"Catch me!" my three year old granddaughter screamed as she jumped into the swimming pool, knowing all along that someone would surely be there to catch her. She was never wrong! My eight year old grandson, along for the bike ride to encourage me as I relearn a long forgotten skill, takes his hands off the handlebars and gleefully coasts on the downhill as I pump the hand brakes and pray that I stay upright. We are all born with that fearless learning gene. I'm currently reaching back and searching to reclaim mine.
Taylor Swift has a song. Fearless. "Dance in a storm with my best dress.." kind of fearless. Hands off the handlebars fearless. Jump in the deep end fearless. We are born with it, and many of your students still have that fearless gene. Why not celebrate it, maximize it, and make it work for learning in your classroom this year? Call it Growth Mindset if you wish, but fearless learning has been present in the universe since the beginning of time. It's who we are at our core.
Lessia Bonn (I Am Bullyproof Music) has a song called Fearless also. Written long before Taylor Swift's song, Lessia's "Fearless" was an integral part of my classroom practice from the day I discovered it. I worked on some (IMO) pretty amazing learning units with Lessia for a couple of years, based on her music. Using the Bullyproof songs brought so much magic to my learning community during my last few years in the classroom. Here's a video made by my Rainbow City kids during that time. All about what being Fearless means to them - in life, in relationships, in learning.
Denise Brennan-Nelson wrote a sweet little book called Willow. Willow is a fearless artist, drawing and painting whatever her heart tells her to create. Her teacher, Miss Hawthorn, seems to have lost her own inner artist. She likes her apples round and red, and her trees tall and green with brown trunks. Miss Hawthorn likes a clean and tidy art room, with very specific uses for her materials and very specific responses to her lessons. Enter Willow, a student and artist who teaches Miss Hawthorn a thing or two about art and life and fearless learning. Miss Hawthorn is able to reach back and recapture her own true inner artist. I have a lesson on this book in this Bullyproof Rainbow unit.
Sharing part of it here with you for FREE! I hope you'll enjoy using it and remember to return to the download page and leave some awesome feedback! As always, I would love to see pictures (and even videos) of your students' responses to this lesson!
Hope you'll check out this blog post on Using the Arts to Teach Perseverance!
Click on the image for your freebie!
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