Starting conversations...

As part of the Dance UK Teachers mentoring scheme (Nov 14-June 15), myself and mentor Adesola Akinleye decided to share a blog with the aim of documenting, reflecting and probing my teaching practice.

The focus of the Dance UK Mentoring scheme for me is to develop the ways in which I work choreographically with children, predominantly within an educational context. This arose from my own yearning to evolve the way I worked in primary schools. As opposed to myself setting the theme, choreographic tasks, structure and music, I am eager to explore more collaborative ways of working and the facilitation of children’s creative processes.

During my first meet with Adesola I began by contextalising my teacher work in terms of session time, topic length and theme. I was quickly challenged by her in relation to the topics I was covering, allocated by the school.

She highlighted the challenge to my desire to work more collaboratively, describing that at present, I was talking the narrative what ‘what’ of the subject. In essence, rearticulating the current knowledge in a different form to aid memory and understanding.

Adesola challenged that the body can be seen not only as another way to explore a concept, but as the very means by which we mainly experience and learn about the world in the first place. In summary, dance as a way of learning in itself, not as an reinforcer of learning.

In order for this to happen, there needs to be a blank space in the dance class which can be filled with the childrens ideas. She illustrated a triangle format between teacher, children and concept. Dialogue should flow between the three, being shaped and directed as the children question and discover things. As opposed to being prescribed beforehand, there should be open and unanswered space. 

In terms of working from a topic, Adesola explained that one string can be picked of which that topic is one example but then children can explore others. My current methods of dance teaching have immediately been thrown wide open, now to try and think this through some more...