#theaterartsforholisticdevelopment

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Mapping Learning Outcomes and Activities

Mapping Learning Outcomes and Activities: A Simple Visual Tool for Neurodivergent Learners, Parents, and Professionals Our Journey to a Simple and Flexible Planner Dr. Dasaratha Rama Parents of neurodivergent children have to make sense of long lists of goals and outcomes from various therapists, educators, and others. Over the last two decades, I have struggled to keep track of varied outcomes…

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Expanding Opportunities for Inclusion through the Arts

Arts have played a role in creating opportunities for inclusion for Ananth for many years. Ananth has been learning Bharatanatyam for over ten years. Dance has played an important role in Ananth’s life because he needs the structured, consistent movement experience. Dance has also expanded opportunities for participating in community events as an observer and as a performer. The opportunities…

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The ABCs of LIFESMART Parenting

The ABCs of LIFESMART Parenting: Parents and Professionals Learning Together How can we best share what we have learned over the years with parents? How can we work with professionals to create useful resources for parents? How can we create an ecosystem for parents and professionals learning together? This week has been an exciting one for us! The answers to these questions are taking shape as…

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Celebrating Festivals: Discovering Opportunities for Inclusion

During the Ganesha celebrations in our community, Ananth performed a dance on Ganesha. This was his first dance performance after his arangetram in October 2020. Dance practice had been disrupted for multiple reasons. Eventually, Ananth started learning from Sri Ujwal Jagadeesh in Ramana Maharshi Center for Learning, Bengaluru. This is the first piece he performed under Ujwal’s guidance. L:…

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How can Parents help Other Parents?

Service learning series Lessons from the Ananth’s Adventures Project – 1 If you know one individual with autism, you know one individual with autism. We have all heard some version of this saying. This saying is worth questioning as it results in a mindset that can keep parents with years of experience from helping other parents. After all, since your child is so different from mine, I cannot…

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How Ananth and I Organize Learning with 100-Day Projects

The process of parents learning with their neurodivergent child at home and supporting their child’s development through experiences outside the home is dynamic. While parents have long-term goals in mind, they must observe, see what is doable and worth doing, and decide on next steps. 100-Day projects and daily routines are two important LIFESMART tools for creating structure and order while…

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How Ananth and I Explore Digital Storytelling and Video Creation

Service learning 2 This is the second article in our series on service-learning. As noted in my previous article, service-learning is an approach for empowering neurodivergent learners by encouraging and guiding them in community engagement. One distinctive feature of service-learning is reciprocity. Reciprocity means an ongoing collaboration that is of value to learners and to the…

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How Ananth and I use Storytelling to Explore Values

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, Ananth started his theater arts journey with Ramana Sunritya Aalaya in 2020. Since that time, he has explored many values through his theatre arts experiences. Value exploration is deeply embedded in Theater Arts for Holistic Development (TAHD) experiences. TAHD was developed by Dr. Ambika Kameshwar, Founder and Director of RASA. The Need for Value…

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