Early HeartSmarts® Pilot Conducted in Salt Lake City
One of the keys to the positive reception by children to the new Early HeartSmarts® program is its simplicity, the program’s chief architect says.
"It needs to be in order to connect with 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds," said Institute of HeartMath Program Developer Jeff Goelitz, who also was the primary writer of the program, which HeartMath unveiled in fall 2008.
Goelitz and IHM Director of Education and Humanities Dr. Robert Rees helped pilot the program in the Salt Lake City School District in spring 2008 in three preschool classes and one kindergarten class. Data were collected only for the preschool classes. There were 66 preschoolers in the intervention group, which participated in the Early HeartSmarts study. A control group, which included 323 children spread throughout the district’s other 16 preschools, went through their normal classroom routines at their preschools and did not participate in the intervention.
Children Live in the Heart …
As with its predecessor, HeartSmarts® Grades 3-5, extensive studies by IHM researchers led to the development of the program.
"Early HeartSmarts is based on nearly two decades of research on emotional physiology conducted at the Institute of HeartMath," Rees explained in preliminary notes he wrote for the future document that will detail the research and pilot program. He said it "demonstrates that a curriculum which focuses on teaching young children about their emotions and teaching them basic emotion-refocusing skills can produce dramatic results."
Rees, whose original vision led to the Kalliopeia Foundation grant that helped fund the development phase of the program and who also assisted in editing the program, wrote that "the essence of the program is that children can better understand and learn how to self-regulate their emotions if they have a rudimentary understanding of the effect of emotions on their brains and bodies."
Goelitz explained that "because children at this age (3-5) live so much in their hearts and operate so much more from their emotions than their thinking brain, the program builds on what children know, or at least can experience, starting with the basic functions and location of the physical heart and then expanding into the "emotional heart," where children recognize and discuss basic emotions like happy, sad, afraid, mad and peaceful.
"From there, children learn self-regulation techniques like Shift and Shine™ (created specifically for the HeartSmarts programs) to either better manage their feelings and learn skills to generate positive emotions. Music, stories and games are spread throughout the program to reinforce key learning outcomes. Also, the program is fun and encourages children to access their hearts, where they can experience the richness of positive feelings like love, care, appreciation and joy."
Rees agreed that a program such as Early HeartSmarts that emphasizes heart focus is a perfect fit for children.
"Children are naturally heart-centered, just as they are naturally, intuitively loving and forgiving," he observed. "So it is easy to see why they would be attracted to learning materials that are fun, engaging, positive, rewarding and nurturing."
Like other HeartMath programs and the HeartMath System itself, Early HeartSmarts "centers on the unique and dynamic relationship between the heart and brain," Rees said, explaining that "the heart plays a central role in optimizing the body’s cognitive, sensory, hormonal and information processing systems. Studies conducted over a range of populations – corporate, healthcare, law enforcement, military, education, etc. – and in a wide variety of settings consistently show that individuals who are taught to self-generate positive emotional states increase their ability to remember, perform, solve problems, manage their impulses, emotions and interact better with others."
Piloting Early HeartSmarts in Salt Lake City …
Rees and Goelitz introduced the program to teachers, administrators and early childhood specialists during a one-day orientation and training session in Salt Lake City in February 2008. Training consisted of a review of the science behind the curriculum and a step-by-step introduction to curriculum components. The educators also were taught elements of the Resilient Educator®, the HeartMath program that helps educators manage their stress.
Former Salt Lake City Schools Early Childhood Specialist Donna Anderson, who is also a HeartMath-trained Qualified Instructor, supervised the introduction of the curriculum into the classrooms from February through May.
The program’s curriculum includes the following four main components:
- Connecting the physical and emotional aspects of the heart
- Recognizing and understanding emotions
- Expressing love and care to family and others
- Becoming problem-solvers
Three pre-intervention assessments were completed for each student by their teachers in the fall, winter and spring. The children at the intervention schools were from the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder. Their pre-Early HeartSmarts scores in 10 assessment areas were significantly lower than those of children in the rest of the district’s preschools – dramatically lower in five of them: Sense of Self, Responsibility for Self and Others, Gross Motor, Representation and Symbolic Thinking, and Listening and Speaking. (See Figure 1.)
The Early HeartSmarts group’s post-intervention scores at the end of the spring semester were significantly higher than the control group’s in all 10 assessment areas. (See Figure 2.)
The pre- and post-intervention assessment, known as The Creative Curriculum: Developmental Continuum Assessment System, was already being used in all Salt Lake City schools, so educators there were able to easily relate to it when assessments were conducted before and after their students participated in Early HeartSmarts.
Goelitz said the preschool teachers in the intervention classes proved to be very effective and responded well to Early HeartSmarts.
"Because they themselves value the heart as a core value, they were able to connect with children at that level as opposed to more of a conceptual approach," he said. "The close heart resonance enables these young children to follow the lead of the teachers and aides."
The children’s parents contributed to the program’s success as well, Goelitz said: "The parents were also introduced to HeartMath through short presentations and letters home explaining the goals of the program. Their cooperation and reinforcement at home contributed to the overall positive impact of the program."
Rees’ belief that children are naturally inclined to adapt easily to a heart-focused program like Early HeartSmarts was reinforced when he stopped in on one particular intervention classroom.
"My visit to an early childhood classroom in which the teacher introduced basic HeartMath concepts was both enlightening and heart-warming," he said. "The children responded so fully and so intelligently to these concepts, it was as if they were demonstrating that they already knew all of this stuff – by heart!"
|
Click here to learn more about the Early HeartSmarts® and HeartSmarts® programs.
IHM is an international leader in stress reduction and emotion management techniques and technology and has established that the human heart plays a central role in optimizing the body’s cognitive, sensory, hormonal and information processing systems. To learn more about the Institute of HeartMath and your amazing heart, visit www.heartmath.org.
|
|
|
