Innovation in Language Learning
Angela D. Kaufman
Institution: The HeartSpeak Project
Country: Italy
Angela Kaufman is the creator of The HeartSpeak Project, an educational programme for primary and nursery schools that aims to combine language learning with the arts, specifically dance. She currently works as a freelance teacher in two Primary schools in Veneto, Italy.
Angela was born in London where she grew up and studied ballet and all styles of dance, attending The Royal Academy of Dance until the age of 19. Following her dream and passion for foreign languages, she moved to Italy where she worked as an English teacher in private language schools while she continued her dance studies and performing career in Milan and Turin. She began teaching dance in dance schools in Piemonte in 1990 and continued after moving to Venice in 1993 and having spent eight months in Sri Lanka where she swapped ballet classes for local tea dances. From 1994 until 1997 she undertook a distance learning degree with the Open University which suited both her versatility in her chosen career subjects and her need to continue working for financial reasons. She graduated with a First Class Honours Degree in Social Sciences in 1998, the same year she embarked on her most challenging endeavour, becoming a mother. 1998 proved a busy year when she also opened her own ballet school in Mestre, qualifying as a Registered Teacher with the Royal Academy of Dance, and life only got busier when she added another member to her family in 2000. From 2004 she decided to go freelance as a dance and English teacher in order to be able to juggle work with the demands of a growing and energetic family. Since then she has seized every opportunity to continue teaching her two subjects in all contexts, from motorcycle factories, military air bases, roller-skating teams, after-school clubs as well as state and private international and convent schools.
Following her love for art and all things visual, in 2009 Angela participated on a course for illustrators of children’s books in Sarmede (TV). From this, sprung the inspiration to combine visual art with language and movement and thus in the same year she devised The HeartSpeak Project for schools that enabled primary age children to experience a foreign language in a bilingual setting through dance, pictures and stories. Through trial and error, she discovered how powerful a tool dance could be in creating an atmosphere for language learning that she had never come across before in any textbook or manual. Mainly from hands-on experience, a lot of support and trust from the staff of two primary schools in Mogliano Veneto and a healthy dose of courage she has continued to develop and enrich the programme. That the arts could be such a well of benefits for children’s learning was not a new concept, yet as a vehicle for language learning and in recent years as a bridge to encompass CLIL methodology, this discovery has proved vital and has become her life’s mission.
In 2013, Angela took a sabbatical in the UK where she worked for two years in state primary schools and was able to see for herself the differences and similarities between British and Italian educational institutions. When she returned to Italy in 2015, she was able to use these experiences in order to enrich and develop her project, particularly in the area of storytelling. In fact, this was the year she also wrote her first novel, set in the Adriatic Sea and seen through the eyes of a sponge crab, as yet unpublished.
It wasn’t until 2018 however, that Angela came across a whole field of study that had previously eluded her and yet seemed to ‘join all the dots’ in her search for a pattern with which to make sense of our need to understand. After much research and study into symbiosis and the work of the micro-biologist Lynn Margulis, Angela stumbled across Systems Theory and the work of physicist and ecologist Fritjof Capra. Finally, Angela has been able to envisage how a network connects the many threads that make up our complicated and chaotic world, in a surprisingly ordered and relatable way, and that by understanding how chains and cycles work in nature, we too in education can learn so much from simply stopping to observe how everything around us, everything that has ever evolved on this planet, can be our teacher.
Currently as an alumni of the Capra Course, an online course in Systems Thinking, Angela hopes to develop The HeartSpeak Project with a more ecological objective for a more eco-literate audience of young learners. She also hopes to be able to continue to take her project into more primary and nursery schools in Italy, where children are ever more in need of finding moments of calm and harmony within the school walls as well as within their own bodies and minds.
Areas of expertise: English teaching for Primary and Nursery schools, Ballet, Tap and Modern dance for vocational purposes and for school curricula, CLIL, bilingualism.
Angela was born in London where she grew up and studied ballet and all styles of dance, attending The Royal Academy of Dance until the age of 19. Following her dream and passion for foreign languages, she moved to Italy where she worked as an English teacher in private language schools while she continued her dance studies and performing career in Milan and Turin. She began teaching dance in dance schools in Piemonte in 1990 and continued after moving to Venice in 1993 and having spent eight months in Sri Lanka where she swapped ballet classes for local tea dances. From 1994 until 1997 she undertook a distance learning degree with the Open University which suited both her versatility in her chosen career subjects and her need to continue working for financial reasons. She graduated with a First Class Honours Degree in Social Sciences in 1998, the same year she embarked on her most challenging endeavour, becoming a mother. 1998 proved a busy year when she also opened her own ballet school in Mestre, qualifying as a Registered Teacher with the Royal Academy of Dance, and life only got busier when she added another member to her family in 2000. From 2004 she decided to go freelance as a dance and English teacher in order to be able to juggle work with the demands of a growing and energetic family. Since then she has seized every opportunity to continue teaching her two subjects in all contexts, from motorcycle factories, military air bases, roller-skating teams, after-school clubs as well as state and private international and convent schools.
Following her love for art and all things visual, in 2009 Angela participated on a course for illustrators of children’s books in Sarmede (TV). From this, sprung the inspiration to combine visual art with language and movement and thus in the same year she devised The HeartSpeak Project for schools that enabled primary age children to experience a foreign language in a bilingual setting through dance, pictures and stories. Through trial and error, she discovered how powerful a tool dance could be in creating an atmosphere for language learning that she had never come across before in any textbook or manual. Mainly from hands-on experience, a lot of support and trust from the staff of two primary schools in Mogliano Veneto and a healthy dose of courage she has continued to develop and enrich the programme. That the arts could be such a well of benefits for children’s learning was not a new concept, yet as a vehicle for language learning and in recent years as a bridge to encompass CLIL methodology, this discovery has proved vital and has become her life’s mission.
In 2013, Angela took a sabbatical in the UK where she worked for two years in state primary schools and was able to see for herself the differences and similarities between British and Italian educational institutions. When she returned to Italy in 2015, she was able to use these experiences in order to enrich and develop her project, particularly in the area of storytelling. In fact, this was the year she also wrote her first novel, set in the Adriatic Sea and seen through the eyes of a sponge crab, as yet unpublished.
It wasn’t until 2018 however, that Angela came across a whole field of study that had previously eluded her and yet seemed to ‘join all the dots’ in her search for a pattern with which to make sense of our need to understand. After much research and study into symbiosis and the work of the micro-biologist Lynn Margulis, Angela stumbled across Systems Theory and the work of physicist and ecologist Fritjof Capra. Finally, Angela has been able to envisage how a network connects the many threads that make up our complicated and chaotic world, in a surprisingly ordered and relatable way, and that by understanding how chains and cycles work in nature, we too in education can learn so much from simply stopping to observe how everything around us, everything that has ever evolved on this planet, can be our teacher.
Currently as an alumni of the Capra Course, an online course in Systems Thinking, Angela hopes to develop The HeartSpeak Project with a more ecological objective for a more eco-literate audience of young learners. She also hopes to be able to continue to take her project into more primary and nursery schools in Italy, where children are ever more in need of finding moments of calm and harmony within the school walls as well as within their own bodies and minds.
Areas of expertise: English teaching for Primary and Nursery schools, Ballet, Tap and Modern dance for vocational purposes and for school curricula, CLIL, bilingualism.
