Are music and the arts just as important as core school subjects, such as math, English, or history? We think so. Whether your child goes on to be a professional musician or just sings in the shower, music lays an important foundation in all children whether it is language development, math, or practical life lessons.
While we cannot be guaranteed perfect restoration and healing, children do have an amazing capacity to learn and grow beyond what we would have believed possible. It makes it easier to hold on to hope and to move forward, knowing that we have such an amazing ally in the plastic brain which loves to learn and improve.
Learning that lasts happens in the whole body, not just the brain. So what does that really mean? It is our senses that capture information from our surroundings and feed the brain with information from which an understanding of the world develops.
When I first engaged in teaching, I did everything very traditionally. What I did was widely accepted as "how you teach", so it never entered my mind that what I was doing was riddled with fatal flaws.
While there are many children who can succeed in traditional classrooms, there are a vast number of children who learn best through visual and kinesthetic connections made between what is familiar to them, and the new, unknown material.
