Isn’t part of the art of living “to be old when you’re young and to be young when you’re old”, as the saying goes? To be “forever young”, and “wise beyond our years”?
It may be that we humans, for all our seasoned expertise, are but toddlers in the universe…beginners all. Our biology may be ancient, but our development as homo sapiens sapiens is just learning to toddle around.
So, what happens when we overpower young lives with what we think we know?
Practical and awesome Human Body education is seriously missing from most public and private school curricula in the USA. Why?
Well, here’s something that remedies this in a small but effective way. We call it Human Body School.
Today’s blog is a kind of ‘dispatch from the edge’ of arts integrating exploration of our amazing human bodies.
Here’s a snapshot:
Bilingual teaching environments serve as brilliant neurolinguistics laboratories. We’ve been astounded again and again by the phenomenon of accelerated language transference and enhanced learning through the conductive media of music, song, story, dance and movement theater.
It should be no surprise. Here’s a sprinkling of language formation facts:
“The Blue Mind way of education not only trusts in our natural intelligence,
it IS our natural intelligence at work…”
“Red Brain loves to explain and inform. Explaining and informing is not teaching…”
A few years ago we were teaching our “We Are Here” curriculum in a Montessori school. It dovetails nicely with the Montessori philosophy, especially exploring the solar system, the Earth’s timeline, and micro-macrocosm comparisons. In teaching the song Riddle of the Planets, we show a video of a CGI model of the helical motions of our solar system. It’s awesome. It crudely depicts the combined spiral pathways of the planets around our sun as the sun moves through the galaxy. It successfully breaks away from the single plane Newtonian atomic model of the solar system and opens the door to breathtaking new perceptions.
“It is all about promoting the arts as a tool for learning. It’s about teachers using the arts in their classrooms as a media of translation
and full bodied expression of their curriculum content. It is a powerfully effective teaching methodology…”
Arts Education is learning to express through art forms – music, dance, visual arts, poetry, drama…and more.
Arts Integrated Education is giving expression to learning through an art form (or forms) in order to assimilate, deepen and broaden one’s understanding and to develop high function mental and emotional faculties.
Education, at its core, is truly one of the highest art forms.
This is the 50th anniversary of the NEA and to celebrate they are publishing “Our Story” from their recipients around the country. With gratitude for their generous contributions to Talking Hands Talking Feet and Songs To Educate, here is our little story.
Every year since 2008, our company, Talking Hands Talking Feet has received generous grants from NEA for our curriculum based performing arts programs in Santa Fe schools, under the fiscal sponsorship of Partners In Education.
Here is the remarkable story behind it.
Human Body School is a springboard for daily arts integrated education activities as well as a curriculum based performing arts program. Songs To Educate also offers professional development workshops where we can come and show you how to do it.
Imagine primary grade children learning the human body by ‘theaterizing’ how it works. Imagine learning about the heart by being the heart, circulatory and respiratory systems; or understanding what happens to the food we eat by enacting the digestive system from top to bottom. That’s Human Body School.
Talking Hands Talking Feet shows how to bring the curriculum alive through interactive performing arts programs, culminating with three Spring performances in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Teaching subjects through song and movement arts is transforming children’s learning one classroom at a time. Establishing this cutting edge teaching methodology has been the mission of Paul and Melanie Zeir, cofounders of Songs To Educate and their internationally recognized record label, Talking Hands Talking Feet, since 1997.
This Spring, Talking Hands Talking Feet celebrates its tenth anniversary creating curriculum based performing arts programs in Santa Fe, New Mexico public and independent schools. These twelve week arts integrated programs culminate with school and community performances of a very special nature.
