"EDU-TAINMENT"

Life is a stage. We are all actors and actresses, taking various roles everyday. I often wonder if my students find me entertaining. They are precisely the reason behind why I do what I do.

It is amazing to find students give their opinion about our styles of teaching. More often than not, children are bombarded with lines so intense such as, "I'm grown, don't tell me what to do! Stay in a child's place!" I can't help but picture Ursula from "The Little Mermaid", whose greatest wish was to take innocent Ariel's most precious voice from her, in exchange for a life on land, with Prince Eric. How many times have we found ourselves not heeding our students' voices? More painfully, unconsciously taking it away from them and not giving them a chance to use their voice and (even-worse).....then, be evaluated on our terms."CUT!"

Now that is not what EDU-TAINMENT is all about.

I have been thinking about the concept of 'edu-taining' my students with special needs for a loooong, looooong time now. "Edu-taining" ("educating while entertaining or entertaining while educating") entails a lot of heart---not just for the "art of teaching", but equally important would be, "the art of acting or role-playing." To see the different expressions on the faces of my students as I go onstage daily, in my classroom, gives me such great joy just to know that I am sending a message out to my students and realize in the long run that my "edu-taining" elicits a myriad of feelings from them, from my own point of view.

As an special educator, I always find myself being "edu-tained" by my students' daily comments, illustrations, interpretations and impressions. This morning, we had an activity about their concept of the word "hero" and whether or not they considered themselves as "modern-day heroes." Amazingly, everyone thought they were heroes and their reasons for considering themselves heroes were truly "edu-taining." One of my students stated that he considered himself a hero when he "tried to stop a woman from jumping off a building." Another child stated that, he wanted to "save the city from bad stuff." Furthermore, one child said that "if a building were on fire, he would save the people."In addition, a student of mine emphasized that, "we all need to help each other to keep our earth clean." In a confident tone, another pupil of mine said that he considered himself a hero "when he blocked a dog from getting run over by a car."All these were based on student-created illustrations in response to a teacher-facilitated prompt.

All their lines sounded very authentic....imaginative... creative.....responsive."Edu-taining" is a concept that may be combined with arts integration in the sense that the learning of new concepts must be constantly repackaged, updated and refined, so as to keep the audience very,very interested! It also involves a lot of opportunities for community-building and relationship-building. "Edu-taining" also provides the learners and educators, with boundless opportunities to "KEEP SHINING" just like all the STARS do!!!!