MUSIC! - KET

An Amazing Year
By Garlene Layne-Abshire, Johns Creek School, Pike County
The 2006-2007 school year
began as a difficult one for me
and my family. On May 22,
2006, my 16-year-old son Dustin
had a terrible four-wheeler accident
that changed our lives.
Dustin received massive skull
fractures and traumatic brain
injury. By the time school began
that August his condition was
improving, but he was still hospitalized
at the Cardinal Hill
Rehabilitation Hospital in
Lexington.
This was the beginning of my
12th year of teaching. I was an
itinerant teacher at two schools,
teaching K-8 in my certification area of visual art. After
Dustin’s accident, while he was in a coma and we had no
way of knowing the future, I asked to be stationed at
only one school so that when Dustin returned home I
would be close to him when needed. When I received my
letter of placement, I was surprised that I had been
transferred to Johns Creek Elementary. This was returning
home for me; Johns Creek is the school where I
attended first grade through graduation from high
school. (When I was a student, Johns Creek was a K-12
school; currently it houses preschool through 8th grade.)
Garlene and her son Dustin
Good News and a New Challenge
When school started I would come home from Lexington
on Sunday evenings and stay through Thursday
evenings. After 158 days away from home, 39 days on life
support, and seven weeks in a deep coma (it was 75 days
before he said his first word), Dustin was released from
the hospital on September 28. He came home and is now
in his senior year at Pike County Central.
On my first day at Johns Creek, I had been informed
that I would only be teaching fifth grade. I would not
only be teaching my beloved visual art but would also be
teaching drama and dance. I was in shock! I had no clue
as to how to go about teaching these areas of the Core
Content to 84 young, absorbent minds. Even though the
previous year I had attained my National Board
Certification in Early Adolescence Through Young
Adulthood in Art and I am currently president of the
Pike County Arts Council, I was still terrified. My wonderful
(younger than me) principal assured me that I
would have no problem with this. I was happy that he
felt that way; however, deep down inside I was scared to
death to know that I had so much to prepare for, especially
since this was on the CATS TEST!
After doing research on the Web and not
being happy with all the confusing
things out there, I began questioning my
colleagues as to what I should do. The
one thing that kept being repeated was
to “use the KET toolkits.” I have a great
friend who is employed by KET, Cynthia
Warner (education consultant for
Eastern Kentucky). She also suggested
the toolkits and all the vast materials
that they offered. So I took the Dance
and Drama kits home and pored over
them for many hours.
Combining the toolkits with other materials,
in January I began my units of
study in these areas. We have a wonderful
music teacher with whom I collaborated,
making these studies more thorough and bringing more
enrichment to students in both our classes.
Using DanceSense
I began our dance studies with the first four programs
of the 10-part DanceSense series that is included in the
Dance Toolkit. These are excellent programs that I
adapted slightly. Along with the programs, the students
used the glossary and the DVD video clips that greatly
reinforced our studies.
The first program helped ease the students into understanding
how everyday movements can be turned into
dance movements. The boys especially loved the clip
showing how football movements can be turned into
dance movements! Several got up and actually demonstrated
those movements for us.
In Program Two (evolution of dance from European to
modern social dance), students explored the origins and
functions of dance in various cultures. I turned the
“Before You Watch” questions in the DanceSense teachers
guide into an interview for students’ parents and
grandparents. These included questions such as “What
dances did you do when you were younger?”, “Where
did you go to dance?”, “What did your parents say
about your style of dance?”, and “Do you like the
dances of today?” The interviews were very beneficial
in that they encouraged respect for dance of many generations
and of many cultures, and I received many
comments from parents and grandparents as to how
much they enjoyed the interviews.
Program Three focuses on Native American, European,
and African dance and the blending of cultures. This
(continued on p. 6)
KET Fall 2007 ARTSource 3