Public Elementary School Teachers’ Perceptions of Health Education & Promotion

Background: The importance of school health education has become well-known in the past two decades, however, there is limited research surrounding the perceptions and attitudes of classroom teachers and school health. The purpose of this study was to understand classroom teachers’ perceptions of health education at the elementary school level, so that policy makers might have a clearer understanding of the state of health in today’s classrooms. Methods: Public Elementary School Teachers, located in Western New York, participated in a qualitative online survey consisting of 10 questions. The survey focused on their perceptions of health education and promotion. Participant’s answers were then analyzed by researchers, using an open coding process, classifying teachers results into major themes and topics. Results: The majority of teachers who responded were passionate about creating healthy classrooms, yet felt limited due to the lack of accessible resources and scope of practice. Many teachers understood the importance of school health and would attempt to incorporate aspects of health education into various moments throughout the day. Conclusions: Despite a wide range of student health issues and a lack of resources, classroom teachers are passionate about creating healthy classrooms and healthy students

Choreographic Exploration of Misappropriation in Hip Hop Dance

To examine the properties that comprise hip-hop dance, a choreographic work will be shown that aims to intentionally misappropriate traditional hip hop vocabulary and philosophies. Drawing from post-modern ideologies such as repetition, accumulation, improvisation for choreography, and chance procedure, the work will scrutinize movements classified as hip-hop alongside contemporary dance material. Spurred by the popularity of Ian Eastwood’s dance videos, this work will embody similar movements and visual expressions portrayed in Eastwood’s films. Although Eastwood’s choreography seemingly exemplifies the hip-hop aesthetic, a large majority of the way Eastwood presents his work misaligns contextually with hip-hop ideologies. However, because of his embodiment of the ‘cool’ aesthetic, the use of hip-hop music, and some traditional hip-hop vocabulary, the content of his work is not questioned in terms of authenticity. If this post-modern depiction employs the same tactics as Eastwood, will the work be considered hip-hop? Consequently, viewers are asked to question what exactly qualifies hip-hop… is it the content? Or context? If a dance is set to hip-hop music and implements traditional hip-hop movements but is contextually out of the hip-hop culture, is it really hip-hop? Through this analysis, perhaps we can begin to recognize cases of misappropriation not only in hip-hop, but also in various cultural expressions