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Site-Specific In-Services & Consultation |
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Conscientious educators are now interested in teaching critical thinking skills, empowering students to pose their own problems and create flexible, innovative solutions that are based on the understanding that each person's point of view comes from a particular cultural perspective. The growing popularity of learning theories such as Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences, Constructivism, Bruner's spiral curriculum, active learning and multi-cultural education encourage a school environment that embraces the arts. Creative dance is a way to observe how children learn by "constructing their own understanding". Dance, through a combination of experiential activities, developmental readiness, peer support, social/cultural context, and the conscious, skilled guidance of a teacher or caregiver, helps each child reach his/her potential. Dance educators must learn to expand theoretical models and practical frameworks to account for student relevancy, integration into curricular design and to meet the needs of a diverse population of students. We must be informed agents of educational reform, allowing dance to take its rightful place in creative, liberating educational practice. We acknowledge that teachers can only teach what they know. To that end, it is the goal of our Professional Development component to offer widespread sharing of resources toward teachers' creative goals. Luna Kids Dance teacher education services provides the raw materials with which teachers can develop their own movement curriculum with a clear understanding of the principles behind them. Luna Kids Dance offers site and population specific in-services and consultations designed to address the individual needs of clients. Services may include: one-day to six-week teacher in-service, on-site parent/child class, model class taught by LKD faculty, cooperative teaching between LKD faculty and school-based teacher, creating a structure for ongoing artist/teacher collaboration, curricular development and programmatic consultation, or any combination of the above. In all cases, LKD will tailor a program to specifically meet the needs of youth, staff and parents in the community. Sample In-service Workshop: Promoting Children's Creativity through Dance People who use our service may include:
LKD's clients include: Albany Unified School District; Axis Dance Troupe, Oakland; California State University, Hayward; Los Angeles Unified School District; Mills College, Oakland; Oakland Unified School District; San Francisco Ballet; San Francisco Unified School District/Arts Education Funders' Collaborative; St. Mary's College, Come Alive Program, Moraga; and Sutro Child Development Center and University of California, Child Care Services, Berkeley. For more information, please contact us at profdev@lunakidsdance.org |