New school year… and building a new dance program!

Well, it's really high time I wrote about what has come about over the summer, and my new school for the new school year (and, I hope, for the indefinite future). I am now building the (nearly) new dance program at De Anza High School, back in the district where I live. This is the school where I assisted the PE teacher who was assigned two periods of Dance last year, in hopes of growing the program… Well, the program has grown, from about 50 students last year to over 100 in three classes now — and I have very high hopes for the future!

Even so, it took some doing to keep the program going, as it nearly became a casualty of our credential situation. The circumstance in this case was that the district had a teacher (credentialed in PE) who needed a placement, and went to place him in the open "PE/Dance" position at De Anza — which led to the budding dance program nearly being dissolved when the teacher said he couldn't teach dance! It took the intervention of an arts-focused school board member to save the program -- she reminded the district administration about the district's stated commitment to the arts, and couched the problem as a mistake needing correction. In short order, the position was re-opened in order to hire a dance specialist, and I am now teaching three classes full of enthusiastic students. I have waited much too long to write about this — I am still catching up from starting the school year two weeks late, as well as teaching more than full time — but I do hope to be more regular about writing this year, even if in little bits. Happy new school year!

(the picture is of the empty dance studio — empty, since my students have not signed photo releases yet — not too large, but so far a lovely little space to teach in).

frustrations with dance education advocacy, part 2…

Shortly after I posted here about my difficulties with advocating for dance programs in various public and private schools, I wrote briefly about it (along with a link to the original post) on the K-12 education forum of the National Dance Education Organization (NDEO)… and seem to have opened up quite a can of worms (or at least jolted a lively discussion into being)!

Immediately, I got a few emails directly back to me —one from a teacher in NY who is in a terrible situation but feels trapped because of the dearth of other programs, another suggesting that private schools need to be told not how dance will benefit their current students, but how it will how it will benefit the school financially by attracting more students (interesting point, I thought). Some of the initial responses on the forum were a bit disappointing — platitudes like "follow the three P's: Persistence, Perseverance and Patience," and asking if I had started an honor society chapter at my school or if I had my students do outreach in the community, as well as reminders about all the advocacy resources available from NDEO (as if I didn't know about and use them already!). So, after a week or so, I posted again — trying to put it as diplomatically as I could, but saying that much of the advice sounded like encouragement for someone new to this (which I am anything but!), and mentioning the work my students had done, when I still had a dance program…

Once I had chimed back in, things got rolling… A former Visual and Performing Arts coordinator for the state of California responded with a continuation of my rant, raising the great inequities in support for the four arts disciplines in our state: "California has all four arts as academic courses. The support for each arts discipline is not equal. Since 1979 the equity disparity widens and the arts are dropped for math, reading and science… Arts funds given to districts specifically for arts education now, with the state's "economic distress," may be used for what ever they need - that wouldn't happen to designated funds for math, reading or science." A prominent researcher in the value of dance education widened the discussion to include teachers in all subjects: "as I read current accounts from teachers of all subject areas, I hear the same concerns repeated over and over. Great teachers are leaving the profession in droves, and administrators are so pressured to reduce the ranks and hire younger, more malleable, less expensive teachers that they are resorting to blind ignorance and indifference to the facts." Another colleague and dance education mentor spoke to the issue on a more local level: "in our county, the arts education team is probably one of the biggest obstacles to dance. Having neither the energy nor the will to understand dance, they time and again bring money to visual art and music. When they must include all four disciplines, they often default to a non-standards-based dance provider"; and she quoted creative dance icon Anne Green Gilbert as once saying "when they say arts education, they don't mean dance."

The discussion shifted as various responders brought up their work in LGBT or environmental activism, and explored ideas around creating urgency and becoming change agents. I suspect the conversation will continue in other forms, especially as teachers meet in the fall at the annual conference… In any case, I found I was certainly not alone in my thinking, and it was good to get the conversation going.

Frustrations with dance education advocacy

Once again, it's been too long since I've written here — partially because such a difficult year at my school has just not been very pleasant to write about; but also in large part because I spend so much time searching for a position in a school where a dance program might be more viable, it has left little time for writing… So, one thing I have written about lately (in an article for the CDEA newsletter) is my long-term frustrations with attempting to bring dance to schools without it, and I thought it would be appropriate here as well…

I have been in public education for 17 years. Most of those years (aside from the seven I taught at EOSA) I have spent much time and energy advocating for dance education in schools which have no dance programs. Unfortunately, I feel as if I’ve been beating my head against the same wall for all those years – there are so many schools which boast comprehensive, award-winning music, visual art, and theater programs, but offer no dance at all. A few examples: one Bay Area high school offers seven different drama courses, from Beginning Drama through Stagecraft to Directing; eight music courses, including three levels of Band, two levels of Percussion, Jazz Ensemble, Concert Choir, and String Orchestra; and sixteen visual arts courses encompassing various levels of ceramics, drawing & painting, photography, and design — but no dance (except as one unit in Core PE)! That school's district, encompassing five large high schools, offers no dance at all among the fifty-two VAPA courses in the district course catalog (but does include Dance among eight requirements of one PE course). One well-regarded private school, in its promotional materials, boasts "every student involved in esteemed performing and visual arts and music programs" – but includes no dance in the curriculum.

I've always tried to emphasize that the state content standards specify four arts disciplines, while so many schools only offer two or three; that dance is the only subject which combines an arts discipline with physical activity; as well as critical thinking, spatial thinking, problem-solving, college-readiness (viz. the CSU/UC "g" requirement), etc. Over the years, I've been told "we're a small school, we don't have room in the schedule for luxuries like dance" or "we have so many arts courses already," or “we value the arts here, but we prioritize what we presently have…”

One bay area school district recently completed an assessment of all arts programs, and found that middle school dance was a huge gap — while many of the elementary schools have dance programs through arts providers or in-house teachers, and the one large high school has an excellent and comprehensive dance program, there is no dance at all in any of three middle schools. I met and brainstormed with the district arts coordinator, and we agreed that an itinerant teacher shared among all three middle schools could make it more feasible for any school to rebuild a program from just one or two classes. Unfortunately, none of the three principals was able to find room in the budget for even one dance class – so middle school dance will continue to be a huge gap.

Another large public high school recently completed new PE and performing arts buildings including a dance studio, but found no room in the budget for a dance specialist – so a PE generalist with no dance background or experience (but a specialty in team sports) was assigned to teach two sections of Dance! I assisted her with curriculum ideas this year and guest-taught one class per month, and had high hopes for helping to expand the program (with a "real" dance teacher) next year. But though the department had been optimistic that increased enrollment could warrant adding a dance specialist, the district decided that the school should host JROTC instead — so the dance classes will be taught by a non-dance teacher for another year.

This is, of course, not new: years ago, I found various schools which were on the cusp of adding dance to the curriculum, but at which all efforts failed. The VAPA department chair at one high school was certain of new arts classes for the next school year – “the arts pathway is going to be a reality and dance classes will begin in the fall.” By the next spring, those plans had withered away due to a budget crisis – and ten years later, that school still has no dance in the curriculum. Another VAPA chair urged me to contact the principal, (“I would love it if we could get a dance program going”) – but the principal never responded, and the program never came about.

I have also advocated for dance education at various "independent" schools — so many of which boast their fabulous arts programs but have no dance at all. Many seemed at first to have excellent potential, but after years of messages back and forth, those prospects faded away.

One private K-8 school advertises its emphasis on critical thinking and project-based learning (such a great fit for creative dance program!). I contacted the associate head of the school and got a prompt response asking for a phone meeting. In the phone meeting, I described a well-planned creative dance program, and he wrote about it in his school blog: “rather than force students to simply learn steps or routines, Avilee teaches them deeper concepts such as line, shape, path, range, level, tempo, rhythm, and weight... Clearly this is not the unit on square dancing we all experienced in our own educations! This conversation made me excited to continue to look at the possibilities around adding dance to our program...” However, after the idea was brought to the school governance committee, eventually it came to “maybe you could talk to our after-school coordinator,” and then even that possibility evaporated.

I likewise kept in contact with a small private high school in the east bay, where a colleague was the VAPA chair. After some dialogue, I was told that the academic dean had “expressed that there may be interest as well as need for beginning a dance program next year.” The dean contacted me about setting up a meeting in the summer, but my message offering possible dates was met with no response… until the fall, when one more contact generated a brush-off: “I don’t foresee us needing a dance program in the near future, our current arts program meets our needs...”

These are, again, just a few examples of advocacy failing to make a dent in the scarcity of dance programs in this state. In California, only 14% of elementary schools, 10% of middle schools, and 34% of high schools offer standards-based courses in dance (according to the Unfinished Canvas report); and only 0.28% of California students are enrolled in a dance course (according to DOE statistics)! Bringing a new program into a school is an incredibly difficult endeavor, and in so many cases, even with an initial positive response, following through to getting a new program accepted and running can seem nearly impossible. It is hard not to get completely discouraged...

NDEO survey (vital information!)

This is a little different from my usual post, but it's an important issue, so… The NDEO (National Dance Education Organization) has been conducting a survey to try to establish a database of K-12 dance programs across the country. One of the reasons that this survey is vitally important is because Dance as an academic discipline has traditionally been left out of the FRSS (Fast Response Survey System) surveys established by the National Center for Education Statistics to collect issue-oriented education data… which is then used in congressional testimony, Department of Education reports, and all kinds of education advocacy. Dance has been left out of these surveys because of the (circular) reason that we just don't know how much dance is out there in the schools! Meaning, of course, that when funding and curriculum decisions are made, we are left out of the conversation again…

So — NDEO began a survey to begin to remedy this situation. The deadline for filling it out has been extended to April 6th — if anyone out there reading this is in a K-12 program and hasn't filled it out, or even knows colleagues who have yet to fill it out, please get to it! The survey form itself is here: K-12 Data Collection Form; with more information about it on NDEO's homepage. Thanks, everyone!

the value of dance education (revisited)

Not long ago, I created a short slide presentation on the value of dance education (in order to have something visual for administrators who may be considering beginning a dance program) — then expanded the text in order to have something to send... I still think, in terms of the true value of dance education, that I can hardly improve on what my former student said (which I posted last August); but I thought I might just copy what I wrote here, since it encompasses some ideas and language that I have refined over the years...

Dance Education — a vital component of arts and movement curricula

The arts are an important, though often overlooked, facet of education  expanding our vision and training the heart as well as the mind. Dance as an art form has been particularly overlooked in our education systems, although dance is one of the most universal and elemental of art forms.

Dance is the only discipline which combines an art form with a physical activity. In today's television- and computer-oriented society, giving students a start toward a lifetime of physical activity is a necessity. A dance program can provide opportunities for movement during the school day, aligning with the First Lady’s "Let's Move" initiative to combat childhood obesity.

Research* shows that many students today  learn best through kinesthetic intelligence —  so including dance in a comprehensive curriculum helps to provide access to learning for all children.
* including:
Clara C. Park, CSU Northridge: Crosscultural Differences in Learning Styles of Secondary English Learners
Dr. Stephen Earl White, Columbus Technical College: Factors That Contribute to Learning Difference among African American and Caucasian Students

The study of multicultural dance forms can enhance our understanding of one another as humans: through the study of a variety of ethnic dance styles, students can explore the  commonalties as well as differences among widely disparate cultures. Dance can be a way for students to experience for themselves the complex, profound art forms of other cultures.

Taught with a creative base encompassing exploration and discovery, dance helps to expand crucial critical thinking, problem solving, and spatial thinking skills, as students expressing themselves through movement are challenged to think in new ways and to form their thoughts and feelings into physical reality.

In standards-based classes using the Create-Perform-Respond model of national standards for the Visual and Performing Arts, students learn to create using the basic elements of dance — Space, Time, and Force/Energy. Problem-solving is inherent in creative dance, as each lesson poses a problem related to a specific dance element, to be solved in a movement study.

Students will also use their knowledge of dance elements to create and communicate meaning — creating, refining, and performing dances “based on ideas, experiences, feelings concepts, or images that have personal meaning or social significance" (National Dance Standards); and will build analytical and critical thinking skills by responding to the work of their peers and reflecting on their own work.

In California, only 34% of high schools, 10% of middle schools, and 14% of elementary schools offer standards-based courses in dance.

CDEA part 2 - the Dance Credential issue

During the morning roundtable session at the Northern California CDEA mini-conference, the ever-present issue of the teaching credential in Dance — or, more precisely, the lack of one — featured prominently in the discussion. For anyone reading this from outside of this state, my understanding (though some of this goes back to before my time as a teacher) is that California used to have a single subject credential in Dance (as well as Drama), but it somehow went by the wayside in a restructuring of credentials that happened in the early 1970s. So currently the applicable credential for teaching dance in this state is in PE (the state apparently assumes that if you're qualified to teach PE, you must be qualified to teach dance — sigh…). There are other ways to go about it — a multiple subjects credential with a subject matter authorization in Dance, for instance — but the PE credential is pretty much the standard.

One problem with this., of course, is that once you have to get a PE credential, they can make you teach PE — which is what I ended up doing for my first few years in public schools, and what I don't want to have to do again… Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against physical education, I believe it is vitally important in its own right — it's just that I personally know pretty close to diddly-squat about teaching any sports (with the sole exception of synchronized swimming, which I'm afraid really isn't called for too often in PE programs), and I do not like teaching subjects I know nothing about!

So there has been a push for many years to get the dance credential restored (as well as the drama credential — drama teachers are in much the same boat as we are, they have to get credentials in English). The discussion at the conference was somewhat hopeful, as there is some movement among the state education department and various arts organizations to bring the issue forward… perhaps there is a possibility of the dance credential being restored within my teaching lifetime...

However, one interesting angle to the PE-for-dance credential problem that I had never even thought of popped up in the course of the discussion: One dance teacher, who had recently been hired to replace a retiring teacher, mentioned that another problem with the PE credential requirement is that lots of PE teachers end up applying for dance positions — she said the previous teacher told her that out of a huge pool of applicants, the vast majority were "PE people" which they had to weed out to get to the relatively tiny pool of dance people… Well, I sat up and took notice at that — because this happened to be a position I had also applied for, but had never been called for an interview. I had presumed at the time that they had been looking for some very specific experience — performing with a major company, a particular technical emphasis, whatever — but on discovering during our lunchtime conversation that there was nothing like that and the only thing that truly separated us was her out-of-state dance credential, I began to suspect another possibility: that I was one of those "PE people" weeded out of the applicant pool! Could it be that someone in HR doing the initial screening actually didn't know that that the PE credential is standard for "dance people" getting credentialed in this state (because there is no dance credential!!!), and simply rejected out of hand all those applicants credentialed in PE without even looking at the resumes? I wonder… does this happen often???

There is one way to put dance on a credential, it is called a "Specific Subject Matter Authorization" (SMA). BUT here's the Catch-22: because the reason for an SMA is to "allow an individual to teach a class in a subject outside the area in which he or she earned a credential"; and because the Commission on Teacher Credentialing considers dance to be "subsumed under" the umbrella of PE, you can't add an SMA in Dance to a PE credential! So, even though all of my coursework was in dance, there appears to be no way to show that on my credential (sigh again). Just another way the arts (especially dance) are disrespected and disregarded in education...

CDEA mini-conference

Last weekend I attended the California Dance Education Association (CDEA) mini-conference for northern California... it was not as big a gathering as in the past (before CDEA became an affiliate of NDEO and everyone started going to those conferences instead), but definitely worthwhile — I hope CDEA will grow to have larger (perhaps statewide) conferences again!

First, we had a fabulous workshop on creative dance and the African aesthetic from Cherie HIll from Luna Dance Institute. I especially loved the treatment of the Brain Dance for warmup, and the juxtaposition of open-and-close with various body parts — it felt like discovering anew everything I've ever been taught in technique classes in African forms, from the inside out. Wonderful work! In the afternoon we had a roundtable discussion on many issues, including the struggle to reinstate a dance credential in California, about which more in a later post; and we finished the day with a wonderfully rejuvenating Somatics workshop with Susan Bauer.

I think one of the valuable parts of the conference for me, oddly enough, was the informal discussion we had over lunch. We dance teachers are so often lonely "singletons" at our schools — a typical high school may have any number of math, science, social studies, or English teachers, but only one dance teacher (if that). So while, say, math teachers can get together at department meetings to share ideas and strategies, at our department meetings we see the art, music, and drama teachers — nice for sharing cross-curricular integration and links between art forms, but definitely not the same as talking with other dance teachers about the nuts and bolts of teaching our specialty! So this conversation was invaluable — in a short 45 minutes we gave each other some great ideas on student musical choices, structures for casting student choreography and adjudicating pieces for a concert, dealing with administrators who don't understand dance… and much more. Such a rich conversation! Next month a colleague and I will be starting a little gathering of local dance teachers for just this kind of discussion — now I know how valuable that can be, and I hope it will be able to grow into a regular discussion group.

the importance and scarcity of dance education (revisited)

a few quotes:

“[Students] should be able to communicate at a basic level in the four arts disciplines-- dance, music, theatre, and the visual arts. This includes knowledge and skills in the use of the basic vocabularies, materials, tools, techniques, and intellectual methods of each arts discipline. They should be able to communicate proficiently in at least one art form, including the ability to define and solve artistic problems with insight, reason, and technical proficiency. ”
-- National Standards for Arts Education: What every young American should know and be able to do in the arts

“The direct physical experience of dancing transforms the dancer into a powerful and expressive being... Choreographing and performing his or her dance requires the student dancer to go beyond known experience to create new forms...”
— California Visual and Performing Arts Framework, p.32

"This study [of English learners in California] confirmed previous research findings... that students generally preferred to learn through a kinesthetic mode."
- Clara C. Park, Crosscultural Differences in Learning Styles of Secondary English Learners

"The evidence shows that… the prime processing mode for Black [students] is kinesthetic."
- Stephen Earl White, Factors That Contribute to Learning Difference among African American and Caucasian Students

 a few statistics:
• 89% of California K-12 schools fail to offer a standards-based course of study in all four [arts]
disciplines—music, visual arts, theatre, and dance—and thus fall short of state goals for arts education.
• More than four in five [of California’s elementary students] are not receiving any standards-aligned instruction in theatre and dance.
• Only 9% of middle school students and only 4% of high school students in California participate in standards-based dance programs in any given year.
• Only 13% of San Francisco Bay Area schools offered a standards-based course of study in dance.
- all statistics from An unfinished canvas. Arts education in California: Taking stock of policies and practices — Summary Report and Bay Area Report

Spatial thinking

Last spring my principal sent around, with her weekly message to teachers, an article from the journal American Educator called "Picture This: Increasing Math and Science Learning by Improving Spatial Thinking." It says that there are three main kinds of thinking (not learning styles): verbal, mathematical, and spatial. Spatial thinking is apparently very important to learning in the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and math, for those not up on education jargon); yet while we focus intensely in schools on verbal and math skills, there has not been nearly the same focus on spatial thinking skills.

The article defines spatial thinking as concerning "the locations of objects, their shapes, their relations to each other, and the paths they take as they move," and describes some aspects of spatial thinking as being able to mentally rotate objects in space (two- or three-dimensional spatial visualization). Among their recommendations for improving spatial thinking in young children are to teach spatial words such as around, through, over, under, up, down, high, low, out, in, line up, etc., and to "encourage young children to gesture."

I of course emailed back immediately "Hmmm… sounds exactly like what we do all the time in dance education!" Of course, our work in the element of Space is all about spatial thinking  — dance teachers teach entire lessons or units on concepts such as around and through, high and low, toward and away… We don't simply teach and use the words, we guide our students to explore as many variations on those concepts as they can discover through movement.

And those words and concepts pervade all of our teaching, no matter what dance element (or technique) we focus on… When we direct students, in the "freeze dance" to "find a shape with one arm high and one arm low… expand it… shrink it… make it spin… keep one part the same and travel around the room with it…" what are we doing if not prodding students to think spatially — and on a fairly sophisticated level? In technique classes, we quite naturally focus on nuances of space (size, direction, etc.) when correcting movements to a particular style. We constantly reinforce the ability to mentally rotate as we practice shapes and movements in different facings… and as far as encouraging children to gesture, what is dance if not gesture writ large (not to mention specific lessons on gesture abstraction)?

There is so much more that could be said about this… Perhaps just one more argument we can muster for the importance of dance education. There's a website devoted to spatial thinking which may be interesting to explore, so I'll add it to my arts ed advocacy links.

the importance of dance education

I was recently asked in an interview to explain why I believe dance education is important (talk about a big question for an interview…!). I've had some ideas on that written down for myself for a long time —  one of my last assignments from my student teaching seminar (15 years ago) was to write about my educational philosophy and why I feel the subject I teach is important — so I was able to pull out some of those points I've had in my mind for so long:

...that dance is the most basic and elemental or art forms, since in dance, the instrument is oneself — not a piano or violin, nor paint and canvas, nor even a smaller part of oneself such as the voice, but one’s own moving body… and students expressing themselves through movement are challenged to think in ways they may not have previously attempted, to form their thoughts and feelings into physical reality…
… that dance is one of the most universal and elemental of art forms — all cultures dance in some way, whether for ritual, celebration, social, recreation, or expressive reasons. Although dance leaves few physical traces and we cannot say for certain when it became part of human culture, it is likely to be among the oldest of art forms as well: there are cave painting depicting communal dances…

(Of course, I continued, one can also make arguments for the importance of all of the arts — I recently re-read The Grapes of Wrath, after many decades, and was struck by the power of fiction to convey the truth of a situation with so much more immediacy than any work of history I have ever read.)

But since I first wrote down those earlier thoughts, I found out a lot about the value of dance and the arts to those underserved students I taught at EOSA… I know there were a number of students who had trouble in their regular "desk" classes, and may not have stayed in school had they not had arts classes to come to every day (and as we were often told in staff meetings, in East Oakland the difference between staying in school and dropping out can be a life and death matter). But I remember especially one student in particular, who came into school wild and angry as a ninth-grader, but because of dance and track stuck with it and became one of EOSA's most diligent and accomplished students by her senior year. She was one of the group who created "All Arms Open" (below), and was asked to speak at an Alameda County "Art IS Education" event being held at EOSA… This is a part of what she said: "I come from a community where there are a lot of killings, the community right outside of this school, and I have lost six of my loved ones to gun violence… and because of that, I am sometimes deprived of my right to happiness… However, when I walk into the dance studio here at EOSA my feelings of being deprived of my right to happiness no longer exist. I feel like when I go into the dance studio at EOSA I am home— they are my family, we learn to care about each other... And things that I wouldn't be able to say in words, I know that I can express how I feel, and my ideas, through dance."

I can't add anything better than that…

the relative scarcity of dance programs

Well, I'm a bit reluctant to take on an issue that sounds like complaining, but it has been on my mind a lot lately (especially after having spent much time over the past year looking for schools in my area which might need an experienced dance teacher)...

I am old enough to have grown up in the "golden age" of education in California (the 60s and 70s, pre-Prop 13), but in those days even my large (2400 students) high school had virtually nothing in the way of a dance program -- we had a one-semester PE elective, taught by a PE teacher obviously never trained in dance of any kind, who left us alone to group ourselves and make up dances for the whole semester.

In those days there were no state Frameworks or Content Standards specifying arts as core subjects or mandating access to education in all four major arts disciplines (dance, drama, music, visual art), as we have now -- yet it is discouraging to see, in many ways, how little has changed. I know, in these times of high-stakes testing and focus on ELA and math scores, that all the arts are struggling for space in the curriculum; yet when the subject of arts in schools comes up in general public discourse or in the local papers, it is so often framed as "art and music" classes. And while there are, of course, many schools both large and small with excellent dance programs (very many I could name right in my area), there are equally many with huge, thriving programs in three arts disciplines, and no dance at all. As just an example, in one local (fairly well-off, suburban) school district encompassing three comprehensive high schools, there are no high school dance programs at all, although each school boasts at least 30 courses in the other three disciplines. And should one of those schools actually wish to start a dance program, it would find at least one large obstacle: the district list of approved courses, including 51 classes in Fine Arts, recognizes no dance courses at all! (except as a unit within Core PE or a one-semester PE elective -- exactly what I had all those decades ago...)

So... why is this? I suppose that part of the difficulty is the lack of a dance credential in California — it is much harder to be taken seriously as a subject with no teachers credentialed specifically for that subject. There is also that PE thing — once thought of as a physical activity within PE, it is hard to get out of that mold (I remember one principal telling me that "we don't have a dance program because none of our PE teachers knows how to teach dance")… although the PE connection is also one of our advantages, as students are often able to take dance courses for Performing Arts, PE, or elective credit — definitely a saving grace when most districts require only one year of arts credit. I also realize the logistical barriers to starting a dance program: while we do not have the ongoing materials budgets that, for instance, visual art programs require (as I have certainly found out this year), there is that big issue of space -- we dancers do tend to be a little (rightfully) picky about safe surfaces and adequate space, so dedicating a room can be a big up-front investment. BUT there are those content standards mandating access to four arts disciplines — and it still feels as if we are so often left out of the conversation...

One of my teachers in college, Chitresh Das, used to say that "I am not a dance teacher, but a dance preacher" — meaning, as I recall, that he feels his mission in life is to continually remind the world of the importance of dance. At times I have felt that that is how I ended up myself — a "dance preacher"  trying to convince the education world of the importance of dance in schools.