Instruction Commentary

“When you shared the elements of dance poster it really showed me how to pay attention to all that is going on when someone is dancing – I appreciate their work in conveying a story. The dancerʻs make it look easy but I know it is difficult.” (Kristy Kamoku)

“I enjoyed the video and the connections you asked the students to make to the video to engage them in thought.” (Kim)

In this lesson, I set high expectations for the community of inquiry, for observation, interpretation, reflection, respectful listening, analysis, written and verbal communication. I set high expectations by being transparent about the connection between the concepts in the lesson and students’ potential success in dance, school, and life. Students also demonstrate responsibility for their learning by actively engaging in close observation, deep thinking, reflection, writing, speaking, and in other lessons, actively dancing, and utilizing other modes of expression. In this lesson, students showed rigor in their thinking about the concepts by writing about their observation of the film clip, discussing and analyzing their observations with peers, and asking critical questions of other students and of me as the teacher.

This lesson focuses on one universal concept, consistent with theory on Concept-Based Curriculum and relevance to students’ academic, personal, and future professional lives. I utilize Universal Design for Learning (UDL), which requires that students be able to engage with material in different ways and is also aligned with the theory of Multiple Intelligences. Therefore, in this lesson I demonstrated by Modeling the skills and concepts of the lesson, and integrated Skill Practice in the areas of observation, listening, writing, speaking, applying concepts, and reflecting. This rigorous approach includes academic vocabulary, critical thinking, writing and speaking skills. The class forms an intellectual community of inquiry, sharing responsibility for the generation of knowledge in alignment with Critical Emancipation theory.

Students were responsible for their roles as active learners from the start, as I introduced the Essential Questions that we would be answering together immediately after greeting the class and announcing the title of the lesson: “How can we exchange ideas and beliefs in an open-minded way? How does one distinguish fact from interpretation in observations of dance and in life?” I challenged students to take on a variety of learning objectives, and proposed an agenda to facilitate our exploration, including a thinking tool to expand what students are able to observe in a dance, and a dance (on video) that would entertain but also prompt a variety of responses that we then leveraged to deepen students’ thinking.

Students engaged in guided note-taking, I modeled writing and sharing, students exchanged ideas in pair share/small groups, I recapitulated our progress as we went, I normalized students’ perspectives and acknowledged student sharing to validate them as sources of knowledge: “Thank you everyone for all of those observations that I got to peek into, we have reviewed, written, consulted, distinguished fact from interpretation…I wanted to emphasize that there’s nothing wrong with us having these interpretations, opinions, and biases that we apply to the facts of that we view and it can be helpful to have that distinction as a jumping-off point in communicating with others about what we see.” I facilitated large group discussion of our findings and wrapped up with connections to dance and life.

Peer feedback pertaining to this domain was very positive:

“I appreciate the clarity of the lesson. You explained the instructions of the lesson methodically” (Vanessa)

“You had really clear objectives that were measurable for the most part! I also learned about the elements of dance. I had never really considered any of this before and you have made me a much more better consumer of watching dance.” (Amber)

“I appreciated that you continually summarized what we were going to do. You said, ‘so you will be paying attention to what you see and also what you think and feel.’”  (Dr. Mangram)

“Modeling how we were to process our observations of the dance was SUPER helpful.” (Rochelle)

“I appreciate your ability to model what you wanted us to do.” (Anonymous)

“I appreciate how you broke down the elements of dance into subsections that made it easy for your students to understand and observe in the video.” (Misti)

“I appreciate how you geared this lesson toward students with varying levels of experience with dance and music in general. Students such as myself who are unfamiliar with dance concepts were able to analyze and participate with students very familiar with dance and music theory (who are are probably more used to teaching).  Experienced and unexperienced students are both able to discern the facts vs biases (ie there are two people vs the dancers are amazing)” (Adriane)

I strive to make learning relevant to students’ academic, personal, and professional lives. I made a point to scaffold this lesson on the distinction between fact and interpretation as part of a larger critical framework, for application to student’s viewing of choreography, work on their own dances, personal, academic, and future professional lives. This way, the lesson is suitable and challenging for all experience levels in dance and different critical skill levels. Watching the lesson on video, I see that I was successful in providing clear objectives (and will get better at this with practice), spoken and written directions, tools, visual aids, connections and applications. I communicated with clarity, precision, and energy in the delivery of this lesson in seminar as well as in class at Kaiser High School. Procedures and directions were conveyed in my slide presentation as well as in my spoken presentation, and the concepts were scaffolded appropriately for secondary learners and beyond. I also situated the purpose of the lesson in the context of course objectives.

To make learning relevant and effective, the design of my lesson was aligned with many of Ormrod’s “Big Ideas:”

#1 Learners do not passively absorb information from the environment: rather, they actively work to make sense of their environment and construct their own, unique understanding of the world. (Cognitive Theory, Knowledge Construction/Constructivism, Elaboration/Information Processing Theory, Information Seeking/Behaviorism; students had the opportunity to actively engage in this lesson via observation, reflection, and discussion)

#2 “Learning is more likely to occur when learners pay attention to the information to be learned.” (Dual Store Model of Memory/Info Processing Theory, Modeling/Social Cognitivism, Orienting Response/Behaviorism; I selected a fun and thought-provoking video clip to pique students’ interest and conveyed conceptual information in clear and varied ways)

#3 “Learners learn more effectively when they relate new information to prior knowledge.” (Chaining/Behaviorism, Assimilating/Piaget, Script/Schema Theory; students were invited to bring in their own life experiences and subject area knowledge)

#6 “Hints about how to think or behave often facilitate performance.” (Retrieval/Info Processing, Scaffolding/Sociocultural, Discriminative Stimuli/Behaviorism; I gave hints about how to think and behave, and modeled the observation, reflection, writing, and discussion process for students)

#7 “Learning and development are fostered when learners are challenged to perform increasingly more difficult tasks or to think in increasingly more sophisticated ways.” (pretty much every theory, this lesson was scaffolded to present the tasks in increasingly sophisticated ways)

#8 “Learners benefit from hearing or reading the ideas of others.” (Conditioning/Behaviorism, Social Constructivism; students shared their ideas with partners and in the larger group)

#9 “Learning is enhanced when learners engage in self-evaluation.” (Programmed Instruction/Behaviorism, Comprehension Monitoring/Info Processing, Self-Regulation/Social Cognitive Theory; learners evaluated their thinking regarding the fact/interpretation distinction)

Required Prompt

How does the learning environment you create and your instructional practices align to the goals of social justice educators as they are described in Teaching Tolerance’s Social Justice Standards?

My lesson was designed with Multicultural Education and Critical Emancipation Theory in mind, particularly with regard to a safe community of inquiry, sensitivity to diversity, and student empowerment. As we prepared to share our observations of the video clip, I made sure to normalize individual/small group ideas and responses: “I wanted to emphasize that there’s nothing wrong with us having these interpretations, opinions, and biases that we apply to the facts of what we view and it can be helpful to have that distinction as a jumping-off point in communicating with others about what we see.“ The students were challenged to communicate in an open-minded way in their partner discussion: “with my partner I would identify which of those observations were really objective facts that we could agree upon together and which of those might more subjective impressions that I’m assuming.”

During the lesson, we practiced skills in objectivity and tolerance of multiple viewpoints, and a democratic approach to generating knowledge. This approach supports Ormrod’s Big Ideas #8 “Learners benefit from hearing or reading the ideas of others.” (Conditioning/Behaviorism, Social Constructivism; students shared their ideas with partners and in the larger group), which is beneficial to learning in general, but to Social Justice Education specifically, as it supports the development of positive identity, awareness of diversity, recognition of injustice, and taking action. It was in my summary that I made the social justice and life applications of this lesson more explicit: “you guys really pointed to some good interpretations, and really more questions than answers in a lot of cases about what is subjective? What is objective? Let’s really pick apart what we can all see and then what do we make it mean based on our knowledge, our beliefs, our background experiences, which definitely has a lot of applications for us as dancers, but also observers of dance and dance critics. If we were to continue to look at it from that point of view, we would go on through this process of being able to describe an analyze and interpret, but then based on all of that information be able to use it to evaluate whether [dance] works are effective or not. On a larger scale in our lives, we can also look at in our interactions with our selves, with our classmates, with our students, ask ourselves: ‘is my thought about this a judgement or an interpretation?’ Or if it’s a fact, are other interpretations possible? And then see what light that sheds on your judgements of yourself and about others, and in the classroom.”

Students came away from the lesson aware of the fact/interpretation distinction, having reflected and written personally and dialogued with a partner. They practiced open-minded communication, written and oral, in pairs and in a large-group context (consistent with Social Constructivist theory). I hope that they started seeing how the facts of the situation were contant, yet people’s interpretations could vary and are worthy of respect. Some students in the cohort did come away somewhat unclear about whether or how the lesson conveyed my selected Social Justice Standard, so I have room for growth in this area:

“In DI.8 it states that student will respectfully express curiosity about the history of others in an open-minded way. How does your lesson help us to consider this? I notice you said that this is part of a bigger lesson. With the history portion be address prior to this or after?” (Monica)

“What was your link to the social justice standard?–maybe make this a little more explicit.” (Amber)

In the future, I’d like to reiterate what an intellectually safe community of inquiry is before we launch into discussion in lessons, and I’ll also work to make my connections to Social Justice Standards more explicit. I think there’s a script in my head about how I need to be sneaky about embedding Social Justice into my curriculum, where just being totally transparent makes more sense.

My goal was to encourage respectful student discourse and create connections between my subject and other areas of life through questioning, and I believe I was successful in those aims. Peer feedback included, “I appreciate how you validated our impressions of the dance even before we watched it—‘there’s no wrong answer,’” (Rochelle) and “I appreciate all of the question you posed to cause us to think not only about how we observe dance but how we can apply this to real life situations.” (Monica)

Regardless of the topic I am teaching, I follow Critical Emancipation theory and try to integrate Socratic Discourse or philosophical inquiry. In this lesson, my progression of questions started with inquiry into how to inquire with an open mind and defining fact/objective vs. interpretation/subjective. Then I asked questions to guide students’ observation of dance, built toward analysis and evaluation of dances, awareness of bias and prejudice, sensitive communication, and constructive feedback. My questioning included:

• “How can we exchange ideas and beliefs in an open-minded way? How does one distinguish fact from interpretation in observations of dance and in life?”
• “We want to know what to look for in watching the dance, so I suggest that you look at the element of the Body, what shapes or body parts involved? Time: are they going fast or slowly? Space: are they taking up a lot? This is the menu we select from in describing our first impressions of this dance, factual as well as interpretation.”
• Write down “what you see, what you think, and what you feel”
• With partners, “identify which of those observations were really objective facts that we could agree upon together and which of those might more subjective impressions that I’m assuming.” “Find one thing in your writing that would be objectively observable, and one which maybe something you are basing on fact, but is your own interpretation of that information.”
• “How did this [the fact/interpretation distinction] impact how you’re watching the dance? Did you find that you were watching it more open-mindedly with that distinction in mind? How did you feel that your prior experience or bias affected the way you interpreted the facts? Did you see further applications to this in your life in the classroom or outside?”

Student cognition was challenged through discussion and they grappled with dance concepts and the fact/interpretation distinction:

Kim: “Ok I’ll share! So I was with Rochelle, if she wants  to unmute herself and correct me, but I really liked the video, I do think it taught a great lesson, we talked about bombastic movements, smiling, baggy pants, go down the fun slide at the end, doing splits, all these things say “happy happy” but we kind of put happy in the subjective because we don’t really know if they’re happy, yeah? so I think the smiling and the fun slide would be objective, because it’s a fact, and the happy would be maybe subjective? um, Blythe can’t hear you… what do you think?”

Me: “Yeah, I’m just interested to see what you got out of it, that’s really interesting..[Kim says “Uh-oh…”] “It is open to interpretation, but it is nice to say ‘we are interpreting it, we think that the choreographer’s intention or the dancers’ intentions were to convey this, I guess there’s no way to know for sure, but you can back up your position by saying, ‘here’s all of the objectively observable facts that I am putting together to try to interpret that idea. And then you go on to analyze it and then evaluate it and then ask well, if that’s what they meant to do, was this a successful piece?”

Kim: “I guess if we were evaluating it right, then it was successful.”

Me: “Yeah. What we’re interested in now is discerning what facts can we all agree on, and then what did you notice about what your interpretations were personally.”

Although she is doubtlessly an expert on dance history, technique, performance, and choreography, one of my mentors at UH, Betsy Fisher, is always careful to position herself as a co-inquirer with students into the art of dance, saying: “I’m not the ultimate oracle of dance,” and having students think critically about sources and test hypotheses. I also purposely do not position myself as the “knower of right and wrong when it comes to interpreting dance,” respecting all positions, encouraging awareness of the validity of alternate views. In this lesson, it seemed like students wanted to know the “answer” from me, and I find this stance common in my classes. Instead of providing a cut-and-dried answer, I reiterated that the process of looking at the facts and our interpretations, then eventually analyzing and evaluating whether the work was effective, is our focus for this lesson.  

Kim remarked about the discussion in my peer evaluation: “Did you want the students to take away that there are some objective qualities about dance? It seemed like you did not want to share the objective natures (aspects) at the end of the lesson. Maybe this had to do with time, or maybe your intent was just to get us to think?” Yes, this lesson is designed to be about thinking critically, and this is the standpoint I aim to come from with all of my lessons.

There was also some ambiguity about the concept of Time, and Amber shared: “I was with Kristy Kamoku and we had a question- we were looking at Tempo and we said it was fast, but is that really fact or is that subjective? How do you really know if it’s fast or slow? Is that a fact or not?” I responded: “Right? Relative to what? Good question.”

Charmaine: “My partner was Jessica, who had a lot of prior knowledge around music, so what I would maybe not known was facts, my point is that background might also impact people’s facts versus interpretations… [Jessica] can you share the minor/major division?”

Jessica: “I believe it was in a major key, which makes you feel happy, versus a minor key. So the energy of the major key and the tempo to me just says happy, joyful, excited, so I counted that as factual happy and joy because of the major key.”

Me: “Jessica had this whole music theory lens that she could look at it with, as well as what she could see happening with their bodies, physically on the stage. That gives a whole other layer to her interpretation. Cool.”

These exchanges are also pertinent to Domain III A. “Provide examples of students formulating questions, initiating topics, challenging or exploring one another’s thinking, and ensuring that all voices are heard in the discussion.” and B. “Give an example of when you seized an opportunity to enhance learning, built on spontaneous events, students’ interests, or successfully adjusted/differentiated instruction to address individual student misunderstandings.”

As I discussed above, one spontaneous event that occurred during my lesson was the discussion about whether tempo/speed is an objective observation, when I left students to ponder about the “real” answer.

Amber was speaking on behalf of her group: “ I was with Kristy Kamoku and we had a question- we were looking at Tempo and we said it was fast, but is that really fact or is that subjective? How do you really know if it’s fast or slow? Is that a fact or not?”

Me: “Right? Relative to what? Good question.”

In my peer feedback PQP, Dr. Mangram asked “What was going through your mind when the group asked whether timing was actually fast or slow?  What decisions did you have to make?” In this case, I made the choice to remain on the level of co-inquirers with the students, which is my intentional teaching style. I had to be with the discomfort of the students feeling uncertain, to promote all of our curiosity into the topic. This is related to Critical Emancipatory Pedagogy and Social Justice Theory as well, as co-inquiring in a safe community of inquiry promotes a just and democratic classroom environment, positive student Identity Formation, appreciation for Diverse ideas and community members, Just relationships, and opportunities for Action.