“It's not like an hourlong flow and stay silent kind of thing,” she said. “We put all the mats in a circle, and everybody faces in, and we start out with a community topic and the classes are all themed.”
Themes have included farm and superhero yoga, “Where the Wild Things Are,” adventures to outer space, circus yoga, as well as holidays such as Halloween and Valentine’s Day. A recent theme centered around the book “The Giving Tree” by Shel Silverstein and included poses that resembled trees and picking apples. The students loved it.
“I usually incorporate some type of breath work, an art activity, and then link specific yoga postures to that story. Students are allowed to move around when they're being read to, or they can lay on the mat and just listen, or do the yoga poses that link with the story.”
Kenna breaks the time up into 15-minute increments to keep things fresh for students. She also took a mindfulness certification class last year to help students become more aware of their thoughts, feelings, bodies, and surrounding environments.
“It's important to introduce those things in a calm setting so they have it in their back pocket for when they're having a stressful time. I had a student who had some medical issues last year and had to go to the hospital to have IVs and things and they used their breath work and yoga techniques in the hospital to help keep calm during those difficult and challenging moments.”
The student’s mother raved about the help of mindfulness and the calm breathing practices that helped her child through that tough experience. It also helped validate Kenna’s feelings about the importance of her club.
“So that was like, ‘OK, I'm doing good things.’ I've since formed a nice friendship with that family, so it's been cool.”
Kenna starts each club session, leading the class through a section of poses, then has students lead the group.
“When they get to be the teacher, it's really exciting, and usually we'll play some type of a game that will help to reinforce the yoga poses we learned the week prior. Then I introduce about five new yoga poses and we try them out together. Then we'll do a story or an activity or they'll work with a partner playing a game with those poses that were introduced that day for the theme.”
All that learning is building up, and students are starting to surprise her with their knowledge.
“They know more about yoga than I'm realizing. They'll teach me things and I'm like, ‘How'd you know that?’ and they'll say, ‘You taught me that,’ and I don't even remember.”
Great work in Yoga Club, Landmark Academy!
Check out a school near you!
About Landmark Academy at Reunion
Landmark Academy at Reunion is a tuition-free, public charter school in Commerce City, Colorado, serving students in kindergarten through eighth grade. It is part of the National Heritage Academies (NHA®) network, which includes more than 100 tuition-free, public charter schools serving more than 65,000 students in kindergarten through high school across nine states. For more information, visit nhaschools.com.
Visit Landmark Academy at Reunion's blog to read more stories like this.