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“Meeting performance standards at this time, with steady progress”

November 20th, 2011 · ····

It’s been 12 weeks since school started, and the dust is just beginning to settle. The term “ratchet up” came to me this last week, as associated with pressure. Such is the climate in education of late, midst educational reform, standardized testing, furlough days, and cries for teacher accountability. I’m wondering when — if — the pendulum will ever swing back the other way.

In my own corner, which happens to be occupied by the only full-time dance educator in my urban district (that’s me), Dance is now on every elementary report card in the district. For my first 15 years of being a certified dance teacher in a public school, there was one box, labeled “Art.” Teachers would cross out “Art” and write “Dance” — or I always assumed they did. Maybe they didn’t.  Then they would copy a check, a plus, or a minus into the box from the student lists I gave them. No one knew what the symbol referred to: behavior? skill? effort? talent? And I never received feedback indicating that anyone cared.

This year, however, a new electronic report card system has put Dance on the page — or at least on the report cards — all of them, with four Dance-related boxes per child. In 52 of the district’s 57 elementary schools, of course, the dance boxes are marked with “N,” for “not evaluated,” AKA “not taught.” In four schools, grades will be filled in at several grade levels (by my part-time colleagues). And in my school, they’re filled in for each of my 360 kindergarten-5th grade students. That’s 1,440 little electronic boxes, indicating achievement (1 through 4) in three standards unique to each grade level [a blog post from July has details], plus a symbol to show minimal, steady, or significant rate of progress. And comments of up to 1,000 words, where appropriate.

Having never done this before, and working with a system which is only in its first year of review and revision, filling all of these little boxes over the past two weeks took about 12-14 hours, outside of the usual schedule of classes. That’s after school and most of last weekend. I did the kindergarteners three times over, wrestling with the software and the scoring system.  I wonder if I’ll have any feedback indicating that anyone cares?

Meanwhile, a jumble of thoughts haven’t yet come to order in my own mind. Here’s a few…

  • There could well be parents all over the district thinking, “Dance? Why doesn’t our school have dance?” I’m OK with that.
  • Many of our parents still won’t have any idea what the standards are in dance, because the district hasn’t even finished translating all the academic subjects into all the home languages.
  • I did have a moment or two of satisfaction at finally having a way to communicate how inadequately several of my (360) students behave during class.
  • If I’m going to have to score my students on these priority standards, I need activities, assessments, and rubrics specifically designed to support the scores. Talk about putting the cart before the horse.
  • And how about a curriculum? As we put the structure in place to incorporate Dance as a full-fledged member in education, a K-5 curriculum would be useful. At least as a springboard.
  • If we can get the kinks worked out, report cards may be a new way to communicate about the value Dance adds to education.
  • I still need to sort out which of the standards we wrote are workable and which aren’t — so we can make recommendations for revisions.
  • Gee, I wish there were more full-time dance educators to talk to about this!
  • And, most important, how do we continue to ensure that dance class in public education is dance — fun, creativite, expressive, collaborative, and engaging because it’s dance? Can we bring it into the fold, without squishing it into a mold?!

If you have any thoughts on any of this, I’d welcome your feedback or conversation!

 

 

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Dance / Panama

August 25th, 2011 · ·

It was a great summer! Among other adventures, we spent three weeks in Panama — and finally saw traditional dances on our last night in Panama City. It reminded me a bit of the dances we saw in Merida, in the Yucatan, several years ago — but quite unique as well, especially in the way the men hold themselves & their arms.

Anyway, I wanted to share. Not the best videos but perhaps you can get an idea of the dancing…

Traditional Dances / Panama from Meg Mahoney on Vimeo.

Las Tinajas Restaurant in Panama City does a great job of staging traditional Panamanian dances.

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ALT/space: Teaching Artist stories from the field

August 16th, 2011 · ··

ALT/space — a lovely new site for ideas & inspiration!

ALT/space is a project of the Teaching Artist Journal — an arena for Teaching Artists to share stories of their students, moments of learning, questions and obstacles, reflections, and successes. I’m honored to be part of ALT/space, representing dance education in a public school setting and adding my voice among other arts educators and advocates. Thanks to the folks at TAJ for putting it together!

I hope you’ll check it out… perhaps you’ve read my story before on dancepulse, but some of the other voices have blogs too, so do browse!

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Dance survey — reflect & share!

August 12th, 2011 · ·

If you’re a teaching artist in theatre or dance, I recommend this survey. Like it says, it takes about 20 minutes, but it’s a great opportunity to reflect on your own work.

There’s also the hope that it might support our profession by collating opinions / experiences in order to gain perspective on next steps…

Participants Needed for Research Study of Teaching Artists in Dance and Theatre

Title of Study:  A Qualitative Study of Teaching Artists in Dance & Theatre

Professional teaching artists in theatre and dance are invited to participate in a research study investigating the experiences and attitudes of arts educators working in urban environments in the U.S., U.K., and Australia. The on-line survey will take approximately 20 minutes to complete. Participants may also be invited to participate in an interview or focus group that asks similar questions. For those participating in an interview or focus group, an additional one to two hours will be necessary. Taking part in this study is voluntary.

Please click on the following link, which will take you to the Zoomerang survey: http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22AZ6WW3AAN

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Dancing your own way

July 17th, 2011 · ···

My 5th graders want to dance their own way, which has as many meanings as I have students. As I work on expanding their interest in all kinds of music & expressing all kinds of ideas their own way, this video should help.

I’m filing it here, so I can use it next year to show them that dancing their own way doesn’t require R-rated music!

Lil Buck and Yo-Yo Ma

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Dance is to report card criteria as…

July 9th, 2011 · ····

Colors are to numbers
Dreams are to budgets
Flow is to schedule…

Such are possible analogies to highlight how jarring the idea of grades can be to dance specialists focused on inspiration, creativity & collaboration!

My district, Seattle, recently decided to revise the reporting of the arts on the elementary report card. Previously, what’s been available on the report card has been the name of the art form and a ✓, + or -.

Dance: ✓
or Dance: +
or Dance: -

…a highly subjective system that says practically nothing. Does the ✓ refer to behavior or to achievement?!

So revisions have been called for.

I put out a call for ideas & samples from other dance specialists, via the NDEO K-12 Forum, as well as to fellow members of DEAW, in order to gain some perspective, and I got a few responses, all of which seem to have uniform criteria across the elementary grade levels.

In Vancouver School District in Washington State, students in 1st-5th receive two grades for Art, Music, Creative Movement, Physical Education, Social Studies & Science, each on a four-point scale, using letters instead of numbers [thanks to Deb, Dawn & Amanda!]:

  1. Understanding concepts & developing skills [C-consistently, O-often, S-sometimes, R-rarely/never]
  2. Demonstrating lifelong learning skills [C-consistently, O-often, S-sometimes, R-rarely/never], with 10 lifelong learning skills delineated: strives to produce quality work, shows enthusiasm for learning, shows respect and courtesy, cooperates with others, practices self control, follows school and class rules, uses class time wisely,  and completes assignments on time.

At a magnet school in the Bethel School District, Washington State [thank you, Krissa!], all content areas are on a 1,2,3,4 system, including dance. Criteria are:

  1. Participation/behavior in dance
  2. Achievement in dance

From Lynn Monson in Arizona [thank you, Lynn!] is a report card including five criteria, with rubrics for each on a 5-point scale:

  1. Responsibility for Own Learning
  2. Positive Self Esteem
  3. Response to Teacher-directed Activities
  4. Self-control
  5. Social Interaction

My district is aiming for grade-level specific criteria. For example, a kindergartener is graded (on a 4-point scale) on “Names upper case letters” and “Retells a three part story in sequence (beginning, middle, end,” among 12 criteria for Reading. Writing has 11 & math has 13 grade-level specific criteria on the kindergarten report card. Real estate on the report card is a bit scarce, so each arts discipine will have no more than 2 or 3 criteria. The criteria should have:

  1. Endurance (knowledge or skill needed beyond this grade level)
  2. Leverage (knowledge or skill transferable to other content areas)
  3. Readiness (a necessary entry point into the next grade level)
  4. Success (knowledge & skill emphasized on benchmark assessments).

Oh yes, and be meaningful to our parents, as translated into their own language.

Clearly, I hadn’t seen a model for grade-level specific criteria when we went into our working sessions. Here’s the result of our 1st run at the task:

K-5 Dance Elementary Report Card Standards

Skills/Technique Problem-solving Collaboration
K Demonstrates movement in self and general space Demonstrates clear response to directions Moves safely, independently and with a group
1st Demonstrates basic locomotor and non-locomotor movement Improvises with focus and concentration Performs a movement sequence in small and large groups
2nd Performs combinations of locomotor and non-locomotor movements Uses repetition and rehearsal to improve performance Demonstrates a variety of spatial relationships within a group
3rd Performs combinations of movements, using the elements of dance Creates & performs a movement sequence with a clear beginning, middle, and ending Creates and performs a movement sequence accurately within a group
4th Performs movement sequences fluently, using body, energy, space, and time Generates a movement sequence independently to express ideas or feelings Creates and performs a solo within a group dance
5th Creates & performs dances using full body extension and intentional energy Performs with expression and stage presence, demonstrating perseverance Creates, performs, and refines  a dance as part of an ensemble

 

So reporting for “dance” on the report card will be different starting next year. Fortunately, there will be time to get feedback & revise!  And of course, we’ll need rubrics for each area. TBD.

Meanwhile… do you or your district have grade-level specific report card criteria for dance that you’d be willing to share?

Or maybe you have some different analogies for “dance: report card criteria” that will further the process of integrating dance as a content area in the mainstream of education?

Do share!

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A musical — with dance, of course

July 2nd, 2011 · ·······

My students were thrilled to do a musical! Speaking lines! Acting! Being characters — & fairy tale characters at that! Singing! Dancing!

We were using the musical Character Matters, by Ron Fink & John Heath at the Bad Wolf Press. It’s a great resource: script, teacher’s guide, CD with songs & intrumental accompaniment. A fun play, with jokes (many of which I had to explain to my ELL kids, which was a good lesson too!). Lively music, with great lyrics — and we could search for the rhyming words to help us memorize.

Of course students had their worries…

“What if we can’t remember our lines?!”

“Who’s going to play the characters?!”

“I’ll be scared! What if we forget our lines?!”

“We’ll never be able to learn all the words to the songs!”

And I had answers:

“Yes, you will. You can do this! Each character only has a few lines…”

“Everyone’s going to have a special character, and I’ll ask you for your favorites.  Oh, and it’s OK if boys play girl-characters & girls play boys-characters!”

“Eeew!” Eyes rolling…

“You won’t be scared cause there’ll be 2 or 3 people playing every role, so you’ll have company.  And if you forget your lines, someone else will remember them & help you out.”

“We’re going to practice.  You learn all kinds of things, so you can learn these songs!”

Of course, I had my own worries… how to get the lines & songs learned & still have time for the dancing! The third leg of any musical is the dancing, and I’m a dance specialist… but how to get it all done?!

And I have to say I was even more worried when I read the teacher’s guide, cause it reflects a bit of dance-phobia — not surprising in our society, but nonetheless!  The teacher’s guide says, “Don’t have the students “dance” while they are singing. Making music of any kind while moving is extremely difficult for anyone of any age to do. Moreover, the students are likely to turn away from the audience during their dance, and that, you will remember, is a no-no.” And then there’s an explanation of why the teacher’s guide never includes the word dance without “quotes.”

Oh well. I’m a dance specialist, dancing is what we do all year & musicals are meant to dance. So off we went, worries & all.

The play has 10 scenes. My 2nd graders learned scenes 1, 2 & 3. My 3rd graders learned 4, 5 & 6. My 4th graders learn 7 through 10. Following suggestions in the teacher’s guide, I didn’t assign parts til about 10 days before our performance, but I did tell kids they could go ahead & learn their favorite part. Some chose & learned a part within a week or so, while others only learned their parts after they’d been in their character group for awhile. Everyone had a special character part & there were lots of kids singing all the lines in the music. Having large clumps of kids sing all the parts helped make the lyrics audible during the occasional dancing turn!

It took a lot of time to get the lines & lyrics down. It was valuable time as we analyzed & memorized the script — really aiming for comprehension, seeking out rhymes & repeats, learning how to practice not only our own lines but the cue lines — but even mid-way through I was wondering how am I going to fit the dancing in?!

But the dancing happened…

  • There were 2nd graders who came in at recess a lot, just to dance to the music. This little recess group — all girls — became a dancing chorus during the Goldilocks song. One day Carlos showed up, doing his own favorite hiphop moves on the side, so as we staged the piece, his improv took center stage at the end of Goldilocks.
  • During rehearsals, I encouraged them all to move while they were singing — we didn’t do much sitting-down rehearsal & there was no seated singing. As they moved, I encouraged them to watch each other,  copy the best moves & repeat what worked. Pretty soon, some of the songs had a complete set of gestures — lots of mime, acting out the words. But then, an amazing thing happened… as rehearsals progressed, a number of the mime-ish gestures started becoming exaggerated & abstracted. Precisely the process I would use to have them build dance from gesture! We never took the time to talk about what happened, cause we were way too busy, but it was a beautiful process — and so natural!
  • For a few songs, I worked with a small group of volunteers (willing to give up recess for a day) to create interactive dances.
  • And for a few songs, we choreographed movements for the whole group.

Towards the end, teachers jumped in to help by doing some extra line-rehearsals in the classroom & singing the songs each day. For costumes, I did my usual — telling the kids to wear whatever seemed appropriate for their character without buying anything new. One 2nd grader — Anna — arrived at school on the day of the performance with costumes that she & her mother had more for her whole class: ears for the bears, ears & noses for the wolves! Teachers gave the kids supplies for tiaras…

By the end, all the elements were there. They remembered their lines. They spoke clearly & expressively. They were scared, but they supported each other.  Everyone had a character to play. Oh yes, there were boys playing girl-characters & girls playing boy-characters — by choice. And there was dancing!

What will I do differently next time? I’ll start using the songs for accompaniment to our dance warm-ups earlier in the year, so we’re all familiar with the music sooner — and already dancing to it! But there will definitely be a next time…

If you think of any other tips for me, do let me know!

 

 

 

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A great resource: Bad Wolf Press

June 27th, 2011 · ···

It’s great to find a resource that really helps!

Every March I have to start pulling together 6 or 7 dances for an end-of-year performance. Every school has its own schedule and rhythm for performance — based on student demographics, the focus of the school, the parent population, logistics, and money — so I operate with some givens:

  • Our community — students, parents, staff — prefer one end-of-year performance. During the year, some classes do low-key performances for staff-and-students at Monday morning assemblies, but parents are only invited in June (each of our other community/evening events focuses on a different content area: Curriculum Night, Math Night, Literacy Night, Young Authors Day…). So our end-of-year performance is the one chance to showcase all 380 students as well as what the dance program has to offer — movement skills, cultural dances, curriculum-related choroegraphy, and a lot of creative input, collaboration and ownership from the kids.
  • Attendance at evening events is healthy. Healthy means the percentage of kids that attend at night has increased dramatically over the years: at the primary level, it’s gone from 5% to 60%; at the intermediate level, it’s gone from 20% to 90%.
  • But it’s also unpredictable: I never know quite which student will or won’t come at night, so I can’t give anyone a starring role. I can’t even do the star-with-understudy thing, cause both star and understudy might both be no-shows!
  • The performances need to be no more than 75 minutes long. [We actually have 2 performances -- one in the afternoon, when students perform for each other, so everyone has a chance to perform, and one at night -- when family-and-friends are in the audience.] They need to be short for the sake of the kid-audience in the afternoon, the parents-wh0-want-to-go-home at night, and teachers-who-are-supervising-dancers-back-in-the-classroom while parents fill the audience. So go ahead, do the numbers… each of 14 classes can do a 4-dance, with a 1-minute transition between dances (and I have to come up with structures for 14 different dances!) OR each of 7 grade levels can do an 8 or 10-minute dance. I opt for the latter, so parents can see their own child on stage for more time! But of course, that’s more kids on stage, especially during the afternoon performance: 50-60 at a time, 2 classes per grade level. At night, when some kids don’t come, the numbers onstage are just about right.
  • There’s no funding. Our population is low-income, we don’t have parent volunteers, we don’t have a PTA, and our entire school budget goes toward improving academic achievement, because our kids are always just barely making it. That means I use the materials I have. The most I ever do for costumes is to ask the kids to maybe wear a black or colorful t-shirt if they have one.

So in March, I need to think up 7 dance structures for 50 kids each, with each grade-level dance showcasing a different aspect of the dance program and no starring roles. This year, as the task was looming, I got a tip from Krista Carreiro, a hugely ambitious and dedicated performing-arts-specialist colleague who does musicals. I’ve never done a musical.

She suggested the Bad Wolf Press as a great resource.

I was skeptical. “I don’t play piano! How can I accompany them?”

“I don’t either! But with the Bad Wolf Press scripts, you get a CD of the songs — both with and without the voices, so you can practice with the voices & perform the instrumental version.”

Hmmm. I checked out the website. Lots of 30-minute, curriculum-related scripts. Samples of the songs on the website. Affordable!

I chose Character Matters and Pirates from Grammar Island — because we’re always struggling to find more time for social skills instruction, and we have so many English-language-learning kids. And because there’s a discount if you buy two! My principal agreed to the expenditure.

And we launched into a musical adventure… I’ll follow up with more details about how we did it. But for now, suffice it to say, it was a huge success. The kids loved it! The principal & staff were thrilled. Parents were enthusiastic. It lightened my load, and I enjoyed it — and I’ve already got ideas about how to do it better next time!

Check it out — and in the meantime, I’d be happy to hear about the performance paradigm at your school!

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A backstage story

June 15th, 2011 · ···

A story unfolded during the lead-up to our End-of-Year Performance this year, which is hanging with me, wanting to be pulled together. It’s about two 5th grade boys in particular.

Adiel is a 5th grader in one of our regular classrooms. I’ve been working with him since kindergarten & he’s always been a bit of a challenge. He spends most of his recesses inside, doing work that should have been done at home or in class — and sometimes in the office of the intervention specialist dealing with bad choices he’s made in his dealings with teachers & other students. Challenged about his work or behavior, he has a tendency to close his eyes & clam up… it’s like you’re talking to a turtle that’s pulled inside its shell. I noticed this year, however, that Adiel could take movement concepts — curvy & straight pathways, delicate & forceful energy, symmetrical or curriculum-inspired body shapes — and nail them using his own individual style… uprock with a lot of crumping, but totally clear at showing the movement concepts!

An aside: Most of the kids respond as though the concepts we explore demand something different from their favored style of movement… as in, “when are we going to do hiphop?” Not so, Adiel. He’s happy to explore his favorite moves with a new emphasis.

As is Daniel. Daniel’s also a 5th grader, but in a self-contained, special education classroom. Clearly, he’s been identified as needing some extra academic support, and in addition he could sure use some help getting to school! In a given year, he has 20-30 absences & 70+ tardies. He’s had some moments of poor choices & behavior difficulties over the years, but mostly he’s a pleasure to work with — if he’s there.  This year for the first time I was able to use the 5th Grade Classroom-Based Performance Assessment with my self-contained 5th graders.  [Logistical issue -- they've always been mainstreamed with 4th graders before, but this year they were mainstreamed with 5th graders.] Daniel’s the only student who’s ever taken a short poem (the “Poetry in Motion” assessment item) & expressed it with his breakdancing style. Totally nailed it — 3 images from the poem, 3 different breakdance moves that clearly showed the words he had chosen to express. Perfect score: choreographing, performing & explaining his moves.

So…

…I decided Daniel should have a chance to enjoy his strength by choreographing & performing not only with his own class, but also with the regular 5th grade classrooms. His teacher agreed to allow him extra time in dance class. Adiel & his group agreed to include him in their small group choreography, in rehearsal & performance. Daniel came to several rehearsals & this group of 5 boys got their moves sketched out, including a short “battle” between Adiel & Daniel.

Then Daniel didn’t come to school for 2 weeks. Every day when Adiel’s group rehearsed, they’d ask, “Where’s Daniel?” …and they continued to rehearse without him, perfecting their choreography with 4 rather than 5 dancers. Daniel had strep throat — a good excuse this time — but by the morning of the performance, he’d been out for 2 weeks, missing all the final rehearsals, including the development of a longer unison sequence the 5th graders made up by contributing segments of their small-group choreography to the combination. Morning of the performance, when we hadn’t seen Daniel in 2 weeks, I talked to his teacher & we decided Daniel had best just perform in the piece his own class choreographed.

I delivered the news to Adiel, so he could be prepared for how the performance was going to go. He looked downcast.

“Couldn’t we meet at recess & work him in?”

I returned to Daniel’s teacher, to let her know how much the group missed Daniel. She said Daniel had been disappointed but understood. She & I looked at each other with resignation.

I returned to Adiel.

“So… Adiel… do you think your whole group would be willing to show up at recess? If everyone can be there to work him in, he can hang back during the unison section & still join your group during the small group choreography…”

“Yeah,” he said, “we’ll be there!”

And they were. I overheard Daniel say quietly to Adiel, “Thanks, man!” before they all got to work.

~~~~~

During the afternoon performance, Daniel hung back during the unison section, following along as best he could. During the rotation of small groups, he came out & battled Adiel with confidence.

And at the evening performance? Daniel was right behind Adiel, move for move, during the unison section, looking like he’d never missed a single rehearsal.

And Adiel was leading the 5th graders, holding them in stillness to count them in for the beginning, keeping them on beat & together throughout.

~~~~~

This week, Adiel’s in for recess again, working on stuff that should have been done at home or in the classroom, and Daniel’s probably tardy most mornings, but it’s a pleasure to rerun their performances, both on & offstage, in my mind.

Onstage from Meg Mahoney on Vimeo.

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Performance aftermath

June 5th, 2011 · ··

Today I made it to the exhibit Nick Cave: Meet Me At the Center of the Earth at the Seattle Art Museum — its last day here! I’ve had it on my list to go since before it even arrived, so when I realized today was it, I called a friend, grabbed breakfast & took off.  If you ever have a chance to see an exhibit of Nick Cave’s Soundsuits, GO!  They’re fabulous & you need to see the detail work up close. I hope the exhibit you see comes with videos of dancers inhabiting them because it’s phenomenal to see them move.

It’s great to be able to look up & see the world again, in the aftermath of performance…

…which came off just fine. Students were higher than kites. Teachers & principal loved it. Parents’ comments were hugely favorable — and they put ALL the chairs away at the end, which must mean something!

I always like the afternoon performance better, when the kids perform for each other. It’s a long performance because it takes awhile for all the classes to get on & off the stage from the audience.  But not only are the kids hugely appreciative of each other [have you ever watched the quiet enrapture of a kid-audience during "Show & Tell"? ...they hang on every word, no matter what the topic!] but they’re a much quieter, more polite audience than their parents.  I also like it better because ALL the kids are there performing.

At night we get a good turn-out, but our demographics are such that it runs about 35% in the primary grades & up to 90% at the intermediate level.  The non-attendees come from families with small children, folks who don’t understand English, religions that don’t believe in dance & music, or parents with night work…

But the evening performance is just plain noisy. Note to self: don’t release the kindergarteners to their parents next year after they perform, because the parents don’t supervise them & they hang on the edge of the stage chatting noisily through the whole thing! Send them back to their classroom like the rest of the classes, to watch videos & play games until it all ends.

But it’s over now — except for the 3 dances that I need to rerecord in order to get a video without the single child in each dance for whom I don’t have permission to video.

On to other things… report cards, submitting scores for the 5th grade assessments, sorting through all the materials in my classroom that wound up in a tangle by the end of the performance… and the world out there beyond the classroom!

 

 

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