I have 2 groups which are distinctly different, and as I’ve gotten to know them, I’ve learned a lot. The older group (labeled as 1st-3rd graders, which indicates both age and a certain amount of time in school) has 9 students. They have a very experienced teacher, with 2 instructional assistants who have been working together as a team (with these children) for awhile. There are moments of chaos anytime something new is introduced, but using experimentation, intuition & some helpful hints from their teachers, I’ve introduced a number of activities with this group. Individual students come & go with their focus, but all of them are following along at least a percentage of the time. Here are some activities with which we’ve made some progress:

~~Clapping conversations: These are one-on-one, your turn/my turn sound conversations, between myself & one child. I’m pretty explicit, saying & pointing “my turn” & “your turn.” Sometimes one of the aids helps a student pause & “listen,” but they’re all glad to give me a high-five at the end. We’ve done a few variations — no more than one per day: hand clapping; hand clapping & knee slapping; I start, they answer; they start, I echo; clapping with 1′ lengths of swim noodles…

~~BrainDance: I go through the various body organizations of the BrainDance, over a period of 8-10 minutes. For each section, I repeat the same moves for quite awhile, with slight variations, cause they don’t all respond immediately. I tend to use a prop (a scarf or a stretchy band). The scarf is particularly good for breathing (it’s light enough to blow away), tactile (soft touches like brushing & tickling), & core-distal (their bodies do stretch & scrunch with the scarf) — and works fine for upper/lower, right/left, cross-lateral & vestibular. The stretchy band is especially good for tactile (using it to rub the back like a towel), core/distal & body half (R/L). The head/tail/spine connection is still evading us completely — heads move but torsos don’t.

~~Once we’ve got a prop for the BrainDance, we continue with a pause dance, progressing gradually from a basic start-stop format to responding to various musical qualities (e.g. slow & fast). I now have a playlist of musical selections that pause.

~~Shoemaker Dance: Alternating the gesture phrase (“wind the bobbin, wind the bobbin, wind the other way, pull, pull & tap, tap tap”) with locomotor sections gives them a steady dose of locomotor moves to try. Each of them has a different array of moves they can or can’t do. It provides a good structure for cycling through a “bear walk” (a body half, right/left crawl on hands & feet), the alligator (a crawl on the belly), and other developmental moves.

~~A pathway of plastic spots for traveling on started as a short circle, but has grown pretty long now, extending across the room, with hula hoops in stands at beginning and end. The hula hoops were a real challenge… for several of the children, I had to bring it down gently over their head the first time & having them step out, in order for them to understand “going through.” Now they’re all able to bend & slip through. I also alternate the colors of spots, because one boy has longer legs & can aim for every other spot. They each have their own way of traveling the path: hopping, crawling, jumping, walking… but they all follow it. I had to create a written, rotation system for who goes first, second, third… after the issue of “first” caused a noisy tantrum one day.

~~Parachute activities still have a long way to go, but the kids seem to like the parachute. Again, it was total chaos the first few days, but we’re working on 3 structures so far… 1. Everyone holds, and we raise & lower on cue; 2. Everyone raises & lowers, while one person at a time goes underneath (under on the first lift, out on the second); 3. Everyone holds, and we try to keep a large nerf ball on the parachute.

I’m so grateful for the instructional assistants who come with this group — they know the kids and help a different one each day. So far, we’re working on whole body organization & locomotor moves, following cues in the music, taking turns & working together. The students seem to like being in my space with me, while I change & add things slowly.

My other group is quite a different story. As “kindergarteners” (again a label referring to a combination of age & (lack of) school experience), the children are completely non-verbal and don’t respond to pictures yet either. Their teacher is working very hard, but the two instructional assistant positions for her group have been filled by an erratic sequence of substitutes with no experience. I’ve given up having them come to my space because it has 4 doors, too many light switches, curtains for hiding in, and too much equipment that can’t be secured. I think the classroom is being considered for a different classification, with a higher adult/student ratio, but in the meantime, I visit them in the classroom and am still struggling to find activities that work….

This week the same instructional assistants were with us all week, and I did the same lesson every day:

Repetition & routine seem to be key!  For now, I’m satisfied that they’re with me at all.  Eventually, I hope progress will be apparent….

To cut to the quick, and at the risk of sounding whiny, I have eight 30-minute classes this year instead of six 40-minute classes.  Even before you consider the fact that classes often arrive late, thus cutting instructional time even further, there’s a vast different between what you can accomplish in 30 vs. 40 minutes.  In either case (30 or 40 minutes), there’s a certain amount of warming up, physically & mentally, that has to happen — an introduction to the day’s lesson & the guided instruction. In a shortened amount of time, what gets left on the cutting room floor is the independent work — the admittedly messy, inefficient & often time-consuming part of the lesson where students engage & have time to be creative.  But wait, wasn’t that the most important part?! The part where I quit teaching, and students do the learning?

Back to my ruminations on time…

In dance as in all activities, quantity of time can be measured — in counts, meter, minutes, duration.  But in dance & movement (as in all activities again I suppose), the quality of time — a person’s attitude toward time, as revealed in the movement — is far more important.

Let’s look at Time Qualities as delineated by Rudolf Laban. Described by Valerie Preston, one of his interpreters, in A Handbook for Modern Educational Dance (MacDonald & Evans, 1977), the Time Qualities are as follows:

“A sudden movement can be described as “urgent,” “sharp,” “staccato,” “excited,” “instantaneous.”  It can be felt as an immediate discharge of energy or as a decisive arrival at a new place. The sudden quality can continue after the body has arrived and is experienced as a feeling of urgency.

“Continuous suddenness appears as shivering, fluttering or vibrating and is an invigorating quality, but an exhausting one if continued over too long a period.

“A sustained movement can be described as “slow,” “smooth,” “legato,” “prolonged,” “lingering.” It can be felt as a gradual change from one situation to another or as an unhurried departure. The whole being indulges in time, extending this experience to the pause after motion has ceased.”

Thus, the mover’s attitude toward time is expressed naturally in movement.  Imagine the difference in your own movement in these 2 situations:

1. On the day of a crucial early meeting, your eyes fly open to the sudden realization that your alarm failed — and you might still make it if you leave the house within minutes.
2. Alternately, waking on an unscheduled Saturday morning when the sun shines lazily through your blinds, you stretch & roll over, beginning to think of coffee & the morning paper.

We’re not just talking about fast vs. slow.  The perception that one’s time is short leads to a sense of rush & urgency — which is possibly invigorating, but likely to be exhausting if continued. The perception that one has enough — plenty — of time makes a person unhurried, even indulgent.  The difference is frantic vs. relaxed.

So what does this have to do with education?  …we can teach & learn quickly, but we’re not at our best when frantic & pressured. The Writers Workshop, which I spent a week studying for inspiration in late August, asks for sustained periods of writing time for children — in order to improve learning. So the hurry of 30 minutes per class is at complete odds with the goal of providing students with time for sustained creative work.

Knowing all this, but stuck with my schedule, I’m left with trying to create an unhurried feeling of sustained learning within a brief modicum of time. So far, I haven’t been able to quell my own feeling of urgency, but perhaps it’ll come…

• the movement vocabularyof space, time, energy & body
• motif reading and writing
• choreographic form and devices
• locomotor & non-locomotor skills
• groups formations & cooperative skills
• agility, alignment, coordination, balance, extension, flexibility & strength
• dances from every inhabited continent
• how those dances fit with history & culture
• a bit about styles (ballet, hip hop, jazz, modern, tap)
• audience skills
• the creative process
• rehearsal & performance skills
• talking-about-dance skills
• how to express non-verbally what they’re noticing, thinking, feeling & knowing about life & the world
• how dance relates to music, theatre, visual art & writing.

The curriculum, that is.  Every other subject area has an abundance of written curriculum — step-by-step guides for teaching day by day at various grade levels.  A teacher in any other content area grabs the teacher’s guide, reads the lesson, gathers & prepares materials & is ready to go… all of which takes time!  Especially for a really good teacher, who probably has a lot of ideas about how to tweak the lesson or organize the materials.  Nonetheless, the foundation of a teacher’s guide — the scope & sequence of what to teach — is a wonderful thing.  [If it's a good guide.  Aye, there's the rub.]

Anyway, dance education has yet to produce a dance curriculum that guides a teacher in a spiral fashion through all grades levels.  No, we do it ourselves.  We have some great texts for doing it ourselves — books that are chock full of lesson structures, individual lessons, ideas & activities.  But the progression is all on the teacher. Perhaps, I’m alone in this, but I do it differently every year, always tweaking & trying new stuff.  Because I haven’t found the perfect scope & sequence.  Each year I feel like I’ve done some great things — and missed some important elements.  Or I’m better with some grade levels than with others. Or, a great opportunity — like a resident artist! — hijacks our direction, and we’re off on a new adventure. Or the kids need a particular kind of work…

But that’s teaching, isn’t it? So I’ll stop whining and continue my usual process.  At this point in the year, my brain is filled with the Everything I want to teach. And as school nears, my focus narrows down to “What am I going to teach the first week — and the first day?”  And as school opens, it’s crystallizes into the really easy stuff that has to come first — where to put your shoes, what to do when you arrive & how to be safe — during fires, earthquakes & dances!  And then we’re on our way…

some of my guides

this year's plan book -- empty

Ideally, standards for the audience at the kids’ performance would be the same standards we teach our kids — pegged as the 4 A’s of Audience Participation in Anne Gilbert’s Brain-Compatible Dance Education:

Attend, Allow, Applaud, Appreciate

Which translates as Pay attention to everyone even if it’s not your child; Allow the kids to do their best by not distracting them with noise & confusion; Applaud when they’re done; & Appreciate them later by telling them what they did fabulously.

No harm in briefing your parents on the same standards the students have learned — ostenstibly so they’ll know what the kids are learning. Meanwhile, maybe they’ll take a hint.

Other strategies:

Spend some time with the kids working up a rubric for what good performers do and then share the rubric with parents, so they’ll have a context for appreciating their children. Post it in written form, so you can brief them very quickly — which saves time and leaves it available as a reference. This approach gives them something to think about…

Provide program notes to clarify the origin and details about the piece students are performing, what they learned from it, and how they built it.  The context may help them focus.

Ask the parents for help in the form of quiet listening — explain that the kids are working really hard on concentrating and being heard, and the audience can help them succeed.

Make the same pre-performance announcement about cell phones that other performance venues do… or at least ask folks to take their call outside if it’s important.  In the same vein, request that parents keep small siblings off the stage and with them, for everyone’s safety.

Plant some allies along the sidelines (teachers? the principal?) to remind the worst offenders.

Results are best when proactive rather than reactive. Once the noise starts, it’s hard to stop.  Use a different strategy each time, and repeat the ones that work. Hopefully, the audience will gradually improve to meet standards — allowing everyone’s kid to do their best by giving quiet attention and applause!

Post-Performance Sleeplessness from Katie Wood

…not to mention managing the 325 kids that crossed the stage each day for rehearsal and other shenanigans.

What were the dances? Details to come.

How did it go? Great!  The afternoon performance was so much fun that an average of 75% of students brought their families back for the evening performance (which is fabulous for us).

Was it all worth it? Ask me in a few months!

teaching self-assessment

finding time to choreograph the ending of the dance

Arranging props

bags & sticks & scarves & bands...

The cycle of sedimentary, metamorphic & igneous rock formation

Moving from sound-in-the-classroom to sound on the stage and in the audience

and ensuring a backup in case of computer failure

Everything has to start at once though, and all classes need to proceed steadily in the creative process. The first 3 weeks are a rush, as I try to scope out the pieces, pull the kids on board, and help them sketch out their dances for refinement and rehearsal. I’ve rarely done the same thing twice; each piece grows out of the personalities in a class, what they’ve studied, and what they need.  This year in the process of starting, I had a very close call and very narrowly escaped disaster…

Talking to teachers before spring break, I had decided that one set of 1st & 2nd graders would do a dance on weather — severe weather!  Kids are always interested in tornados… blizzards… hail.  And indeed, they were hooked. We spent the week talking about severe weather, defined the varieties of bad weather, talked about what to do in each instance, and voted on our favorite 3 for inclusion in the dance: tornados, hurricanes, and lightning. We had a name: “Weather Alert!”   We’d explored free and bound flow, and we’d reviewed leaps and chasses…

But somehow, after 4 days, I realized I’d been avoiding actually letting them loose as tornados and hurricanes. A structure for the dance was eluding me, and we weren’t getting started. At 4 am on Friday, I had a flash of insight — these are NOT the students to do a dance about severe weather. An onstage tornado with these kids will have the same effect as a real tornado — they’ll be swept away. I’ll have a Level 5 Hurricane on my hands. These kids are all ENERGY on the quietest day, and I haven’t the energy to contain them. What’s needed here is some focus on SPACE!

In class on Friday, I gathered them around me in a circle and admitted that I was troubled about our dance. The thing is, I said, we have such wonderful props that we aren’t using, and no one else in the school is using them. I just think, said I, that we ought to be using some of our props. But in order to use them, we’ll need to change our topic… to GEOMETRY! Will you experiment with me today, and see if you like the idea?  So we used stretchy bands, body bags, hula hoops, and by the end of class when I asked for a vote, they all agreed.

This week has been a breeze. Every day’s been productive, their dance is clear, and today they choreographed an entire section.  4-sided polygons with stretchy bands.

Whew.

I reminded her — and the class — about some of our agreements (nixing unexpected physical contact and outdoor voices). Then, we changed course — to using our focus and moving safely in the space together.

On Tuesday we were 20 minutes into the class before another bloodcurdling shriek from Rasheedah brought us to another abrupt stop. This time, nerves rattled, I asked her to sit down and collect herself.

What I must remember is that this is an improvement for Rasheedah over last year.  New to our school mid-year, she would develop mysterious, can’t-dance ailments daily and insist on sitting out. This year she’s actively involved! Perhaps we’ll find a middle ground soon…

Every student in the school takes dance, kindergarten through 5th grade (except one, but that’s another story). I get to know them as they grow, and they accept dance (and me), almost like air.  When new students come in, as they always do, they’re swept along by the breeze, and the shock at having dance class as part of the required curriculum fades quickly.

Classes last 40 minutes — not quite enough time for a full progression, but certainly enough for concept development. Meet daily, so we can pick up where we left off. Ten school days in a row, so skills can grow, and ideas can deepen. It’s enough to introduce a topic and pursue it. Or enough to glance across elements and interweave them. Enough to add a video observation, a little time to journaling, choreograph, and rehearse for informal performance.

After 10 classes (2 weeks), half of the school goes away, to PE, and the other half comes my way, to Dance. The rotation happens every month.

There are some downsides:   Five classes per day would be better than six — less rushed and better planned. There’s always more to do — things I intended, but couldn’t get to. On the Monday that classes come back from PE, it’s always chaotic, as students reacclimate to the focus and flow of a dance class.  Several classes are back-to-back, with not even a minute for reorientation.

But that’s nitpicking.  My schedule allows kids to refine their coordination, explore and build concepts, express ideas, develop creative and social skills through improvisation, choreograph, create, be playful, and generally do a lot of dancing.  It’s better than I ever would have imagined.