What Dance Techniques Can Be Used to Teach Children with Severe Disabilities?

When the pediatrician placed the measuring tape around her infant’s head and noted, “His head is a little small,” Joanne De Simone knew that motherhood wouldn’t be as she had dreamt. After a devastating diagnosis, she was not prepared to raise a child with life-limiting brain malformation – and then her second child was diagnosed with autism.

Joanne De Simone is a graduate of Hunter College with degrees in dance and special education. After dancing professionally, she dedicated her life to teaching children with disabilities and supporting families.

“It’s realizing that we live simultaneously in love and grief. In the end, dance teaches us not only how to move freely through pain but also how to fall and recover.”

Her story will grip your heart as she shares how this struggle drove her to reconnect with the lessons she learned as a modern dancer.

 

Special educator Joanne De Simone bears all in this raw and transformative memoir that captures how she used lessons of modern dance in her journey through motherhood with two children with disabilities. Inspired by her experience performing José Limón’s There Is a Time, based on Ecclesiastes 3, each chapter of Fall and Recovery details a dance lesson and the dichotomy of parenting children with disabilities. Over time, Joanne discovers that surviving motherhood isn’t a matter of strength, bravery, or faith. It’s about linking your past experiences and creating your own purpose. It’s realizing that we live simultaneously in love and grief. In the end, dance teaches Joanne not only how to move freely through pain but also how to fall and recover.

 

Fall and Recovery 

Joanne is a special education advocate for the Alliance of Private Special Education Schools of North Jersey. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Exceptional Parent

Magazine, and the Rumpus among other publications. She is a contributing author to “Barriers and Belonging: Personal Narratives of Disabilities.” Joanne and her son, Sebastian, were instrumental in a legislative change allowing students with intellectual disabilities to participate in NCAA D3 intercollegiate sports. Joanne has been featured in the Philadelphia Inquirer, on HuffPo Live, CNN, and GMA3.