Allen East has taken the next step to improve the mind, body, and spirit of their students. Thanks to Activate Allen County and their partners, the school is able to introduce a new yoga program for all grades K-12.
The students at Allen East were excited to receive a grant on Thursday that will allow their school to buy yoga equipment for a new mental health initiative.
Chloe Zellmann, a senior at Allen East has been benefiting from practicing yoga for the past several months and can't wait for her peers to also experience the calming effects of the exercise.
“Yoga helps calm you on a daily basis, it helps relieve stress on a day-to-day basis in school and just everything," says Zellmann. "Especially what we’re going through with COVID right now.”
Two sets of yoga equipment will be bought, one for general school use and one for sports teams. Athletes are even anticipating gaining the mental strength that doing yoga builds.
Kaden Armstrong, a senior at the school says, “All sports, especially with basketball which I play, is a mental sport. Having that booster mentality, that just helps tremendously.”
As schools start to place more and more importance on students' mental health, Activate Allen County along with Mercy Health and other organizations wanted to give a head start to those initiatives with the Activated School Challenge.
Kelly Prichard, the intervention specialist and strength coach at Allen East says, “It’s nice to know that they’re going to support us in this way, that we can take this money and give it back to the school in a way that is going to benefit our students directly.”
The challenge involved the school writing out a proposal of how they would use the money to improve the wellbeing of their students, and the school found that yoga would give the students at any age an opportunity to focus on their mental health. The equipment will last the school for years to come.
“Kids can be very fragile in some ways and we really need to pay attention to their mental health," says Prichard. "If we can get them mentally well, then we can teach them.”
11 other schools from Allen, Auglaize, and Putnam county will also receive Activated School Challenge grants.
