Apirl 1, 2008

First Day Back!
Being back in the feild makes me feel excited and thrilled to be in education. This block I'm completeing a unit on cultural dance and today we just learned teh Hukilaui (Hula) from Hawaii and I think the kids loved it, as we filled out our journals as they wrote what they like and what they didn't like about the dance and even all the boys were excited about the hip motions which we were doing. The students explored the music first and were able to make assumptions about the dance and how it might look and after we learned the entire dance they were able to add their own flare to the dance, which I believed was really important as I wanted my students to take ownership of the dance so that they were able to remember it and begin to think about creating dances. Something that I'm happy I'm using this semster is dance journals where the students answer a question about the dance which they completed and think critically. This unit I wanted the students to think about themselves and how they act within dance so that if I ever used this unit I could suit the students suggestions to make it better or take the unit farther for the students, as they begin to have say (take responsiblity) in their education which is a system which we are further moving towards. One thing that I can't believe that how much the students have grown up in the past year, we have been with the students since October and they have reach a sense of indepence in a year which is amazing, I'm sad to leave these students in a week as I feel I have gotten to know each one of them on such a different level and their progress is something that is so inspiring to me, that makes me believe that I am truely in the right profession.