Michael Chissick ponders on what helped him improve his yoga teacher training programme in Special Needs Schools. It’s yoga with a confident smile.

Maybe I was a little crazy. I often think I am crazy to do what I do. I put myself in front of a class of students on the spectrum, of mixed ability, who I’ve never met, whose individual needs I don’t know, and who may find me frightening. Their needs may be highly complex; they don’t know me, and the expectation from the adults present is that I will deliver an amazing lesson, where every student is engaged and achieves. That’s bonkers.

Planning
My approach used to be simple. With five lesson plans up my sleeve, I would assess the students on arrival and decide which plan to use, A, B, C, D or E. 

Posture and breath control promote self-awareness.

A bit hit-or-miss, maybe, but generally this approach worked well. However, I became aware that there were drawbacks that could influence the quality of the training and prevent staff from getting full value from the day. For example, a student meltdown, which can happen for any number of reasons, could cause disruption to the lesson, as well as the student and their adult support having to leave and miss the training. My goal is to show staff how to adapt the postures and activity should a student be reluctant to engage. After all, reluctance is an everyday part of teaching students with ASD. 

Lightbulb Moment
It was time for a change, so I took the best aspects of my existing practice and combined them with a new approach, which has resulted in a much more rounded and immersive training day. The new training structure enables me to show staff six sessions covering three different sections of ability or learning style. In each section, the first session will involve staff only, in an interactive and practical way, where they learn how to structure each lesson. I focus on how to teach yoga to whole groups, lesson planning and classroom management specifically in the yoga lesson. The staff also have access to successful and engaging yoga games and activities and techniques to teach movement sequences, self-esteem enhancement and calming and relaxation techniques. They also learn how to ensure that as many children as possible are engaged and included. 

The staff session will be followed immediately by a lesson with students of that ability level, when staff will see how it works in practice.

This has been successful because by the second session staff have a greater understanding of the structure of the lesson and the individual elements of the lesson, as well as their role, how to adapt postures and how to engage reluctant students  Above all, from their initial session, staff can appreciate how yoga can be such fun and at the same time they have experienced being in their students’ shoes. They often have that lightbulb moment that sparks confidence and an eagerness to get started.

Real Time Remote Training
These sessions have become far more common in our ‘new normal’ world and I adapted my own by asking some course participants to pretend to be students, with some of the staff acting as the adults in the room. This was such fun: I have not laughed so much for years. Putting staff into students’ shoes also widens their understanding of how teaching yoga this way works and is engaging. 

A moment of stillness

Remote training enables trainers to give schools more value for money, cutting travel costs and also improving carbon footprint. At the same time, staff continue to learn how to confidently integrate yoga into their practice through my twilight sessions, scheme of work, with lesson plans for the whole of the academic year for each ability and learning style group, and visual resources.

Michael Chissick
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Michael Chissick is the founder of Yoga at School and has been teaching yoga in education for twenty-five years. He is a leading specialist in teaching yoga to children with autism and the author of several books on Children's Yoga, including Yoga for Children and Young People with Autism, published by Jessica Kingsley.

Website: yogaatschool.org.uk 

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