Yoga Course To Prepare Students For Mastery Test At Reed

By Eliza hallabeck

As the time to administer the Connecticut Mastery Test approaches, Reed Intermediate physical education teachers MaryFaith Zanghi, Mark Gerace, and Aaron Blank are also preparing for a morning yoga course that will prepare students for the upcoming test.

The program will start when the CMT is administered at the start of March, and will last for the full two weeks of testing.

“The students are welcomed, the parents are welcomed to join them, and teachers. Everyone is welcome to come in,” said Ms Zanghi. “It is going to be from 7:45 am for about 25 minutes before school starts.”

Up to 80 students have attended the morning yoga program on one day with Ms Zanghi, Mr Gerace, and Mr Blank. Participation can vary from day to day, according to Mr Gerace, and mats are offered for the student use.

“We’ve had some nice feedback from it,” said Mr Gerace. “The kids feel they are more focused, calmer when they take the test.”

Mr Blank said teachers and school interns have come in to take the course, too, and it gives students the opportunity to interact with adults in the type of setting that will reinforce a lifelong fitness perspective.

“They see it is not just something we are making kids do,” said Mr Blank. “It is something they can do throughout [life], and everybody feels better from it.”

Yoga is tied into the curriculum at the school, according to Ms Zanghi, and that helps to make students more comfortable with coming in to practice it for the program.

While this is the third year the course is being offered during the CMT administration, in the summer of 2008, the school applied for and received a grant to fund sending Mr Gerace to Los Angeles for training.

“We thought this would be a great idea,” said Mr Gerace, “and the first year we did it, we used a lot of video tape and things like that, because we weren’t as comfortable teaching it. The course was designed for physical educators to incorporate yoga into the curriculum.”

Since taking the Los Angeles course, Mr Gerace said the teachers now sometimes video tape themselves doing a variety of yoga to keep the courses timed for the PE classes. The CMT yoga course is taught live.

He said they also like to organize the yoga course each day depending on what portion of the CMT students will be tested on that day. For a math section, he said, it could get students moving around more, or doing more flexing positions to get blood flowing to the brain.

When the program begins, Mr Gerace said students walking in will be welcome, even if they are not dropped off exactly on time.

“It is open to anyone,” said Ms Zanghi, “and we would like to encourage them to come.”

Mr Blank said seeing parents getting involved with things like father-daughter breakfasts really brings school home for students.

“So much of what we do, we try to have the kids take it home and have them participate with their folks at home,” said Mr Blank. “This is one of our ways to create that atmosphere, where the parents can feel comfortable to come in here. It is not a significant time commitment, there is no equipment, there is no money associated with it, and they can do something that not only benefits them, it also benefits their kids.”

Exposing students to different types of physical activity and connecting physical activity to academics was a big part of bringing the program to the school originally.

“We know that classroom teachers have a lot of responsibilities,” said Mr Gerace. “If we could help this process that the kids have to go through every year be a better process, to have everyone more relaxed while they are doing it, we figured this was a good thing.”

Some students really respond to practicing yoga in the program, Mr Gerace said.

“When it started, we thought was the right thing to do for the kids, for the faculty, and all the people who are under stress,” said Mr Blank. “And we did it strictly voluntarily, all of us on our own time, no matter how many kids showed up, all three of us were dedicated, and here well before the school day started.”

Mr Blank added that the course and yoga is something the physical education department at Reed wants the students to have as a yearlong process, and that was why it was added into the intramural program at the school this year.

“This is a critical element for these kids,” said Mr Blank. “It makes them do better academically, they work better socially with their peers. It brings everything that we want for well-rounded fifth and sixth graders at an intermediate school, and it is absolutely free.”

An intramural form will be available at the school closer to the start of the course for interested students to sign up and learn more information.