Where the Wild Things Are: Teaching dance in urban schools

by RACHEL COSTELLO

Teaching in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco feels like teaching in the fictional area of Baltimore from the The Wire, where drugs were made legal within a specified zone of the city. Of course, drugs aren’t legal in the Tenderloin, but they might as well be. The streets are teeming with addicts, recovering addicts, and those who have nowhere else to be but among addicts.

Outside the entrance of a school where I taught, drug deals go down, the homeless take shelter from cold or rain, and hungry men and women pace back and forth muttering angrily under their breaths, occasionally yelling at a passerby who disturbs them. Often that passerby was me, hurrying into the preschool to teach a class of wild four year olds.

I work for an organization called Performing Arts Workshop that hires professional artists to teach in schools and community centers with children that are often referred to as “at-risk.”  Their programs provide the education students need and deserve within a system that often views the arts as something that are “nice to have,” versus a core subject which develops necessary skills for 21^st century living. The organization prepares us artists for just about anything, or so it seems: our training workshops have us creating curricula on the spot, teaching lessons to each other, and figuring out how to craft unexpected, creative classes that break the conventions of the traditional classroom in a refreshing way.

Some realities of the job, however, cannot be covered, even in the most thorough trainings. On my way to teach in the Tenderloin, I have had my drum stolen and I have been slapped by an old woman who didn’t even pause to look at me, just continued on her distraught way.

My first day teaching in the Tenderloin, I walked into the preschool expecting a sweet group of kids sitting calmly in a circle, waiting for me (this was what I had experienced at my first site in Berkeley). Instead I walked into the classroom to find pandemonium: students crawling all over each other and screaming at the top of their lungs, a little boy clenching his fists while kicking a book shelf, a little girl dumping blocks out of a container, and two women, presumably the teachers, sitting passively at a table nearby. It had been naïve of me to believe that a school could exist in a vacuum. The fact of the matter is, a Tenderloin preschool feels like a Tenderloin preschool.

I yelled into the loud room, “If you’re listening, stick out your tongue.” No one stuck out their tongue except me. The kids all roared with laughter that their new teacher was sticking her tongue out at her students. Maybe they don’t understand English, I thought and sure enough, to quiet their hysterical laughter, one of the women sitting to the side got up and attempted to calm the students down in Spanish. When the laughter didn’t die down, she looked over at me apologetically.

One thing that Performing Arts Workshop stresses is the importance of responding to the energy of the students in any given moment. That in mind, I grabbed my drum and modeled dancing fast while I played the drum at a fast tempo. Then I hit the drum loudly and shouted, “Freeze,” while holding still in a shape. I could see the loud drum had gotten the students’ attention. “Good job, look how frozen she is,” I said as I lightly tapped a tiny girl with braids who’d dropped to the floor in a ball and held the shape fiercely. Whether or not they understood my words, they certainly understood the tone. They all wanted to succeed and to demonstrate that success to their peers.

Later in that first class, I was faced with the question of how to discipline when I was relying so heavily on a quick pace to keep the students focused. How was I going to deal with the hyper boy who seemed incapable of participating without kicking whoever was standing or dancing near him? I remembered a conversation at a recent Performing Arts Workshop meeting where a teacher had suggested giving such a student a leadership role. After thinking for a moment (the crazy kind of half-thinking, half-intuiting that happens when you’re in the middle of instruction), I called the little martial artist over and announced that he was going to be my demonstrator and would help me show the class what to do. As he stood by my side, I could feel his pride at having been recognized for something other than his misbehavior.

About half of my teaching time in the Tenderloin was spent dealing with class management. Students drifted over to the toy shelf, they fought with peers, and they lay down in the middle of the dance space, refusing to move. Yet what became clear to me over time (and after many of the warmest welcomes I’ve received from students every time I came in) is that despite their behavior, these students thirsted for ways to express themselves and for the positive attention of a teacher more than any other students I’ve had.

As the residency progressed, the little girl with braids turned out to be key in rallying the troops. Just as she was the first one to freeze in a shape, she was also the first one to create her own series of shapes (aka: her first dance). Her excitement was contagious and made her classmates eager to finish and share their work with the group. My little martial artist stayed by my side for most of the residency and became my permanent helper. He turned on and off the music for Freeze Dance, he helped me set out the paper plates for our body parts activity, and he collected scarves when we had finished dancing with them. Though I wish he could have matured enough to be self-sufficient, I also realized that he needed my support more than others and by helping him get through class without getting into trouble, I made sure he left feeling successful.

Having taught a number of residencies in the Tenderloin now, I feel that in addition to providing the kids with an opportunity to move and create, it is important to offer them a different kind of attention than they normally receive—an attention that is patient with their energy and seeks to channel it rather than eliminate it.  Every child should experience this, but it is especially important for those who have more chaos than most in their lives and who must learn to cope with it and hopefully channel that chaos into something beautiful.

Rachel teaches dance residencies at preschools and elementary schools in the Bay Area.