MA Dance Pedagogy

Hey everyone - hope you all had good weeks. I started my new teaching role this week so I am pretty tired now and haven't managed to do as much work as I had hoped to this week. I wondered if anyone would be willing to talk about the Areas of Learning essays? I have a few brief ideas so I'm just looking at how to develop my ideas a bit more in a sense of getting my original subject titles off the ground and to start writing! I have two ideas for subjects of the essays, the first being Nurturing students as a teacher - I feel the broad range of people I have taught have allowed me to develop a strong sense of nurturing students during class and trying to help them become the best they can be. I think this could be partly down to my own training where I felt I could have been more nurtured during my experience (of course this is just my perception of it) and also down to teaching smaller children and then teaching adult from specialist population groups who were not trainin...

Just had a quick look through the claims to prior learning handbook and found a good blog of Helen's from last year, read it here.... http://helenkindred.blogspot.com/2017/09/ I think this module will be a lot about where I am right now and how my past experiences have got me here. From this I thought I'd start by creating a little mind map of what I've been part of during my dance journey. It actually made me feel really proud of everything I've achieved so far as a dance teacher. The course start has also come at a time when I've been offered my first work as a dance lecturer at a college too. So I'm very excited to use what I learn during my teaching in my MA studies. I have come to realise that outcomes don't necessarily have to be used to verify you as a person and what value to bring to jobs/studies/family/friends/anything in life. But it is hard to remember this sometimes. Tomorrow I'm running my first half marathon and I'm real...

If I am to reflect on who I am now in relevance to my professional practice and who I was when I started the course, I feel I have made massive leaps and bounds towards understanding more about my professional practice. When I first started the course and wrote my first blog, one student picked it apart so much I had to delete it. I felt vulnerable, on display and under qualified to be taking on this work. I was hesitant to write any blogs after this and kept my learning to myself. Even in my critical reflection in Module 1 I tried to point out all the advantages of learning alone to justify my actions. I then took a break from studying for personal reasons and I truly believed I didn't want to complete the degree anymore. I put off talking to my tutor and again tried to work everything out by myself. I eventually did talk to my tutor, and I explained I no longer wanted to study. She asked me if this was really the case and if perhaps I just needed a bit more time out before cont...

I've just finished reading Reader 4 finally and one of the big things that caught my eye was the idea of the many benefits and disadvantages of having a team at work. As a self employed person who runs a business single handed, I wondered how this might affect research and learning; if it would give me a bigger advantage, looking at the idea of how a team at work is employed to get different jobs done in a practical and efficient manner, and may not allow much time for process, research and developing ideas. On the other hand, the disadvantages would be something I looked into during module 1, although SIG's and Communities of Practice can be created and/or are already there, having someone in person with you on a day to day basis perhaps gives more scope to constantly give and receive ideas and knowledge from the other people you work with. Anyway I think ultimately, whether it is a bigger disadvantage or not, that's my situation at the moment so I will just do the best ...

Hello! So it's been a while, I'll be honest I've found it really hard to get back into blogging as I've had so much going on. I did have a chat with Paula about deferring for a term but I'm going to hold off deciding yet. I'm really excited about what's going on right now in my life so I thought I'd share! So far this year... I completed my Level 2 Exercise to Music and Group Exercise Instructor course - it's given me invaluable knowledge about teaching I was offered a full time job at Frame Studios in London as an instructor - I did turn this job down as I just have so much going on and it didn't feel like the right option for me at this time - but I was absolutely thrilled they offered it to me as they do some brilliant work at their studios - would highly recommend! I started my Ante and Post Natal Instructor course - this is so I can teach exercise to pregnant ladies and ladies wanting to get back into exercise after having a baby. I...

I've just been having a look at David Kolb's learning style. It's taken me a while to really get to grips with it but think I've got it now. I'm trying to liken it to experiencing using a new muscle in class and afterwards having a good think about how you can keep using that muscle in future classes. Then thinking about how much better your leaps and turns will be when you develop that muscle! Then the following class thinking and experimenting during exercises and routines to try and use the muscle again! I also like the idea of looking at this learning cycle from the point of view of my students. It would be great to really get to grips with the system and then apply it to see how my students learn best and use different teaching approaches for this.