Learning Through Music, for All Abilities
Posted Thursday May 02 2013 at 11:41 pm in Education
This is a guest blog post by Liz Buchanan.
I'm in a room with twenty-five children, four of whom use wheelchairs. As the children act out a song about butterflies, I choose several students from the "typical" classroom to partner with the children with disabilities. The students walk over cautiously at first. But they seem to overcome their shyness as they dance about the kids in wheelchairs. Smiles of pride come to their faces – they're just five years old, but they're doing something helpful that makes a difference in another child's life.
This is my third year as a teaching artist with VSA MA at the Condon School in South Boston, integrating music with the literacy curriculum for children in the early childhood classrooms through first grade. Condon's student population includes many students with special needs, and VSA MA's main goal is to bring together children with a range of abilities through the arts.
This year, we combined classrooms in my music sessions to bring together students from Condon's Developmental Day Care (DDC) program with the Pre-K and kindergarten classes. The DDC students face many obstacles in their daily lives – most have multiple, severe disabilities.
Read More →
