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Learning to Teach

The AD of the dance school I attend has been hinting that she thinks I should try to teach. I was hesitant, because I've never taught anyone anything before, and ballet can be kind of complicated.

I've found myself with much more free time than usual, and when she asked again, I decided why not? So another student teacher and I have been assigned a class together (ages 7-10ish).

I'm both super excited and nervous. We went over with the AD all the things we'll work on, things we'll introduce later, things to watch out for. It's a lot, but I'm looking forward to making up combinations and digging up fun music.

There are way more results on iTunes than I expected...

I'm also finding myself wondering what kind of resources there are for a beginning dance teacher? Are there manuals/books for this kind of thing? Will I be able to break down steps in a way that is easy for a 7 year old to understand? Will I be able to make the class both fun and disciplined (e.g. no kids running around and hanging on the barres)? Time will tell, I guess, though if anyone out there has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them!
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  1. BearikaBallerinaMarch 1, 2015 at 9:45 PM

    I started teaching ballet last year and I love it. Now I teach 3 ballet classes and a Lyrical class. You're going to love it. lol The biggest thing that helped me was having a lot of patience (with the seven year olds). And yeah, I had a seven year old that insisted on hanging on the barres all the time. I now have them hold a balance (just eleve and hold with arms up) for an amount of time. Time-outs just seemed like a waste.

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    1. GlorieMarch 5, 2015 at 10:18 AM

      Oh, thank you! I like the eleve plan :) Hopefully since there's two of us teaching at the moment it won't be a big issue, but one never knows!

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  2. RemedialBallerinaMarch 2, 2015 at 9:25 AM

    Congratulations! I assistant teach and am itching to be given my own classes! Looks like next year.

    I'd suggest checking out amazon, there are tons of ballet pedagogy and choreography books available-- if you look for actual hard copies you may be able to get used textbooks on the cheap!

    One I've purchased is called "100 lessons in classical ballet", which is technically supposed to take a ballet student from lesson 1 through their 7th year of classes and exams, and it lays out every lesson for you. I don't use literally every lesson, but its great to help figure out what you can expect a certain age to be able to do!

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    Replies
    1. GlorieMarch 5, 2015 at 10:27 AM

      FABULOUS, thank you!! I'm weirdly less worried about making up exercises and combinations than I am about how to actually TEACH things, so I'll investigate the pedagogy end (though the 100 Lessons book sounds awesome, I will definitely check that out!)

      Delete

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