Bright School is the winner of a $1,000 Yoga Recess Grant after having received the most votes in a Facebook voting competition recently. The grant will help fund yoga programs in the classroom.
Bright School students perform the airplane yoga pose in Denise Cooper’s first-grade class. From left are Kendall Rizer, Sophia Moses, Anisha Phade, Ally McVay and Stewart Hartman.“Using young children’s natural affinity to yoga, my students have gained a tool for quick serenity and a body of actions and activities that enhance our unity,” said Denise Cooper, the first-grade teacher who initiated the grant application through writing a yoga essay. “Yoga is a fun way to integrate things into the classroom. Doing yoga poses before class or yoga breathing helps [students] concentrate. My students love to do yoga. During recess they do their own yoga classes.”
The grant will fund a yoga library for teachers at the school, new yoga mats and yoga training for the school’s guidance counselor to become a certified children’s yoga instructor. In addition, books like “Storytime Yoga,” “The ABCs of Yoga for Kids,” and “Yoga Bear Yoga for Youngsters” will be be made available to students through the grant.
“Take a deep breath, let’s stand and stretch, come to easy sitting position on the carpet, stand up and come to mountain pose,” said certified yoga instructor Cooper, reciting phrases she uses during yoga in class. “We’ll take a grounding breath before we begin our spelling test.”
She said yoga has added a spark to her teaching tools to bring students out of their desks and into a community of learners.