Bent on Learning

BENT ON LEARNING (BOL) is a not-for-profit organization that focuses on the wellbeing of young people. We do this by teaching yoga, mindfulness and meditation in classrooms during the school day. OUR IMPACT For twenty years, BOL has served over 22,000 kids across 76 public schools in New York City. We use a research-based youth development evaluation platform to measure social and emotional learning (SEL) outcomes for young people in our programs. Studies show that any improvements in SEL outcomes are correlated with long-term gains in high school completion, college and career readiness and increased life-long thriving. Evaluations of our yoga programs found that: > 83% of high school students made statistically significant gains in SEL outcomes; > Students who rated lowest in their confidence to attain academic success before beginning BOL’s yoga program improved the most: +47 out of 100 points; and > A group of 100 3rd graders from a pilot program at PS214 in the Bronx made improvements in their ability to regulate emotions and behavior and to get along with others. OUR HISTORY BOL was born out of 9/11 when our founders, volunteer yoga teachers for youth at the time, were invited to teach yoga as a tool for stress management in schools directly impacted by the terrorist attacks. Since then, we have developed a yoga curriculum appropriate for each phase of childhood development, created a top Children’s Yoga Teacher Training program, and trained a diverse team of teachers who represent the populations we serve. In 2019, we began collaborating with the NYC Department of Education to support them in training 75,000 staff members and providing a yoga and mindfulness teacher in every school. That same year, a former BOL student who became a yoga teacher and educator brought our program to the middle school where she is on faculty and thus began our second generation of yoga in schools! By investing in youth today, we empower them to create a better tomorrow...