NDEO鈥檚 Guest Blog Series features posts written by our members about their experiences in the fields of dance and dance education. We continue this series with a post by Pascal Rekoert, Assistant Professor and Dance Education Program Director at Central Connecticut State University.聽 Guest posts reflect the experiences, opinions, and viewpoints of the author and are printed here with their permission. NDEO does not endorse any business, product, or service mentioned in guest blog posts. If you are interested in learning more about the guest blogger program or submitting an article for consideration, please click here.
Successful educators continually adopt a sense of curiosity in their work environment, ideally adjusting to their community鈥檚 needs and learning attitudes. As teachers, we are leaders who strengthen our community in the microcosm of our learning spaces, guiding individual students toward success. It is imperative to build (or revisit) our teaching philosophy annually. While this might initially seem daunting, it can also be a fun and creative way to reexamine your values. Mirroring the spectrum of teaching approaches ranging from authoritarian and delegator to facilitator and demonstrator style (Ahmed et al., 2021; Sarode, 2018), successful teacher-leaders embrace an adaptive attitude towards their work environment, offering students the abilities and skills to develop their confidence and motivation. How do you lead in your learning spaces? What is the most effective way for your students to pick up and retain kinesthetic, socioemotional, and cognitive information?
Starting from one鈥檚 core values is useful when constructing or redrafting one鈥檚 educational philosophy. Does compassion or competition matter most to you? Do you reward individuality or teamwork? Creativity or accuracy? Integrity or resourcefulness?
Click here for a link to a worksheet including a list of teacher values. While this is not an exhaustive list, it might be a helpful tool in (re)examining what matters most for you. Pick five to ten from this list and write them on a note card. Your number of values should match the number of cards. Then, spend three to five minutes freewriting on the flip side of each card. If you enjoy using your stopwatch, use it! If you don鈥檛 like timed writing, this is the moment to indulge. After, place them in an order logical for you. At any time, you are welcome to reorganize or replace the cards. Your writing does not need to be perfect or make sense to anyone but you.
Remember to have fun with this!
Are you feeling successful in this task? You can translate your chicken scratches into a more detailed teaching philosophy. If you have an existing philosophy, how does it stack up to your selected values? Have your ideas about teaching changed over time? Which of these values do you currently reward in your classrooms? What does student success look like? How are these values embedded in your assessment materials? Over the past two decades, I have repeatedly performed this task, which has taken many forms, from written and academic to creative arts and crafts. Bust out the puffy paint, colored paper, and markers! Or design and print a core values poster for your learning spaces. As an educational leader, I currently emphasize six cornerstone tenets: decisiveness, integrity, relationship-building, problem-solving, dependability, and the ability to teach and mentor. Let me elaborate...
I value decisiveness in my teaching approach. To stay time-effective, I rely on scheduling and daily planner apps to make quick and effective decisions. I also stay abreast of new developments in education, implementing key learnings from professional development sessions into my methodology. Because educational teachers often struggle with time management, it鈥檚 imperative that I am confident in taking responsibility for the impact of my choices. Knowing my methodological why supports my decisiveness but also increases my accountability. The biggest challenge for many educators is integrity, which may sound like a rudimentary skill that all leaders should have. Still, the reality is that the ego sways them to make poor decisions in which uprightness is effortlessly pushed aside for self-serving knavery. As an advocate for my students, their needs trump mine.
Through successful relationship-building skills, teachers can create students willing to move beyond compulsory learning requirements, working towards a cohesive community vision and goal. Though problems always arise, efficient teacher-leaders can stay calm to provide step-by-step problem-solving solutions that make all parties happy.
Dependability, particularly combined with integrity, further cultivates strong classroom relationships. Lastly, the most significant tenet is the capacity of educators to mentor their community and intuitively hone their leadership skills, enabling their scholars to deepen their leadership skills within their classrooms. The adage, 鈥淕ive a man a fish, and you feed him for a day, but teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime,鈥� comes to mind. What is the implicit teaching in your classroom? Ambition? Collaboration? Perseverance? Respect? Kindness? What is the proverbial act of fishing you want your scholars to learn? What is your hook that will increase their curricular engagement?
Embrace the opportunity to align your values with your educational approach and strive to be the best leader for your students and community. Take an hour of your weekend for this fun task or do this with a colleague over a beverage of choice!
After a professional performance career in the Netherlands and the United States, Pascal Rekoert pivoted his focus to education. First, as a company member and Associate Artistic Director of Jennifer Muller/ The Works, he taught dance professionals and collegiate dance scholars across the globe. After, as an NYC K-12 educator, he taught students from Title 1 schools to pre-professionals at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts. As a Lincoln Center Scholar that finished his master鈥檚 degree in an inaugural partnership program between Lincoln Center Education and CUNY Hunter College, Rekoert helped revise the NYC DoE Blueprint for Teaching and Learning in Dance. Currently, Rekoert is pursuing a doctoral degree as part of the Ed.D. Dance Education Program at Teachers College. He is an Assistant Professor and Dance Education Program Director at Central Connecticut State University, currently the only one providing state certification for K-12 dance educators in the state.
References
Ahmed, S., Khan Farooqi, M. T., & Iqbal, A. (2021). A Study of Teachers鈥� Teaching Styles and Students鈥� Performance. Ilkogretim Online, 20(2). Sarode, R. D. (2018). Teaching strategies, styles and qualities of a teacher: a review for valuable higher education. International journal of current engineering and scientific research (IJCESR), 5(5), 57-62.
Photo Credits: Featured photo by Jaqi Medlock, headshot by Nico Iliev