Artists in the Classroom (18-19)

By Diane Musho Hamilton

From the Article: 

SIY @ Anoka-Ramsey Community College. January 2019. Coon Rapids, MN

SIY Practicum 3, at Anoka-Ramsey Community College, with Sheila!: Had an amazing first time in Minnesota - thank you for the warmth, welcome, friendship, and for a beautiful co-teaching experience. With gratitude and breath 🙏🏽📿 @searchinsideyourselfleadership @anokaramseycc

Arriving: 

Day 1:

Day 2: 

Exploring Minneapolis: 

SIY @ Marin Academy. January 2019. San Rafael, CA

Another Hip Hip Hooray 🎉🎈🎉 for SIY Practicum 2, at Marin Academy: A beautiful experience, tremendous growth edge, and so much FUN! ⭐️✨✨ T’was great to get to know Marin Academy’s faculty & alumni! And getting to work with Stephen again was pretty darn remarkable, too 🙌🏽 With gratitude and breath 🙏🏽📿 @searchinsideyourselfleadership @marinacademy​

SIY @ La Jolla Country Day School. December 2018. La Jolla, CA

A Hip Hip Hooray 🎉🎈🎉 for our first SIY practicum at La Jolla Country Day School! What a tremendous experience, with incredible staff, teachers, and administrators from the LJCDS community. Thank you Ms. Nordenger, for making it all possible, and thank you Stephen, for being an incredible co-teacher; With gratitude and breath 🙏🏽📿 @searchinsideyourselfleadership @lajollacountryday

La Jolla Country Day School. November 2018. La Jolla, CA

Over the past decade I’ve become fascinated by the characteristics of high-functioning school sites & organizations, and how we can create and sustain cultures of respect, curiosity, mindfulness, innovation, integrity, risk-taking, and healthy challenge.

“Do the students want to be here?” I’d always ask myself when working with a site. “Do the teachers want to be here?” “Is every child, regardless of background, or behavior, being treated with respect? Even when it seems like no one is looking?” And is this a place where truly *Everyone* feels safe speaking their mind?

One of the reasons I’m so exited about working with LJCDS @lajollacountryday is not only because it’s my Alma Matter (Woot Woot! 🤗) but also because of the school’s focus on Dignity — the commitment to cultivate a community of individuals who are able to see the worth, and value, in every person, and the worth and value in themselves. Beautiful.

I’m thrilled to be teaching my first SIY @serachinsideyourselfleadership practicum there with Stephen, next week! What is SIY, you might ask? — SIY is a neuroscience & mindfulness based emotional intelligence program developed within Google. It’s designed to help people manage stress, build focus, and sustain high performance, as well as support resilience, leadership, collaboration, and teamwork through empathy and compassion training — And we get to share it with Country Day! AND, I get to practice & develop my presentation skills :)

While my introvert-self got (maybe too) comfortable teaching dance over the past 7 years in the SFUSD @WEAreSFUSD, the idea of giving talks, or power point presentations has always felt a little intimidating —  it’s new, and different territory for me, indeed. However if there’s one thing I’ve leaned, it’s that I have a lot to say about what I’ve seen & experienced. And that through getting to work with & observe so many creative children over the years, the best way to work with fear is to do the things you’re afraid to do - over and over and over again. Until you’ve befriended them, until you’ve befriended your fear - and it no longer frightens you anymore.

That’s exactly what I’m going to do. I’m going to go from being a dance-teacher / introvert-down-low-researcher-and-ethnographer / person-who-only-shares-my-real-thoughts,-insights-and-observations-through-blogging to being a BOMB blazer-clad presenter! 👔👗💼💻👠 

It might take a few practicums to find my flow, and that’s OK. 

From the article: 

“His research focuses on building bridges in the language between three areas: educational psychology, dance education and the world of standardized intellectual assessment.

He was concerned that the language used by the dance education community might automatically marginalize the field in the eyes of the intellectual assessment community and, in turn, in the eyes of people who determine funding and policy.

“All I had to do was change the language of ‘bodily-kinesthetic intelligence’ to ‘proprioceptive aptitude,’” Henley said, and the TWU faculty members involved in intellectual assessment suddenly understood.

Henley explained to them that proprioception and kinesthesis are modalities for the manipulation of information to solve problems. It is the manipulation of movement qualities rather than letters or numbers.

“For me, this is a social justice issue or a neuro-diversity issue because there’s so many students out there who are only being evaluated on their ability to put letters in an order that makes sense to other people or organize numbers which can then be manipulated to find answers,” Henley said. “And, yes, those are valuable skills that develop ways of thinking, that are absolutely vital for our culture, but there’s lots of other ways to exist successfully, happily and wholly in our culture which are served through other sensory channels.”