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Over the course of the year, I watched these children accomplish great
things, but nothing stands out in my mind more than those times that they
were involved in music and drama. With so many challenges to face, music
and movement gave my students the words they could not speak and the confidence
they struggled to find. I realized very early on in the year that these
students had a common interest, and that was music. Throughout the school
day, I began to integrate music whenever I could. I did this primarily
because it kept their attention and, as most teachers in special education
will tell you, keeping their attention is the key.
I began by playing all different types of music to engage the students
in a lesson, usually using a song to teach the concepts I wanted my students
to learn. As the year went on, I found myself singing most of my lessons.
It was amazing to see how much information these students could retain
if it was simply put to a familiar tune. For example, all of my students
were able to memorize their address, phone number and birth date just
by singing them. Music is an excellent mnemonic for retaining important
bits of information, which is very difficult for my students who have
visual and auditory processing problems. Their parents were amazed. I
was very careful not to teach only content but to relate the songs to
real life - I was afraid that, although they could recall a tune, the
might not understand the concepts, so I made sure there was a balance.
By January, my students were becoming less passive learners and beginning
to take initiative and create their own interpretation of songs. They
began to put their own movements to everyday transition songs. To an outside
observer in my classroom, it began to look like an "opera in sign language."
Using music and movement, my students had found a new language.
At last, their speech impairments were less of an obstacle because they
were clearly understood by their teachers and classmates in their environment.
Parents began calling me at home saying that they just witnessed their
child sing an entire song about time and money and then generalize the
information to real life. They were overwhelmed. They could not believe
that these were the same children who had worked on recognizing basic
numbers year after year in school without success.
I then decided that in order to build their confidence and motivation
to learn, my students needed to become totally immersed in creating something
meaningful for themselves. Since they all had musical strengths, I chose
to make this the central point of our curriculum and made each thematic
unit content driven but music-based. I provided the structure and music
for the shows we developed, but I was flexible enough to allow for their
own improvisation. Most of the time, the songs or movements they created
were better than my ideas because they felt ownership of what they had
created.
Our shows became well known around the school community. We began visiting
other classrooms to present our shows. The children's responses were wonderful
- it gave them an opportunity to see the life skills students in a positive
light because they saw them being successful. All students involved seemed
to grow from this experience. I often invited a small group of students
from different grade levels to work with us on our shows and it was amazing
to see how music and drama bonded a group of people, regardless of age,
race and ability. They communicated, built relationships and worked as
a team toward a common goal, and that is where I witnessed the most learning.
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