Developing Confident Learners through Movement
By: Siegfried Gerstung

It’s been more than half a century ago that I started to study young children and how they learn through movement. My focus was always on Rhythmic, Movement Education, and Educational Gymnastics, and I have studied children over the past 46 years in schools and at the Gerstung Movement Learning Center in Baltimore, Md. There we teach movement skills and develop confident learners.

It is my firm conclusion that the way children learn before they become “students” has a lot to do with the type of students they become. We have seen how children have grown into self-confident adults with good judgment. I know it is all about developing intellectually and physically at the same time, and it must happen in the elementary schools, where we create the foundation for good learning. Only Movement Education can teach what writing, reading, and arithmetic can not. What we physically experience, we usually keep for life, and developing the intellect through movement (that’s what kids do best) is simply a whole lot more fun.

But, what is the secrete behind Movement Education that educators should understand?

After many years of searching for a good answer I came to the conclusion that all of us who are in this field of specialty are trying to explain the characteristics, the teaching methodology, the values and benefits of this subject, when in fact, it is not a subject at all. It is clear and simple Progressive Child Development. It is all about how children learn and how they become better learners before they turn into students; and this is not embraced enough by our educational institutions, nor encouraged by parents and teachers alike!

But why do young children learn faster through Movement Education and Educational Gymnastics and what do they learn that the class room teacher can not accomplish very well? First of all we must realize how we teach and what we tell our children to do. Actually, good movement educators do not tell students what to do, they put their request in form of a question and expect a “movement answer”; then keep asking, “is there another way?” Children that are totally involved focused on the task, the problem, and the question, experience what is easy for them, what is difficult, simple, and challenging. The child explores personal limits and becomes aware of his or her abilities. While we are striving for our students to become skill full, accomplished, and as perfect as necessary, a movement educator is not thinking in terms of teaching a subject, but is focused on teaching the child. The motivation factor is fun deriving from personal accomplishment. Competition should only exist in relation to ones own ability, not in direct comparison to someone else. Challenging independent thinking, responding, discovering, and creating, demands a higher then usual level of participation with both sides of the brain, not just the body. We encourage learning through guided discoveries and not through responding to commands. The learner explores and experiences, gains knowledge and becomes self-confident. The child celebrates accomplishment; we call it fun.

Let’s take a look at how children learn. During the most playful and playable years, kids learn from their environment and develop in accordance to what information they have stored. Such information was not presented to them as facts, for it to become matter of fact knowledge is an action and an experience for the moment, and how that information was experienced becomes knowledge and is stored in memory. Of course, it usually is first experienced physically, through movement.

Learning is a fundamental process of repetitiously acquired information, physically and/or cognitively, that the brain stores as knowledge. Most of what we have learned in school we have not been able to retain (unless we are using school skills in our day-to-day life). A lot of what we have explored physically we still remember. That is why brain researchers draw differences between how we learn and what we store in memory. Although learning and memory are not exactly the same, but one can not exist with out the other.

Movement Education provides the interaction between discovery and memory. It also creates the ever so important environment for better learning. We often neglect to understand or to pay attention to the environment of the growing stages of a child and how intensively they interact with their environment (even more noticeable later on, i.e. young teenagers).

The earlier we are able to give the child a fun learning environment, the earlier child and teachers can celebrate success. Here are the 25 most significant contributions Movement Education can make outside the classroom to the developing child:

1. Reinforcing good listening skills
2. Developing a “movement vocabulary”
3. Responding to problems with movement answers
4. Building creativity through physical expressions
5. Responding to problems with movement answers
6. Practicing decision making abilities
7. Learning to understand and solve problems
8. Expanding on imagination
9. Expanding efficiencies
10. Learning to think ahead of the action and execution
11. Understanding questions, problems, and tasks
12. Practicing how to express oneself
13. Developing images and visions
14. Rethinking actions, possibilities, and consequences
15. Becoming experienced to evaluate situations
16. Learning to value quality in perfection
17. Becoming confident of trying something new
18. Learning to finish for completion
19. Discovering growth and satisfaction (fun)
20. Investing in determination, effort, and integrity
21. Gaining self-confidence and self-esteem
22. Feeling safe in assuming responsibilities for self and others
23. Practicing hot to apply knowledge and experience
24. Executing independent thinking and setting examples
25. Becoming accomplished and above all, a better learner with a stronger body and healthier mind, worth celebrating.

You can find Siegfried Gerstung, at Gerstung Inter-Sport at 410/337-7781 or sg@gerstung.com.