Eligible individuals and organizations can receive special funding from HeartMath Institute’s Caring Initiatives sponsorship projects. These include HeartMath Education Projects, HeartMath for Communities Project and the Military Service Appreciation Initiative. We’ve selected some of their inspiring stories to share and hope these will touch your hearts as they have touched ours.
HeartMath Education Projects
We know children are naturally curious and like to learn new things. Give them the right emotional tools, however, and they can start to truly blossom and will continue to love learning right into their adult years. That’s the promise of the HeartSmarts® learning program, according to the HeartMath professional trainer who implemented it at a Berkeley, Calif. elementary school.
A group of fifth-graders at Cragmont Elementary School, where Carolyn Janson trained teachers to incorporate HeartSmarts in the classroom, discuss how the program changed them in this 7:27 video.
At the outset, Janson said, the school’s principal knew of the program’s power to show students how to reduce stress, improve learning and forge better and stronger relationships. She wanted teachers, however, to embrace it as well. Two in particular did exactly that, and Janson spent the next two years teaching HeartSmarts weekly to fourth- and fifth-graders.
Once she got into it, Janson said, "We learned how essential it is for teachers to learn, use and model effective use of HeartMath strategies during the school day. When the students learn and practice the skills in and out of school, they have the ability to manage their emotions and are able to help shift the energy in the classroom. Working together, teachers and students can help each other stay in sync and are able to create a caring learning environment where everyone can shine."
Here’s what two fifth-grade girls had to say about the program.
"When you’re in a classroom where your teacher will do HeartSmarts and is calm and open, you learn a lot more because she is understanding of the pace that you need to learn at," one of the girls commented.
"It helped me a lot, but it helped me the most in computer testing," a second student said. "I got really frustrated, because there’s a lot of glitches … I did HeartSmarts and it actually not only made me go faster, but it helped me concentrate and it kind of blurs out all the distractions that are in the room."
The HeartSmarts video, which was filmed by professional photographer and videographer Shari Dyer, owner of Keigan Productions.
The HeartMath Institute helped make Janson and Dyer HeartSmarts projects possible through the generous contributions to HMI’s Education Sponsorship Projects by caring donors, whom we sincerely thank and appreciate.
