Success of Program (10 points)
Heartmath has been very successful at Truckee Elementary School. I use the stations daily for one on one with many tier two and three students on my caseload who have a very difficult time calming down due to homelife, learning issues, relationship skill deficits, etc. Every student I have worked with over the last five years love Heartmath. After the initial sessions to learn the Heartmath process occur, there are many games that can be played. But the games only work when your body is calm. The students feel a large sense of satisfaction knowing they are empowered to calm themselves down and are the only ones who have the ability to do that. Adults in their lives can tell them to take deep breaths and calm down but they have to actively make that choice and then they can see and feel the results. I teach the students that the purpose of Heartmath is to calm your heart down in order to calm your brain and then you can make good choices. The other piece of Heartmath is to achieve a sense of well being by thinking of a peaceful, calm and happy time in your life while breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth, this is called heart emotion. The ultimate goal is to gain coherence, which in layman terms is a calm body. I use the stations every day to help students to get calm before addressing issues that happen on the playground, in the cafeteria, or in class. In addition to one on one Heartmath support, I have taken the program into classrooms to demonstrate the different ways to achieve a calm body. Due to the limited amount of units I currently have, we have to break out into groups and take turns. With four stations, I can only do one classroom at a time. We all know that effective, problem-solving conversations cannot happen with people who are angry. So kids will do Heartmath for 5-10 minutes, get calm, then have the ability to speak about what occurred and problem-solve what needs to happen next.