Adventurer Hall of Fame

I am a music teacher and choral director at an Austin, Texas elementary school.

Music soothes the heart. When combining music with HeartSmarts Adventure, it helps empower my students and gives them more emotional resilience.

Every hour of the week, I teach a different class of kids from pre-K all the way up to 5th grade students. I teach them heart-coherence breathing techniques along with dancing and singing to the music in HeartSmarts Adventure. I find that the concepts stick a lot more with my students because of the music.

The kids would hear the songs, sing to the songs and then dance to the songs. Later on when they needed to use the coherence breathing practices, they remembered how to do so having already learned the lyrics from the songs.

When the pandemic was in full force and we were doing classes virtually, I remember how one of the 5th graders was having a tough time. He was depressed and missed his friends. So I asked him, "What can you do to get yourself out of this funk?" My student responded by singing the lyrics of the song: "Breathe in through the heart a good, good feeling. Breathe out through the heart a really good feeling."

When you use music, it helps students remember the concepts you are trying to teach. Because that student sang out the lyrics, it helped lighten the mood for the rest of the class. Everyone’s spirits were lifted.