Dance Classes in Mabel, MN

Here is a link to the dance class' website that I teach in Mabel, MN. STEPS dance class

This dance class has been very helpful to my development as a future educator. I have had to handle different learners, discipline issues, upset parents and also making lesson plans. 

I learned how to make something as simple as stretching fun and exciting. One day I was bored with the normal stretching we did, so I made each action something besides what it was. We would make pizza in between our legs to stretch in straddle making sure to get the crust as far out as possible so that your pizza was nice and big. We would go on adventures to outer space as butterflies and so many other things. 

One time that I had to try something different with my teaching strategy was with teaching the girls a dance. They were struggling with remembering what came next so I made up a story to help them remember the order. 

One thing that we had problems with was with one of our girls. She probably had some personal things going on at home but we did not know what they were. (It also seemed like the teachers were not doing anything and had given up on her, which was more upsetting than anything else.) She would often come into dance class moody and sad about something that happened earlier that day. One time she broke down because some other girl earlier in the day got upset at her because she did not laugh at the other girls joke. In order to help her get past what happened earlier and focus on dancing every day I would talk to her and ask her about her day and if anything bad happened that day I would remind her that its in the past and that she's at dance today and that we're going to do a lot of fun stuff. This didn't always work, but for the most times it did. Unfortunately there were some days where no matter what I said to her or no matter how long we let her cry it out she would never get better and it was just a bad day. However, by the end of the year she was one of our best dancers, it was amazing to see her dancing up there full of smiles. Its days like this that remind me why I became a teacher.