Memo # 4: Connection & Understanding

Performing Arts In The Classroom

 

Earth without Art is just ‘Eh’ 

Shayne is a teacher who runs a constructivist classroom. She has a student in her class with Down syndrome named Isaac. She immediately noticed in him a different way of communicating and connecting with his fellow classmates and the world around him. She understood that when he was fidgety or had outbursts that he was simply communicating, not misbehaving. When Shayne reads a book in class Isaac dances to it because that is how he feels it, that is how he understands it. “Isaac literally danced to books and his dance did change as books were discussed, acted out, reread and discarded for new books. His dances also changed how his peers and teachers saw the stories. Before Isaac, few of us knew you could dance to a book at all. Isaac’s literary waltzes established a new sense of communication that connected children, teachers and materials in a manner that was previously non-existent” (Kliewer, pg. 90). Shayne was able to acknowledge that his idiosyncratic performances were his way to connect to the class community which helped him to be understood.

Sir Ken Robinson tells of a similar tale about Gillian Lynne in his book The Element (in this TED talk he refers to the book as “epiphany”, indeed!) and during his world famous TED talk. Gillian Lynne was born in Bromley, England (yes, that’s where my name comes from) in the 1920’s. Her teachers noticed that she was always moving about during lessons and that it was a serious learning disability. Gillian’s mother took her to see a doctor who asked a bunch of questions and then decided to leave Gillian alone in the room with the radio on as he and her mother watched form outside.

Soon she got up out of her chair and started dancing about the room. The doctor turned to her mother and said “Gillian is not sick, she’s a dancer.” He said that she didn’t need medication (at the time ADHD hadn’t been “invented” yet as Robinson points out) and instead just needed to be enrolled into a dance class, which her mother did. Gillian felt understood in her dance classes because it was full of people just like her, “people who had to move to think.” She said “I get days where I feel very low for no particular reason. I’ve never had therapy. I believe you have to deal with it yourself. My answer is going to dance class.” As you see in the video below, this recognition led her to nurture her talent and make a living through dancing and choreography.  

            Phillip Seymour Hoffman notices that “a very important part of being in school is not just sitting and listening but having a group of kids who begin to move and play in space with their bodies together and who know how to learn together. This is very important for the quality of learning” (Kohl, 110). Lisa Delpit puts the movement into motion showing how because the students movement is supressed at school that when they are in the classroom, they can’t help but move about. When the students do this, the teachers are failing to notice what their movements represent, instead subscribing to the idea that they are just acting out. “Suddenly the little boy who can’t sit still, jumping and tumbling around the room, can, with a new set of lens, becomes a dancer. The girl whose school papers are covered in scribbles becomes an artist. The boys who annoy their teachers by constantly tapping on their desks become drummers. Those whose notebooks are filled with raps become lyricists. The little girl who cries at the least affront becomes a thespian. The arts give us new eyes to see the potential for the expression of divinity, for perfection, in our children” (Kohl, 38).

            Shayne noticed Isaac’s need to dance out what he learning in order to understand and Gillian’s doctor recognized her need to dance in order to think instead of simply labelling them both with a learning disability. Through movement, they could understand what they were learning about and feeling. Through dance, they were both able to connect with the lessons they were being taught. “The ability to symbolize through dance, as in language, extends the child’s knowledge of the world and its ways. Whatever else dance may be, its strong interface between motor and cognitive activities makes it a unique way of receiving and expressing knowledge.” “Dance could be a natural part of any literacy program for long before words are used, aren’t children already competent at communicating meanings through movement” (Cecil, 109, 108)? 

            Another way to communicate through movement is through playing music. Moving notes around, composing melody, creating harmony is another way to move in order to feel. Deborah Meier “suspects that if we were wiser and more competent, we could see the most abstract of arts as the essential ingredient that makes us human-out search for ways to communicate what is deeply felt and what inspires out imaginative free play. After all, when we hear good music it creates feelings that wasn’t there a moment before” (Kohl, 114-115). Music can connect you to something that understands where you are and what you are going through. Music is one of those things that can build a community because together, you make the entire sound complete. “These students’ experience of immediate connection with a world of others with whom they work to create the best performance of music that they can resonates throughout the natural community-building connections that arts learning affords” (Davis, 81).

 

             Through the arts, not just dance and music but theatre, film and performance art too, understanding takes place and connections are made both within the students own selves and out into their community and world. “The intense engagement in the co-construction of an artistic production awakens students to a sense of responsibility that can extend beyond the word to the world of human issues represented in and through art”. To take co-construction a step further is to point out that the teacher must discover and understand alongside the student. They must not come to the table with all of the answers, they must instead be receptive to the ideas the students come up with as well. “A creative relationship in which you can formulate ideas together and take guidance from the teacher in the direction you have personally chosen helps the students view their teacher as a co-constructor of idea’s rather than the holder and conveyor of knowledge. This fosters sense of self-respect and the ability to find multiple meanings that students will need to find their way in the complex (gray, not black and white) adult world” (Davis, 101, 100)!

 

Works Cited:

Cecil, Nancy Lee., and Phyllis Lauritzen. Literacy and the Arts for the Integrated Classroom: Alternative Ways of Knowing. New York: Longman, 1994. Print.

Davis, Jessica Hoffmann. Why Our High Schools Need the Arts. New York: Teachers College, 2012. Print.

Kliewer, Christopher. "Citizenship in School: Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome." Schooling Children with Down Syndrome: Toward an Understanding of Possibility. New York: Teachers College, 1998. 71-96. Print.

Kohl, Herbert R., and Tom Oppenheim. The Muses Go to School: Inspiring Stories about the Importance of Arts in Education. New York: New, 2012. Print.

Picture Links:

http://www.rewritebeautiful.org/sites/rewritebeautiful.org/files/2010/08/holding-hands-peace planet-earth-painted.jpg

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http://www.gogamestorm.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/understanding-chain.jpg