Hale Linnet: Teacher Spotlight February 2023

Hale Linnet (they/them) joined the SCY teaching team in 2022 and immediately hit the ground running teaching at South Portland High School (SPHS), one of our most complex programs. They helped to design a Yoga & Art class for multilingual students at a time when the high school was urgently seeking help from community partners to provide programming for their newest students. Haley developed creative classes that rotated between gentle movement, dance, and sketchbook  journaling– a practice of creative visual expression of thoughts, emotions, experiences. The class met 2-3 times per week for two semesters, and became a place of solace for students experiencing myriad challenges. Haley quickly recognized how stressful it was for these students to navigate a new school in a new country, and made space for them to safely rest and unwind in the class. 

“Sometimes the most healing thing to do is to stop pushing so hard to heal and just lay your body down for a while if that’s what it’s craving.”

Kara Tierney-Trevor, SPHS Social Worker, shares, “Hale is an intuitive, creative presence who leads their classes with gentle humility and acceptance. They especially shine in the SPHS classroom setting of new Mainer multilingual learners. Amidst cultural and language differences, Hale finds common ground through breath, movement, and artistic expression.”

Hale has also been co-teaching the Yoga for New Mainers class on Saturday mornings at Gateway Community Services, and they serve on the Queer Youth Yoga Project planning team.

We are so grateful to Hale for sharing their many gifts with their students and the SCY teaching team. Sea Change is a stronger organization thanks to committed teachers like Haley! Please read below for Hale’s reflections on their work with Sea Change. 

How do you think teaching in a trauma-informed way impacts your students? 

It is so important for each of us to feel sovereign in our bodies. Sometimes we have life experiences that teach us that our bodies are not safe places for us to be, and we grow disconnected. Especially in populations where much of life is controlled, structured or regulated by powers outside of the self, (students in a school, or New Mainers navigating a complex system of asylum seeking, or folks affected by incarceration for example) it’s so important to let bodies be free to move or not move and be on each individual’s schedule rather than the yoga classes’ schedule. Sometimes students opt to take a nap instead of moving, and I believe that rest and restoration is the best choice for them and am glad to provide a space where they can make that choice. Ultimately I do hope to share tools like movement, breathwork and meditation that help us to regulate our parasympathetic nervous system, but sometimes folks arrive to class and they don’t need another thing to do or learn. Sometimes the most healing thing to do is to stop pushing so hard to heal and just lay your body down for a while if that’s what it’s craving. Trauma-informed yoga offers a moment of freedom in a structured, often stressful day.

What have you learned from your students? 

It was really humbling to get to teach a class and spend a lot of time with teens who are new to Maine from Angola and Central America. I learned how important it is for the kids to have role models who they can relate to, who really understand them through shared lived experiences. I cannot fill this need. My life has been so different from theirs, and I view my role as their teacher to be a placeholder of rest and choice until Nuna could come and bring so much passion and energy to a group who she knows so well because in many ways, she IS them. My students showed me how lucky we all are that they have come here to live in our community, and how we must do more and do better to ensure they feel celebrated for arriving here in Maine with us. We are truly blessed to share place with this group, and I hope we can conduct ourselves as a community in such a way that makes them want to stay.

How do you overcome language barriers for the class you teach for New Mainers? 

Verbal communication is ultimately just one tool in a whole toolbox of human capacity to send messages to each other, through our faces, our bodies, sounds and silence. When necessary, we’re always able to understand the essentials of each other and how we are arriving to class. It is so important to ensure folks understand that everything is an offering, and they get to opt in and out of everything we do together, and that really requires verbal communication which we achieved through a mix of Spanish and English, and the students translating for each other. 

How do you weave your art background into your classes? 

As an artist, I know how creative practices can really access a different side of the brain for emotional processing and understanding of ourselves. It was so powerful to be able to combine sketchbook journaling with movement and breath practices. Oftentimes a typical yoga class doesn’t allow for much interconnection. Having art prompts that students could spend time on individually, then come together to share, really helped us to get to know each other and build a class community in a way that wouldn’t have been as accessible without the art component. 

Hale is deeply committed to our mission and has brought a rich and thoughtful perspective to our work, ever challenging the status quo and advocating for those who cannot always advocate for themselves. Thank you, Hale, for your heartfelt dedication to all of your work with Sea Change!