Dance/Movement Therapy: Bullying Prevention in Schools
Channel: American Dance Therapy Association
Date: 2014-05-08

Over the past two decades, Rena Kornblum has introduced her  violence prevention curriculum in over 300 schools with 90% of the teachers reporting positive gains in their classrooms. In this informative ADTA talk, Rena explains why dance/movement therapists are in a key position to positively impact individuals who are targets of bullying, those who do the bullying and those who witness the bullying and are not sure what to do about it. Dance/movement therapists work with the body on self-regulation, spatial awareness, self-assertion, empathy, activation under stress and managing strong feelings safely -  all of which are integral to violence prevention.

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Rena Kornblum, MCAT, BC-DMT, DTRL, brings over thirty years of professional experience as a dance/movement therapist to her therapy and prevention work.  She developed the children and family program at Hancock Center for Dance/Movement Therapy, where she is currently the Executive Director.  She initiated an in-school program in which she provides therapy sessions for children dealing with physical and sexual abuse or other trauma as well as violence prevention classes for entire classrooms.  She also coordinates an undergraduate certificate program in "Introductory Studies in Dance/Movement Therapy" at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has been lecturing in the Dance Department for over 30 years.

Rena has written a book called "Disarming the Playground, Violence Prevention Through Movement and Pro-Social Skills" and edited two training DVDs by the same name, all of which describe her prevention curriculum in detail.  Research on the effectiveness of her violence prevention curriculum has been published in The Arts in Psychotherapy, a peer-reviewed academic journal. She conducts workshops and trainings on her work internationally and her writings on the subject of DMT with children have been published in books on the creative arts and nonverbal therapies. 

Rena received the 2002 Wisconsin Dance Council Research and Journalism Award, the 2005 Distinguished Service Award by the Wisconsin Alliance for Arts Education and the 2009 American Dance Therapy Association Excellence in Education Award.  She is licensed in the state of Wisconsin to practice psychotherapy specifically through the expressive arts therapies.

"Disarming the Playground, Violence Prevention Through Movement and Proc-Social Skills" can be purchased via ADTA's online store: http://tinyurl.com/kceudds