time frame, I read books as I received them, and two in particular impacted my procedure. I was also able attend a Yoga For Young Warriors class at the Eliot Street Collective. I began on a Thursday: I tried to […]
During the next week, I worked to return to my original intention: to pair the time in tree pose with a visualization/lesson on trees to encourage students to think beyond themselves. I realized that the third graders were reading about the life cycle of a plant in social studies. I quickly adapted our short time […]
At first, I felt suspicious of books on yoga for children. I initially felt that incorporating too many elements, like music, acting, costume, puppetry, shouldn’t dilute yoga. However, as I reviewed why I thought yoga for children might be important – to provide them with tools to know and interact with their own bodies – […]
As part of Denver’s Axis Yoga teacher training, aspiring teacher’s hone in on their skills by designing personal experiments using yogic philosophy. In wanting to work on her sequencing skills as well as increasing her knowledge for using yoga as medicine, this student chose to create asana sequences that catered to healing particular ailments. She carried out […]