Meghan Glassey

KIN 447
Fall 13

Philosophy Statement for Dance Education in the Elementary School

Education in Elementary school is important because it is essentially the steppingstone in life for these children. Having a structured classroom and a teacher that can teach
students and get them interested in learning the material is very hard to come by.
Statistics show that one bad teacher in Elementary school can ruin a students chances of
ever catching up after they have lost what they should have been learning. Core values in
Elementary school must encompass reading writing and physical education. I believe that
physical education plays a key role in growing up and a lot of growing up is done in
elementary school.
Arts in Education is important because in elementary school, students start to
learn what they are good at, and art can help students explore new and exciting hobbies.
Having the arts a part of the curriculum helps make the student become a better all
around student and more involved in learning. It helps with their self-esteem, which is an
important thing to posses growing up. Involvement in the arts builds motivational
cognitive thinking and personal skills. For example for grade level one the VAPA
standard 2.6 talks about Communicating the Meaning in Dance. 2.6 states express basic
emotional qualities (e.g. angry, sad, excited, happy) through movement. This is very
important because at a younger age children dont know how to express themselves and if
they do not learn they will never be able to talk about things. So having a dance class
where the students can learn to express themselves through movement this will help them
in the future.

Rhythm and dance can bring many things out of a child especially while they are
in their growing years. Learning to move to a certain beat and being able to count beats
in music and then putting movement to the music is not only fun, but its a challenge and
once it is accomplished it is rewarding because you took the time and have the mental
ability to remember a set of movements. Having rhythm and dance is also a great way for
students to express themselves. There are so many things in music and art that can help a
student cope with certain things going on in their lives.