Directed Study January 2010

Course Title: Finding A Balance Between Right and Left Brain Learning in Public Education

Course Description:
Traditionally, education focuses on external directives and testing the ability to memorize information - - approaching learning mostly through uniformity and typically leaving creativity and individuality outside of the classroom environment.
This Directed Study will work in tandem with Theatre/Dance 185: Stubborn Light First Year Seminar, applying the theories and practices based on radical questioning of familiar socio-cultural norms and practices for the evolution of artistic thinking, for re-imagining a world of connection, authenticity and compassion. This study will help re-examine the "learning" in the public school system. Activities will be designed through faculty/student collaboration and implemented, with the support of students from the First Year Seminar, to Pre-K through 8th grade students at North Winneshiek Community School. This study will attempt to integrate activities, which foster self-discovery through self-expression, into the traditional structures of the public school environment.

Goal:
How can the public school environment help students find themselves and their place in the world? What they want to do, what they care about, how does this relate to their lives? Not everyone cares about the same things. Providing creative opportunities for children to use their imagination for self-discovery can foster deeper connections for learning, in addition to the traditional linguistic and logic-mathematical intelligences most often addressed in schools.


So that's my course. 4 credits. supervised by Dr. Jane Hawley.

It's really been challenging and eye opening. So many things have caught me by surprise. Some things have disappointed me, but i use these disappointments to further challenge myself. I'll write more about it later, tater.