by Caitlin Neidow
Ava Heller is a part of the Fieldston faculty who has managed to incorporate important social justice issues such as racism into her studio.
\tIt was one of the warmest days New York City had seen in months. The blinding sun broke through the ominous clouds making way for new possibilities. Ava Heller had agreed to sit down for an interview reflecting the relationship between social justice issues and her work; dance. As an educator at Fieldston, Heller incorporates issues such as racism in her classes on a day-to-day basis. \u201cI found out years ago, that one of my students- that she had studied, like her whole life, traditional Chinese dance and you know it wasn\u2019t something that she really talked about at school. And I said \u2018Wow that\u2019s really interesting to have a side of yourself that you don\u2019t feel like celebrating at Fieldston\u2019 so my students, I think is really what pushed me into this work.\u201d But this is only the beginning of her fascinating work.
\t\u201cAs faculty, we would have meetings and we would talk about issues around race; and at first I was really uncomfortable, I didn\u2019t know how to deal with it, I didn\u2019t know how to deal with my feelings as a white person. And then also as a white Jewish person.\u201d Ava Heller explained when asked what personal experiences motivated her activism. She took what feelings she knew and used them to create a compassionate environment in the classroom with her students. \u201cThere\u2019s a safety they feel in this group and this company\u201d. Heller also talked more about what she did to actively engage herself in the topics she found relevant to her student\u2019s lives. \u201cThat was also a big change for me, about five years ago I started to dive into the work of anti-racism or anti-biased work because I realized that, if I\u2019m struggling with it, that\u2019s a place that I should investigate and learn more about.\u201d
\tAdditionally, Heller makes sure to achieve mindful choices while in the studio and create a space where the focus is really on her students.\u201cNow how do I actually lift up the stories that they want to tell about their identity?\u201d. She explains how teaching her students is about making them feel comfortable in the environment they\u2019re in and doing what works for them. \u201cI think it\u2019s more about the approach that I have to teaching movement and dance history\u201d, she goes on to say when asked what one of the main components are to the success of this teaching. Lastly, Ava Heller describes another approach to her work that is crucial to this mindset: \u201cI really strive to decolonize my teaching in the sense that I try to not focus on western approaches as the first and only way that we talk about dance\u201d.
\tOverall, it’s clear that making her students feel comfortable in the space they\u2019re in is Heller\u2019s top priority. She says that if there\u2019s one piece of advice she could provide to someone looking to become a social justice activist it would be to \u201cGive yourself the freedom to make many iterations of whatever this thing [the social justice issue] is so that you’re not feeling the pressure to get it right the first time.\u201d.
NOTE: 8th graders wrote their own versions of THE NEW YORKER\u2019S Talk of the Town this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Caitlin Neidow Ava Heller is a part of the Fieldston faculty who has managed to incorporate important social justice issues such as racism into her studio. It was one of the warmest days New York City had seen in months. The blinding sun broke through the ominous clouds making way for new possibilities. Ava Heller had agreed to sit down for an interview reflecting the relationship between social justice issues and her work; dance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":282,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[402,58],"tags":[],"coauthors":[404],"class_list":["post-5473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fieldstonian-middle-school-paper","category-slider"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/282"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5473"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5480,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5473\/revisions\/5480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5473"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}