By Francesca “Frankie” Silverstein
If you walked into a Kellogg Middle School PE class this past January, you might expect to see students running around. Instead, you’d likely witness them sitting quietly, practicing their breathing. January marked the second quarter where the SKY Schools Program’s two-week breathwork and emotional regulation curriculum was taught in Kellogg health and PE classes.
The program was piloted in the fall after SKY’s parent organization, the International Association for Human Values (IAHV) reached out to the school. Due to budget cuts, some of the previous PE offerings, like dance, had been cut. A new PE class called Fit to Live was being implemented, and SKY’s programming was the perfect addition. As Kellogg health teacher Logan Heyerly explains, “We’re teaching [Fit to Live] in classrooms, so no jumping or running is possible.”
According to SKY Schools, “A session at Kellogg has some active game or stretching, some positive psychology framework that [students] can reflect on and some breathwork practice for them to learn and reflect on its impact and benefits.” Many of the lessons focus on self-exploration, asking students questions like “Who do you want to be?” or “What do you value in friends?”
The standout aspect has been the breathing, however. Heyerly remarks, “I thought that [students] would be much more self-conscious about it, because some of the breathing is kind of funny-looking—like you breathe in and out through your nose really hard and lift your hands up above your head as you do it. But they…wanted to keep doing it about once a week, and they would lead it themselves, which was really cool.”
In the second quarter, students were especially engaged, as the teachers now knew what to expect. The sessions were collaborative: classroom teachers helped set classroom expectations to ensure the SKY facilitators were able to teach their lessons smoothly. “Pretty much all of the classes involved—sixth, seventh and eighth grade—were really bought in,” says Heyerly. A teacher wellness program was also offered to some of the teachers, which Heyerly attended.
Overall, the reaction from both students and teachers has been positive. Heyerly recalls how one of her students wrote that she wanted to use the SKY breathing forever because of the sense of calm it provided. “I think [this] is something that really appeals to middle school kids, because they oftentimes feel like they’re not in control—they’re still learning how to regulate themselves,” she explains.
The SKY program believes this regulation is key to combating youth violence, including gun violence. Brad Krishnamurthy, the coordinator for SKY Schools Oregon, states, “What are we doing to help these youth manage their emotions better so that they can learn to respond instead of react? The SKY Schools Program tries to bridge that gap.”
The funding for SKY to implement their curriculum at Kellogg stems from its utility as a violence prevention tool. SKY’s parent organization, the IAHV, was awarded a $45,000 grant for SKY Breathwork from the City of Portland’s Office of Violence Prevention. $7,000 of that grant—the 2025 Safer Portland Grant—went toward the program at Kellogg.
However, since this is a one-time grant, the future of SKY at Kellogg is unclear. Heyerly explains, “There’s a SKY teacher training…that they told us we would need to take to get their full curriculum, but it’s fairly expensive and a pretty long time commitment. So I don’t know that any of us are able to do that.”
Ultimately, maintaining an official SKY-Kellogg partnership is contingent on renewed funding. Nonetheless, Kellogg’s teachers hope to continue advancing SKY’s underlying classroom mission. “All of us wish that it was possible for us to get trained in this program, so that we could do it in our classrooms, even when there’s not grant funding for people to come in and do it,” states Heyerly.