In their webinar, Andre Avila and Robin McCall of ComMotion - Community in Motion explain how to combine the power of technology, unique partnerships, and multidisciplinary arts to bring authentic voices of Latin America into your classroom through adaptive and inclusive movement programs. Students learn about the world while also exploring social and emotional learning competencies, including self-awareness, social awareness, and relationship skills.

• Latin America is an incredibly diverse region, with a wide range of cultures and natural features.
• This diversity is represented in the music and dances, with the blending of indigenous, European, and African rhythms, instruments, costumes, and movements. Also, many rhythms and melodies reflect the biodiversity, from Caribbean islands to Andes mountains to the Amazon rainforest.
• You can create an inclusive and engaging learning experience about Latin America by incorporating multi-media and multi-sensory activities that use the authentic voices of the region.

• Connect with people from the cultures you are teaching about, to gain authentic perspectives.
• Contact your local Latin American cultural organizations to find local artists and educators.
• Zoom and other technology allows you to easily connect with artists from other communities and across the world.
• Use videos, pictures, and audio recordings of the artists in your classroom activities so your students can see and hear them.
• Use movement and music to augment the learning experience.
• Enrichment and family engagement activities such as research posters and arts & crafts projects extend the program and allow students to express themselves in different ways.
• All activities can be inclusive.
• Movement activities can be done standing up or sitting down.
• Use visual and auditory cues and activities, in addition to written instructions
• Many simple tools are available that you can use to create multisensory inclusive programming
• Virtual backgrounds in Zoom (static images and videos) add depth to your online programs. You can also make immersive videos by recording through Zoom.
• Add subtitles (free of charge) by uploading videos to YouTube and autogenerating captions
• To see samples of multimedia, multisensory, and bilingual programming, visit https://www.commotionnc.org/rhythms-of-my-community/