In August 2014, Valerie Gutwirth and I published a pocket guide/journal of 55 teaching tips we wished we had learned before embarking on a career teaching children and teens. This book is not teaching advice about content or lesson planning; it is about those essential details - the brass tacks (teaching supplies, paychecks, shoes for teaching, observing at the school before you begin, protocol for days when you are sick...). Whether you are teaching one class a week or twenty, these tips are practical and easily applicable right away in a wide variety of teaching settings including in a studio, preschool, or K-12 school. Since many dance teachers teach a variety of ages within a given week, Dance Education Essentials touches upon ideas that are universal to all dance classes as well as some specific to preschoolers, elementary age students, and teenage students.
For the next few weeks, we will share some of these teaching tips. If you would like to purchase your own copy of the pocket guide/journal ($7.99), click here.
We welcome college professors to print out these teaching tips and use within a college course on dance education.
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Tip #14: Visit Before You Begin
Go to the school site/studio before your first day; figure out the commute time, look at the space where you’ll be teaching, and figure out a beginning plan for set up. How much or how little space do you have? What is the surface? Will the students be able to remove socks and shoes to safely dance on the surface?
Tip #3: Set Up Time
How many minutes do you need to set up the room before the students arrive? Is there something going on in the space before your class? Do a dry run if possible. Also consider asking your administrator to schedule 5-10 minutes in between your classes so that you can re-adapt to the age level and ability level of the students.
Tip #19: Teaching Schedule
What is a reasonable amount to teach in one day? Ballpark the idea of 4 or 5 one hour classes a day.
Tip #21: How Long Does It Take to Prep a Class?
Prep time for new dance teachers - for each 45-60 minute class, consider that you might need an hour each week to prep. Prep time includes writing notes, creating activities, referencing dance education books or standards, finding music, and gathering props. So, if you are teaching 5 different kinds of classes/age groups, consider that you might need to prep for 4-5 hours each week as well. A lesson quickly learned is that it is better to teach the same lesson plan a few times a week if you can get that kind of work (ex. 3 first grade classes a week at an elementary school).
Tip #23: Reflect and Take Notes
If you review the lessons from the day within 24 hours before ideas get lost, you will save yourself time and improve your lessons. This is prep time as much as lesson creation; put it into your schedule as if it were a class or a prep. Note how things went and what you want to repeat, get rid of, or extend during the next class. Create a shorthand system of notes that work for you to describe what went well, what you didn’t get to, what you might want to discard, and what you want to repeat next time.
Tip #24: Transition Time
If you are traveling between teaching sites, you will be changing cultures with every new site. This adaptation takes attention and energy on top of teaching. It might help to develop a routine when changing from one site to another. Even if you only have time for 3 cleansing breaths, it will help refresh you. Best is to have 20 minutes in addition to travel and set up time, to review notes and resettle.
Tip #28: Meetings, Workshops, and Trainings
Will you be paid for these? Is it at your teaching rate or a different rate?
Tip #29: Cancelled Classes Due to Under-Enrollment
If you are teaching at a studio, community center, or summer program and your class is under-enrolled, will the class get cancelled? Not all small classes will get cancelled. Understand the policy around this from early on and plan/budget accordingly.
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About the authors:
Valerie Gutwirth began teaching dance to children in high school. She graduated from Connecticut College in 1984, and received an MS in Early Childhood/Elementary Education from Bank Street College in 1992. She has taught movement, dance, and fitness classes to people from birth to age 80+, from Mommy and Me classes in church basements to Juilliard’s dance department, and everything in between. Valerie’s dance and performance experience includes companies in New York (1984-1991) and the San Francisco Bay Area (1995-present), most recently with Paufve Dance and the dance/singing/ body percussion group MoToR. Valerie has been thrilled, inspired, and challenged as a dance teacher in the Berkeley, California public schools for the past 17 years.
Jill Homan Randall graduated from the University of Utah in 1997 and has been teaching dance, or directing arts education programs, ever since. In the San Francisco Bay Area, Jill has taught in a wide variety of settings including preschools, community centers, dance studios, and public and independent K-12 schools. From 2004-2006 Jill was the Director of Education for the Lincoln Center Institute affiliate in Berkeley, California, and from 2006-2010 Jill directed Shawl-Anderson Dance Center. Jill currently teaches dance full-time at The Hamlin School in San Francisco. She has performed extensively with Nina Haft & Company and Paufve Dance. As a dance writer, Jill maintains three blogs on children’s books on dance, careers in modern dance, and the intersection of dance and technology. In 2013, Jill received the Herbst Foundation Award for Teaching Excellence.
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