Alys May-James BA Professional Practice Blog

Recently I have been looking into the importance of the arts and being creative. Having been a dance teacher and performer for many years, I believe the arts are extremely important.  These are some of my opinions why: improves confidence improves mobility gives students the freedom to express themselves gives students a sense of belonging or community creates more friendship groups teaches discipline improves communication skills I came across this blog from TedEd. https://blog.ed.ted.com/2018/04/02/why-dance-is-just-as-important-as-math-in-school/ Sir Ken Robinson talks about how creativity is within us all, and we should all have a right to access it and use it. However, many education systems put far more ‘importance’ on subjects such as maths and literacy. What I find interesting is how he talks about how being creative doesn’t have to stay within the arts. You can be creative in any subject. This is so important for children, because curiosity is a key way ...

This week I attended a skype session with guest speaker, Peter Thomas. The main focus of the meeting was to explore academic writing. 'writing is utter solitude, the decent into the cold abyss of oneself.' Franz Kafka  Firstly, he got us to experience ‘free writing’. This is where you write continuously about a specific topic for a set amount of time. This method has a number of components to remember; ·          Write in sentences ·          Don’t stop writing in the time period as this helps generate a flow of thought ·          If you don’t know what to write, you can write ‘I don’t know what to write,’ until something comes into your head that is relevant to the topic. ·          Correct language isn’t important ·          Don’t read what you have written until the end. ...