Syracuse University’s Falk College received a $24,942 grant last week that will finance its initiative to assist preschoolers who have been subjected to violence and trauma in Syracuse communities.

The program, developed by the David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics, will utilize yoga to help young children manage stress, said Rachel Razza, the project director. The teachers will be trained by trauma-informed scholars as well as the Syracuse Trauma Response Team. Teachers will learn skills in workshops that will then be implemented in the classroom with students ages 3 to 5.

“Sometimes (the kids) don’t get opportunities to be silent … and it’s fun … (it’s) presented in a way where they are curious and interested,” Razza said.

The 20-minute sessions of yoga will provide an opportunity to learn stress management at a young age. The preschoolers will learn breathing techniques and other simple aspects of yoga, allowing them to regulate themselves and hopefully help alleviate the negative impacts of trauma, Razza said. Overall, the program aims to provide children with skills that go beyond the classroom and can be utilized in everyday life.

Those types of grants are first identified by the Falk research center, Razza said. This particular grant was presented by the Health Foundation for Western & Central New York. The organization routinely funds projects with an aim to improve the outcome for disadvantaged families.

Kara Williams, senior program officer at HFWCNY, said she and others at the organization are excited about the proposal. She said they hope to see positive effects of mindfulness techniques when used with young children who have been exposed to trauma.

Initially, Razza said the project was intended for the Southwest Community Center. Program developers wanted to be able to include the parents and target all different ages of children. When the developers became aware of the grant’s restrictions, they changed the project to target children from birth to 5 years of age.

Preschoolers from the P.E.A.C.E. Inc. Head Start Merrick school — an organization that has previously worked with Falk — were chosen for the program, Razza said. This specific school was chosen based on demographics to best target low-income families and children exposed to trauma.

The program is split up into three phases in order to lay out a simple, comprehensible program.

The first phase includes the training sessions where teachers will learn the necessary skills to execute the program in the classrooms, Razza said. Aside from simple yoga instruction, teachers will also learn methods to better handle trauma-impacted students.

The second phase will be the actual implementation of the program, Razza said. The 20-minute yoga sessions will run twice a week for eight weeks. The class will be offered during the fall and in the spring, as to include more students.

The third phase will be a follow-up period where students will have the opportunity to share their experiences, Razza said. Teachers and families will be offered additional resources from the trauma-informed scholars and Trauma Response Team.

Members of HFWCNY are eager to see the results, Williams said. If effective, they would think about using this program as a model and potentially implementing it on a larger scale.

Published on September 19, 2016 at 10:16 pm