Here is an excerpt from our Fund For Teachers proposal that pretty much sums it up:
Students do better in school when they are healthy—emotionally and physically. As Pre-Kindergarten teachers in a Title One school, the majority of the students in our classrooms live in poverty. With poverty often comes poor nutrition, stress, and emotional, behavioral, and social problems. When you think of childhood, you may not think of it as being stressful, but for many of our students it is. While we cannot change our students’ socio-economic status, we want to help them cope with the difficulties it brings with it. How can we help our students feel less anxious and give them tools for stress management? We are also concerned about their physical health. Approximately thirty percent of the students in our classrooms right now are obese at the age of four and five! We feel we have a great responsibility to teach more than just colors, shapes, letters, and counting. How can we promote healthy living with our young students in a fun and interactive way that is also long-lasting?
Even though we have not initiated our travel through Europe, our adventure started in December when we started to take yoga classes, and believe us...sometimes we wonder, "Why yoga?" as well. :0) Yoga is not easy, and we have struggled, but we are improving and know that we will continue to do so as long as we are committed to it.
Fund For Teachers encourages teachers to dream big, allowing teachers to design their own Professional Development that will impact their students, school, and themselves. We spent months researching, planning, writing, revising, and praying, and two months after we submitted our proposal we received our acceptance email. We are full of gratitude for Fund For Teachers and excited for what we will experience and learn on this adventure. We are also looking forward to sharing our adventures with all of you!
We will leave Houston, TX on Monday July 7th, arriving in Dublin, Ireland on the 8th. The countries we are going to visit are: Ireland, Northern Ireland, England, Scotland, and just for fun: France. As we travel and learn on and off of the mat, we will be posting journal entries, pictures, and video clips on this blog and our facebook page. Be sure to FOLLOW our blog and LIKE us on facebook! You can also post comments to the blog and on our facebook page, and we will write back to you.
Namaste.
