I have experienced that education is a constant conversation for students as well as teachers. I have witnessed firsthand the relationship between a practiced curriculum - the explicit, implicit and even null learning opportunities in my classroom - and the ways in which both my students and I collectively learn, adapt and grow from the environment it provides. Throughout my education experience, I have seen the effects of a strict traditional pedagogical approach in dance studies that have set a structure and cultural context, which students inherently learn from. I have come to learn and adapt from these “higher educational practices” and have thus moulded my pedagogical philosophy to challenge the way my students learn and perceive the world.

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I developed an interest in education and worked to discover my own pedagogical practices and identity throughout my university years. In the classroom, I believe a well-rounded dancer is one who has balanced strengths in all aspects and genres of dance. This encompasses artistic education, aesthetic education and cultural education through creating, performing and appreciating all dance styles. Throughout my years of teaching thus far, I find that students of all ages excel the most when they are actively engaged as a creator and performer of movement. While expanding the horizons of dance to students through the history, anatomy, pedagogy and production of dance, I encourage them to mend these ideas to the other dance practices, other curricular subjects, and life. Inevitably this will allow each student to reflect on their own ideas and recognize their accomplishments and failures. As the teacher, I am responsible for creating lessons that are developmentally appropriate and reach each style of learner so ideas are manifested and expanded. While discussing their opinions and concerns I provide factual knowledge and personal experience, which empowers students to critically think about dance and understand movement in a new perspective.

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My experience of “higher education” has shaped my pedagogical approach by questioning Western theories in regards to the value of dances and aesthetics along with the bodies of the dancers and knowledge that they are gaining. Students will best succeed in a classroom that has harmony in being a safe, trusting, joyful environment that has a hint of structure, yet challenges and strengthens both their creative ability and critical thinking. As the learning journey concludes between my students and I, it is my hope that they have gained enough knowledge, explicitly and implicitly, to observe, appreciate, and inspire the world they are a part of using their expressive bodies. My role as the teacher in the classroom will become less central as my purpose will be to guide, not to lead. Students will have the opportunity to become responsible and self-reflexive learners.