by Dr. Desiree Cremer
The arts nourish our souls and help us to make sense of the world. When small children hop, skip, and prance around on the beach. They are only curious children drawing circles in the sand, building sandcastles, making art, and exploring. During this pandemic, we need the music, dance, and visual arts in our schools so that our students can explore and cope.
Explore
Dancers improvise and make up dances, and then they start all over again. When dancers create and explore, they qualitatively search for meaning behind the movement. Schools must offer platforms for interested students to explore music, visual arts, and dance. In high school, there is little time for creativity and no time to explore. With a series of prescribed courses and few elective options, exploring is not an option, for the school is now restrictive.
Look back and learn.
Some educational leaders plan and design curricula for students without any reflection or evaluation of the past plans. Over the years, I have seen that a new initiative generates a lot of noise. When you look at the plan, it is neither new nor innovative, just a rebranding of an old plan implemented years ago. Now the old plan is back, with a new name. The plan needs buy-in, marketed, with the familiar slogan “all on the same page,” and the school goes ahead and implements it. Then I hear the cheer, “if you are not in support of the initiative, change schools!” In my state, the public school system is a top-down system with decisions flowing from the leadership.
Educational stakeholders at the gates of implementation, such as classroom teachers, hold the data, and their voice matters. When teachers and students give their input, they may be able to get conscious-minded educational leaders to change course. When a student in a dance class struggles with a movement phrase, they will often reflect and rehearse. When the movement is not working, they will throw it out and start again. They will not repeat the movement phrase, for it is not working. How is it that we keep repeating failed educational initiatives?
Educational stakeholders at the gates of implementation, such as classroom teachers, hold the data, and their voice matters.
The Arts
Teaching under COVID-19 takes creativity and coordination, a conceptual shift of thinking that requires awareness of multiple realities. One staggering old reality staring in our face and banging at our door reveals our students’ inequities. This pandemic is taking a toll on students, faculty, and staff. The mental anguish during this crisis needs us to embrace change. If ever there is a time for mind and body connection, it is now. We need the arts; we need the visual arts, dance, and music to help us sway along with another recycled school-wide initiative.
Cooking Choreographer 
I am happy to have found this blog
Wonderfully written and beautifully articulated. The Arts IS such a vital part of society, community and humanity. We need more voices like yours! It would change more lives like you did mine.
What a wonderful surprise. Yes, it is important that students have access to the arts.
Great writing, honey!
…and actually what we talk and muse about over many delicious meals: What is it that lights the spark of curiosity, of creativity, of productivity? We may find the answers are as varied as the people you talk to all over the world. Congratulations. Keep going! Love, Max
Great writing, honey!
…and actually what we talk and muse about over many delicious meals: What is it that lights the spark of curiosity, of creativity, of productivity? We may find the answers are as varied as the people you talk to all over the world. Congratulations. Keep going! Love, Max
Dr. Creamer,
I was blessed with the opportunity to observe and actively participate in your creative modern dance classes. You not only write with true honesty in what is happening in our school system during this pandemic crisis, but you actually implement music and dance with heart and passion in your program.
You always give your students opportunities to create, explore, search for meaning behind their movements, and time to reflect what is in their heart by relating it to their truths (their own meaning of life) through dance. You have given all of your students the opportunity for mind and body connection during this time of crisis to embrace change. I commend you for practicing in your classroom what you passionately write about with conviction in your blogs.
Thank you, Denise
Dr. Cremer,
You capture the way children learn best — engaged through creativity and exploration of their body and mind.
I love the analogy of children being allowed to create when enjoying a task…like building a sandcastle in the sand, where the child has ownership and creativity is organic and unlimited.
Thank you for being the “voice” of the voiceless in education.
Jo
Thank you, Jo
Thanks Joy
Sound argument. The Waldorf schools have a similar approach, where arts are infused through the whole curriculum. Your comment about how schools keep repeating the same mistakes is most observant.
Another great analysis and commentary; we are in a system of recycled concepts and repeated patterns… Arts gives us the means and opportunities to break free from this, and taste the freedom that our souls may be thirsting for- even if it may only be brief moments in our daily lives…