Kind: captions
Language: en
We need to figure out a way to engage students
more in the classroom to be fearless when
they learn.
For Ashli Polanco, that way is dance.
She runs a program that uses choreography
to get kids from diverse and underserved communities
in the Boston area excited about science.
It’s called “Science Can Dance.”
We already know that young kids love music,
they love dance, especially hip hop music.
We really think of it as allowing students
to remix the lesson with their own culture,
creating an environment where being good at
things like dance, music, body movement are
an asset to learning about science and technology.
There are a lot of hard problems out in our
world today, and engineering is what makes
us move towards the future.
Does that make sense?
Today’s workshop is about circuits.
Ok, so LED stands for light-emitting diode.
First we give a little mini-lesson on the
science concept and provide a small hands-on
activity so that the students feel like they’re
actually making something that day.
Ok, the longer leg, does it touch the positive
side or the negative side?
Positive!
When you have your LED glowing, I want you
to hold it up in the air.
And then we follow up with the dance segment.
Our dance is going to have three moving parts
to it.
Some people are going to act as the battery,
some people are going to act as the light
bulb, and then some people are going to act
as the wires.
Ok?
But first I’m going to teach you all the
choreography altogether.
So let’s all stand up.
We recruit scientists and engineers from the
community who are also local hip hop dancers
and choreographers, and we ask them to choreograph
different dances that break down complex scientific
concepts into different parts.
Seven, eight.
One, two, three and four, shift five and six,
seven and eight.
The big goal here is to get these kids imagining.
Dreaming up new solutions to the problems
confronting our world and communities today,
and also imagining new possibilities for their
own futures.
In spite of the fact that maybe a student
is only a wire, or a student’s only a battery,
they still have to have an understanding of
how that all fits together.
And we feel that the dance piece in terms
of that collaborative aspect of repeating,
fitting together, practicing—it reinforces
the overall scientific concept and process.
Circuits is just the theme for today—we’ve
done polymerization, self-driving cars.
There’s so many different things that you
can teach through dance choreography.
Instead of just sitting down and listening
to somebody teach something, you actually
get to get up and move around.
Before, I felt nervous and I didn’t want
to do it, but now I love science and I want
to do it next time.
You can always learn new things by dancing
at the same time as learning science.
The lack of encouragement that a lot of students
of color and young women face when pursuing
technical studies—that can be really daunting
to overcome.
What we’re hoping is to fill that gap to
really cater to learners that aren’t being
served in the way they should be.
So that we have access and equity for all
of our youth, not just some of our youth.
And the result—a brighter future for all
kids.
I want you all to bow.
Good job, everybody, today!