Teacher scholar Emily Blossom, OUSD
I’ve invited five of my first-grade students to join me for lunch in our classroom. In this group are two native English speakers and three English Language Learners (ELLs), a ratio which is reflective of the school population. We’re sitting at a classroom table, looking at videos taken during the creative dance class we just finished about a half hour ago, taught by a dance educator from the Luna Dance Institute. The kids are excited because they are the stars of the movie they’re watching! I ask them to describe what they see.
Liz: I saw Kyle spinning around Zara and he was doing this (gestures with arms wide).
Antonio: I see Zara doing a shape and Kyle doing like this (gestures turning and going backwards).
Teacher: Now this time, I want you to think as dancers and use dance words.
Liz: He’s bowing and spreading his arms wide.
Jori: I think that was like a bird.
Teacher: Do you think that was what he wanted to do? Can you use any dance words?
Jori: Smoothing.
Jessica: Loose.
Elodie says, “She’s moving like a little slug, like a little caterpillar.” Elodie’s an ELL, and she’s struggling to find the words, but she’s using her body to show the way an inchworm folds itself and then expands forward. The others supply some more ideas: “bursting,” “falling,” “twirling,” “balancing.” When they’re finished eating, we move to the classroom rug and I ask them to show me some of the moves they saw each other making in the video. They happily demonstrate for me, reenacting each other’s creative explorations.
I listen to the recording of this lunchtime conversation on my way home. I’m hearing the kids’ processing in a new way, when I have the luxury of not managing the class or thinking about the next step, but just listening to them. While their language is imprecise, they’re noticing details about each other’s dancing that I didn’t appreciate because I was so focused on whether or not they could use the specific vocabulary. I’ve kept these recordings of lunch conversations with my students on my phone for months now, because every time I listen to them, I hear something I hadn’t noticed before. I keep thinking about the value of teaching dance, and the ways that the arts can support a child’s emerging literacy. This is the type of powerful arts integration that I was able to understand and apply in my classroom, thanks to my inquiry with Mills Teacher Scholars --arts integration that I had always supported, but for a long time had not worked to fully leverage.
