This year I have started my journey into becoming a dance teacher. Rambert school train dancers not teachers, so this has been something new for me to explore and develop. Over this past year I have had the opportunity to experience teaching in multiple contexts.
Here are a few:
In january I started working as an assistant teacher for Springs Dance Company. Springs is a Christian dance company based in London and alongside their small company they run an education program. We go schools and create dances with the students as a way of exploring and retelling bible stories.
This summer I was invited to teach a summer intensive for young dancers at Swindon Dance for 3 days. I had the students from 10:30 am to 4:00 pm each day. This was my first time to teach full dance technique classes and lead a choreogrpahic project by myself, which was a big learning curve. I really enjoyed it and it has helped me to know that I do want to develop teaching technique classes as well as leading creative projects to make choreography.
I have been assisting Rachel in restarting a small dance business, called createmovedance, in our local community. So far we have been setting up weekly childrens classes. This is helping me to learn how to work with children and young teens as well as what it takes to set up a business.
Teaching is harder than I thought it would be! It is challenging but fun. Here is something I have learned.
A good teacher is always a student and should never stop learning. This also means that I don't have to wait until I know everything before I start teaching others. It is more exciting knowing that there is always something new to learn and pass on to others.
Here are some of the challenges that I am working on:
Multi-tasking: dance teachers have to do many things at the same time such as demonstrating movements, talking, counting the music and engaging with students to help them.
Planning classes: this takes a lot of time and understanding of how things need to build and develop through a class or workshop.
These are all amazing experiences and are part of preparing me for the future and helping me to see kind of work I want to focus on in the future.
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