As an innovative adaptation to the sudden disconnection of students from their school community over the course of the past year, the student support team at Del Norte County, California schools, a Mental Health Services Professional grantee, arranged to convert its Yoga Calm, an evidence-based program, to a combination in-person/Zoom! platform. As a trauma-informed program, Yoga Calm was taught in classrooms prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. As the school district began to adjust to the pandemic’s restrictions, the need for tools to manage stress and anxiety was even greater than it had been, so the Del Norte team designed a new approach to adapt the program as a way to engage students and regain connections with one another.
Working with the purveyors of Yoga Calm, the district has expanded to multiple schools and continues to train and certify additional staff to facilitate this program that teaches self-management to fend off anxiety and serves as an engaging way to bring together physically disconnected people to rebuild “community” during the COVID-19 pandemic.