Human Tableaus

In our dance class with the 6th-8th graders my co-teacher, Miss Allie, and I are introducing the idea of improvisation through the guideline of negative space. If we consider our selves to be positive space, negative space is how we refer to the air surrounding us. To play with this idea, we asked the students to explore the negative space around each other. We split the students into groups of six and numbered them first to last. The first student improvises movement until settling into a pose, the second student then dances toward the first student and moves around their body until settling into a pose that relates to the first student's negative space. This continues until every student in the group has found a pose amidst the negative space created by the previous students, culminating in a human tableau. As Miss Allie and I say, "First thought, best thought," encouraging the skill of quick-thinking and promoting confidence in the choices the student's make.

Express Yourself

When I decided to come to India to teach the arts I knew I wanted to observe the effects of arts education on academic and life skills. Over the past few days alone I’ve seen the students’ collaboration and teamwork skills improve, as well as their ability to think creatively. 

Imagine Your Possibilities,
And Gift Them To The World

However, what I have come to realize is that the students need the arts even more as an emotional outlet and a means of expression. As mentioned in the previous post, these students have a lot riding on their education - the charge to lift their families out of extreme poverty. The stress of this responsibility is never far from the students’ minds, it weighs on them constantly. I know this from what they have shared during times of reflection, which is something they have only during arts camp. It is really wonderful to see the students open up during dance class, explore improvisation and challenge themselves to make movement choices depending on how they wish to express themselves. 

The student of team Yokohama at Arts Olympics
with their mascot, Banana Princess Tiki

Gifting

Today I composed a song with a group of 4th and 6th graders. Just to even say that I composed a song is a feat considering that I am a dancer and cannot read music, but to have composed a song with a group of 25 children is even more of a feat. One of the other volunteer artists has a degree in music education and discovered a method for composing with children after working with the Metropolitan Opera Guild. He led myself and the other volunteers in a workshop on how to lead the composition class and off we went to teach the students. It was eye-opening to realize that singing really is just speaking with a rhythm to it, and the fun comes in experimenting with diverse rhythms.

The Gifting Tree
Leave a message of positive thought
or a gift to share with the world

When working with the students, we focused the message of the song to the theme of  camp: Imagine Your Possibilities, and Gift Them to the World. To the Western world this may seem to be a straightforward idea, but to the children of Shanti Bhavan (SB) it’s a more complex thought. The students come to SB at the age of four and stay until they go to college, and even then they come back on the weekends. The children come from the poorest areas of southern India and, although the caste system is now illegal in India, their families are of the lowest “untouchable” caste. To be attending SB is an immense honor as their education, housing and food is all paid for, including their college tuition. Each year a new class of about 25 three- to five-year-olds are selected from a pool of around 300 applicants based on various academic and social tests. The students are steered toward becoming businessmen, engineers, doctors, tech specialists and other similar high-paying careers that will allow them to pull their families out of poverty. Thus, while we as artists hope to inspire the students and shed light on their many talents, we have to be careful to not promote a message that will not benefit the students in their long run. Whereas students in the Western world can imagine the possibility of becoming an actress or musician, the students of SB cannot. However, we can help the children discover how to incorporate the arts into their every day lives and illuminate how studying the arts can improve the talents needed for their professional jobs, such as original thinking, collaborative work and discipline.

The Example

For the past couple days the other volunteer artists and I have been brainstorming, planning and creating the objectives and lessons for this summer’s arts camp at Shanti Bhavan. We are all approaching this program from different disciplines, experience levels and perspectives and the result so far has been an incredible melding of ideas into new super ideas. Our process has been electric; musicians, actors, dancers and visual artists all bouncing ideas off each other and feeding on the collective energy as we work to create a program that will leave a lasting impact on the students at Shanti Bhavan. As I reflect purely on the time spent in program development with my fellow volunteers artists, I am struck by the fact that we are able to collaborate so effectively due to the traits learned from training in our art forms. It is exciting to be confident in the fact that we personify the very life skills - such as collaboration and team work - that research so often shows accompany the study of the arts. 

With that, here's to an amazing team.

ASTEP Team at Shanti Bhavan Fall 2014

Meet Some Students

Making Connections

My mission with this blog and this whole experience is to document first hand observations of the impact of arts education on the students' lives. As I was sitting at breakfast this morning (eating spicy rice covered in curry - yes, rice and curry for breakfast) I became a little overwhelmed at the task. Would I be able to observe concrete evidence of connections between the arts, academic achievement and life skills? Yet, as the day and its many activities continued, I quickly learned that observations of this connection are almost painfully evident in the students' lives at Shanti Bhavan.

An example of how arts is ingrained in SB life

An important daily event at SB is the assembly. This is a time when the entire school comes together to essentially get on the same page for the day. It kicks off with a beautiful nondenominational prayer voicing gratitude for SB and asking to always remain mindful of ways to serve others. Then one student stands in front of the entire school to read the virtue of the day, which in today's case was the value of keeping an organized life. Dr. George, the founder of SB, gave the student constructive criticism, citing her cadence as too singsong-y. The student took the notes graciously and attentively. Next four students went to the front and one-by-one reported on news articles about different issues happening nationally and internationally. The presenting students then opened the floor to questions or comments, proceeding to answer the questions on the spot.

I was a little shocked by this entire event and how well the students held themselves in the spotlight. Not one back was slouched, not one voice was inaudible and not one presenter was fidgety. No sentence fillers or embarrassed giggles to be found. Moreover, the audience was attentive the entire time, I never heard even one snicker or side conversation. After observing this assembly I had no doubt that the students' exposure to arts education played a role in their eloquent behavior. From my own experience, theatre and drama education contribute to public speaking skills, dance training benefits posture and stance, and all the arts advance critical and original thinking skills.

http://www.nasaa-arts.org/Publications/critical-evidence.pdf

The National Assembly of State Arts Agencies and the Arts Education Partnership teamed up to create a compendium on the importance of arts in our public school education. Based on their findings, the NASAA and AEP identified six major types of benefits associated with study of the arts and student achievement: reading and language skills, mathematics skills, thinking skills, social skills, motivation to learn, and positive school environment. Yet, while visual art classes are prominent, very few public schools that I know of offer performing arts classes.

Later in the day we had the opportunity to get silly and play games with the students. We sang songs and danced dances about forming and peeling bananas, hugging bears, and tiny mice with tiny feet who get pushed through a toilet seat. Do these songs and dances directly enhance the students' life and academic skills? I couldn't say for certain, but I would not be afraid to bet they do.

Playing "Funking Chicken" with 4-12 grade

Gearing up for Hugging Bears

cultureSHOCK in the best way

So it wasn’t until my friend commented on my see-ya-later post on Facebook that I realized I never explained how/why/with whom I am going to India. Let me fill you in… 

I am in India thanks to Artists Striving To End Poverty (ASTEP), a non-profit that believes in the power of arts education to give students the power to succeed:

“Access to the arts is essential to children’s academic and social success. From improving reading comprehension to advancing creative thinking, from teaching problem solving to fostering collaboration, access to the arts brings about significant improvements in children’s educational and social development.” - http://asteponline.org/2013/ourstory/

A still from dance class (I'm in the pink making the students feel goofy)

I became involved with ASTEP this past summer in NYC teaching dance at a summer camp for refugee youth organized in cooperation with the International Rescue Committee. I got to teach students from Tibet, the Ivory Coast, Sudan and about 20 other countries, and I got to learn so much more from them. The students were so grateful to be in the US and so appreciative for the chance to learn just about anything - although it did feel like pulling teeth to get a couple of the boys to dance. By the end of the four weeks though, both of my high school groups performed 3 minute dances and rocked it. Click here to see a peak: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrnywQIIKKQ&list=UUnAO-t7x9n2bbSAMR6646IQ

I had been bit by the volunteering/teaching bug and the next thing my family knew I was telling them I was going to India.

After a wild travel ride I arrived at Shanti Bhavan (SB) at 6am this morning. It’s funny, before I left everyone kept asking me, “Aren’t you so excited?”, and I never really knew how to answer. Of course I was excited, but I had no idea what to expect of where I was going so I didn’t know what to be excited for. I am happy to say that SB has exceeded any expectations I could have held. The campus is an educational oasis in the middle of a jungle. The students are more full of life than anyone I have ever met. And the teachers and staff go completely out of their way to make sure you are settled and satisfied.

Just a small example, when I got to breakfast at the dining hall this morning, I had no more than sat down in my chair when about 10 children no taller than three feet came running up asking me my name and telling me theirs. I had never felt so welcomed before in my life.

It’s only been a day, and a jet-lagged one at that, but I am already so inspired by this place and these children that I can feel the dances bubbling under the surface just waiting to be embodied.

Inside of the schoolhouse

"The Park"

The walk up to the schoolhouse