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While listening to some music I was playing for my students (I
use music for start and stop signals), I was strongly struck by
the analogies brought forth by one of the songs and the lyrics it
contained. It caused me to pause and contemplate about what we are
doing in our classes and how we are teaching our children especially
in the lower grades. Here I am in the 50+ crowd and I suddenly realized
somewhere along the line I had lost my childhood and everything
that went along with it. When was the last time we played and imagined
we were Joe Montana throwing the winning touchdown, Barry Bonds
hitting a homerun or MJ slam dunking the ball to the imaginary cheers
of a crowd.
"Painted wings and giant's rings make way for other toys."
Children as well as adults over the years have given up play and
imagination to computers, video games, TV, etc. As adult
teachers many have given up movement and creative based activities
and replaced them with drill and assessment which takes away one
of a child's greatest assets... "imagination". Now
don't get me wrong assessment is wonderful thing and we need it
to help justify what we do. But, don't get in the habit of assessing
just for assessments sake. Plus, we do not have to use drills with
military like precision until perfection takes place.
Over the past 30+ years of working with children I have noticed
the different trends, fads or whatever that seem to pervade our
profession. What is disturbing is that some go so far in a particular
direction that they lose sight of the fact that we should be creating
efficient movers with a love for activity not little Olympians.
"So, Puff that mighty dragon sadly slipped into his cave"
As adults we are going to lose our innocence and stop using our
imagination to a point, but lets not be so eager to take that from
our children and have them grow up too fast.
One way to curtail this is through creative play. No, not only
but as part of a well rounded curriculum base.
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