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Center Ring: Circus Arts Improve Academic and Social Skills
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13278 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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10 / 1987 |
1,607 Words |
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Kathleen Prentice
Kathleen Prentice is a free-lance writer whose articles appear
in the Detroit Free Press. |
It's 7:30 on a crisp, fall Long Island morning as Andreas Papalaskaris and Melissa Postora arrive at Barton elementary school an hour and a half before classes begin. They head for the music room to juggle.
Drums, stacks of tambourines, xylophones on stands, stilts and bins of balls, beanbags, juggling rings and scarves border the walls of the green cinder block schoolroom. Teacher Karen Deeter is helping a child manipulate three balls while her partner, Chuck Maler, watches a fifth grader spinning a plate on a pole.
Maler and Deeter's Center Ring curriculum has evolved over the past fifteen years. They merged ideas, energy, resources, and their art and music students based upon a belief that a children's participative interdisciplinary program is important. What has grown from their vision is a blend of visual and theater arts, music, movement, and circus arts in a process-oriented approach to learning. Each spring Center Ring culminates in a performance that is as unique as each group of fourth and fifth graders. The diagnostic and therapeutic effects of Center Ring activities for children with perception and reading difficulties is an added bonus.
The Barton arts program is unique. Yet it's one among many excellent programs that gives us reason to be optimistic about our public schools. Ernest Boyer, former U.S. commissioner of education and current president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, addressed the national PTA last year on the future of public education. Citing the recent report filed by the National Commission on Excellence in Education declaring that "the nation is at risk," Boyer replied. "The
... (1998 of 9705 Characters)
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