TEACHING
I started teaching in 2019 simply just to get some experience under my belt. Little did I know that I would fall in love with teaching dance. Watching your students grow in your own classroom is one of the most rewarding feelings you can ever get. I love creating lesson plans, choreographing, communicating the importance of technique, and developing strong relationships with my students. I want to be apart of the improvement of this upcoming generation of dancers.
TEACHING PHILOSOPHY
Dance is for Everyone
The NDEO believes that everyone should have access to dance-- no matter their race, gender, age, or economic background. Hearing about this inclusion of everyone was at first foreign to me. The dancers in my hometown (that were considered to be actual dancers) were ones that have been at a competition studio since they were two years old, and have not left since. They were very dedicated to dance as if it were a sport, and would brag about the trophies and medals they would win at these competitions. I have met their parents, who considered themselves to be “dance mom’s” and “ dance dad’s”, making dance a big part of their family culture. Since this was all I knew of dance, this is how I defined it. I felt that there was no way I could be a dancer because I did not align with this stereotype of one.
When I started dance classes, however, my passion for it immediately sparked. I was naturally a musical kid, who always moved to music whenever it was on. I was also very imaginative and enjoyed the process of creating. I was never a physically active kid due to my persistent asthma. Dance was a way to trick myself into being active while having fun. I can now run, jump, move, and most importantly breathe. I like to think that dance has saved my life. Without it, I would not be as strong, as confident, as social, nor as sharp as I am today.
I did not stumble upon the world of dance because I was privileged in any type of way. I committed to dance in a time of my life where I was considered “too old”, and could only afford to take a limited amount of classes. I loved dance because it made me feel whole-- physically, emotionally, socially, mentally, cognitively, and spiritually. My age and socioeconomic status did not hold me back from participating or improving in dance.
Because of this, I want to take this mentality of inclusion into my teaching. My number one priority will be to encourage everyone to dance, no matter their circumstances. Dance promotes psychological health, awareness, team work, and problem solving. Everyone deserves to partake in the experience.
I also want to recognize that people choose to dance for different reasons. For the girls in my hometown, it was to advance fast technically and win competitions. For myself, it was to stay healthy, and happy while also having an outlet for creativity. My Aunt dances to keep herself moving. My students dance to escape from their day-to-day responsibilities, to cope with their living situations, and to have fun. With this in mind, my objective as a teacher is to attend to the needs of the dancers and have a student-centered environment. In other words, my expectations must be flexible to the needs of the students.
Importance of Conditioning
With that being said, I would like to talk about a different approach to studio teaching. Coming from my own personal experience, a dance class is usually structured as such: 10-15 minutes of conditioning, strengthening, and stretching, while the rest of the class is dedicated to dancing, technical work and choreography. The emphasis in dance is usually put on technique and performance (which, don’t get me wrong, are extremely important and valuable elements in dance that must always be taken into account when building a good dancer) but the process of conditioning and preparing dance is not significant in studios, and is sometimes completely disregarded.
When I came to college, almost half of my dance classes consisted of pilates, breathing, and strengthening techniques. I did not understand why at first. But after some time passed in these classes, I found myself getting stronger. I would be able to hold a plank longer, and go up on relevé without losing my balance. I learned about muscle engagement, and having precision without tension. I was able to internally assess what my body needed to do when performing certain tasks. A foundation was being built for myself. The best part is that the knowledge I was obtaining in these classes was transferring over to the improvement in my other dance classes. Technique work that I used to find so strenuous and painful became easier, and I was able to pick up corrections quicker. With this new body, I was able to finally challenge and push myself. I would strongly implement conditioning as a big part of my classes, if not having entire classes being dedicated to it.
Mindbody Connection
It is important to have a mind-body connection (otherwise known as mindbody) when you are dancing, and conditioning does just that. When this dualism works together, there is a sense of awareness that is created. Dr. Kimberly Vaccaro, the director of the dance program at Rider University, wrote COMBO: Conditioning the Mindbody. She encourages her students to understand that the mind and body are one entity, and one can and should not work without the other. For example, when we teach through only physical demonstration, we are only teaching the body. For a more efficient education, dance should be considered an exercise of the mindbody. With this, they are able to think quicker and make the best decisions as dancers! It increases critical thinking, brainstorming, and problem solving skills. This applies to what I was talking about before with having a better understanding of the body and how it functions.
Using meditation in your conditioning practices is almost like having “trained intuition,” so to speak. Slowing down in the classroom gives us a chance to feel what it is like to work from the inside out. When the dancers take the time in class to check in with themselves, they are able to develop a better understanding of their bodies. Anna Paskesvska, the author of Both Sides of the Mirror: The Science and Art of Ballet, says in her book, “Like a fine musical instrument, the body needs to be tuned to keep its tone.” The relationship between musician and instrument is very similar between dancer and body. However, a musician cannot simply pick up an instrument and play it. He must take care of it and keep it in the best shape possible in order to produce quality music. Dancing is the same. Taking the time to slow down and understand our bodies is not only important for our awareness, it is important for our technique, our dance ability, and our health.
Importance of Ballet
Trust me, Ballet was never my favorite style to dance. I used to dread taking classes. It was hard, and painful, and for a long I never left a ballet class feeling good about myself. Ballet gets a huge reputation for being a difficult form of dance to learn. This style of dance has definite rights and wrongs, and there is little to no room for imprecision. It takes years of developing a good enough foundation to be able to truly apply yourself in this artform. However, one you achieve something in ballet, you truly feel like a superhero.
The reason ballet is hard is because it is a literal applied science. The rules of Ballet are not simply made up for the sake of creating an aesthetic. They are essential for the dancers alignment, aplomb, and execution of barre and center work. Without it, the dancer loses all abilities.
This is not to say that Ballet is the foundation for all dance styles. There are many worldly dance forms that exist that embody their own culture, style and technique. However, the common styles we often teach in the dance world in American studios (i.e. Modern, Lyrical, Contemporary, Jazz, etc.) take on similar posture, technique and even some vocabulary as Ballet.
Ballet, as rough as the experience was, has helped me achieve my most difficult and impossible goals. A great teacher once told me, “You do not need ballet. However, if you understand it, it makes performing other styles of dance so much easier.” This is true. I consider ballet class to be another form of conditioning. It requires the understanding of posture and muscle engagement, strong physicality, and a good sense of focus and artistry. Alongside teaching ballet elements in my classes, I would stress the importance of taking ballet class to my students so that they can feel like superheros too.
Promoting Artistry and Performance Abilities
I have already talked a lot about the importance of strength and technique in dance. While I acknowledge these to be extremely important elements, we have to keep in mind that dance is as much a sport as it is an art form. When the audience comes to see the performance, they may be in awe of the person’s ability to dance. But whenever you hear about people being touched by dance, it is because the dancer(s) executed artistry on the stage.
As I have mentioned before, what I originally have learned about dance was to be the competition side of it. I remember very vividly being involved in conversation with some of these dancers, and we were talking about our talents outside of dance. Mine was music. I have played piano for ten years, guitar for eight, and violin for two at the time. Everyone else in the conversation had never picked up an instrument, or any other artistic activity as a matter of fact. They all began to vocalize how good at math and science they were. None of them really enjoyed choreographing, and actually found a lot of stress in that process. We all began to find it strange that they were good at dance, but not in other subjects of art. And then it clicked.
In watching these dancers, I have found them to be extremely talented physically. Their technique was astounding, they all had 180 degree turn out, and their legs were so flexible that they could kick their heads. However, they had no facial expression. Their love for performance came from their physicality, but they lacked emotional connection. This is not to say that these people didn’t love dance, they just related to dance in a different way than I did.
In my teaching, I will promote and practice creativity and performance as much as I work on technique in my students. My ultimate goal is that my students perform on stage as well as they dance in class. I want them to leave my class feeling that their education was well-rounded.
Affirmations and Empathy in the Classroom
Implementing affirmation in a classroom setting is, what I believe, one of the best things you can do for a student. I think many teachers walk into work thinking that either the students emotional needs should be met at home, or that their well-being is not their responsibility. But when we encourage and support children verbally, they are more likely to be able to participate in the class and have higher executive functions. As mentioned by the author Ellie J. Leonhardt in the reading Holistic Education, the Marion Chace DMT technique is about supporting students with affirmations, making them better physically and artistically. In Chace's time teaching, she encouraged her students to dance through their personhood as well as their technique. To push her ideas (i.e. empathy, expressiveness, therapeutic approaches to teaching dance), Marion Chace helped develop the American Dance Therapy Association in 1966. Empathetic reflection in the classroom changes the tone of the environment. It can make a competitive atmosphere into a compassionate one.
Teaching Approaches to Different Age Groups
The Healthy Dancer shares some insight when dealing with different age levels in a dance class. When children are in their preschool age, they should be encouraged to learn through imitation in the classroom. Learning through verbal instruction does not work well with them because they have a limited attention span and cannot see well from others perspective. Within this age group, teachers should not strive to push the student to achieve "correctness" in their dancing. Pre-adolescent children should be encouraged to focus on the process of dance (i.e. effort, risk-taking, goals, etc.). During this age, children have the capability to understand corrections and apply themselves--so the teacher should advocate for this! This is the beginning of dancers learning to truly understand the art form in a variety of different ways. The parents should contribute to their child's dance experience by giving them positive affirmations.
Early adolescents (ages 11-14) have much for control over their impulses and where their attention is directed. Because of this, they are at a great age where they can handle the corrections coming their way. On the other hand, teenagers tend to be more anxious and self-conscious. It is important to reward them with effort, and to still provide them with affirmations. Those between the ages of 15 and 20 are at their limit in major cognitive changes. This is where negative self-talk reaches its peak, and teachers should pay attention to their thoughts and feelings. It is important to listen to this age group and to communicate with them.
Assessment
As a teacher, the biggest aspect of my job is making sure that I am delivering the knowledge that I have in the most effective way possible. I have to understand that there are two perspectives of a classroom experience: the teachers point-of-view and the students point-of-view. Every student walks into a classroom having obtained different life experiences, making their perception of the class different from mine and others. As I impose expectations on the students, I must also remind myself to be student-centered in my teaching. There comes a point where I might have to change my lesson plans because I am not seeing improvement.
I like to view the responsibility of a classroom to be 50/50: I am keeping my teaching habits and communication in check, and in return, the students must always be giving their best effort to absorb the information I am giving them. If goals are not being achieved in the classroom, the teacher must examine this relationship to find the root of the problem. When I say best effort, I mean to the best of the students ability, not what I think their ability is. However, I will not allow the phrase “I can’t” be said in a class. When a student labels an activity with that phrase, they are restricting their ability to improve. Students must keep an open mind and not be scared to take risks in the classroom. Otherwise, the mindbody is lost, and so is any chance of progress.
Reflective Theory
As I have mentioned before, only preschool aged students learn the best through the act of copying and imitating. This mentality of using external mirrors as a teaching tool is still used on older students. Conditioning, meditating and breathing are all great techniques to practice to help better the use of internal mirrors. Unless these methods are used often, the dancer tends to rely on physical and verbal demonstration to learn different movements. For example, when a teacher says “pull up” to a student at barre, the demand is not usually followed by an explanation. The student is left to interpret the teachers' meaning behind the demand. They could “pull up”, but maybe they are engaging the wrong muscle by doing so. The student could internalize this correction and apply it wrong (i.e. sacrificing their own alignment, tipping over in the pelvis, engaging or gripping the wrong muscle). Once they learn this habit, it is often hard to undo.
This is where reflection comes in. I might recommend that my students (those who know how to write) have a journal for my classes. Depending on the activity we are working on, I might ask them to write things down. What did you do right? What did you do wrong? How can you fix your mistake? What muscles are you using for this activity? What does it feel like? There would be no wrong answers in these journals, as they are not for me to read. They are solely for the purpose of the student to document their work and progress. To increase mindbody, I want to exercise the brain as much as I do the body. By reflecting and revisiting activities in class, teachers can give the students a sense of purpose for each objective in class.