Feldenkrais in the classroom
Children move during recess and physical education classes, but these occur outside the classroom, creating a separation between the experience of movement and the experience of learning. When learning, children usually sit in a chair, look at the blackboard and the teacher, and stop moving. However, when they move, they go outside or enter a space explicitly designated for movement and stop learning in class.
Unlike many other movement lessons for school children, this program is situated in the children’s regular classroom, with minimal modifications to its physical arrangement. The methodology arose from the desire to operate within a familiar environment while introducing an element typically foreign to that setting: movement.
In this project, the Feldenkrais movement classes offered a learning model in which the children learn about how they learn. Movement, in this sense, served not as an end in itself but as a means to embodied learning, being the foundation of conceptual learning and supporting it.
This was a 1.5-year-long project I did within the framework of a small elementary school. The Feldenkrais classes were given to kids aged 6 to 12, as well as to the teachers. It was part of a worldwide project on embodied learning led by Dr. Eilat Almagor, a Feldenkrais trainer from Israel.