Teaching Statement

I am an experienced, highly trained dance educator with a passion for inclusive and culturally responsive education. My dance classroom is a place for kinesthetic learning, but also provides a rigorous and diverse curriculum connecting dance and culture, and inviting students to develop a personal relationship with multiple dance forms. In my classroom, joyful education builds myriad student skills and allows students to grow and shine both within and without their dance education.

WHY?

While dance education has inherent value, whether as an artistic recreational pastime or career pursuit, n my classroom dance education also:

• Builds independence and leadership skills through regular performance, design, and composition opportunities

• Provides students a space to express and communicate through kinsethetic and artistic mediums

• Allows students access to a flexible and culturally responsive curriculum which molds and shifts to meet classroom need

• Integrates community-building and social emotional learning opportunities seamlessly into the classroom structure

• Builds confidence by challenging students to take personal and academic risk in a safe, structured environment

• Showcases and spotlights students who do not always excel in classroom spaces to shine through differentiated learning and assessment opportunities

HOW:

My classroom is a space where dancers of all abilities are integrated into the curriculum through a four-pronged approach:

• Representation: dancers of varied abilities and cultures are considered across diverse curriculum

• Universal Design: lessons are designed with clearly articulated outcomes all students can access

• Modifications and Adaptations: as needed, teacher provides students modifications and adaptations to support their unique skillsets

• Student Voice: students are given opportunities to compose, design, choose from differentiated progresses, and students are regularly asked to provide class feedback in different forms

Students are given differentiated and multi-disciplinary opportunities to engage with the material including graffiti projects, timelines, and unique student interpretations of assignments. Student choice is harnessed to increase engagement and encourage student autonomy over curriculum and work product.

Performing is an essential dance skill and assessment opportunity, and students are given regular opportunities to practice performing. These include mini-class showcases, small invited events, or whole school assemblies. Performing builds leadership, confidence, problem-solving, and builds community around the excellence of our dancers.

Design: Students are engaged holistically in performances- supporting with costume design, direction, stage management, and choreography.

Community activation is built into the course design. Students learn to partner and work together in safe, scaffolded lessons. Students are offered a supported entry into partnering with the support of manipulatives like sticks or strings. Games which teach essential skills bring joy and community, and eventually students become comfortable with improvisational cyphers, so that community development in turn supports the individual growth of students.

Curriculum includes hip-hop and street dance forms (breakdance, VOGUE, pop and lock, House), Latin dance forms (Bachata, salsa, merengue), Tap, Ballet, Modern, Jazz (including the Charleston and other social dances), Laban Movement Analysis, Composition, Production and Design, and Multi-Media Projects.

All dance forms are underpinned with cultural and historical considerations. My students learn the geographical and cultural origins and importance of each dance form, and in turn are able to identify how these dance forms affect them personally.