Artifact:

5A: November Calendar

5B: Choreography

5C: Student Survey

Context:
            During the fall and winter quarters of 2003-04, I coached the drill team at a suburban junior high school. This team consisted of 50-60 girls and, for the first few weeks, two boys. My involvement with an extracurricular activity demonstrates my core belief that teaching is about educating the whole student. By becoming involved in their lives outside of the science classroom, the students were able to see my interest in them as people and their trust in me grew.

Goals and Targets:

2D: Adapting for Diversity

I adapted my teaching to the different cultural, linguistic and socioeconomic backgrounds of my students by incorporating a variety of dance styles, musical choices and written presentations into the drill team. This shows my respect for the diversity of my students.

3A: Communication Strategies

I used written, verbal and non-verbal strategies, such as explaining a dance movement while demonstrating it, and creating a written guide, to communicate with my students. This allowed students to experience a situation in multiple ways and gave them multiple opportunities to understand the material.

Reflection:

As a teacher, I am much more than a giver of knowledge. I feel that the most important aspect of my job is being a role model and mentor for my students. Many students see teachers for more hours of the day than they see their parents. This means that teachers may have a great influence on their students' lives. It is a core belief of mine that teaching is about educating the whole student. To achieve this end, I took on the role of coach for the drill team at the junior high school where I did my student teaching.

Drill team is much like a dance team. A group of middle schoolers gave up two hours of their day, four days a week to learn various routines which they performed at basketball games, pep assemblies and a district culminating event. Likewise, I was giving up two hours of my day, which easily could have been used for planning and grading, to instruct these students. We came together in the school cafeteria because we all loved to dance. The biggest challenge for me was to provide a worthwhile experience for students of varying abilities and backgrounds. I was able to do this by employing a variety of communication strategies and by incorporating elements of their backgrounds into my coaching.

Learning a dance is like learning a language, except instead of using just your mouth, you use your whole body. You must learn basic sentence structures before you can put together a paragraph and with dance, you must learn the basic movements before stringing them together to convey a feeling or message. When considering how best to teach the language of dance, I realized that many communication strategies needed to be used such as verbal explanations, physical demonstrations and written guides (Target 3A).

Because you live in your body, you know how it moves better than anyone. Even if you are not consciously aware of it, you are in control of every part of your body every moment you are awake. I needed to get all students to recognize that they needed to control all parts of their body when dancing, not just the foot they were stepping with or arm they were moving. To communicate this effectively to all the students, I gave them scenarios and had them walk across the floor in whatever manner they thought fit this scenario. For example, I told them to imagine they were a cartoon lizard. They closed their eyes and imagined what a lizard looked like and how it moved. Then, with music, they walked across the floor to their own interpretation of a lizard. This strategy gave the students the freedom to experiment without there being a "wrong way" to do it. It allowed students to feel included and respected no matter what their background (Target 2D). These "attitude walks," as the students called them, became a favorite portion of the daily routine.

If you've ever taken a dance class, you may remember that the movement quickly fades from your mind and you can't easily remember what you did the day before. I used several communication strategies to counter this (Target 3A). After stretching everyday, we had a skills section of class. The motions they learned were often skills they would later use in a routine. After this section of the class, we worked on the routine. The repetition of the skills helped them to remember the motion later. I communicated to them as a large group using a microphone to verbally tell them what I was doing and how they could do it, but I also physically showed them so that they would have another way of referencing if they were performing correctly. Often, I would give them time in small groups to work on the dances where they could turn to each other. This strategy supports another of my core beliefs that students are their own best teachers. They were able to explain to each other in new ways that I had not thought about. In addition, by teaching each other, they were able to assess their own knowledge. I would use this time to help anyone needing some one-on-one time with me and to listen/watch to find out where they needed more help.

The last communication strategy I used was written. Even after repetition, it is hard to remember a 4 minute dance. In my years of dance, I have seen many teachers expect their students to retain the movement without having anything to reference. For this reason, I wrote down all the moves with counts and cues for the students to reference at home (Artifact 5B). Students seemed to respond well to this strategy because it gave them the power to go at their own pace without the pressure of a large group. They also received notice of the schedule and performances (Artifact 5A) so that they could see our progress. This fits with another of my core beliefs that students must see the purpose behind their learning in order to invest in it.

The majority of the drill team was Caucasian and came from middle class families. There were, however, several students on the drill team who were African American and there were many who did not speak English in their homes. I recognized the diversity present and conducted continual poles of the team to decide what music we should use, the pace of the learning and the clarity of my instruction (Target 2D). In addition to a popular pop song, we danced to an 80's punk song, hip-hop song and even performed an acapella body rhythm. When students were having trouble understanding my verbal instructions, I rotated the floor positioning of the class so that those students having trouble could better see what I was doing. By not rushing forward when some were lost, everyone ended up feeling respected.

Through organization, research of other teaching methods and flexibility, I was able to provide an environment where communication boundaries were overcome and students felt respected. This challenge was well worth the investment to me because it showed the students that I am interested in their development in more arenas than the science classroom. This supports my core belief that teaching is about educating the whole person. Most of the drill team was not in my classroom during school hours, but they still knew that I cared about their learning and development. It was a joy to see them in the hallways and know that I was making a difference in their lives through opening channels for them to express themselves.