Katie Johnson Leads Evergreen College Class in Developmental Movement Work
Olympia, WA (PRWEB) July 26, 2013 -- For four intense days in July, students at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, crawled, danced, watched each other's eyes as they read, made rhyming words out of bright-green play dough, and checked their eyes' convergence. Led by visiting expert Katie Johnson, these were only a few of the activities the students engaged in during the summer class called Developmental Movement and Emotional Health.
"One of the fascinating outcomes of this work is that students often experience new emotional insights as well as physical ones as a result of fine-tuning their neurodevelopmental patterning through movement activities," explained Jehrin Alexandria, professor of dance and movement at The Evergreen State College who teaches the three-credit undergraduate course. "The body-mind connections are highlighted and reinforced by this work." Students reported feeling unsettled or euphoric after an afternoon of practicing patterns such as the Homolateral exercise shown here.
The class was called, “Developmental Movement and Emotional Health,” an unusual subject for an undergraduate class at a public university, perhaps; but this was The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. Evergreen is well-known for its unusual take on the world, and for the way it stretches its students and faculty in interesting ways.
Katie Johnson was one of two visiting instructors invited by the Evergreen professor, Jehrin Alexandria, to co-teach several days of the class. Developmental movement therapist Bette Lamont from Seattle also taught guest sessions.
Katie Johnson is the author of Red Flags for Primary Teachers, a handbook of developmental movement and vision exercises. As well as being a writer and a primary teacher, Katie also dances and is a student of Anne Green Gilbert, who developed the BrainDance and has written and taught extensively about the relationship between movement and the health of the brain.
“I never knew that there were so many parts to vision,” one student marveled. “I am wondering now how my eyes are working – or not!” “I liked your dances, and the BrainDance,” commented another. “Thanks! I enjoyed every minute."
The students did creeping and crawling activities, played games such as pick-up sticks, eyeball tracking, copying a pattern exactly, hookups, and balancing to learn about their eyes’ movements; learned, practiced, and performed two folk dances, one from Norway and one from Mexico, each of which incorporates all eight developmental patterns of the Brain Dance.
Students read and reported on various books, including Brain Rules by John Medina, Brain-Compatible Dance Education by Anne Green Gilbert, Red Flags for Primary Teachers by Katie Johnson, Jillian’s Story by Robin Benoit, and others.
For the final activity, members of the class built a machine, complete with movement, sounds, and purpose. (See photo)
Bette Lamont, nationally-known developmental movement therapist, also taught a session of this course.
Katie Johnson, KatieJohnsonAuthor.com, 206-548-0155, [email protected]
Share this article