Music and movement are stars of education, teacher says
Kari Brandon, a kindergarten teacher at Mustang’s Prairie View Elementary, could have done about anything. She had academic and music scholarships to multiple universities.
She considered going into medicine but went to college on a music scholarship.
“The second year I backed off and thought ‘What am I going to be able to do with a music degree other than teach music? Maybe I would like to teach everything,’ so I got certified in early childhood and elementary.”
She spent three years as a music teacher in Shawnee, then taught music at a private school in Edmond.
“I got to work with all the kids in prekindergarten all the way through eighth grade,” said Brandon, who is campus teacher of the year for 2017. “I fell in love with the babies.”
She moved to teaching prekindergarten, but she never stopped singing.
“When I sing, the kids stop and everyone is paying attention. They’re immediately engaged.”
Brandon took a job at Lakehoma Elementary and eventually moved to Prairie View, earning a master’s degree in early childhood curriculum and instruction along the way. That degree opened her eyes to why music and movement had been so successful in her classroom.
“You have your leftbrained kids, you have your right-brained kids, you have your musical kids, you have your kids who just like technology, and that’s about it. You have to find a way to hook them,” she said.
“I can say something and turn around and sing it and get them up to move while we sing and they learn it 10 times better than if I just say it to them and then have them go do something.”
She’s adamant that children be allowed to move; they learn with play.
“More of the philosophy of early childhood is that children come to school to have the exposure and to get a lot of time to play and socialize. And here we are in America telling kids who are 4, 5 and 6 years old to sit down, be still and do this paper. That’s not developmentally appropriate.”
In Brandon’s classroom, students move in small groups from station to station. They come together on the carpet for a lesson, usually one that involves song and dance.
Even more than what they learn, Brandon wants them to know they are loved. Although all of her students are memorable, she remembers one child in foster care who had done something wrong at home.
Her foster mother called Brandon to demand the girl not be allowed to participate in a class party. Brandon refused to punish the child at school for something that happened at home.
The foster mother showed up at the school. If Brandon wouldn’t keep the child from participating in the class party, then she would call DHS to have the agency take her back.
“I was in tears all day,” Brandon said. “I called my mom and my husband and said, ‘Don’t be surprised if I bring home a little girl with me today.’ ”
All day Brandon waited for the authorities to show up.
“She knew something was wrong, and we cried together,” Brandon said. “And I told her how much I loved her. Every day I had to hold that little girl because she didn’t get it anywhere else. She didn’t like life, but she felt safe here.”
The child wasn’t taken away that day. She got to finish the year and then stayed for one more.
Brandon doesn’t know where she is now, but she hopes she remembers she was loved and knows Brandon continues to think about and pray for her.
“I feel like if I can teach them that someone cares about them, and I hug them every day and I tell them I love them, that they’ll enjoy coming. We can get the ball rolling, and they’ll enjoy coming to school for the rest of their lives.”