Thinking

Ok, it's May and at some point these thoughts have to turn into an essay, a conference paper and a PGCert presentation. As a journalist, I would have written this months ago. As a film maker, it would be in the can by now. As an academic, I'm paid to ponder.  Worries: will it be rigorous enough? How am I to grapple with the possibility that my hypothesis may not even make it past the first post? Is the rest of the research throwing up any ideas that are worth spending this amount of time on? ie - will any of this make a difference? It may not matter in Uniland, but it does to me.

So, questionnaires out, request for interview with Steiner storyteller and another email sent to Paul Whittaker of Music for the Deaf whose signing work with the Ballet Rambert will send me through another worm hole, I reckon and I'm just left with questions and the words. Writing for Publication notes tell me what I tell my students: Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? or, in this case, the preferred: Why? What? How? What if? So What?  Ah - that's the question that floors my students, and is my main niggle.

So, Why?
Because most of my students don’t punctuate well and because punctuation is in crisis among the younger generation.

Good writing is rare among young people

Why dance? Because of Michael Jackson – his dance seems to communicate meaning – not sentences but something more visceral. How does that visceral quality add to language to bring texture to text?

With texting and Facebook changing modern language, kids are becoming fluent in another written language but what would it take to excite them about their mother tongue? Dance? Storytelling? Breath, pause, engagement, excitement - Txt spk can't communicate this but punctuation can.

What?
What is this? It's a 4000 word article, a conference paper and a 15 minute presentation looking at the role that dance might play in exploring a more engaging way to teach punctuation in schools. 
What will it be? A teaching tool in school, a film, a paper delivered to teaching conferences.

How?
I tested an early theory - that dancers might be able to interpret creative writing through movement on year 9s and my own foundation students. It didn't work; the creative write/dance experiment showed that dance students understand rhythm in language more than the writers - possibly because of the dynamics they learn in year 7. Something there.

Story telling:  most of my students were not read to as small children. Perhaps Steiner will be able to shine a light on this; storytelling from very early on in school before they start to read engages them through natural punctuation - pause, breath etc. By the time they write, do they automatically add the correct punctuation? Or is there a bridge that needs to be built here to keep the excitement and rhythm? Teaching at this point is crucial. Wonder how they do it. Steiner mentor, Jeff Olson just rang. He's in Brighton! Interview on Tuesday.

What if?
What if I find the answer? Now that's more my style. Getting it out there is my thing. Sitting in ivory towers pontificating is so not.   What does it look like being? Something about engaging through rhythm (Phil Beadle doing this in poetry), engaging through thrills (King Fu punctuation - Ros Wilson), understanding how dance teaches (ie turning it around and teaching creative writing through some of the techniques of dance like dynamics - no-one doing that so far).

But what if it comes to nought? If it's nothing new, or if it just doesn't make a difference?  Hmm. I reckon that my drive will pull something out of the bag. And punctuation is in crisis - if someone has come up with the answer, why are schools not using it?  Jeff Olson says that even Steiner teachers need to be reminded of the need to keep it up in modern teaching - and the visceral, engaging element of language. Thrills are the key. Which leads us neatly back to MJ.

So what?
Make it work in schools. Take it out and about. Make the difference