Valuing all kids

Building on Strengths Department
A lot of people talk about how schools should build on kids’ “multiple intelligences” but not as many really do it. So I have to tell you about a recent class my daughter taught.
She works in a program that teaches art/creative expression in some of the “worst” schools in Oakland. Last week in an after-school class of first- and second-graders, the kids made “storyboards,” a series of drawings telling a simple story of a problem that was solved by a family with "superpowers." Then the kids wrote words for the power the family had used to solve the problem. For example, one of the stories showed a homeless person who was cold, so the family built him a fire. The kids wrote “power of fire.” The superpower in another story was the “power of cheer-up.” :)
Meanwhile there were a couple of kids, as there often are, who couldn’t sit still to work on the project and hadn’t yet gotten into this writing thing. So they wandering off making up dances to a current popular song, chanting “lean with it, rock with it, lean with it, rock with it.”
“Can you dance about the superpowers?” my daughter asked. “Here’s a story about the power of fire.”
So the dancers went to the first group, danced, and chanted “Lean with the power of fire, rock with the power of fire.”
Then, my daughter said, all the kids were clamoring for the dancers to dance for their story, so they danced for each one in turn: “Lean with the power of cheer-up, rock with the power of cheer-up.” Etc.
From being marginal and uninvolved, the dancers had turned into valued contributors.
Obviously it can’t end there. They will have to learn how to write! But it will be easier if they feel like valued members of the group. This was a start.