In my classes, I prioritize collaboration, creativity, socialization, and play. I build class structures that allow my students to work collaboratively. Starting at my second-grade age students, I will give an exercise and have them find a partner. Then, they watch their partner do the exercise. I guide the students with suggestions of what they should be looking for. This allows them to see what movements look like and practice giving and receiving feedback from peers. With my kindergarten-aged students and older, I enjoy giving them an opportunity to practice their creativity by building dances individually and in teams. Depending on the genre of dance, I give the students different frameworks to build their dances. This can be anything from having the dancers make up a story and then tell the story through dance to giving specific technical skills that we have been working on to giving different choreographic structures to work in, like motif and development, retrograde, or ABA.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I believe many young people missed out on learning important social skills and how to socialize with their peers. Especially for my youngest dancers, I always give opportunities for building friendships and practicing social skills. In my preschool-aged classes, I will give my students a prompt to share their answer in a whisper with their friends. This is one way I work to create an environment where my dancers feel safe, and it is an effective transition for young dancers and gives them the chance to be social. This can be an effective method to break up teacher-focused time and allow for more student-focused time. With my youngest dancers, I work to have as much student-focused time as possible with a little teacher-focused time. As my dancers get older, I work on incorporating more teacher-focused time while still allowing my dancers to socialize and be creative. Play is an integral part of child development, and I strive to incorporate play into every class I teach. This can be imaginative play where we pretend to make a pizza or bake a cake while we are stretching to playing games in class to having themed classes where we go on a safari adventure or have a fairy princess tea party.
It is my goal as an educator to cultivate a love for dance and a passion for creativity while growing social skills in a playful environment. I work to create a space where my dancers feel safe to be creative, try new things, work collaboratively, and receive feedback.
Cassidy Zins 