July 19, 2012
Two blog posts in one day, you ask?!?! Ahhhh, the joys of summer
programming. With her class starting tomorrow, Michelle Kuchuk took
some time to journal about the many reasons she’s excited to teach
tomorrow’s Dance workshop.
Most of you know me as the embarassing-ly
silly teacher in Daytime Moon’s past programs, but those of you who know
me well know that I am incredibly invested in the academic relevance of
everything we do here at Daytime Moon. It may seem like we just like to
have fun, and certainly that joy is the centerpiece of all of our
programs, but there is a substantial amount of scientific data
supporting every curricular choice we’ve made. If you’ve gotten a chance
to read the article Emily shared with you the other week from Autism
Spectrum News, called “Everyone Can Play-Using Theatre to Promote Developmental Gains,”
you’ve seen some of the scientific support for theatre. But Michelle
has taken this opportunity to share some exciting research about her
discipline, Dance. And it’s mind-blowing!
So, from one nerd to (I hope) many more, it gives me such joy to
share with you Michelle’s journal. I hope it’ll resonate with you the
same way it resonated with me, and that you’ll join us on Facebook,
Cheers!
Jenna
Jenna
And without further ado… MICHELLE!
***
Most of you know me as Jenna’s assistant teacher for all of our
regular programs, but tomorrow I’ll be teaching the dance workshop as
part of Daytime Moon’s summer series! My mom used to be a choreographer
and danced for most of her adult life, and I probably watched Gene
Kelly or Fred Astaire tap their way into a frenzy on the day I was born
(her favorite movie of all time being “Singin’ in the Rain”). I’ve been
dancing at least in some sort of capacity since I was three, having
fallen back in love with dance in the last two years, so I was therefore
incredibly excited when Jenna asked me to teach our dance workshop!
Since I’ve now been working with Daytime Moon for a year and a half, I
was also really excited to figure out how I could apply this particular
medium into our usual methodologies and reasoning behind our classic
theatrical programming.
As it turns out, there is a lot of exciting and newer research to be
learned about some of the benefits from learning a skill such as music
or dance – benefits that you might think you could guess (as I did),
when in reality, the research reveals far more than what is typically
held to be common knowledge.
I’ll start at the beginning. The great thing about dance whether
you’re Michael Jackson, a Daytime Moon student, the star of Swan Lake,
or me, is that while learning a new dance step does require some verbal
instruction, we can only dance anything complicated after forming
nonverbal knowledge, commonly known as muscle memory. (In actuality,
the phrase ‘muscle memory’ is a bit of a misnomer as it is our brain
networks, and not our muscles, that store memories of movements. These
memories can therefore be more correctly referred to as motor memories.
The important point, though, is that these motor memories are specific
to movement and distinctly different from the memories of the verbal
instructions of the same action.) I can tell you about a plié in ballet
or a time step in tap until I’m blue in the face, but you’ll only even
begin to interpret the step until you see ME do it, and only truly learn
it if YOU do it.
WHAT?! First of all: does the chunk of the brain that gets activated
when my student sees me perform a dance step get activated when he
performs the same step? Research has shown again and again that there
is a huge overlap, that certain networks of the brain get activated when
both doing and observing the same action. Does the network get more activated
if the student was already a pro at the step he was watching me
perform? Yes: a network in the cortex called the action observation
network becomes even more active when we watch a step that we are
already physically familiar with. This body of research
suggests that the action observation network is a ‘general-purpose
observational learning network for simulating actions, and it is cued by
both physical and symbolic models.’ We learn better by DOING.
WHAT?! Schools typically emphasize reading, writing, and math
because these subjects are supposed to produce development in reasoning,
abstraction, and semantic knowledge. The only reason P.E. is probably
still in some curricula is because of the health benefits – I know I’m
not alone in remembering how I ‘got out of it’ in order to take more
advanced classes in history and English. Courses focusing on physical
knowledge such as wood shop, music, dance, and theatre are being cut,
and are often only ‘saved’ when these mediums are thought to help with
academic learning. We assume that anyone with sufficient cognitive
abilities can gain physical knowledge if they just put their minds to
it; this interpretation of the relationship between ‘knowing’
(cognitively) and ‘doing’ is false, and yet it dominates educational
policy and practice today. Any importance placed on the arts is viewed
through the lens of helping a child learn the core subjects. I’m sure
most of us (me included) have defended the arts in this way, and it’s an
extremely important and valid point (which I’ll explain in more depth
in just a sec) … but it’s actually not the whole story. All of those
crazy sentences about action networks and observational learning show us
that a whole wealth of ‘other’ knowledge comes from experiencing the
physical world – knowledge that is separate from and not JUST supporting
cognitive knowledge and training. Experiential knowledge is
inherent in creating surgeons, scientists, innovators, truck drivers…
the list goes on. Their learning comes from observational and imitative
learning, which this action observation network facilitates.
…But yes, there is a whole ton of ongoing research that supports the
fact that learning and performing an art – if we practice a lot and are
truly engaged – strengthens the brain’s attention system which improves
cognition more generally (measured by IQ scores, among other means).
Attention plays a crucial role in learning and memory, and this, without
question, improves cognitive performance. It might seem obvious, or
something you kinda just assumed was true, but it’s actually pretty
scientific: our brain changes according to what we do, in other words,
our behaviors shape our brain. If we find an art that we like and it
completely engages us and then we stick with it, learning and memory
(especially) will improve. The more and more we practice our clarinet,
the more and more efficient that specific clarinet brain network
becomes. And because everything in the brain seems to happen in
conjunction, this increased efficiency in the clarinet network causes
all of our other attention networks to become more efficient, like, for
example, a network called the executive attention network. This
particular network is especially interesting because it helps us control
our emotions, and choose among conflicting thoughts in a specific
moment (should I play the B flat or the A minor?) in order to focus on
our long-term goals (I want to be a musician, graduate high school,
etc). These abilities are also important in creating social and
academic success by helping to develop empathy and manage impulses.
Getting back to dancing specifically, it has been shown that empathy can
also be gained from movements alone: after watching dance clips,
observers could gauge whether the dancer was happy, sad, or nervous
based only on their body movements.
The last yet extremely important facet of teaching the arts is based
around finding passion. The need or want to learn the skills of music,
dance, theater, painting, film, or building your own guitar is a source
of important motivation that spreads to all aspects of any learner’s
life. Our brain is an unbelievable and curious entity, and research is
showing more and more how brain systems are actually driven by
passionate interests and physical skills. This is not to say that every
single person out there is going to learn ‘better’ by engaging in some
sort of art form. But when kids find that particular artistic endeavor
that they really love, you’d be hard-pressed to find another subject
that would produce such strong and sustained attention that happens to
also be incredibly rewarding and motivating.
So what the heck do I want and expect from my workshop tomorrow?
This is a one-time workshop and will be an introduction to just getting
in our bodies while having a whole bunch of fun, but I guess this blog
illustrates a few of the reasons why we wanted to introduce our students
to different mediums: so they could find the art form they loved best
but still experience it in the context of the practices and approach of
Daytime Moon. With dance, it’s nice to know that not all learning has
to be so verbal – even though we are engaging our minds. Dance gets into our bodies and our brains in ways that just maybe, we never really expected.
I’ll be blogging again after my class tomorrow (and I promise to
leave out all talk of observation networks) but I’ll leave you with
this: I was four years old the first time I was ever onstage. I was in a
dance recital, and we were all lions. We took our bows, and then
4-year-old Michelle sneaked back onstage for a second bow. In
tomorrow’s class, I hope to include not only lions, but the joy that
must have been at play for me to have bowed twice.
Don’t forget to follow along on all our social media!
See you in class,
Michelle
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