EDPE 513 - Stretching Bodies and Minds: Using Yoga to Enhance Student Focus and Motivation

For thousands of years, the world has embraced the practice of yoga as one of the best ways to calm the mind, build physical strength and balance, increase confidence and emotional resilience, and improve focus and concentration. But did you know that practicing yoga in the classroom can also enhance classroom instruction by preparing students to listen, focus, and learn?

In this course, you’ll learn when to incorporate yoga activities into the school day and how your students can gain the benefits of yoga with little instructional time. Even if you lack prior yoga experience, you’ll gain the tools you need to explain yoga to your students and make yoga activities easy for them. You’ll acquire strategies to effectively implement a wide variety of yoga exercises and poses in your classroom, including those that settle students at the beginning of class, refocus students when their attention wavers, calm and center students before assignments and tests, and build their confidence and self-regulation.

Using the techniques from the course, you’ll be able to include yoga practices in your instruction, which will help your students develop the social-emotional, cognitive, and physical skills they’ll need beyond the classroom.