I watched a wonderful video by The Killers this
morning. It is filled with images of dancers that simply lifted my soul. It
reminded me of one of the joys of my second grade classroom -- dancing.
I never officially taught
my students to dance. I had a huge collection of cd’s; classical for math and
writing, lullabies for wound up days, The Beatles, Irish music, Raffi's Bananaphone
for lunches that included bananas, and good old-fashioned early rock. Music
came on while we ate lunch, at parties, cleaned our desks or wrote. My favorite
form of evil punishment was during silent lunch. I’d turn off the lights, put
on early Beatles music and dance. Usually a student teacher would join in. The
students weren’t allowed to talk. Laughter was allowed, though. They settled
down from a rowdy morning (hence the silent lunch.) I recharged my batteries. A
wonderfully productive afternoon would follow. They never complained about it.
Well, a few did because they didn’t get to dance with me.
A favorite reward picked
by the kids for completing a task was having me spin and dip them, which was
danced with beaming smiles on the child’s face as well as mine. . We
conga-lined around the room during parties. I’ve seen anxious children let go
and be free while we took some much need down time. I have a clear image of a
group of boys laughing, singing, and dancing to Lolllipop at a Valentines Day celebration. They played that song
fourteen times until I dreamt of lollipops in my sleep that night.
I taught them to do the
twist while we scrubbed out our desks before parent conferences. It was a
little like Karate Kid methodology and an important task. No one wants their
mother to clean out their desk- EVER! “What is in this folder? Yuck! Is this
dirty tissue yours? How come all these scraps are in here? What is this moldy
thing?” You get the picture. With the accompanying bubble gum music and the
twisting motion the task took only a few minutes.
We didn’t dance all day,
every day. There were days were we didn’t dance at all. For the life of me, I
don’t know why. And Michelle Rhee, if you think I played too much and my class
didn’t learn anything, you need to get your head out of your hiney, shake it
around, and live a little. Why do you suppose all those high tech, innovative
companies have basketball courts, game rooms, and …. juke boxes? That is because physical movement encourages
thinking! In fact, brain studies show boys need to move to process information.
Man, oh man, my boys loved to dance.
There were guidelines for
dancing whether it was for a morning meeting activity or a class party. No
jumping on other people. You had to keep your eyes open. You had to have fun.
No one could force you to dance. And of course, no making fun but my students
didn’t need to be reminded of that rule. I ran a safe classroom where risk
taking was encouraged whether it was for reading, doing a report, answering
questions, and, most importantly, letting your personality shine out through
your actions. Those actions most certainly included dancing.
One highlight of all my years teaching was at a year-end party. An
autistic boy I had was dancing by himself on the rug. He was doing a move he
had seen at the talent show that morning. A line of boys had put their
hands on top of each other and made waves with their arms. He was standing on
the rug with his arms extended mimicking the dance move. Two girls stood watching him. Finally, one sidled up and asked, “Hey, can
we do that with you?” He stopped and
looked down. I watched breathlessly. I realized he was smiling.
“Yeah!” he said in his
raspy voice as he extended his arms.
They lay their hands on his and began to dance together, faces
beaming. I was smiling too, but my eyes
had filled with tears. A school year
made successful because he could let someone touch him while he danced.
You can’t dance all day
in school. We had much to get done. I
firmly believe learning requires hard work but that does not disallow fun.
Joyous laughter rang out and was a reward for something accomplished. It is the
relief of mastering something difficult. It is the fist pumping “Yes!” of
finding a solution. It reflects love, surprise, pride, excitement, and wonder.
Happy dances were well received when an onerous job was finished successfully. Why
not? Life is too short not to dance.
Here's the link to "All the Thing's That I've Done" by The
Killer's. Enjoy!
michelle rhee, dancing with children, dance, second grade, teaching
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