Do It for the One

Rachel Hollis talked about it on Amy Porterfield‘s podcast. She said, “We created it for her. The podcast was for her. The second podcast was for her. We’re having the response that we have because the style was entirely my own but the content is in response to what she’s asking for.”

When I think of all my Dance Daze students (both at the studio and at schools across the United States) and when I look at all the memories I have created for my businesses: I think of one child, one day, one family, one teacher, one moment.

When I think of starting that Dance Daze in Schools program in the Bronx, New York, I remember how rewarding it felt to bring in that one male teacher who wore glasses and had grown up there. I remember feeling that, in bringing him onto the team, I got to, in a teeny tiny way, be part of his experience of giving back to the community that raised him. I got to be part of him waking up every day as a successful man, human, and teaching artist.

When I think of the school in Oakland, California, where I had the privilege of teaching dance for an entire year, I remember that group of 6 middle school boys and girls who asked me why I smiled and laughed so much. I told them it was because I was happy.

And when I look at photos and videos of all the performances we are doing today, I’m overwhelmed to be part of creating magical moments for each of my students. I’m overjoyed to be part of helping them fall in love with the art of dance. But really, when I see 15 of my students showing up and dancing on these California roads with me, I think of her. I think of her mom looking at me in my eyes and saying, “She wants to perform. She’s ready.” I remember feeling the responsibility of providing positive performance opportunities for her when her dad asked me when we would be performing.

So when I look at them, I see her. One child, one family, one day, one moment.

And I’m so so grateful that by focusing on the one that I get to be part of the lives of many.

Are you interested in learning more about what I focus on in order to best serve my clients (my students and their families)? Go to www.DanceEdStartup.com and join my mailing list! Each week, people on my mailing list are getting dance-related business tips in my video series called “Two Tips” and this month (May of 2019) they’re also getting a live webinar every Sunday morning! Sign up today!

 

Cultivating Happiness

When I was thinking of starting to blog again and playing with names for this blog, I knew I wanted to somehow incorporate the idea of the pursuit of happiness. However, over the past few months I’ve really been focusing on the idea of intentionally creating or cultivating happiness, as seriously as a lifestyle choice. With that idea in mind, I also knew I wanted to talk about what I know in a professional sense and in practice, which is dance and education. So that’s how I arrived at the blog title of The Happy Dance for this little section of mine on the interwebz.

Every now and then, I’d like to step away from my voice as an “expert” (We are all always learning and forever students of this thing called LIFE, aren’t we?) in dance education, or startup entrepreneurship, or online marketing and talk about regular life things. Being the hardcore Gen-Yer that I am, I’m completely aware that everything I share on the internet (And, oh boy, am I all over the internet… Good thing I love Google!) is completely public and potentially accessible by anyone, including the very words I’m typing in this blog…. So I want to talk about things with which I’m comfortable sharing and that are hopefully still helpful to whomever is reading these words of mine. So, I want to talk about what I’m doing to create happiness! I want to share the tiny moments of my life that are causing me to do a Happy Dance. Presently, that’s travel.

I remember this quote that I came across several years ago:

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
– Henry David Thoreau

That’s kind of how I’ve been feeling about my life lately. I’ve been feeling like I want to stand up to LIVE each day in the ways that bring me the most joy. I want to take all the risks. (But don’t worry, I’m a really safe [read: paranoid/anxious] person, so all my risks are super calculated.) I want to experience all the things.

So sometime last year, I set the intention of traveling. And, I’m thankful that I’ve been able to commit to and live out that intention. Today is the first day of May of 2019, and, since November of 2018, I’ve traveled to 8 different cities, 2 different states, and 3 different countries. (The featured photo from this post was taken in Heidelberg, Germany!) In fact, in the past 6 months, I’ve been fortunate to take a little vacation 5 times.

For me, traveling is causing me to do a little Happy Dance because it both humbles and inspires me. It makes me feel simultaneously small in a super grand world and enormously large in being gifted with the opportunity to create the reality of my dreams. (Truer entrepreneur words were never spoken, right? Hashtag live yo’ dreams.)

What are you currently cultivating in your life that’s causing you to do a Happy Dance?

Online Teaching with Podia

The true Millennial that I am, I’ve always loved the Internet and social media. Though I’m sure my design skills were sub-par compared to the Internet Blogging Queens I admired back then, I had my first web domain at the age of 14. I’ve been sharing my thoughts and ideas online–through blogging, creating graphics, or editing videos–ever since.

Now, after 10 years of being a dance educator and running my own businesses, 5 years of being an elementary teacher, several years of mentoring college students completing service-learning internships through teaching dance, and a couple of degrees under my belt (including a Master of Arts degree in education), I’m ready to put all of these experiences together and begin creating online again–in a big way!

I recently began developing an online course, coaching program, and membership program for experienced dancers who want the specific steps on launching their own dance education business. Thanks to an awesome website called Podia, I’ve been able to do this with confidence and to have fun as I create.

So, while I absolutely love the Internet and can often align myself with the mindset of many digital creators or mediapreneurs, I only began listening to podcasts a few months ago. I have a few favorites that I follow, and I believe it was one of the guests on Nick Loper’s The Side Hustle Show that casually mentioned they might try out Podia for a course hosting site. The short and sweet name stuck with me, and I Googled it later that evening.

I immediately fell in love with the look of Podia. The affordable pricing, though it still provides everything that some of the more expensive course-hosting sites offer, was also extremely appealing to me. When I began looking into Podia, I just wanted to create a single online course. But when I found out I could also use the site to create and sell a membership program and digital downloads, as well as use the site to create and publish emails–including drip content, I was even more excited.

What’s also neat about Podia is that they have top-notch customer service. For all the impatient creators, like myself, who don’t want their flow messed up simply because they can’t find a button, this site is wonderful. When I use their pop-up help box, someone has answered me in real-time in a matter of minutes (or seconds) 9/10 times. When I didn’t receive an answer within a couple of minutes, the answers to my questions were emailed to me the same day.

I’ve honestly also been surprised with the amount of information about online content creation that Podia gives away for free. Though I haven’t delved in yet, I’ve been considering creating a webinar as well, after reading through Podia’s educational resource called “How to Use Webinars to Launch Online Courses.” I’ve been really impressed with the amount of detail that is put into their resource articles, and those have made it really apparent to me how much they want their clients to succeed.

I’ll definitely be sharing more about my online course, Dance Ed Startup, in the future, but I wanted to hop on really quickly (while I’m on a layover on my way to Germany!) and let you know about the awesome platform I’m using to create all the cool stuff over which I’m currently obsessing, in the best way.

Avoiding Dance-Teacher Burnout

Have you ever gotten to a point with your dance classes where everything just sort of feels BLAH? Maybe you’ve been working on the same piece for several weeks or months and the moves have lost their air of newness. Perhaps students are beginning to master some combinations and your classes are running smoothly, but you haven’t brought in anything that excites you or makes you uncomfortable for a while. Maybe the butterflies that you normally get before each class you teach (that happens for you too, right?) haven’t been there for a while. If any of the above is true, you might be experiencing dance-teacher burnout.

I will admit that I’ve been fortunate with my work as a dance teacher. Even when I’ve taught dance at the same school for a year or longer, every class feels fresh for me. Every hour and each different group of students is an experience unto itself, and I am grateful for the feeling of utter exuberance I have felt at some point during every single dance class I’ve taught. While I may not always feel like making the drive or lugging the props, I absolutely love creating lifelong, positive experiences for my students through the art of dance.  I love shaping moments, learning from what works and what doesn’t work in my classes, seeing my choreography performed, feeling the music I’ve chosen change an environment, and more.

However, as a classroom teacher, I know the feeling of teacher burnout very, very well. I’m not sure of the best way to describe it, but I think it would not be inaccurate to say that it feels something like situational depression or acute hopelessness.

So how can that be avoided? My first advice would be, of course, to change things up. Trying something new (One day I’ll tell you about the hip hop curriculum I was working on several years ago, and how I tried to teach popping and locking….) and being open to the experiences that can come with that can often break up the monotony during a spell of boring-ness in teaching. But, my real advice, my from experience advice would be this: Schedule happiness.

In the same way that you make time to go grocery shopping or to shower, you have to schedule time for the things in life that bring you joy. I’ve calendared different things at different times in my life to make sure I get to them. I’m currently working on scheduling in social activities a few times per month.

One of the things that causes me to do a happy dance (Hey blog & creative project title! I knew I’d squeeze you in!) is creating and being part of community. In fact, community is my word for the year. (I don’t really do “New Year Resolutions” — I’m more of a mantra kind of person. And I don’t have space in my brain to remember tons of words, so a single word or phrase works really well for me.) So since I want to create and share moments with an awesome community, I don’t simply hope that it happens. Like everything I truly want in my life, I create it. I go for it. I just do it. (One of my favorite sayings is: “Where you truly wish to go, there your feet will manage to take you.”)

I think that we get to a point in life where we know ourselves well enough to recognize some of our triggers for either sadness or happiness. And I think that in order to break out of sadness or just BLAH-ness, sometimes we have to trigger our own happiness. So, my advice on how to trigger it is to schedule it. Plan time to do the things that will relax you, inspire you, mix it up for you, and bring the joy back into your life so that you can bring all of that goodness back into your dance classes.

We’re artists. We’re creators. We’re the crazy ones. We are the ones who dream in color and with our eyes open. But we’re human too (some days). So we have to remember to nurture the human parts of ourselves. And to do it with the same gusto and flair with which we do everything else in our life. (So yeah, when I schedule happiness, you better believe I do it in gold Sharpie on all 5 of my calendars.)

Making Space for Creativity in Your Dance Class

It’s okay to sometimes be a little uncomfortable when you’re teaching. This might sound surprising to some, but it is a fact that I’ve found to be true. I have found this sentiment to be most true when I am working to allow space for creativity in my dance class. Now that I’ve said that, let me give you a little background.

As an elementary teacher for 6 years now, I have spent several years working to find my teacher voice, establish my authority in the classroom, develop my warm/strict mechanisms, and to really just own the idea that I am the “expert in the room” (a validating phrase that I heard frequently at one organization where I taught for two years). But with all of that, sometimes we forget about allowing kids to create. We forget about all of the detailed lessons based in the theory of constructivism that we developed while training to become educators. We forget to make space for our students to experiment, take calculated risks, and to build in their own learning environment.

Also, besides forgetting, sometimes we just get comfortable. We get into a groove, our students enjoy it, we get positive feedback and no complaints (classroom teaching heaven, am I right?), and we decide to not fix what isn’t broken. The problem with that is: stagnation. I believe I heard recently on one of the podcasts that I listen to: “If you’re not growing, you’re dying.” Call us dramatic if you want to, but I’d bet that for most of us creatives, not moving or making causes us to feel like there’s a piece of us that isn’t really living. (#createordie)

Since we artists, educators, and creators have the intention to always be growing, learning, and making, we have to allow our students to do the same. We have to let them discover the joy that comes from ideating, making, and re-making.

So, let’s get uncomfortable. Sometimes, this can be as simple as adding a song to your class that fits within your lesson plan, theme, or unit, but that might not give you the desire to move in a way that is comfortable for you. It could be as simple as slowing down or speeding up the tempo to a piece, changing the direction of a movement, or releasing some control during a portion of class and passing the ownership of the learning completely to your students.

When you allow yourself to be uncomfortable and force yourself to create in an unfamiliar space, you are modeling successfully working through unfamiliar experiences to your students. You are encouraging problem-solving. You are demonstrating new ways to compose dance using various movement elements. You might even simultaneously challenge and empower your students to trust their skills, in movement and in life, even when the unexpected occurs. And, in the process, you might remind yourself that you have the power to do the same.

Cheers to the discomfort! Let’s keep creating.