So hula hoops became a frequent ending activity. No matter how the class had gone, everyone would take a hula hoop — to carry or twirl or roll or step through or run with or hula with. I always take one too, and I’ve almost recovered some of the hula hooping skills I had in my youth! Some students try out what I’m doing, sometimes I use the concept we’ve been working on in class, but I always quit talking. Which is probably a relief for my non-verbal learners!

And then last week, there came a hula hoop moment with 8-year-old Hank that was pure magic! Hank started two years ago with 0% participation, lying on the floor and sobbing. He’s gradually begun to join us, and his skills are growing, but he’s still unpredictable. Sometimes it helps for him to wear silencing headphones — when he’s suddenly overwhelmed by sound. Often as not, on a bad day, he retreats to a tiny dark corner of my space with his headphones on and won’t come out til it’s time to leave.

Last week he stayed with our activities pretty well throughout the class, and at the end, I passed out hula hoops. In the midst of our parallel play, I noticed Hank just a foot away from me, and he seemed to be watching. Much as we work on eye tracking activities in class, eye contact with or among my Autistic students is almost non-existent. But Hank seemed to be focused. And he seemed to be doing what I was doing.

Moving slowly, I continued moving, and he stayed with me. I eased off, and he kept moving. I stayed with him. Our space grew very small, just he and I moving together in a single sphere, trading leadership. As we continued, I’m sure there were moments when our eyes met.  There was a magnetic current of interaction that ran between us, such that Marnie, one of his instructional aids, stopped and just watched. When the music finally ended and I thanked Hank for dancing with me as we put away our hula hoops, my eyes met Marnie’s, both of us with the wide eyes of amazement.

And smiles of hope.

And it means so much more if the effect of dance class reverberates for a student outside the classroom.

Tommy is 7 years old, and he’s only just begun to join our activities. A few weeks ago, we were working on body shapes (twisted, straight, angular, curvy…), and I read Alphabet Movers by Teresa Benzwie to his class. Tommy loves the alphabet! He listened when I read the book, he immediately tried all the poses, and by the second time through the book, he was taking the shapes before I even turned the page.

a body shape for every letter...

I excerpted the stick figures from the book, so I could do them in sequence with the kids to music (Pizz.ah! by Eric Chappelle on Music for Creative Dance, v. II).

Letters O-U

This week his teacher sent me a picture of what he had doodled on the white board in their classroom, while she and his mother were having their parent-teacher conference:

Tommy's doodles on the white board

Success!  So cool!

On the days when I read my horoscope, my engagement with it lasts all of about 10 seconds, as I cast a thought toward whether it applies to my plan for the day.  Then I forget it.

Today, however, it sort of fits — on 2 counts. First, because writing here is something I do in order to make sense of what I do. And second, because just now I’m in the process of letting go to make space for the new.

Oh, I haven’t actually let go yet — the End-of-Year Performance, which has consumed my time these last few weeks, is still 3 days away. At this point, I’m making the program, arranging the music playlist, creating a backup on my iPod, copying the rehearsal videos onto my hard drive, and writing notes for teachers on how to prepare their class on the day of performance.

But I’m letting go of the kids’ performance. It’s up to them now. Each class has one more rehearsal, with no more changes. Critiques & suggestions have given way to “Have fun!”… “If there’s a problem, improvise!”… “Do your best!” Each class has gone as far as developmentally possible just now…

Kindergarteners… have 2 dances, both based on following musical cues. In the first, set to Pathway Puzzles* by Eric Chappelle, they use scarves for juggling, making curvy pathways & making straight pathways, melting & rising with the musical changes of pitch. In the second, they do The Shoemaker dance, with a different locomotor skill during each traveling interlude (walking, jumping, hopping, galloping, skipping, bear walk, crocodile, frog jump, crab walk, and choice dance). Kindergarteners do this dance every year, so when they start dancing, it’s delightful to see the whole audience of older kids do the gesture part with them from the audience!

This year one of the classes has been HUGELY difficult, so their locomotor skills aren’t at the same level as usual. I’m letting go of that. They’ll enjoy the performance, and next year we’ll continue refining their skills.

First graders… have 2 parts of a dance about weather. First, they sing “Rainbow Round Me” with multi-colored scarves, highlighting the colors for sky (blue), clouds (white) & sun (yellow). Then they put the scarves away & join a 4-person dance group for a very structured improv with 3 cinquains about weather that they wrote as a group:

Sky
Tall empty
Stretching reaching widening
Weather crosses the sky
Blue

Clouds
Puffy wispy
Flying in the sky, bringing storms, flattening out
Clouds make many shapes
Clouds

Sun
Bright hot
Rising shining setting
The sun is a star
Sunshine

There are 32 1st graders in each class & both classes perform at the same time.  Every single one of them has an opportunity to leap through general space, while others stay in place. Some of them skip, hop or run instead — but I’m letting go of that. They do look wildly free, which was the intent of leaping!

Second, third & fourth graders… are triple threats this year.  They’re acting, singing & dancing in a musical from the Bad Wolf Press (more about that in another post) — a first for me!  They’ve learned the words, so I’ve let go of singing every song with them.

The class that combines 20 fifth graders, 14 self-contained special ed students & 2 students from one of our self-contained autism classes… is a production including narrators, boomwhackers, ribbon sticks, an earthquake, a tsunami, 3 long sheets of blue plastic tablecloth, 14 10′ streamers on sticks, a cymbal, and 2 rolling blackboards with a village scene on one side & Namazu the Earthquake Fish on the other (painted by the kids of course). In the past week, we rehearsed it down from 45 minutes in length to 9 minutes (all having to do with having their props in the right place & knowing their cues). It’s a recreation of the book The Magic Fan by Keith Baker, and it could well fall apart if there are too many absences on the night of the performance (which is always an issue with our families who speak another language at home or work several jobs). I’m letting go of how nuts I was to allow their dance to get so complicated!

The other 5th grade group… is doing fine!  Their dance is called Night in the Wax Museum. It includes a rap, a shape museum with role models coming to life to speak about their accomplishments (5th graders did autobiographies of important figures earlier this year) , and a reversal where the 5th graders teach their historical role models how to dance “their way.”  They all succeeded at getting their choreography done! But now I’m going to have to let them go, cause they’re graduating. Most of them have been with me since they were kindergarteners doing The Shoemaker!

Anyway, it’ll all be over within a few days, with graduation & summer vacation following in a few weeks.  Then, judging by how much time has been going into the prep, there’ll be space and time for something new!  And that’s a good thing. Maybe I’ll get a hint from my horoscope about what’s next — or maybe I’ll figure it out by writing down my thoughts.

*The link for Pathway Puzzles takes you to volume II of Music for Creative Dance by Eric Chappelle, which inexplicably doesn’t include Pathway Puzzles, but honest, it’s on the CD!

Friday last week, the class fell apart. There were a lot of absences, from colds & such, so only 5 students out of the usual 8 were even available for class. Of the 5, only one and a half of them were there in mind & spirit: Samir was back & in good form after a 4-day absence, generally joining in, and Joey was with me about half the time. Adriel spent his time studying wall posters, worrying the edges of them to loosen the staples holding them up. Marty went after various props & tools on my shelves. Kelsey melted down in the hallway outside, collapsed in a sobbing heap. She never arrived.

The instructional assistants were also off. My most wonderful support wasn’t there at all. Another assistant wound up escorting a student from my other autistic class to PE, after he mistakenly came to my room. When she arrived 10 minutes late, she chose to model good participation without intervening with any of the student wanderers. It was a good indication of how dependent a good class is on the teaching team, rather than just the teacher!

What to do? Back to square one: hula hoops with a long spell of soft music. No verbals. Modeling engagement & exploration. A sit-down clapping pattern to end. A smiling goodbye. And hopes for next time.

The stunning silence happened back in January. I was working with all of my students on percussion, so my students with Autism were drumming too. Drumming with them involves a lot of disorganized noise. We worked on playing & stopping, playing & stopping, playing & stopping, but the stopping didn’t happen much. We worked on taking turns & listening to each other, but taking turns required moving the drum away from a few kids when it wasn’t their turn. We worked on rhythms, playing a simple rhythm over & over & over again while some of them came in & out of the groove. It was in the second week of drumming that a stopping moment came & they all stopped! There was absolute silence. And it happened again. And again. And again. That was a good day.

The following week, when we returned to dancing, an astonishing pause came in the middle of a “freeze” dance. The music stopped & they all stopped moving! Several were frozen with tension & intention, clearly having made their body stop. Others looked sort of tentative, almost like they had stopped by accident, with their internal juices still flowing, but on the outside they were no longer traveling. They were stopped. And it happened again. And again.

Nowadays, most days are amazing. Because we’re dancing together, as we never did last year…

• During a partner rhyme, there’s one boy who has always done it with me, while others ignored us or did something alone. Lately, most of them are paired & moving with the rhythm.
• The older class has an activity with an elastic band, where one student dances freely in the middle while the rest of us pull the elastic into a giant circular space for dancing. They take turns being in the middle, letting the circle shrink in order to change dancers.
• During our closing yoga, I look around & all of the students are doing something related to the position.

There’s a long way to go, but we’ve come so far!

I was asked how to structure a class or lesson. But for the first year-and-a-half, the structure of my classes for the autistic students was totally different from my other lessons for kindergarten through 5th graders. I mostly alternated structured activities with unstructured activities — we’d do something that involved lots of modeling & visuals & verbals on my part and then we’d do something with very little direction. Exercises… a pause dance with scarves (pauses didn’t necessarily happen)… an obstacle course where they take turns… free time with hula hoops.

Nowadays I’m able to plan a lesson that teaches a particular element of movement (such as tempo, or moving in different directions, or axial vs. locomotor movement).  I use activities my students are already familiar with but vary the emphasis.

As I plan successive classes, I try to use a lot of repetition, with a new twist or a new activity each time. Repetition is their friend, and “something new” fascinates them!

“I will be teaching a dance class for children with Autism starting next week. There will be 6 kids ages 6-10. Honestly, I have been attempting to plan the first class, but unsure where to start. Some children are fairly high functioning and other face more challenges (one also is bi-polar).

I really am unsure how to stucture the class that will be 60 minutes long. Any advice would be most appreciated.”

Wow. Yes, that’s daunting. I remember when I started, with NO idea how to begin!

First, will you have assistant(s)? If possible, talk to them beforehand about the role you would like them to take — hands-on, helping students participate, modeling participation (in my case, the assistants had to run interference for awhile, as some of my students tried the doors, turned off the lights, pushed buttons on my computer, dumped out baskets of scarves & otherwise explored their new territory). If you can’t talk to them in advance, be ready to give suggestions on the spot. If there’s no planned assistance, try to find some for the first few classes while you get acquainted!

Second, prepare your space. Reduce distractions: put things away or cover them up. Last year I had 6 garbage bags that I would use to hood computers, tvs & projectors, and I taped cardboard over the light switches.

Third, plan a variety of activities to try. Until you have an idea of where your students are in the spectrum of Autism, avoid activities that require much turn-taking, any partnering, or group organization. Some early successes for me included:

• find a video to do along with the kids — they are accustomed to focusing on tv/video & you can either model along with the video or help them participate. On advice from another dance educator, I used Anne Green Gilbert’s Brain Dance video — the nursery rhyme version. It kept their focus, and little by little I weaned them from the video to doing the exercises with me.
• alternate activities that require them to focus with free-dance activities.  For example, do a pause dance where you start & stop moving with the music (you may be the only one starting & stopping for awhile). Then, give them hula hoops, put on some quiet music & let them explore for awhile — observing what they are doing with the hula hoops may give you some idea about their various skills & interests, as well as the range within the group.
• use locations to help the group focus — I used a line of stools against one wall through most of last year as a home base. We would start there with some simple songs (“head-shoulders-knees&toes” & other kids songs) and then we would return to the stools mid-class for obstacle course work.
• as one activity (late in the class), set up & teach them how to take turns on an obstacle course — use any items you can find for crawling under (a table), jumping on (a single-person trampoline is wonderful!), stepping through (hoops on stands).
• find a book to read (good pictures, almost no words) — they sit on the stools while you read. Some pages can inspire a movement adventure in the space, returning to the stools for more reading.  Here are some books that have a clear picture & a word to inspire movement: Move! by Steve Jenkins & Robin Page. Waddle! or Swing! or Gallop! by Rufus Butler Seder. You can easily create a sequence of movements from the pages, if your kids seem able to handle a sequence. My kids weren’t at first.
• use visuals! Think in pictures — find/make/create simple pictures to communicate your activities. For example, I have pictures for each section of the nursery rhyme Brain Dance, I have pictures to indicate staying-on-the-spot vs. moving-in-the-general-space, and pictures for yoga shapes. Teachers of children with Autism often have computer software for producing pictures of almost anything, if you can just tell them what you want.

My before-school-time is up now; I need to take off. But I will try to add more soon — some details about suggestions above, as well as some encouragement about the fabulous progress we’ve made. Almost every day I meet with my children with Autism now, I am amazed, delighted & gratified at how far we have come!

Each of my 2 classes is a little older this year & more experienced with school.  There’s a whole team pulling for them: teachers, instructional assistants, occupational therapist, physical therapist, tutors, student helpers.  And the team is more consistent now — not so many one-day-only substitute assistants.

The younger class (K-2nd?) has added 3 students, with each new student upsetting the apple-cart of behavior & consistency.  With 9 now, the class is overloaded. Still, our days are better than most of last year & it probably helps that Milly the Wanderer* transitioned to a different program.

The older class (2nd-4th?) is pretty settled, especially since Cedrick the Screamer* was relocated to a class in another school. One of the twins moved from the younger class to the older class, given his readiness to be working in a different group.

We still do many of the activities, or variations on them, that we did last year (BrainDances, obstacle courses, Freeze Dances, props), but some of our new successes have come in the area of dancing & [literally] pulling together…

With the children sitting on stools, I pass out segments of a huge elastic band.  To the simple song of Frere Jacques by Caspar Babypants (Caspar Babypants is Chris Ballew of the The Presidents of the United States of America), we pull & release the band.  On alternating phrases of the music, we pull the band backwards to make it HUGE (“frere Jacques, frere Jacques”) & let it shrink inward to a smaller circle (“dormez vous, dorvez vous”), pull it big again (“sonnez le matin, sonnez le matin”), &. change rhythms in-out-in, out-in-out (“ding, dong, ding… ding, dong, ding”). Lo & behold, they can do it together!  We’ve even tried it standing, which amazingly, was more successful with the littler kiddos than the bigger ones.

Sitting on the floor, with our feet under a parachute, we move together to the song Dust Bunnies (also Caspar Babypants, very soothing & the imagery of the dust bunnies under the bed helps with the feet being under the parachute).  We wiggle toes, kick feet, lift the parachute & see each other underneath, pull it down & see each other over the top… We’ve even extended our repertoire to lifting it, scooting under, sitting on the edge & then kicking our feet.  Or rippling the parachute & taking turns walking across the ripples, one at a time.

Another song that’s been great for taking turns & developing individuality has been Gotta Shake [when the spirit says "shake"].  I start it with one verse, and then I ask each child to take a turn “suggesting” a move.  Some of the kids actually have an idea & can barely contain it, while with others I have to invite them repeatedly, watching for a clear move that we can replicate.  But everyone leads once, and the ideas are getting better & better.

Moving along… today I started the younger class on a few weeks of percussion.  Barely controlled chaos, but I’ve begun to recognize the beginning signs of progress.  It looks like we’re headed into new territory.

Meanwhile, if you haven’t seen the movie Temple Grandin, do.  It’s a must-see!

“Can we practice our part of the dance during recess?”  Corner turned: kids are taking ownership in their upcoming performance.

“What are we going to wear?” Corner turned: they’re starting to think like an ensemble.*

“I know my part!”  Corner turned: they know their parts!

Full rehearsals started yesterday.  That’s 50 kids onstage at a time,** with the stage open.  We’re working on spacing, timing, order, sequence, details… fixing parts and running the whole.  Meanwhile, our whole schedule is in an upheaval, to accommodate this week’s standardized testing schedule and next week’s need to give every group a chance on the full stage.

I was especially worried about the schedule change for the autism classes.  They’re none too flexible. But what a surprise!

I have the youngest, most difficult group this week, and they’ve been fabulous!  Their instructional assistants & I have been amazed — so pleased. They’ve been participating more than ever, each one joining in here and there throughout the class — and occasionally all together!  Is it because morning’s a better time?  Is it because I’ve finally found the rhythm they need [structure/free dance/structure/free dance/structure/free dance/goodbye song)? Or is it because we've come a long way since the beginning of the year, and they're making [HUGE] progress?

Probably all of the above.  But what a major corner to have turned!

*We don’t do costumes, except for agreeing within each class on what general colors to wear — always a range of colors, so they can wear something they already have.

**Two classes of kids (e.g., both 1st grade classes) perform together, so that we still have a solid showing in the evening, when many kids/families can’t attend because of families at home, religious restrictions, second jobs…

Next week I’ll start my 7^th month of teaching dance to 16 students with autism, without the help of extra time for planning or professional development. Fortunately, we’ve come a long way, with me grateful for every stray scrap of advice and inspiration that’s come my way.  Thanks especially to a small email network of colleagues who are venturing along the same path, as well as a couple good books (by Temple Grandin & Ellen Notbohm).

I work with two classes of 8 students, one with 1^st-3^rd graders and the other with kindergarten-1^st graders. The two classes are so different ~ the older group having developed some skills in verbal & visual communication, while the younger group are just learning to communicate!

So, where have we gone in our explorations…?  The older group can venture in many directions now, each child in his or her own way.  What keeps us going best is the usual delicate balance between familiar routines, new & exciting props, and gradual challenges.

Explorations that have succeeded and continue to grow include:

• The BrainDance: First thing each day we progress through the coordination patterns of the BrainDance, often using the prop of the day (foam bats, stretchy bands, body bags).
• Taking turns: We use short foams bats as clappers and have clapping conversations one-on-one. Depending on the child, I still say “my turn/your turn,” or I ask the child to initiate the conversation, or the child responds to my initiation.  None of the students need an instructional assistant to guide their hands anymore, and one boy is very adept at copying my rhythm. They also take turns on…
• Following a pathway: They’ve progressed from picking up the plastic marker spots and flapping them against the floor to stepping on or over each spot on the way across the floor. I’ve added hula-hoops-in-stands for crawling through along the way, and lately they’ve been practicing jumping over cardboard boxes (instead of stomping on them).
• Beach balls: All but two of the kiddos have learned to blow up and deflate their own beach ball – and are motivated to do it even when it’s hard and takes awhile!  Once the beach balls are inflated, we do the BrainDance, a Freeze Dance, solo toss-and-catch, one-on-one toss-and-catch (with me… not with each other so far), solo dribbling with our feet, and toss-through-a-hoop or into-a-bucket.
• Foam bats: BrainDance, Clapping Conversations (see Taking turns above), rhythmic patterns with music.
• Body sox:  Boy, are these ever a hit! They’ve all learned to lay them out to insert their feet like a sleeping bag. Using the bags, we’ve explored body parts (feeling them push from inside the bag), levels, shapes, smooth&sharp energy, and stationary/(carefully!) traveling moves. At first, I taught them to keep their head out, but as they’ve grown familiar with the body sox, I let them choose — head in or out.  The kids are even getting used to folding them when we’re done.
• Hullabaloo: This is an extension of an electronic game one of their teachers had. Instead of the little spot-markers in the game, we use brightly colored plastic circles, and instead of the electronic directions (that are fast and hard-to-understand), I call & demonstrate different ways to travel from one color-spot to another, using whatever concept I’m emphasizing for the day (body parts, locomotor skills, levels, directions, shapes…).
• Percussion instruments: We practice starting & stopping on cue (stopping is a vague concept for some of them!), beating a match-the-words rhythm (“Pizza, I like pizza, pepperoni pizza, and cheese!” with “shhh” and a “quiet” gesture of a finger to the  lips on pauses between the words), and taking turns playing solos ~~ as well as let-it-rip play-as-you-like intervals.
• Yoga: Using pictures, we have a progression that starts standing and ends with the “Do Nothing Doll” ~~ with each of them lying down while I circulate to gently lift and shake their relaxed arms as a way of saying goodbye each day.

We all still suffer some from Carter’s screaming tantrums whenever things don’t quite follow his expectations (some weeks it happens every day), or Aldrin’s obsession with aggravating Spencer by touching & poking him.  But each week we work together now I’m delighted to see their improvement – with gratitude for the consistent support of their instructional aids (always with us) and the work of their classroom teacher — it’s great to see them dance & grow!