Schools

Goat yoga comes to Central District

Bellmore-Merrick introduces new program for incoming high school students

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Grand Avenue Middle School took on the look of both a farm and yoga studio during a goat yoga session that was part of Bellmore-Merrick’s inaugural Bridge Program. While incoming high school students practiced the classic downward dog pose, juvenile goats climbed onto their backs, jumping from one aspiring yogi to the next.

Combining animal-assisted therapy with meditative practice, goat yoga has grown in popularity since it was introduced last year on the farm of Lainey Morse, of Albany, Ore. Bridge Program students participated in the meditative trend as part of the course’s Mindfulness Day.

Directed by Mary Donnelly, Grand Avenue Middle School’s English chairwoman, the Bridge Program is a mandatory summer course for students who failed two or more subjects in eighth grade.

“It was actually a lot of fun,” Donnelly said. “We worked together to create sort of an alternative program to engage children who did not fare well in a traditional classroom.”

Running four days a week, from July 10 to Aug. 3, the program included three categories of instruction: the humanities, math and science and what Donnelly referred to as the Genius Hour, when students worked on independent projects.

On Mindfulness Day, students took part in stress-reducing activities. When the Bridge Program staff created Mindfulness Day, “we were thinking about our population of students,” Donnelly said. “Many of them may feel anxiety, they may feel stressed, or they may feel unmotivated at times.”

To help them better understand such issues, students had to read “Highly Illogical Behavior,” the Calhoun High School-wide summer reading book whose subject is panic disorders and social anxiety.

Bridge Program instructors spoke with the students about ways in which they could alleviate daily stress and anxiety. One of these included yoga, and aspiring yoga instructor Dawn Sullivan, who teaches science at Kennedy High School, introduced the practice to the students.

Donnelly read about goat yoga online and said that it stuck out to her because of the juxtaposition of the calming practice of yoga and the chaos of a hyperactive animal.

“The presence of the goats is almost a dose of reality,” Donnelly said. She reached out to Mepham High School alumna Karen Bayha, of rescue organization Steppin’ Out Ponies and Petting Zoo, who immediately agreed to bring Steppin’ Out’s goats to Grand Avenue.

Donnelly said that she and the Bridge Program’s instructional staff worked closely with students to prepare them for ninth grade. She added that students honed their personal strengths through the Genius Hour, which is based on Google’s policy of granting its engineers time to work on individual projects.

“We tap into the kids’ interests,” Donnelly said. “We see what makes them tick and what motivates them.”

Bridge students presented their Genius Hour projects on the last day of the program, and Donnelly recalled watching in awe as one student gave a martial arts lesson, another created spray-painted pictures and another gave a physics demonstration.

“When they came in on the first day, they were a little wary,” she said. “But we connected with the kids early on.” She added that one student even asked whether he could return next year.