Student learning receptivity
Dance's ability to transform (illuminate) learning (beyond mere mechanics)
Role of vulnerability in learning
The topics in the list (above) are derived from my original narrative as ideas that I have identified as those upon which I would like to expand. The three that are highlighted are those that I am addressing in this document, through the lens of Shirley Brice Heath’s paper, The Promises of Learning on Our Own Time and A Dramatic Approach to Reading Comprehension by Lenore Blank Kelner and Rosalind M. Flynn. In our final phase narrative writing, I will address #2, 4 and 6.
At the end of my last narrative, I was finishing up a reread of the book, A Reason to Read, which addressed the myriad of ways that art, as a subject is able to engage students in reading and writing. One educational theorist I was made aware of in the context of the book by Wootton was Shirley Brice Heath. It was my first encounter with her and her ideas, but she works perfectly in synch with the ideas of other arts integrationists as well as those theorists who value art education as part of whole child education. One of the ideas in my first writing, which I would like to develop and explore more deeply, are the ways in which receptivity of students can be shaped from an arts encounter.1 Brice Heath states unequivocally from the start, that if we as educators are determined to make claims about art and learning, we must clearly back those claims up with data and the validity of our research. In fact, the mere act of claiming that the arts raise scores in core subjects diminishes their value. In her paper, The Promises of Learning on Our Own Time (and In Our Own Way) she states about how studying art may raise marks in another subject:
“Such claims put arts at the service of something else. Advocating for the arts because they do something else (such as enhance reading or math skills) leaves the arts auxiliary, vulnerable and positioned far down in a constructed hierarchy of learning.”
Brice Heath wants to find ways to do interdisciplinary research that values equally both partners. She makes it clear that many disciplines such as anthropology, study students as they learn an art form and have document how their memory, creative vision, wellness, emotional development and language are affective. If that is an argument for art for arts sake, I believe the time has come to address the issue head on without the fear of justifying art in any of its forms. There are three generalizations that Brice Heath makes which provide guidance in the arts. They are that art is…
Hand Work
Play
Science at Work
Art is Hand Work
The first of her fundamental points, in this paper, is concerned with tactile learning. Tactile learning is traced through our development of tools early in human history that has led to new discoveries. It also points to how we interpret symbols translating our ability to verbalize deeper understandings. The haptic system allows humans to do tasks that help us acquire knowledge through touch and tactile development. It follows therefore, that use of the hand in visual and musical arts must hold a key to development in capacity to learn. Brice Heath further states,
“This reality results for us because the hand’s symbol-structuring capacity runs along in front of the locomotors operations that support speech. Recent research, for example, has shown that individuals who ‘know what they are talking about’ use gestures that correlate appropriately with the thoughts that they wish to express.”1
To read that the hand is part of knowledge acquisition allows an arts specialist to step out in front and say it is more important to do something first allowing the brain a chance to process in a way that is more evolutionarily appropriate. I am very intrigued by the why the arts make students more receptive to working or learning. As I stated in my first narrative,
“…When I begin any of my classes with some sort of active game, as well as (a) mental challenges, it will provide students with a chance to unwind for a bit, after which they seem ever more ready to collect and digest new information.”
We seem to need that type of transition as humans; I can bear that out with my own experience as an adult learner. I feel much more capable of making a specific point after brainstorming general and non-specific ideas. Blurting helps me focus, so why wouldn’t a quick game that includes either running or freezing help students focus their brains? I don’t know if I will ever be the kind of researcher who will find empirical evidence, because the brain on arts is creating so many new neural pathways, it is difficult to focus on just one idea. But I do know that I could clearly create my mission statement or elevator speech based on Brice Heath’s research. It gives me clarity and illuminates what I respond to as a student of the arts. One of my great hopes in writing this reflection is that I can find new rules of engagement that will allow me to more skillfully engage students in the fabric of classes. Children come to me with reluctance, even though after they are no longer students they come back to help with classes, or say how much they miss the class. Now maybe they really love me (I am very lovable!) but more often than not, they realize it was a special way of working, learning and being. They miss the play of our time together, and this is how they express that yearning. I know that we have spent time discovering and working together in a way that is memorable to young children.
Art is Play
Continuing with the work of Brice Heath, I am drawn especially to the second generalization. In the pursuit of play, students continue to use invention, initially drawn from work with hands and the tools used. As students invent through play it is this play, which helps students build their own imaginative worlds, while making meaning out of what they are playing. Such is the case with socio-dramatic play in which we use both tools and gesture to imagine we are someone else (such as teachers, doctors, firemen, etc.) to practice verbally embodying the roles we can identify as typically from adult realms. Gesture in socio-dramatic play is critical in creating and sustaining neural pathways that are the basis for learning language. When recreating through dramatic play, using the language of the character we are portraying, students will expand vocabulary while increasing fluency as part of that development. Young students are able to practice talking in another’s persona, as they create imaginary characters. When speaking using a specific structure, we realize how difficult it is to create with human language through writing. But there is something about the emotive centers of the brain that become opened up and that allows a pathway to learning so young children are able to express at a more advanced level then they are capable of reading or writing at any given age. Language fluency is greatly enhanced through dramatic re-enactments, tapping into the emotional sectors of the brain, and performing characters give insight into motivation and sequencing as well.
One of the sections in my original narrative that I wanted to more deeply investigate was how traditional reading instruction has focused primarily on the mechanics of reading. 3 It is the reader transforming those ink spots into a “set of meaningful symbols” that transforms a student into a reader. I am very concerned that we still do not address the reason some people become passionate readers. I am convinced my reading was enhanced because my third grade teacher gave me a voice and made me a narrator of our play about Pegasus. Enabled to make reading come alive (and this was with a small town teacher with no arts background, just a belief in kids) nine year old Kim was hooked and started writing plays, poems and stories because one teacher gave me a chance to make the words come alive. It is proven that –
“Portraying the emotions, state of being, and words of others enhance not only oral language development, but also fluency in written expression. Shakespeare may give the best example of this fact. We know that Shakespeare acted on stage before he began to write.”
This section plays to the idea that reading and arts should go hand in hand to motivate and enhance learning. Mechanics of reading is about drill and kill and makes it difficult for any student, let alone those with an Individual Education Plan, (IEP) Social Emotional need, or an English Language Learner (ELL) to connect to and learn to love reading. Finally, Brice Healy states her generalization that
Art is science at work
Brice Healy initially states, “all science is artful”. The first African American woman in space, Mae Jamison, puts it this way
“The difference between science and the arts is not that they are different sides of the coin…or even different parts of the same continuum, but rather, they are manifestations of the same thing. The arts and sciences are avatars of human creativity.”
It could be that they have always been inextricably intertwined. I find it very easy to accept that art and science are linked. Consider Leonardo Da Vinci an artist who extended beyond the studio and backed his way of thinking, through inventing and living. This is one example of how science is artful. It requires imaginative thought to find new ways of approaching the questions that scientists pose about the world. They wonder and imagine, what if? Modern mathematics mirrored the rise of a middle class that had time to create puzzles and demonstrated performance of science experiences. Science is part of what it is to be human. We see problems or phenomenon and wonder why, how and what we can learn to change or adapt a situation to learn, grow or heal. Linking science and the arts is a way to rekindle enthusiasm for learning once again.
My other document is the book A Dramatic Approach to Reading Comprehension, written by Lenore Blank Kelner and Rosalind M. Flynn. The thesis of this work was born at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. and inspired by the book Weaving Through Words: Using the Arts to Teach Reading Comprehension Strategies during a teacher training in 2003. The seminar focused on supporting the reading curriculum through targeted implementation of just one drama strategy. Out of that grew the following six reading comprehension strategies:
Developing sensory images
Building and activating schema
Questioning
Determining importance
Inferring
Synthesis
Drama to Approach Reading
This is one of those books that I have referred to over the years, because it was developed by one of the leading arts organizations, which added to the validity of its work on arts integration. In this final part of my prose, I would like to address the role of vulnerability in the arts and how that can impact students’ learning. 5. Vulnerability, as defined by the Merriam Webster dictionary means
the quality or state of having little resistance to some outside agent or
the state of being without protection against something harmful
The synonym that relates most closely to my work is the word openness. I believe vulnerability is critical in teaching and performing in general. It hurts to be vulnerable, but it is a joyous feeling to feel the openness of vulnerability. I envy colleagues (both arts educators and general education) that never doubt themselves in anything they do. I know that is not who I am so I don’t even attempt to change, but it must be so relaxing to feel no pressure to be other than what you are. As a performer as well as an educator I always doubt myself and wonder how to improve. That openness creates a raw feeling, that is part of how to create characters, and innovate in art education.
One of the key elements of the dramatic approach by Kelner and Flynn is the use of the tableau. I have used tableau extensively in my work with dance and theater students, but never with the kind of secure feeling that I am getting at the heart of why I am using the technique. The groundwork provided by this book gets at the why or science of my use of the exercise, that everyone does in any workshop about addressing literacy through the arts. Let me take you through their thought process.
Kelner and Flynn identify imagination/mind and voice/body, as basic acting tools and their list of acting skills are listed as cooperation and concentration. Each of these elements require the participant to be open and honest to the experience, which does require a sense of vulnerability. Naturally, students need to agree to pretend, which is a frightening experience for those learners who are perhaps less secure social development or who don’t trust process as a means of learning. My experience is that in third grade, the capacity to pretend does start to erode and is replaced with more questioning of what occurs in the classroom. As arts educators, I begin to feel vulnerable with older students who doubt the reasons I use this kind of work to “get at” the heart of a text. Even though I believe that it is the way to reach down into the recesses of our brains to come to a deeper understanding, is to use drama games and techniques that are basic to drama creation.
I really get shaken when a younger student questions the why and the reflection and reading I am doing goes to the heart of my own vulnerability. The tools that give me a sense of security are establishing personal space, cues and the use of side coaching to establish teacher as director. Mirror and group mirror in particular, is a great device to work on that vulnerability and a sense of focus that requires no words. Next we move on to partner mirror work. It is harder with 4 year olds, but even they can learn to refocus by some side coaching. All I need to do to help students refocus is say, “If I can tell who is the leader, you are not mirroring skillfully.” Because I believe theater activities are fundamental for learning in dance, I include them in all our basic work. Again, sometimes students critique that choice (echoing perhaps the cultural norm of what dance is) and it throws me. The beginnings of doubt do more harm to my curriculum, than bad lesson plans. Reading this book reaffirms why I do these exercises and helps me embrace my own vulnerability, which is the undervalued trait of every performing or visual artist.
Then add to this, that to able to use drama, there must be an embrace of this vulnerability. I have a conversation once a month at the least about the value of allowing yourself mistakes. Let me clarify, I state that if you as a student are not allowing yourself to make mistakes, you are not advancing your learning in significant ways, as a learner.
Another stumbling block to learning is being unable to voice how you actually feel. I use the activity of masking as a way to crumble away the façade of the social emotional piece of learning that is undervalued and underdeveloped by teachers and school districts alike. Only drama can address those untold emotions and unheard stories. As performing arts teachers, we have all learned about our students through acting out emotions and characters. Now it is time to allow students to feel that this kind of vulnerability leads to strength and leadership. It gives students a voice when they can be honest about their own feelings.
Students who have been labeled as having reading and writing challenges, are often most vulnerable when exposed to the ideas of literacy within the framework of the drama classroom. It is that feeling that they are already behind which makes students a bit harder to reach when they suspect you are trying to reach them through other strategies. They are resistant and already suspect of the system because of assessments and traditional methods of learning in the classroom. When a child is vulnerable because they have lost a desire to try to learn, it is imperative to show them that they have requisite talent to learn and grow, even though that may not be their experience up to this point in their lives.
Kelner and Flynn use the following strategies to approach drama from a literacy standpoint.
Story Dramatization-students enact scenes from a story using their own words
Character Interviews-Role dramas in which students portray characters from a book and answer interview questions
Tableau-silent frozen picture made by actors striking poses to represent a moment in story
Human Slide-Show-sequence of tableaux presented in chronological order
These strategies are used over and again in a myriad of ways and are replicated in both dance and theater classes to achieve understanding of a text of any type.
Story dramatization, the first of the named strategies is ideal for allowing students a voice able to express ideas. When writing students sometimes parrot what others have told them, or talk on a superficial level. If students are allowed to dramatize their own understanding of a story (written or oral traditions) they will find space to insert their own ideas and understanding. In fact, improvisation in general has a healing power to student actors, because it flows from an authentic place of knowing. The imagery that emerges from this kind of improvisation allows students to find the reality of events through what they have already experienced. Sensory input is part of this experience, and gives students a reality check on the drama. As they enact characters, imagining who they are, connections are made to the thoughts and feelings of a character in order for the student to comprehend why and what the character may say. This kind of improvisation work taps into use of inference within the context of the storyline. It is critical with this approach, as with any of the drama strategies, to plan and be clear about objectives and expected outcomes.
Character interviews are another way of accessing how much comprehension your students possess and give teacher the role of facilitator, but allow students to carry how much or how little they inhabit the character. Characters are the lifeblood of any strategy in drama, because you can do it on an individual basis and make connections to the entire text by finding clues in the character’s words and actions. When students talk as if they are the character they are learning about or reading about, they develop a confidence that they know more than even they realize. It is easy to defer understanding until students can answer questions on a test, but allowing them to experience what it is like to be the character, learning their true instincts and motivation.
Both tableau and human slide show are activities, which can be repeated over and over, and always, help me gain new insight into the process. The best part of doing these activities is that they are fun and easy to get at a deeper meaning of the text. A more advanced way of approaching tableau is to make it a “talking” tableau, wherein the participants become the characters in each scene and are given opportunities to speak in the character’s voice without pre-planning. The kind of vulnerability this commands is as Brene Brown described in her book, Daring Greatly. The quote is from Gay Gaddis, the owner and founder of T3 a think tank in Austin, Texas.
“When you shut down vulnerability, you shut down opportunity.”
Brown also speaks of the cult of perfectionism, which at its heart is about earning approval, not of the improvement of self. Emotional risk is at the heart of leaning in to discomfort of growth. We have no right to expect students to be vulnerable in their process of learning, if we are unable or unwilling to do so as well. My conceding to vulnerability, usually leads to observations and reflections that improve my understanding of how to best teach. Recently I had an idea for a unit I wanted to do, but no time to plan so I used the grid Dr. Risner gave us in the fall and did a brief outline of what I wanted to accomplish. Though not perfect, this gridded outline gave me an overview of how to approach the material, which was to be a series of books that gave an overview of the Underground Railroad and the fight for freedom in the South.
With this outline and my texts, I was able to begin the unit, which gave me a sense of openness and dare I say, vulnerability. As an educator, I didn’t have all the answers, but I did have a framework and yes, I was armed with my vulnerability to reflect and process. Because of my openness to approach the work in a much looser way, I feel I am tackling a topic through my own discoveries, that I would have spent an entire summer trying to craft. The process of openness and vulnerability is a way to access both the craft and the art of lesson planning.
In a word, this process, newly explored, has given me insight into all three areas that I am exploring: Student receptivity, transforming or illuminating learning, and vulnerability or openness to the process
All three areas that I have been interested in exploring as I work with students were opened up for me by keeping the third premise (vulnerability) held closely. I was able to organically explore students’ reception of a topic by keeping my topic more loosely held, and dealing with changes to the curriculum, in the moment and with a lot of immediate reflections. I have made myself much more vulnerable because of the belief that openness creates a cult of us, rather than me versus them. It illuminated my learning as an arts educator, allowing me to follow the students learning and using my own understandings, rather than planning what I wanted to show. It often mirrors the actual process of doing research, I am just now realizing. You have to follow the facts and make conclusions later. This allows growth in student with the teacher, not just on the surface, but also deep into our understandings.
The Blank Kelner book talks extensively about how selecting a text that is appropriate can shape the work that you undertake with students. Of all the texts that I work with, it is the picture book that gives me the greatest flexibility when working with young students. The words are usually chosen very specifically to expand young vocabularies without dumbing down. Sequentially, picture books provide a wide range of possibilities of story dramatization. Take a book that I recently began using; Follow the Drinking Gourd. The words of the story mirror the song and give students symbols to grab onto. The illustrations of a picture book are often museum quality prints that lend themselves well to tableau activities and character interviews. Students in our school are well trained (because of a fabulous visual arts faculty) in visual thinking strategies (VTS). This system of noticing details allows students to make open-ended discoveries and reach their own conclusions and synthesis. When I use picture books, I have no doubt that the arts curriculum is enhancing learning. They remember what they do and books are the link between literacy and drama/dance curriculums that ignites young minds.
So at this writing, having come full circle, I am reminded once again that the impetus for my writing is both intuition and about the wonders and mysteries of the world. Much of what we live is random which sometimes feels like luck; a well-lived life must include a questioning of all that happens, both positive and negative. I have always loved following a random path, allowing life to show me new alleys, detours and pit stops. I am reminded that finding the path for my students always leads me back to where I need to go personally as a lifelong learner. One of my presumptions when I began as first a teaching artist and eventually as an arts educator, was that I would find the way to reach my students and be able to fix and replicate that method for my entire career as an educator. What has been most surprising to me, and most enervating in many ways to my dismay, is the fact that the more that I know what I am doing and how to do it, the more insecure and farther away from the mastery I believe that I am. Perhaps that is the reason as artists we always feel insecure; being an artist means tapping into that vulnerability is part of childlike innocence that allows an artist to always try to break barriers. Breaking barriers often means taking chances and failing in the process.
As a teacher of children, we are not often allowed to fail. We have to document what we do to allow students to succeed; that usually doesn’t include making mistakes and reflecting. But that is exactly what I feel real teaching artists and TA researchers are finding makes a most successful curriculum. To break barriers with children you have to be willing to fail and learn from those mistakes. Students likewise must be allowed the ability to fail and use those “failures” as lessons to the next level. When we are honest with our students, and ourselves we tell them over and again that life needs to be honest, mistakes are part of that honesty. In many ways the arts become emotional surrogates for children to act out their greatest fears, in a “dance” of learning about themselves and the world. When we put ourselves on the line to create art, we give rise to the ability to challenge the system.
In all my readings, I am struck by how researchers, teachers and artists are willing to take risks with their ideas, in service to their art. Learning through any of these methods helped me realize that to be successful in the arts one needs to explore having faith in both life as well as in other humans. Brice Heath talks very eloquently about how imagination fires the brain and stokes the flames of language. Wooton gives us an insight into how an artist creates and uses that process to teach a love of reading. And Blank Kelner shows us that there can be a codified system with specific steps to uncover and discover literacy with and for our students. I am never sure what I need in my own curriculum until I try out several new ideas and edit out the ones that don’t work at all. I finally have reached the realization that when I start writing, I sometimes think my ideas are a complete disaster; it often is because I don’t use reflective thinking to understand where each lesson has taken me and how to get to the next step of creating a curriculum. My curriculum is often created as simply looking at the lesson for the dance classroom, as if they were to be used as a creation of dance or theater. Teaching in the performing arts gives me total creative control and an ability to use my artist powers to edit and produce. Life and art are so intertwined, that I often get them confused.
Vulnerability, illumination and engagement are three areas that I wanted to explore. Brice Heath was illuminating in her short paper but the book I used, was more of a road map to how to do something than to understand the underlying forces. I think that I can do better next time in choice of guiding documents.
