Music education teacher at Anna K. Davie Elementary, Ammie Rogers, saw an opportunity to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month while also getting her students up, out of their seats and dancing.
Rogers said the song she built her activity around is called El Jarabe Tapatio, or “The Mexican Hat Dance.” Jarabe Tapatio is considered the national dance of Mexico and is taught in nearly every grade school in Mexico.
She said that the students were interested and immediately eager to participate,
“They are very enthusiastic to get up and move.” Rogers said that the amount of energy that the kids sometimes have to expel can make music a challenging subject to teach. “So we find times when we can get up and move,” she said. “Dance is a big deal to these kids. They love to get up and move and dance.”
Not only was Rogers able to get her students interested in and excited about a piece of Hispanic culture, but the activity has an eventual goal of helping the students read notes on a staff.
“We’re working on figuring out where the notes come into play with the counts and rhythms,” Rogers explained, “so I knew that getting counts into their heads with the dance would help get us into notes and music as a whole.”
“I love coming here every day,” she expressed, “because I see those light bulbs pop up in everything we learn.”
Rogers said that teaching music at AKD isn’t just her job, it’s her passion. “Music has always been my life,” she said. “Music gets me going every day; I’m a singer myself. I love to share my passion with kids. I’ve always been enthusiastic about helping children learn.”
Rogers expressed that watching her students show enthusiasm and determination when it comes to music makes her day, every day.
“I am so proud of how hard my students have worked,” she added. “Every week they are working towards a reward and they show me that they can do anything that they set their minds to.”
