The Zoomasanas

 When I started this business to support families with their children’s virtual schooling by matching them up with a Home Educator, some people asked me if the support was virtual. I thought the response was funny. As a classroom veteran, I couldn’t imagine having  virtual support to alleviate the negative effects of virtual school  Nope, the Home Educator arrives at your house (wearing a mask and is in your pod/bubble) and provides in person instruction, encouragement, management, and an additional social element to your child’s remote life. Still, the notes from the field were not surprising: the children were restless and having trouble with focus and engagement with their consecutive zoom calls. Do they all have ADHD? No, they are 100% developmentally on target.  If they didn’t wiggle, try to escape to the bathroom and sneak in video games then I would be alarmed. But how do we get the kids to sit and do their work all day as if they were lawyers? To begin with, we can't have that expectation. To learn a little bit more about why it's impossible for children to sit all day, see the article “Reason why kids have so much energy”

 In order to help with the inevitable wiggles, I  started to share my tips and tricks for helping students maximize learning in the transition-less, easily distractible screened-in school day. The advice worked!  Have your child choose the fidget of their dreams on-line , get a ball of clay, and scented markers with a sketch pad. Raise the computer up so that your child can stand and always use headphones. I knew there must be  more strategies  out there to maximize learning in this environment and so of course I sought out the wisdom of a Yogi, Liza Toft. Given all that we know about the benefits of breathing and mindfulness, I felt there had to be a way to incorporate these techniques into our new practice of learning on the screen to improve the experience. I once laughed at virtual teaching helping with virtual learning but here I am! We designed an intentionally short session combining k-12 pedagogy with yogic practice and you get:  The Zoomasanas!  The Zoomasanas are strategies for surviving , even succeeding in remote school.