I started out this year trying to stick to the new curriculum I had planned over the summer, though with some modifications. My plan had been to focus on one major dance element or concept each week, with a set structure to the week: creative work lessons on Mondays and Tuesdays to introduce the concept, video observation and journal writing on Wednesdays (which is our district’s early release day, so the classes are too short for getting dressed in dance clothes – good day for classroom work), and technique work that continues to focus on the week’s concept on Thursdays and Fridays.
Unfortunately, the Wednesday observation / writing day went right out the window, for a number of reasons: For one, I had no workable technology for showing video; also, the first time I brought out paper for observations, the non-participating students wadded it up and threw it around the room (so I gave up on that for a while); and, as it turned out, I would still have to supervise the locker room for the other PE class even if my students were not getting dressed – so since I couldn’t take my students directly to a classroom there wouldn’t be enough time for any serious observation and writing anyway. So Wednesdays turned into a very short regular class and catch-up day, either creative work or technique, whichever most needed the extra time…
My plan was to start working on opposites – EXTREMES! One thing that came up at the curricular progressions workshop over the summer was that middle school-aged students tend to live in “medium” – so getting them to go to extremes right off the bat seemed like it would be useful for everything afterward. The elements I picked to work on extremes were size/range, level, and speed/tempo — as probably the most easily accessible elements for brand-new, non-dance-experienced kids.
For Size/range, we did some basic freeze dance work using action words and HUGE and tiny movements (I tried to do a bit of Shape Tag or Puzzle Museum, but only the 6th graders actually did it, since with the 7th and 8th grade classes were still too chaotic to get much past the freeze dance). For the technique classes, I tried to focus on doing a little jazz combination with very big and very small movements (with mixed success).
The next week, for Level, we tried to do a little bit of Rocks and Bridges (from Anne Green Gilbert's book), where movers climb and leap over low shapes ("rocks") or crawl under and through high shapes ("bridges") — again, the 6th graders managed it, but it was a little scary since we were still in the little portable classroom (leaping was really out of the question). We tried the Erosion game the next day, in which pairs manipulate each other into gradually lower shapes, and all the classes had some success with that lesson. For the technique half of the week, because we weren't moving very quickly through steps, I couldn't very well teach them a whole combination focusing on Level in two or three classes (as I had envisioned before school started) — so I just appended five shapes onto the end of their (very brief) jazz combination, alternating high and low.
The next week, we spent just a day working on Speed/tempo, working on finding movements that they could do faster… even faster… hyperspeed! and slower… slower… s-u-p-e-r slow-mo… Then they got into groups and began their first choreography project. The project was pretty simple: create a short dance that includes extremes of size/range, level, and speed/tempo — and, of course, a beginning and ending shape!
For this first assignment, I let them work in groups that they felt comfortable with (this may be a mistake in the long run, but at this point it was definitely a matter of choosing my battles — arguments over "I can't be in a group with him/her!" were just one more thing I did not need to deal with). As it happens, once they got into groups and began planning their own steps, some of the students who had not been dancing yet got pulled along, and began asking if they could join one group or another and participate, so the classes began to look more generally successful…
The next problem was that, absolutely universally, everyone in the class agreed that they could never, never perform their dances in front of the rest of the class! So I made the agreement that, just for this time, I would just come around with my video camera while everyone was working, just as if it was a normal practice day, and no one else in the class would be watching because they would all be practicing (sigh… so much for showing and responding…). I am hoping that once they get a little more comfortable, we'll be able to get them to show in the future… baby steps for now. In the end, the finished projects were not the most original in the world, and the extremes were certainly not as extreme as I had hoped — but about 2/3 of the class did complete the assignment, which a few weeks before was something I would never have believed. So it's a start… This week we're starting on shapes and symmetry, we'll see how it goes from here!
Sunday, October 13, 2013
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
a difficult year…
Well, I certainly haven't started out to write as frequently as I had hoped for the new school year! My apologies, it is turning out to be a much harder year than I had anticipated — and I'm afraid I was so disheartened, at first, that I just couldn't bring myself to write about it…
As it happens, I do have three dance classes at my new school, one for each grade (6th, 7th, and 8th) ostensibly as a PE elective. The problem is, they programmed the kids randomly into their PE classes, apparently expecting us to sort them all out the first week of school. It's probably a little understandable, because of the way this position came about, in the last week of the school year — they may have already programmed the classes by the time the idea for a dance program even came up. But I had understood that they had polled the students to be sure there was enough interest in Dance to support three classes, so I was a little baffled that they didn't save the names somewhere… We tried to fix the situation during the first week of school... but of course for those middle school students — who are, after all, all about not sticking out and appearing different — once they were in a class and expecting to go out and throw footballs, peer pressure kicked in and very few kids stepped up to say they would rather take a dance class (and leave room for the sports-minded kids to trade into regular PE).
So I ended up with about a quarter- to a third of my students actually choosing to be in a dance class, with the rest constantly asking me when they can change classes (they can't anymore, not until spring semester) or just not participating, playing around and talking incessantly — and a critical mass who were so openly resistant to trying a dance class, or even having a modicum of respect for me as a teacher new to the site, that for the first couple of weeks it was all I could do just to get through taking roll without calling in a school safety officer to get them to settle a bit… For a while, I was in total despair — had I been a first-year teacher, I would have been thinking that there was something seriously wrong with my teaching (thank goodness for the perspective of 16+ years in urban schools).
Added to that was the space issue — the auditorium, as it happens, is the usual repository for furniture that has been moved out of classrooms that no longer need it; and with construction happening with the other school on the same campus, there was a lot of furniture not getting moved out of the auditorium. So I spent the first five weeks of school trying to teach 40-45 students at a time in a regular-sized portable classroom! That would be crowded enough for a "desk" class, but for dance?!?!? Obviously we did not have room to do any of the kind of curriculum that might hook those reluctant boys — running, leaping, sliding — or much of anything else, for that matter. Five weeks in, I was just about ready to file a grievance for health and safety issues when they finally got the custodians to push all of the extra furniture off to one side of the auditorium so that there would be enough room for us to use it… So we now have some more space, but the downside is that there are piles of furniture all over one side of the room, and the kids who don't participate in dance like to play around and hide in the piles…
Things have gotten better since those first couple of weeks... I still have far too many kids (15 out of 45 in one class) who literally never participate, and I spend way too much of my time chasing down, and sending out, kids who are running around the room yelling (not to mention all the phone calls home to parents). And of course, my new curriculum has pretty much gone out the window, along with much of what I've come to depend on over the years (the first time I brought paper for non-participating students to take observation notes, the 7th-graders crumpled it all up and had a great game of throwing it around the room — I haven't brought out a stack of paper since). But we have managed to progress through some creative work and one small-group choreography project as well as a (very) little jazz technique. And at least I'm no longer coming to school with my stomach in knots every day. Baby steps! Perhaps we'll accomplish something this year after all...
Okay, I do plan to start writing about the curriculum we've managed to cover — I hope to post something about the creative work and choreography project over the weekend or early next week. Bear with me, and stay tuned...
As it happens, I do have three dance classes at my new school, one for each grade (6th, 7th, and 8th) ostensibly as a PE elective. The problem is, they programmed the kids randomly into their PE classes, apparently expecting us to sort them all out the first week of school. It's probably a little understandable, because of the way this position came about, in the last week of the school year — they may have already programmed the classes by the time the idea for a dance program even came up. But I had understood that they had polled the students to be sure there was enough interest in Dance to support three classes, so I was a little baffled that they didn't save the names somewhere… We tried to fix the situation during the first week of school... but of course for those middle school students — who are, after all, all about not sticking out and appearing different — once they were in a class and expecting to go out and throw footballs, peer pressure kicked in and very few kids stepped up to say they would rather take a dance class (and leave room for the sports-minded kids to trade into regular PE).
So I ended up with about a quarter- to a third of my students actually choosing to be in a dance class, with the rest constantly asking me when they can change classes (they can't anymore, not until spring semester) or just not participating, playing around and talking incessantly — and a critical mass who were so openly resistant to trying a dance class, or even having a modicum of respect for me as a teacher new to the site, that for the first couple of weeks it was all I could do just to get through taking roll without calling in a school safety officer to get them to settle a bit… For a while, I was in total despair — had I been a first-year teacher, I would have been thinking that there was something seriously wrong with my teaching (thank goodness for the perspective of 16+ years in urban schools).
Added to that was the space issue — the auditorium, as it happens, is the usual repository for furniture that has been moved out of classrooms that no longer need it; and with construction happening with the other school on the same campus, there was a lot of furniture not getting moved out of the auditorium. So I spent the first five weeks of school trying to teach 40-45 students at a time in a regular-sized portable classroom! That would be crowded enough for a "desk" class, but for dance?!?!? Obviously we did not have room to do any of the kind of curriculum that might hook those reluctant boys — running, leaping, sliding — or much of anything else, for that matter. Five weeks in, I was just about ready to file a grievance for health and safety issues when they finally got the custodians to push all of the extra furniture off to one side of the auditorium so that there would be enough room for us to use it… So we now have some more space, but the downside is that there are piles of furniture all over one side of the room, and the kids who don't participate in dance like to play around and hide in the piles…
Things have gotten better since those first couple of weeks... I still have far too many kids (15 out of 45 in one class) who literally never participate, and I spend way too much of my time chasing down, and sending out, kids who are running around the room yelling (not to mention all the phone calls home to parents). And of course, my new curriculum has pretty much gone out the window, along with much of what I've come to depend on over the years (the first time I brought paper for non-participating students to take observation notes, the 7th-graders crumpled it all up and had a great game of throwing it around the room — I haven't brought out a stack of paper since). But we have managed to progress through some creative work and one small-group choreography project as well as a (very) little jazz technique. And at least I'm no longer coming to school with my stomach in knots every day. Baby steps! Perhaps we'll accomplish something this year after all...
Okay, I do plan to start writing about the curriculum we've managed to cover — I hope to post something about the creative work and choreography project over the weekend or early next week. Bear with me, and stay tuned...
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
new school, new thinking about curriculum
I spent three days last week in the Curricular Progressions workshop with the folks from Luna Dance Institute, ostensibly to be working on refining my middle school dance curriculum before starting a new year at a new school… but instead of just tweaking the curriculum, I ended up shifting my thinking in a fairly major way, inspired by another participant in the workshop who is also starting a new middle school dance class. Her idea was that each week (with four classes per week), she will teach two days of improvisation and composition, one day of technique, and one day of video observation and response — with all those classes sharing a common focus in the elements of dance or principles of choreography. For example (to pick one at random), if the focus for the week were Levels, then the improv/comp classes would explore high, middle and low level shapes and movements, the technique class might introduce a combination with lots of relevés and jumps as well as floor work, and on the observation day students could view works by choreographers who work with extremes of level in interesting ways.
As I said, I was inspired… Over the years, I've developed a comfortable flow to my school year — basic jazz and modern technique and historical social dances in the fall, world and cultural dance forms in the spring, with creative work / improvisation / composition interspersed throughout the year as the base, always with enough freedom in the schedule to try out new ideas. But I realized that I've become accustomed to teaching in discrete units, which may or may not relate to each other, and which may or may not build to a coherent whole. So I was excited by the possibility of finding a way to tie everything together, relate the technique lessons to the creative work, make those spiraling skills spiral in a way that makes sense…
So rather than making minor revisions, I've upended my curriculum and turned my head around in a completely new direction. I haven't got everything fully worked out past the first couple or three units, but I can tell my thinking has definitely shifted: the other day, during Hawkins technique class, when my teacher mentioned that Erick Hawkins believed all movement was made up of loops and circles, my first reaction was to start thinking how I could incorporate Hawkins technique into a unit about curved and angular movement (perhaps pairing it with Horton?).
It's just a little bit scary, starting a new school with entirely new curriculum, not falling back on my comfortable, well-tested lesson plans; but it's exciting as well. I'm looking forward to an interesting year (in a good way)!
As I said, I was inspired… Over the years, I've developed a comfortable flow to my school year — basic jazz and modern technique and historical social dances in the fall, world and cultural dance forms in the spring, with creative work / improvisation / composition interspersed throughout the year as the base, always with enough freedom in the schedule to try out new ideas. But I realized that I've become accustomed to teaching in discrete units, which may or may not relate to each other, and which may or may not build to a coherent whole. So I was excited by the possibility of finding a way to tie everything together, relate the technique lessons to the creative work, make those spiraling skills spiral in a way that makes sense…
So rather than making minor revisions, I've upended my curriculum and turned my head around in a completely new direction. I haven't got everything fully worked out past the first couple or three units, but I can tell my thinking has definitely shifted: the other day, during Hawkins technique class, when my teacher mentioned that Erick Hawkins believed all movement was made up of loops and circles, my first reaction was to start thinking how I could incorporate Hawkins technique into a unit about curved and angular movement (perhaps pairing it with Horton?).
It's just a little bit scary, starting a new school with entirely new curriculum, not falling back on my comfortable, well-tested lesson plans; but it's exciting as well. I'm looking forward to an interesting year (in a good way)!
Sunday, June 30, 2013
next year - new school! (and hopefully more regular blogging…)
Well, I seem to have gone completely AWOL for the last couple of months… a consequence, I guess, of teaching at (and dashing between) two different school while simultaneously trying to find a school interested in building a dance program. Also, I guess, there's that thing of not really teaching much dance this year — I have kept a little more up-to-date on the art program blog for my school's website...
So as it happens, I got the word this spring that the art program I'd been teaching for the past two years, since the dance program at EOSA vanished, was also being cut — the classroom teachers thought their kids needed more physical activity, so they decided they needed a PE specialist for their prep teacher (I tried, but failed, to sell the leadership team on the value of a dance-based program… I got comments like "yes, but those sports skills are so important, too…"). When I reminded my contact in HR that I had been trying since December to get some help from her department to get back into a dance position, she gave me a list of three schools with open positions so that I could inquire about interest in dance… To make a really long saga relatively short, one principal replied to my inquiry right away, saying she was so excited to get my message because she had been hoping to start a dance program for two years (if only I'd known!).
So I get to transfer, to a middle school this time (now I will have taught every grade in this district). It will be a half-time position, three classes of Beginning Dance (one each for 6th, 7th, and 8th graders), presumably stuffed full of kids (40-plus in each class). It's been a while since I've taught middle school, so this should be interesting — last time (about 10 years ago), I was a very different teacher, with not nearly so much experience under my belt… and most vitally to me, without having yet had that experience of guiding kids to get beyond cute steps to cool music and to truly create meaning in dance. I am excited to see what will happen (and so relieved I won't have to teach elementary-school PE!)… No matter what, with three dance classes a day, I should be able to find much more to write about here than I did this year!
So as it happens, I got the word this spring that the art program I'd been teaching for the past two years, since the dance program at EOSA vanished, was also being cut — the classroom teachers thought their kids needed more physical activity, so they decided they needed a PE specialist for their prep teacher (I tried, but failed, to sell the leadership team on the value of a dance-based program… I got comments like "yes, but those sports skills are so important, too…"). When I reminded my contact in HR that I had been trying since December to get some help from her department to get back into a dance position, she gave me a list of three schools with open positions so that I could inquire about interest in dance… To make a really long saga relatively short, one principal replied to my inquiry right away, saying she was so excited to get my message because she had been hoping to start a dance program for two years (if only I'd known!).
So I get to transfer, to a middle school this time (now I will have taught every grade in this district). It will be a half-time position, three classes of Beginning Dance (one each for 6th, 7th, and 8th graders), presumably stuffed full of kids (40-plus in each class). It's been a while since I've taught middle school, so this should be interesting — last time (about 10 years ago), I was a very different teacher, with not nearly so much experience under my belt… and most vitally to me, without having yet had that experience of guiding kids to get beyond cute steps to cool music and to truly create meaning in dance. I am excited to see what will happen (and so relieved I won't have to teach elementary-school PE!)… No matter what, with three dance classes a day, I should be able to find much more to write about here than I did this year!
Sunday, April 28, 2013
Dear Marcus…
There was an altar set up in the (former) EOSA building for our lost student and EOSA family member, with papers available to write messages, and this is what I left:
Dear Marcus — I will never forget...
… your sweet, beautiful smile…
… you so often acting goofy in class — and somehow managing not to drive me crazy in the process...
… how you always asked me to play Chris Brown songs for warmup stretches…
… you going on stage all by yourself (after much encouragement — and pushing) to perform your sophomore-year Beginning Dance final as a solo, when your partner didn't show up…
... your junior year dance history final, in the style of Michael Jackson...
… senior year, after being kept out of school for a couple of months, you came back the day before (the day before!) the Winter Concert — and pulled off your part in "Rocka My Soul" with style and aplomb…
… when the whole Dance Production class was asked to come to your Student Study Team meeting, to help keep you on track in your senior year…
… on the way to performing at New Highland Elementary, you grabbed me just before I would have stepped off the curb in front of a car I hadn't seen coming — saying "Mrs. Goodwin, I just saved your life!" (and you did)…
… did I mention your sweet, beautiful smile?…
... and of course, your absolutely invaluable contributions in a class that made some truly meaningful dances together...
You were so much a part of my teaching life for those years, I still can't wrap my head around the idea that you're gone so soon — I will never, never forget you.
Dear Marcus — I will never forget...
… your sweet, beautiful smile…
… you so often acting goofy in class — and somehow managing not to drive me crazy in the process...
… how you always asked me to play Chris Brown songs for warmup stretches…
… you going on stage all by yourself (after much encouragement — and pushing) to perform your sophomore-year Beginning Dance final as a solo, when your partner didn't show up…
... your junior year dance history final, in the style of Michael Jackson...
… senior year, after being kept out of school for a couple of months, you came back the day before (the day before!) the Winter Concert — and pulled off your part in "Rocka My Soul" with style and aplomb…
… when the whole Dance Production class was asked to come to your Student Study Team meeting, to help keep you on track in your senior year…
… on the way to performing at New Highland Elementary, you grabbed me just before I would have stepped off the curb in front of a car I hadn't seen coming — saying "Mrs. Goodwin, I just saved your life!" (and you did)…
… did I mention your sweet, beautiful smile?…
... and of course, your absolutely invaluable contributions in a class that made some truly meaningful dances together...
You were so much a part of my teaching life for those years, I still can't wrap my head around the idea that you're gone so soon — I will never, never forget you.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Hard news...
I found out this morning that one of my former students from EOSA was shot and killed... Marcus was one of the dancers from 2008, in that amazing class who created the dance about youth killings in Oakland. His entrance words for that piece were "I lost at least three of my friends last year… with all this happening, it makes me think about how much longer I have to live..." I had described EOSA, in my NDEO presentation that year, as a school where kids walk around in t-shirts saying “RIP, gone but not forgotten" and miss school for way too many funerals. And so it goes on...
Rest in peace, Marcus, you were beautiful and will never be forgotten...
Rest in peace, Marcus, you were beautiful and will never be forgotten...
 |
| Claudia, Marcus, Asia, & Johari |
Sunday, April 14, 2013
East Oakland student to Mills
I haven't written a lot about my current dance class this year, in large part because it has been one of the most… well, shall we say challenging?.. classes I have taught in all my years of teaching teens — an odd and unfamiliar combination of not taking Dance seriously as a class or subject, but still caring about a good grade. This group has been hard to reach (which is also one reason my blog posts here have been pretty sparse of late).
But we do have small successes, of course, and one came recently in the form of the only senior in the class fall semester. Back in November, we had had the opportunity to attend the Mills College Dance Repertory concert as a field trip (for anyone outside the bay area, Mills is a fairly exclusive private university which boasts one of the preeminent dance programs in the area). Many of the students seemed disengaged during the performance, and needed some reminders about theater etiquette; but this senior was captivated, and talked to me extensively about both the dances she saw and the Mills campus on the way back to school.
Unfortunately, this student had to transfer out of the dance class in order to complete some other credits this semester… But a few weeks ago, she stopped by the class to tell me that she was so taken by the atmosphere on the Mills campus that she had applied there, and had just found out she was accepted! I spoke to her about it again last week, and she said that she was lining up her scholarships and financial aid, and intended to attend Mills in the fall.
The reason this is big news is that, even though Mills is located in East Oakland, just a couple of miles from the inner-city communities where my current students (as well as all my former students from EOSA) live, the low-income students in the community who even aspire to attend Mills are few and far between (those with high aspirations are much more likely to try for the UC system, which is generally much better known). One of my creative dance teaching mentors, herself a Mills graduate, mentioned to me that when her organization began working with the Oakland schools to create an elementary school dance program in the neighborhood, one of her dreams was that she would see an East Oakland student go to Mills… so, one small success from this class!
But we do have small successes, of course, and one came recently in the form of the only senior in the class fall semester. Back in November, we had had the opportunity to attend the Mills College Dance Repertory concert as a field trip (for anyone outside the bay area, Mills is a fairly exclusive private university which boasts one of the preeminent dance programs in the area). Many of the students seemed disengaged during the performance, and needed some reminders about theater etiquette; but this senior was captivated, and talked to me extensively about both the dances she saw and the Mills campus on the way back to school.
Unfortunately, this student had to transfer out of the dance class in order to complete some other credits this semester… But a few weeks ago, she stopped by the class to tell me that she was so taken by the atmosphere on the Mills campus that she had applied there, and had just found out she was accepted! I spoke to her about it again last week, and she said that she was lining up her scholarships and financial aid, and intended to attend Mills in the fall.
The reason this is big news is that, even though Mills is located in East Oakland, just a couple of miles from the inner-city communities where my current students (as well as all my former students from EOSA) live, the low-income students in the community who even aspire to attend Mills are few and far between (those with high aspirations are much more likely to try for the UC system, which is generally much better known). One of my creative dance teaching mentors, herself a Mills graduate, mentioned to me that when her organization began working with the Oakland schools to create an elementary school dance program in the neighborhood, one of her dreams was that she would see an East Oakland student go to Mills… so, one small success from this class!
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