My Journey - Part 8

After my dance teacher's training, I wrestled with the idea of changing my position from ESL teacher to Dance teacher in the Department of Education. What did this involve and was it feasible? Joan Arnhold assured me and all of my classmates in the dance teacher's training course that there were many jobs for dance teachers in schools in New York. I spoke to a few people at my school, and people warned me that there might not be many dance teacher jobs. The school's Union representative, for example, told me that his wife worked with the Department of Education a few years back as a licensed Special Education teacher and also had a Dance license. He told me that she tried to switch positions, and had a dance teaching position for a year or so and then her school cut the program due to lack of funding. I had heard of a number of cases where schools cut their arts programs when they faced a lack of funding, and the current climate at public schools was tighter and tighter funding. Switching to a dance teacher's position away from my steady ESL teacher's position sounded a little risky. I checked the Department of Education website to see for myself how many dance teacher's jobs were available. I was surprised to find nearly a dozen, but disappointed to find that all of them were available only at charter schools. ,

For those of you not familiar with charter schools, they are schools with public funding that are given the freedom to radically alter their curriculum, job positions, and money allocations throughout the school. They essential operate like private schools outside of the control of the teacher's union, and are known to make teachers work a much longer work day for about half the pay of regular public schools. Certain community leaders favored them over traditional public schools because they promised to deliver better standardized student test scores than public schools. Some indeed yielded higher standardized test scores, but all charter schools could pick and choose their students. In contrast, public schools had to be open to all students regardless of academic background. The effectiveness of charter schools has greatly divided politicians, educators, and the public alike. But, most educators see them as an indirect way for legislators to kill teachers' benefits and public pension schemes that the Union and public educators worked so hard for for so many years to secure. If there were no stable public school dance teaching jobs, I was sure as hell not going to work for half the pay and half the benefits at a charter school!

So, where could I go next with my dance teacher training? Something that stuck at the back of my mind in exploring becoming a dance teacher was that my project with Shahar had got me quite interested in trying yoga classes. Without real prospects of becoming a dance teacher, the only moving I was doing was my tai chi long form at home. I wanted a way to get back into my body again. A little looking around on the Internet made it very apparent that there were almost as many yoga studios in each neighborhood as there were places to buy groceries! I was astounded... New York was well-serviced with an abundance - or perhaps an overabundance of yoga studios. To add to my surprise, I soon discovered a yoga studio 2 blocks from my apartment in Astoria, NYC called Yoga Agora. I liked the studio well because information about the teachers was not advertised on the website, and with the incredibly cheap rate of $5 a lesson, the classes were practically free. With no egotistical teacher-gurus and barely a dent in my pocketbook to worry about, I started to attend classes at the studio regularly for a few months. My teachers, Anna and Nick, were kind and gentle, and appreciated whatever you could give on a particular day. The element of competition I found all too present in some of the dance classes I had taken around the city was absent. I felt very much at home with the dimly lit studio, the flicker of candles, the ambient music, and the sincere thanks the teachers said to us after every lesson. I was hooked!

My Journey - Part 7

About 2010 when a very warm-hearted administrator, Ann Bello, was hired and things were finally settling down at my school, I received an E-mail from the Arts Department of the City of New York. Because of my background in dance, I was invited to enroll in an alternate certification program through the Dance Education Laboratory (DEL) at the 92nd Street Y to become a certified dance teacher.

I thought this sounded like a wonderful opportunity to get moving again - literally! The class met once a week for 6 months, and was led by Joan Arnhold - a long time philanthropic dance advocate and educator, and two other savvy dance educators - Ana Nery Fragraso and Ann Biddle. The 20 odd participants included veteran and amateur dance teachers and dancers, and yoga teachers. Through an intensive series of workshops we learned to design and lead classes that would accommodate all levels and age-groups to explore movement creatively and reflectively, and choreograph their own dances. Here is a picture of my class in one our the workshops:

I am in the foreground on the right with glasses.

As a culminating activity, we were asked to pair up and create a dance unit. I paired up with Shahar Yanay, who was already working as a children's yoga teacher. I had never tried yoga before, so I tentatively picked up a couple of books on teaching yoga to children through animal shapes. The topic related surprisingly very well with creative dance exploration because children could explore moving as animals as they learned the yoga poses. Animals, of course, are very high interest material for children, and content-wise all children come to class knowing something about animals. In the end, my inspiration turned the project into a voluminous 60-odd page document of detailed lesson plans mostly authored by myself!

Four or five months later, my hard work paid off. I was delighted one morning to look in my mailbox and see my Professional Dance Teacher's Certificate from the State of New York: