Fall semester — some progress, some adjustments

Well, after teaching all fall, I've got a lot of writing to catch up on — I hope this post doesn't get too long. We are making some modest progress in exposing students to dance elements and concepts — and, along the way, I have of course made some adjustments to my teaching practice in order to make that happen…

The 6th and 8th grade classes have both appreciably improved their participation, for different reasons: for the 6th graders, we have been able to transfer a lot of kids between Dance and regular (sports-based) PE, so that a significant majority of my students are now in the class by choice; while with the 8th graders, it was more the fear of failing the semester and not being promoted to high school, which kicked in after warning letters went home from the counselor (and the subsequent discovery that participating in dance actually could be more interesting than sitting around talking…). the 7th graders are still the most challenging class, with a majority of students who regularly choose not to participate (and then often spend their class time talking loudly and playing around all over the auditorium).

I have mostly given up on revamping my curriculum, as I had intended to do this year — given the extra hurdle of so many dance-resistant students, I decided this was not the best year to experiment with new ideas… I am falling back on tried-and-true units which I know have worked well and engaged students in the past. So I have once again been alternating units on technique and dance styles (which is what middle school kids expect — to learn steps) with creative explorations and composition. We recently had a fairly successful unit on Baile Folklórico — I like to start with La Botella from Michoacán, as it is bouncy and energetic, just challenging enough, and fun to do (I had some longtime students at EOSA who would periodically beg me "can we do the bottle dance again?"). We took that up in late November, and it was about the time that some of the 8th graders started to turn around — one week, we had thirteen students who participated fully every single day! (doesn't sound like much, out of 40, but it was actually quite an improvement…).

Creative work has been somewhat harder — these teens like to get together in groups to make up dances, but they are very impatient with exploring the elements and applying them to their compositions. They seem to feel (as is common with teenaged beginners) that the reason for group work is to combine their favorite steps from videos into a really cute dance, and whatever elements I've asked them to pay attention to and work on in their compositions fly right out of their heads as soon as they get started…

Back in October, I challenged them with a symmetrical and asymmetrical shapes project (to create a short dance using only group shapes and transitions), which is always a conundrum for teens who think of dance in terms of "steps" — but they got it done, some groups quite successfully. Our latest project, just before winter break, was more accessible… but it presented some new and unexpected difficulties, which I think I'll get to in the next post as it's already getting late...