My Favorite Teachers Through the Years: Miss Katie - 6 years old: I began taking a ballet and creative movement class at the YMCA in my hometown when I was six years old. We had a teacher we called Miss Katie; I remember her being an absolute sweetheart and a very engaging teacher. She combined teaching us the very beginnings of basic ballet technique with playing pretend games. I remember us using silk scarves to pretend we were pirates, playing freeze dance games where we got to dance like mad until the music stopped, and then we had to freeze and be absolutely still like statues. Miss Katie knew how to make classes fun and engaging, she was really skilled at including students with all different personalities, and she made the class feel like a time when we could explore movement and enjoy ourselves. Though I was really young when I was taking these classes, I remember my mom really liked Miss Katie as a teacher and I remember how much fun I had in the classes. Eventually Miss Katie had to move on from her teaching position at the YMCA, and though she was my teacher for a short time, I will always remember her classes because they were a really positive start to my journey as a dancer. Miss Anna - 6 years old until 19 years old: After Miss Katie left her teaching position at the YMCA, I wanted to keep dancing and start taking lessons in a studio. My mom helped me find a new studio that was not too far a drive from where we lived, and I was excited to start taking classes as soon as my mom got me registered. I started taking ballet and jazz classes at my new studio, and my favorite teacher during this time was called Miss Anna. Again, since I was about six years old when I was in Miss Anna’s classes, I don’t remember too many specifics about this time. However, I remember Miss Anna was a very kind and gentle teacher. Though this was over twenty years ago, I can remember Miss Anna encouraging each student in learning their technique, and if we didn’t understand something she would really take her time to demonstrate the movement and explain it in a way that allowed us to feel confident in what we were learning. In addition to being an amazing teacher and really loving each of her students, Miss Anna was an absolutely gorgeous performer. I remember watching her in the Christmas shows our studio put on which told the biblical nativity story, and thinking, I want to dance like her someday. Miss Anna was an early inspiration to me as someone who’s love for dance and joy for teaching permeated everything she did. Sarah - 6 years old until 19 years old: I stayed at the same dance studio from six years old until I graduated high school. While I was there, I had many teachers who positively influenced my perception of myself as a dancer, performer, and as an individual. They will always occupy an important place in my heart because of their unique characteristics as women in the arts and as teachers who really understood me and had a heart for seeing me succeed in all I did. One of these teachers was called Sarah, and she was an extremely important teacher to me for many reasons. Sarah brought all kinds of influences into her teaching, making our classes a time where I felt I was not only learning about dance, but also learning about how to be a person. Sarah would talk to us about history, she would use sign language while she was teaching us because she was fluent in it, she would talk about her past performance experience with a dance company she was in during her college years, she would share elements of her faith because it was a Christian dance studio, and tell us lots of interesting stories or funny anecdotes as the class went on. I always felt like her classes just flew by because she kept things so interesting. I also really connected with her style of movement. There was something about her choreography that felt so right in my own body and her movement style was hugely influential to me during that time. Dancing her pieces always felt easy because they became part of me in a way no other teacher’s choreography had before. One of the last pieces I performed by Sarah was one all about taking joy in life, wherever you can find it. This choreographic inspiration has stuck with me until this day, and a lot of my own choreographic work is related in some way to this idea that came from Sarah so many years ago. Susan - 21 until 23 years old: When I entered university level dance training, I felt so pleased and privileged to be there because I had dreamt of becoming a professional performer since I was a very young child. Though university training was certainly a whole new world of experiences from what I was used to in my studio growing up, it was so exciting. And I quickly connected with a teacher who reminded me a lot of my favorite teacher, Sarah, from my previous studio. Susan quickly became my favorite teacher, not only because she was absolutely hilarious and so sweet to work with, but she was also really skilled at bringing her interest in anatomy into our classes. She could explain an aspect of technique, alignment, or choreography in such precise ways because she was able to explain how the body works with such clarity that my understanding opened up in a brand new way. She would also bring new exercises and challenges into class every week that targeted our strength, flexibility, and creativity, and I always felt so capable under her tutelage. When I changed universities, I knew Susan would be one of those teachers that I would miss working with. She was a fascinating person to listen to, a caring teacher to engage with, and someone you could tell genuinely ate, slept, and breathed dance. Susan embodied a passion for seeing her students succeed that was really evident in her teaching, and her attitude as a teacher remains a goal of mine in my own teaching to this day. My Values as a Teacher: I have had the privilege of being taught by many people who have encouraged my growth as a mover and as an individual, who have helped me realize my own potential for growth, and given me a lifelong love for dancing and movement arts. These teachers live in my heart and have made a massive impact on me as a dancer. Whenever I teach, their examples form a huge part of my motivation and goals as a teacher. Whenever I am teaching, whether that comes in the form of teaching my friends choreography I’ve come up with or working with students in a primary school like I was privileged to do over the last couple of weeks, there are three things that are extremely important to me:
My Experience as a Teacher: Teaching four-to-six-year-olds during my dance company years: My first experience as a dance teacher was in the studio I grew up in. I was a member of the studio’s dance company and company members at the senior level were given the chance to assist in the creative movement classes for four- to six-year-olds. Our role as assistants was pretty simple, and quite honestly consisted mostly of crowd control. Children that young are very dreamy and creative, so there were a lot of times where the children needed gentle reminders to pay attention to what the teacher was demonstrating, so I would come alongside those children and demonstrate the moves to them, gently bringing them back into the task if they were starting to get distracted. Quite a bit of the class, however, involved a lot of free time to play. We would often start the class with coloring time where each child would get a printed out drawing to color in, then we would move on to a mini obstacle course or a free dance activity where the children could dance with props like ribbons. During this experience, there was one child in particular who I made a special connection with. She was what some might call shy, but I could tell that she really liked dancing and was a really sweet child. She reminded me a lot of myself when I was younger, and so I spent a bit of extra time with her each class whenever I could, dancing near her so she felt comfortable in doing the movement the teacher was showing and using positive feedback to acknowledge her participation in activities. She had the best attention of all the children in the class and I could tell, even though she was still really young, that she was very engaged with learning in the class. At the end of my time being an assistant with this class, this particular girl gave me one of the drawings she colored in at the start of class and she had written my name across the top of the page. The fact that my influence clearly meant something to her was such a huge moment for me, because at the time, I honestly thought I maybe was not very good with teaching children in general. I also felt like before having this teaching experience that I did not like teaching children, but this one girl really changed my perspective on my abilities as a teacher. I remember the connection I had with her to this day and I hope she is still dancing now. To be fair, there were times during this teaching experience that were challenging. As I mentioned, I went into it thinking that I really was not good at and did not particularly enjoy teaching children. The teachers I assisted were very pleased with my work, and they always thanked me for being there to help them with the funny predicament of crowd control during the classes, so it was not that my skills were actually lacking. I think what I needed was more exposure to teaching children, and as I got more experience, I got more comfortable with making connections with the children, as well as being firm when I needed the students to listen or pay attention. There were a couple of children that had consistent behavioral issues each week, and they required a bit more attention and care during the classes. I remember one girl in particular often did not finish the class and needed to be brought out to her parents. She was very funny, talkative, and energetic, but this also came along with a healthy dose of deciding to do something else rather than paying attention to the class activities and sometimes getting into little arguments with the other students. I had a lot of love in my heart for this girl, because I could tell she had a big personality, but it sometimes did make it difficult to keep the other children on task because she often diverted their attention. I would approach this student by coming next to her and asking her if she could come do the exercise with me if her attention was straying, or if she and another child were getting carried away, I would give them each a ribbon to dance with or ask them if they could show me some of their dance moves to get them back on task. It was sometimes really difficult to bring this particular student back into the group because she sometimes really did not want to participate with everyone else, but I found it to be a valuable learning opportunity for myself, so I would know what to do in the future when I encountered students of similar temperaments. I also really hope this particular student is still dancing and, I hope, doing drama or musical theater. She had quite a flare for such things even at that young age, and I feel like she would be a really successful performer if she still has the interest in it. Teaching choreography to my classmates: In the years between about 2016-2017 when I was a teacher to young ones in my old dance studio, I had not done much teaching in a formal class setting. However, I have had the chance to teach choreography to my fellow classmates throughout my time in both universities I’ve attended. During our second semester of third year last year, we had the chance to make choreographed performances with each other amongst our cohort and give an informal showing in the studio at the end of the semester. I created a piece called you cannot eat money, which centered around the idea that, though humans have participated in a contentious relationship with the planet during the last one hundred years in particular, there is still the possibility that we can heal our relationship with the planet and reconnect with nature. I am a hippie at heart, and I bring my love for nature into a lot of my work. I took a really collaborative approach to teaching my choreography to the two colleagues I selected for this piece. I had chunks of choreographed work that I set before beginning working with them, and then left certain parts of the music free for them to create their own movement. I know their dance styles really well and wanted to incorporate their own unique voices into the piece. One of my dancers has experience in popping and street dance as well as her incredible skills as a contemporary dancer, and another of my dancers is really skilled in ballet and she brings her sense of extension and suspension into contemporary dance in really fascinating ways. I wanted to highlight their unique qualities and give them the freedom to create movement that put their own unique stamp on the piece. I started the rehearsal process by explaining the storyline of the piece to my dancers so they knew what the spirit and intention of the piece was. I also asked for their input on the music before I put the final mix together so they would be dancing to sounds that they really enjoyed. From the beginning, both of my dancers were really excited about the concept of the piece and they were eager to start the rehearsal process. Their attitude toward the work was so encouraging for me as a teacher, since this was one of the first times I was teaching an entire piece to my colleagues. I had some experience teaching sections of choreography to my fellow dance company members years before, but that was a short section of co-choreographed pieces where I was not the sole choreographer or teacher. I could feel from the beginning that this would be an amazing first experience as a choreographer and teacher of my own work. While I was teaching them my choreographed bits, I would demonstrate and rehearse the work phrase by phrase with them until they could perform it on their own. Since they both pick up choreography really quickly, they had the phrases down in no time, which allowed lots of creative time for them to develop their solo work and coordinate their movements with each other. The whole teaching process was really easy because we all knew how each other worked, and we were all on the same page about how the piece should look and feel. Throughout the process, the fact that I am really close friends with my dancers came into my teaching style quite a bit. We had a lot of fun working together and this fostered an atmosphere of co-creating and co-learning together. I really enjoy teaching in a way where my dancers or students have as much input as possible, and what is most important to me during rehearsals is that my dancers feel comfortable with each other, themselves, and with me in the midst of the work. This feeling of comfort and friendship really came across in the finished choreography, and I had such a sense of pride watching my friends perform my work with such grace, bodily intelligence, and sensitivity to each other. The following video is the recording of our studio showing of the piece, and I still get emotional watching it to this day: Teaching in primary schools:
My most recent experience teaching was just over the last couple of weeks in two primary schools. I had the opportunity to go into two schools with a group of my peers to show a short performance that involved body rhythms, rather than musical accompaniment, as well as teach the students in the schools short rhythmic phrases in smaller groups. I worked with two of my classmates to develop a lesson plan for about thirty minutes worth of teaching. Each one of us in my teaching group took on a section of the lesson plan, and we coordinated really well in getting to know the students, teaching the material, and making the class a fun and interactive time where the students could express themselves. Our lesson plan went as follows:
I enjoyed performing and teaching at both of these schools. After our time with the students, I felt like my mood was boosted. Sharing knowledge and getting creative with young students who may have never encountered dance in quite the way we were teaching them was such a positive experience. Getting to teach these students, have a positive impact on their day, and give them a space to move with each other was such a privilege. My Style as a Teacher: From my most recent experiences teaching in the two primary schools this week and from my choreographic work with my classmates last year, I can see that my teaching style falls into the realm of the practice style and inclusion style from Muska Mosston’s spectrum of teaching styles (Kiikka, 2021). I like to allow students and dancers I work with to use exploration as their main method of learning, and give space for students to adapt the learning to their own capabilities. I also enjoy seeing my students or dancers I am choreographing with getting creative and adding their own movement to what I am teaching. When I am teaching set material, I really enjoy practicing the material along with my students so that we’re experiencing moving together. This is especially helpful for students who are new to dance since there can be a certain amount of fear associated with doing movement on one’s own. Doing the set material with my students or dancers, and then taking the set material and playing with it a bit like we did in the primary schools, is a great way to create something together with my students and close the perceived gap between the student and teacher. As a teacher and choreographer, I feel like I am always growing and learning from each experience I have, including teaching my work or other set material to others. I feel like over the years, I’ve become more sure of my own teaching style and approaches as I’ve been a student in multiple contexts. I have seen many superb examples of what makes a great teacher - their joy, passion, and wealth of knowledge about dance - and I feel like I have so many tools available to me to bring their examples into my own teaching in the future. Sources: Kiikka, D. (2021) The spectrum of teaching styles: A summary of all styles, The Sports Edu. Available at: https://thesportsedu.com/the-spectrum-of-teaching-styles-summary/ (Accessed: 22 March 2024).
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