Well, it’s been years since I last wrote here – with 250-plus students to grade (more than half PE students, sigh), I just plain ran out of time. This year, I convinced my administration to transition me to (somewhat) part-time so that I could teach only dance, so I am hoping I will have enough time to start writing again. At still nearly fulltime (83%) I still feel pretty busy, but I’m going to try to be efficient with my time and at least write when big new things are happening.
So this year the dance program has grown to five classes – three level 1 (called Jazz Dance 1 in my district, for inexplicable reasons lost to history), one level 2 (Jazz 2), and one Dance Production. That is up from two Jazz 1 classes and one combined Jazz 2 / Dance Production last year – and only one Jazz 1 and one combined class the year before. The growth in my first-year classes I attribute completely to the three seniors who went out to our feeder middle school along with the counselors last spring, to talk to each eighth-grade class about why they should consider taking dance – they were so much better ambassadors for the program than I could ever be!
As far as the Dance Production class (the first time it’s been separate from Jazz 2 in four years, yay!), I had a lot of extremely focused, creative, and enthusiastic students in my Jazz 1 classes last year, and I was able to keep enough of them in the program to fill both Jazz 2 and Dance Production (at least as much as the district needed to not take away the classes). The new Dance Production class is a dream – 20 dancers open for any new challenges I throw at them (more about that later). I am so looking forward to working with them this year!
