I recently created a tagline for my work:  Teaching students is my joy; teaching teachers is my passion. I love working with my students and watching them grow in their appreciation of dance.  In addition, I have a passion for supporting, leading, and collaborating with other dance educators.

I enjoy working with my students and developing new ways to expose them to the joy of movement and to engage in dance experiences.  I love the way their eyes light up when they master a step, the sound of middle school students collaborating to choreograph a dance, and the way they smile when the audience is appreciating their performance.  These aspects of teaching dance bring me joy.  My dance program provides ways for students to think and express themselves both creatively and critically, and I believe that my program is developing the next audience of dance - those who attend performances, take classes, or expose their own children to dance in some way.

I also love supporting other dance teachers.  My favorite pastime is “talking shop” about classroom practices.  When I share my ideas and another teacher adapts it for their own dance classroom, it fuels my own practice with fresh approaches and continued inspiration.  I create unit overviews and assessments that help teachers build out their own curriculum.  I also observe and coach teachers, providing strategies for improving their practice, and I open my classroom so others can observe and learn from me.  I believe we are stronger in our teaching practices when we collaborate with and support one another.

In the future, I would like to support the growth of dance education and teacher certification programs in my city and state.  At this time, there are multiple pathways to becoming a certified public school teacher in the field of dance.  While it is nice to have many avenues for achieving this, the programs have room for improvement.  Through teaching and mentoring, I have noticed some trends in our new dance educators.   For example, some of my mentees enter the classroom lacking the management skills for teaching 30+ students in a public school environment because their experience teaching dance is mostly in a studio setting, not a public school.  Some new teachers do not have a clear understanding of the state standards, which affects their ability to create cohesive lessons and units, effective assessment tools, and clear learning objectives.  Most certification programs do not prepare dance educators for the teacher evaluation process.   As a mentor, I am prepared to support my mentees all of these areas, and I develop my own professional learning workshops to meet this need.   I believe if we strengthen the teacher preparation programs, new dance teachers will be more equipped for this work.  We can build stronger programs in our schools when we are building stronger dance educators.