To Each its Own: Targeting My Professional Development Workshops

In the last couple months I've had whole bunches of fun presenting professional development workshops in a variety of settings, to a variety of people.  Let's see...math teachers from all over the U.S., PE teachers from across Indiana, classroom teachers from Indianapolis, fellow Teaching Artists from a variety of disciplines, and arts education administrators from Young Audiences affiliates from around the country. 

Each session bore the title 'Math in Your Feet' and was a combination of big picture information and hands-on experience, but that is where the similarity ended and my job got really interesting!

For the classroom teachers I started by focusing on the challenges of using movement in a classroom setting.  As they started to move and experiment with foot-based percussive patterns they became more comfortable and sure in their own movement.  This approach usually leads to a greater willingness to embrace, sometimes for the first time, the possibility of leading their own students in movement-based learning.  To some extent I am also encouraging them to have fun with math, many for the first time.  I consider the 'doing and making' of percussive dance patterns in this program the same as the 'doing and making' of math so, in every teacher workshop I do, I walk them step by step through the intersection where math and dance meet.  We're so used to focusing on the symbolic, static realm of mathematics that we don't always recognize when we see math happening in front of our eyes.  It helps to have a guide.

For the self-identified math teachers at the NCTM annual meeting I also started with a message of 'anyone can lead movement in the classroom and here are some tools' but then quickly moved toward 'here is an opportunity for your students to represent their math understanding in a new way within the kinesthetic realm'.  I also drew their attention to the fact that the processes of solving a problem in both math and dance (choreography) are often similar -- question, understand what tools it might take to answer the question, experiment with ideas, use your resources, find an answer that seems to work, evaluate and then ask more questions. 

The group of 80 or so PE teachers was a new one for me simply because there was not one bit of trepidation or reluctance to get up and move!  Not all of them were comfortable with the idea of dance, at least initially, but they were definitely game.  I was only with them for about an hour, and I couldn't go very deep, so I stuck with active modeling of the bridge between my particular brand of movement with an academic content area.  If I had had more time with them, I would have focused on the  process for moving the dance to the page -- speaking the words that describe aspects of our movement as we move, writing those words down, turning these words into symbols, and graphing foot positions on a coordinate grid.  I did the point that Math in Your Feet can be a collaboration between classroom and specials teachers, just like it is when I lead my residency.  The concrete movement and math activities can be done in PE or music class which then build the bridge to the formal, written, symbolic realm of math back in the regular classroom.

At their conference the arts education administrators were focusing on how to add the A in arts to STEM topics (STEM to STEAM).  I gave a general overview of the program and laid out my process for building the program and integrating the dance with the math.  The most important issue for me is that when you are thinking about integrating any art form with another content area you really need to be honest with yourself and ask 'is it a good fit?'  If the answer is no then it is not worth forcing the issue.  If you think 'maybe' then do a little more work to explore the connections.  In the end, though, the connections need to be more than skin deep.  Just because we count our beats in this program doesn't mean I consider that a good example of what math and dance have in common.  I also gave a similar account of how I combined math and dance to my fellow Teaching Artists.

My favorite moments while teaching teachers are when they ask me questions that show me they are imagining how they will do this work with their own students.  It's similar to house hunting, I suppose.  The minute you start imagining where you're going to put your furniture the realtor knows you might really be serious!  I love hearing all the different ways engaged and caring education professionals imagine tailoring my ideas for their own particular learning environments. 

Divided Loyalties?

In the process of exploring the intersections between math and dance I find that I seem to camp out in one subject for a while, and then pack up and move on back to the other camp.  Frankly, it leaves me feeling a bit fractured, which is interesting since I have declared in the past that in Math in Your Feet the two subjects come together 'seamlessly.' 

Maybe for the kids, yes, but not for me.  So let's focus on me for a moment.

This issue shows up in my teaching.  When I am thinking too closely about the math, my feet don't move in class.  They don't talk.  I forget to use the one great attention getter I have that nobody else does -- my tap shoes!  I forget to start our sessions with the art and instead hurry forward to the math. 

My most recently completed residency at Christel House Academy has made me think of this.  The residency was part of a pilot project by Young Audiences to evaluate the structure of their new Signature Core Services and the elements that interact to create a quality arts learning experience.  They wanted to know if and how these elements were brought out in this particular arts-based programming.  But me? I was worried about how I was teaching the math and was surprised that they didn't even care about that (for the purposes of the pilot).  That shows you where my mind is these days, doesn't it? 

I've also spent a lot of time overly focused on the dance (mostly in the first few years of developing the program) but these days?  These days, as I teach, I have mostly been taking the dance for granted.  I am quite surprised and somewhat alarmed to realize that I've been seeing dance as a means to an end.  I'm horrified, actually! This is not really supposed to happen in an integration and I'm really supposed to be on the side of the dancing right?  Yes, we're dancing and moving our bodies at least two thirds of each workshop, but I am realizing now just how much my mind has been over at the math camp.

I think this might be because I've been spending much of my creative work time this fall focused on learning about math.  I've been trying to figure out what math means:  What is math really?  What other kinds of math are we doing in this program besides the ones I know about already?  What kinds of conversations are these kids having about the math while they're dancing?  The learning I've engaged in, I believe, has been a full out creative process, one full of questions, dead ends, frustration, problem solving (What don't I know?  Where do I need to go to find out?  What sorts of questions do I need to ask?  Am I asking the right questions?) and 'aha!' moments. 

My intellectual explorations have affected my teaching in the past as well.  Earlier in the development of Math in Your Feet, when I was still trying to figure out how the dance and math fit together I was deeply engaged in exploring the integration aspect of the program and  my teaching at the time reflected this.  Although I did have questions about the value of teaching the integration (and still do; mostly I think it's a good tactic) I was working it out in the classroom none-the-less.

So here's a question: If the basic flow of the residency content stays the same, does it matter if my interests bias our focus, even if slightly?  Does it matter if I'm over in the math camp while teaching a dance-based program?

Maybe my loyalties to both camps are like siblings vying for their mother's attention.  I am essentially acting as the content specialist for both camps simultaneously and it's hard to pay attention to both equally at the same time. 

Maybe I embody the reality of integration and the inherent tensions therein?  It's interesting to reflect on this question because, since it's just me responsible for both content areas, we can't blame the tension on personality conflicts between teaching artist and classroom teacher.

Maybe none of this matters because one's best teaching comes when you're enthusiastic, engaged and truly interested in the subject matter. 

Maybe it doesn't matter which camp I'm in on any given day or year because the truth is the kids are moving, they're dancing, they're thinking intensely with their bodies and they're learning a whole lot of math, all at the same time.

I've been told on numerous occasions that I think too much, but who was it that said an 'unexamined life is not worth living'?  (I just Googled it, it was Socrates.)  I think it is important for me to ask questions about where my loyalties lie even if, in the end, it doesn't matter.  I'm a process person, I live in the moments between.  And, I know I'm a better teacher when I'm inspired, whether it be by math or dance or reading Carla Hannaford's book Smart Moves like I did in the Fall of 2009.  Hopefully my dance friends will put up with my math obsessions for a while.  I'll be back soon!

The Mind/Body Split: A Guest Post from My Former Self

I found my former self in some files recently, but I wasn't sure what to do with her, until now.  Here's what happened:

A friend sent me a link to an article titled Children's Gestures and the Embodied Knowledge of Geometry.  This is an incredibly important finding.  Here's the abstract:

There is mounting research evidence that contests the metaphysical perspective of knowing as mental process detached from the physical world. Yet education, especially in its teaching and learning practices, continues to treat knowledge as something that is necessarily and solely expressed in ideal verbal form. [Emphasis mine.]  This study is part of a funded project that investigates the role of the body in knowing and learning mathematics. Based on a 3-week (15 1-h lessons) video study of 1-s grade mathematics classroom (N = 24), we identify 4 claims: (a) gestures support children’s thinking and knowing, (b) gestures co-emerge with peers’ gestures in interactive situations, (c) gestures cope with the abstractness of concepts, and (d) children’s bodies exhibit geometrical knowledge. We conclude that children think and learn through their bodies. [Emphasis mine.]  Our study suggests to educators that conventional images of knowledge as being static and abstract in nature need to be rethought so that it not only takes into account verbal and written languages and text but also recognizes the necessary ways in which children’s knowledge is embodied in and expressed through their bodies.

Reading this abstract I am reminded that when I was in college I was concerned with, among other things, the continuation of a dichotomous world view; you know, seeing only us/them, self/other, intellect/emotion, good/evil and not any of the gray area in between.  In particular, one of my main concerns at the time was of the mind/body split.

That's where my former self comes in; it turns out she actually has a lot to offer this discussion.  Here is an excerpt from the introduction of a paper I wrote at the end of a quarter of self-directed study in 1989.  The paper is grandly titled "Connections: Healing the Split within Western Thought" and although I'm pretty sure it wasn't my best work, I find this portion to be particularly interesting. 

(Please excuse my youthful idealism.  And, please keep in mind the first line of the above abstract as you read: "There is mounting research evidence that contests the metaphysical perspective of knowing as mental process detached from the physical world.")

"In a dream I had a couple years ago, I cut off my head and walked around with it under my arm.  But the funny thing was, I could still hear and think, and feel.  I sat it down on a bed and we looked at each other for a while.  Then it was time for me to put the head back on my neck; I tried to keep it there but it flopped around like a little baby's head.  Finally, I got it settled, but then realized that I had to sew it to my neck -- but I hate to sew!  So I just let it sit there and walked around with a bright red line of blood around my neck.  I never did connect my head to my body, until now."

"The dream of severing my head from my body and then being reluctant to reattach it in any permanent way was, I know now, an unconscious image of the dichotomous schema that pervades Western thought.  Polarities such as self/other, us/them, male/female, black/white, mind/body, human/animal, and life/death permeate our mentality and prevent us from seeing the necessary relationships and connections that run between them. [...]

"In the following pages, I touch on the issue of how we have become so disconnected with the world.  And, more importantly, I look at the steps we can take to heal the split to become whole again.  In Part One, I trace briefly the major steps in history that have contributed to the dichotomy of thought that exists in our society today.  In Part Two, I present the foundation of holistic thought, which includes a brief discussion of Gregory Bateson's epistomology -- how we can learn to know the world as it really is.  Part Three investigates the characteristics of creativity and how it can help everyone reach her or his potential in life.  And, finally, Part Four shows how, when combined, Systems Theory, Batesonian epistemology, and creativity create an understanding of how we can, at least in theory, heal the split."

Um.  Okay, I know that was a big bite of thinking I took back then but let's but fast forward to now.  I suppose you could say that in creating a curriculum that integrates math and dance, using concrete movements and patterns executed by the body to illustrate and illuminate the often abstract world of mathematics, I am attempting to 'heal the split.'  I should also say that, at the time, I was acutely aware that I was short on life experience with which to illustrate my ideas.  My twenties were spent searching for a solid tether; when I found step dancing five years after this paper was written I felt a huge relief that I was finally doing something meaningful and real. 

And now?  Now it seems I've come full circle because from where I sit it is clear to me that finding the connection between mind and body has been my life's work all along.  I also like reading about the seeds of my interests in understanding the uses and benefits of creativity outside the realm of artistic process.  But that's for another day. 

(A side note from me as the spouse of a digital archivist -- if I hadn't printed out my papers back in 1989 and only kept my now inaccessible 'floppy discs' there would be no 'former self' to contribute to this blog.  How will you be accessing your digital files twenty years from now?  Just sayin'!)

Good Words

Another 'map is not the territory' moment... This one hangs in my home studio/office to keep me in line.  Does it relate to your life in any way? 

Artwork by Morag Manzer, Charlottetown, PEI Canada