Last week, as one of my 3rd grade dance classes was winding down, students laying on their backs, listening to music and focusing on their breath, a 3rd grade teacher came up to me and said “I just want to let you know that dance class is such a ray of light for us. It’s my favorite part of the week. When I get discouraged or bogged down with all of the logistics of school, I look forward to being able to come here and just watch them. And realize how talented they are. To see them all moving and smiling - it’s such a gift.”

I see this sort of transformation happening in teachers often - when they stay. When they really observe their students during dance class. They start to see the young people in front of them  through a completely different lens. It’s especially true when they observe something like our dance circle (an activity in which students are invited to express themselves in their own way, through movement).

We had just been talking about data collection at our last VAPA meeting. And while I think that data is an important part of the big picture of arts education, and NEEDS to be collected, there are so many aspects of what the arts bring to students, teachers, schools, and communities that are not objectively measurable. Or maybe they are (?). Maybe it’s just a matter of framing the data-collecting questions and measuring systems in the right way (?). As Richard Carranza said during the National Arts Education Week panel discussion, we (arts educators) need to broaden our idea of what data can be, and make it more inclusive and encompassing. I agree with that.

At the end of that class last week I was thinking: ‘how do you measure what just happened?’ Sure I can say that dancers were performing the choreography “correctly” and that they were “engaged” and that “positive affect” was visible, but beyond that, it seemed to me like everyone that was a part of that class walked out the door with a substantially stronger and more hopeful sense of themselves and their classroom community than they had when they walked in the door. And that just makes my day - it’s one of the most rewarding aspect of the work I do. And who knows what it will lead to? For the students as individuals? For that classroom? For the community?

The possibilities and manifestations of inspiring and positive experiences are limitless - everyone can feel them, BUT it’s difficult to pin all of their aspects down, to box them in, to label them. It doesn’t make those experiences any less valid or worthwhile, however. Maybe our dance class is like a ray of light - shining because that’s it’s agenda-less nature. When I experience these classes within the context of public education, I always think ‘It’s OK for it to just be THIS. To just be a positive, engaging, expressive experience for students.’ And with regard to data, some of the effects of this class are immediately, objectively measurable, some are not, and some will become measurable far far down the line when a student might make a connection that they wouldn’t have made otherwise, feel a little more open and courageous when expressing themselves, or infuse their work and play with the same kind of joy and freedom they might have experienced in dance class. And that makes it all enormously worthwhile for me. And enough.