Children's Theater: An Inclusive School's Venue for Children With Needs to Publicly Demonstrate Their Talents

摘要

Meeting the daily physical, mental, spiritual, social, and emotional needs of children with disabilities is already challenging and exploring, discovering, and nurturing their gifts and talents is even more difficult. The practical and limited goal of the parents, school, and community is to just help children with needs be as independent and functional as possible and discovering and nurturing their gifts and talents often takes a backseat, if considered at all. However, MindHaven School has been implementing and evaluating different approaches in discovering and nurturing the gifts and talents of children with needs since 1993 and has proven that Creative Dramatics and the Performing Arts should be essential components of its Inclusive Program. To help children with needs develop their cognitive, non-cognitive, and art skills, the school has a Children's Theater which produces a year-end showcase/play/musicale. Utilizing Creative Dramatics, the Performing Arts, and Children's Theater has positively affected the harmony and collective dynamics of the stakeholders of the school. The children's interactions with peers, adults, and materials provided opportunities for holistic development and all adults involved took on the roles of scaffolds, facilitators, and mediators. This study particularly seeks to answer the following questions regarding having a Children's Theater in a school for children with and without needs: 1.) How are the children engaged in Creative Dramatics and the Performing Arts in preparation for it? 2.) What skills does it develop in children? 3.) How are gifts, talents, and skills identified through it? 4.) What innovative teaching approaches are needed to implement it and 5.) What are the perceptions of the involved stakeholders?