Tenth Visit- Its Hard to Say Goodbye...

Reflection time... This semester working with Ms. Thorstrom and her students has been more impactful than I ever imagined it would be. I felt that this program has given me the practical application of teaching that I've needed, to be successful in my field of dance education. I worked with a very energetic group of third graders. I learned a great deal about the importance of clear expectations. This group was filled with brilliant and creative minds, but they struggled with keeping focus and staying on task. Don't we all!! I had to start each class with a reminder of the rules, and then reinforce expectations throughout class, immediately and professionally.This Arts Bridge internship gave me a practical classroom management experience that allowed myself to gain an internal perspective of how to respond to what actually happens in the classroom.   I start my student teaching next semester, and feel more prepared because of this internship. I was able to practice being authoritative, engaging and confident in front of students, who were so forgiving and caring, in a professional environment. I was able to truly discover my love of teaching while being an Arts Bridge Scholar. Thank you Thank you THANK YOU to my mentor Pauline, Ms. Thorstrom, the wonderful third graders that revitalized my love for learning, and of course to all those involved in the Arts Bridge Program!!! What a wonderful experience!

Ninth Visit- Multicultural Continues Once More

Today we wrap up our exploration and investigation of movement (because my next visit will be a few practice runs and the final performance). It is so wonderful to see the confidence these students are building through repetition of the movement. By embodiment of movement these students are living, breathing, what they are learning in the class. Each person comes from different backgrounds, and its important to recognize that they all have value in our society. Without giving it a second thought these students are tasting the african culture right in their classroom. I'm so excited to have them show their school, through song and dance next week. One great thing about teaching a set movement phrase is to see the pride in the children's eyes when they know they have done a great job. The students in this class are hard workers, and I feel like they are all successful in different ways. How privilege I feel that Ms.Thorstrom has allowed the artsbridge program to be apart of her teaching, every student will go through their own challenges in school, but I hope the students realize how much potential they have, because I see it each time I watch them move; and I think each one of them are simply AMAZING!

Eighth Visit- Multi-Cultural Continue

We continue our journey with learning and accepting about one another and other cultures. Today we learned a song about friendship and celebration in Swahili. They will be singing this song in front of their school live next week! They will sing this song and then begin the movement portion of their performance. We started learning our African Dance. It is the first time the students have learned movement and are expected to remember it. They not only are learning about another culture they may be unfamiliar with, but they are learning important life skills such as- memorization, recall and repeat, coordination, balance, rhythm, teamwork, and the list could go on and on. They are learning a dance to a recording of djembe drums and we talked about the importance of the drummer and how the drummer is the leader and the dancers are the followers, and how we have different roles in different situations.

Seventh Visit- Introduction of Multi-Culture

I loved working with these sweet sweet students today. We started class sitting in a large circle. I prompted the students to think of one thing that made them special. It could be ANYTHING they wanted to share. Each student went around identifying one thing that made them special and unique, we had comments that covered just about everything, such as "I'm really good at soccer", "I like math", " I speak two languages", "Hot dogs are my favorite food", "I'm an older sister".  It was so neat that at such a young age these students knew that they each were special, and my favorite moment during this section is that if a student had a hard time thinking of something, their classmates would remind them of something. This portion took the majority of my teaching time, but I would do it exactly the same if I could do it over. I loved hearing from each child, each child had their moment, and got to say out loud something about themselves. From this portion of class, we identified that all though we had many different things that made us who we are, we need a world of lots of different people to make this world so wonderful and exciting. This concept was one that was understood easily and was quite instinctive for these sweet students. To learn about multi-culture through movement we began to learn some African movement for our final performance in just a few weeks!!!

Sixth Visit- Poetry: "NOISE DAY"

Today the students created a short dance based off a poem by the one and only Shel Silverstein.

NOISE DAY

Let’s have one day for girls and boyses

When you can make the grandest noises.

Screech, scream, holler, and yell—

Buzz a buzzer, clang a bell,

Sneeze—hiccup—whistle—shout,

Laugh until your lungs wear out,

Toot a whistle, kick, a can,

Bang a spoon against a pan,

Sing, yodel, bellow, hum,

Blow a horn, beat a drum,

Rattle a window, slam a door,

Scrape a rake across the floor,

Use a drill, drive a nail,

Turn the hose on the garbage pail,

Shout Yahoo—Hurrah—Hooray,

Turn up the music all the way,

Try and bounce your bowling ball,

Ride a skateboard up the wall,

Chomp your food with a smack and a slurp,

Chew—chomp—hiccup—burp.

One day a year do all of these,

The rest of the days—be quiet please.

~Shel Silverstein

There were a couple objectives with choosing this specific poem. The students were working on creating their own poems in class, and if I had another day with poetry I would have them create movement based off their own individual poem. But for today, I wanted to encourage the third graders to keep their personalities. Their high energy. Their willingness to be loud and crazy; but our society has social standards, and being loud and crazy has its time and place. We created a dance together as a class. We read through the poem and found action words and their choose their own movement with that specific word. They found it challenging to be loud with their bodies and not their mouths, but as they explored more and more they found more interesting ways of moving. They were excited to be involved in the creative process but still have their own role as an individual.