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The Art is in the Practice:
Action Research & Reflection by Dance Educators

Engage with the dance educators from Luna’s Teacher as Creative Practitioner-Scholar course as they present their action research projects. Hear about their inquiry questions, their process, what they learned about themselves, and their reflections. Each 15 minute presentation will be followed by a short question & answer.

Monday, March 8, 2021
4-6pm via Zoom
Free

Register

Presenters & Projects

IMG_0713 (1)

Ashley Rogers is an elementary dance educator and peer coach for the Los Angeles Unified School District. She received her B.S from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in dance education and is a National Board Certified teacher. Since a young age, she knew she had a passion for dance and for working with children, in her position she is able to have the best of both worlds. 

Zooming Out
An investigation of how I could identify and become better aware of unconscious bias to better interact with my students.
Erin Walter

Erin Walter teaches ballet, creative dance and the creative process at St. Mary’s Episcopal School in Memphis, Tennessee. She is also a ballet instructor at Children’s Ballet Theater and is the Artistic Director of CBT’s professional company, Tennessee Ballet Theater. At TBT, she specializes in creating original works celebrating Memphis’ unique and rich history. Erin attended Luna Dance Institute’s SI in 2019-2020, and is thrilled with the results that her new way of teaching has impacted her students. During the pandemic, she was instrumental in creating four outdoor dance spaces in Memphis and she co-directed The Children’s Ballet Theater Nutcracker Movie, which was shown in 4K at the drive-in theater, as an alternative to the traditional stage production.

Reducing Stress in a Stressful Year
The 2020-2021 school year brought tremendous challenges, including doubled workloads, mental exhaustion and fears for physical safety. I sought to answer the following questions in my action research project: How can I reduce stress and irritation in a year when I am feeling stressed out before I even begin? Will shifting responsibility to the students and giving them more agency alleviate my stress in the classroom?
Lisbeth_Photo

Lisbeth Woodington teaches 3rd and 4th grade dual language in Los Angeles. Her interests as an educator include inquiry-based learning, care and creativity in schools, and supporting teachers.

Circles of Care

Care is an essential part of the work we do as teachers and educators. During the pandemic, themes and questions about care have been in the collective conversation. In my action research, through my experience as a teacher, I explore why care matters and how we might consider its personal, private and public domains. 

Michaela
Michaela Summers teaches Performing Arts to grades PK-6th in Culver City. As an educator, she is dedicated and passionate in her commitment to engage students through the rigor and creativity of purposeful arts education. In the classroom, her focus is on releasing the creative potential of each student by encouraging them to make connections to the world in which they live through movement as a tool for creative expression.
Assumptions
As educators, we often have to share our work with a variety of different people in a multitude of settings. As an arts educator, do you find yourself struggling to come up with the words to describe what exactly it is you do in the classroom? Do you feel like you have to justify the importance of your content? Me too! During my action research project, I investigated these uncomfortable questions to improve the way I communicate my teaching philosophy to key stakeholders in a way that felt honest and authentic to my true self.
Rosalina Macisco

Rosalina Macisco is a Dance Educator and Founder of Santa Barbara Dance Institute (SBDI). Rosalina is first generation latinx and New York native who has performed professionally for 15+ years, appearing in Off-Broadway plays, regional theater productions, and national television commercials. Believing that dance should be a part of every child’s education she has developed educational dance programs for public schools and provides professional development for schoolteachers so they too can implement dance into their curriculum. Since founding SBDI in 2005, the institute has grown from reaching 80+ students to over 18,000+ per year through both direct programming and SBDI’s professional development, Dance Infusion Program.

Cut the Crap
As an artist I have worked hard to “get out of my own way” to gain access to all facets of expression.  As a teacher, I wondered, how can I look critically at my practice to get out of my students’ way and provide a space for them to develop their own unique modes of expression? I wondered, what is the importance of dance classes at this particular moment in time? We are in the middle of a pandemic and in the middle of a huge reckoning with unaddressed systemic racism in our country. Dance has the ability to ground you in who you are mind and body.  How might ensemble thinking create connection, community and strengthen the individual voice?
Shona

Shona Mitchell is an itinerant TK – 5th grade Dance and Creative Movement teacher for San Francisco Unified School District’s Arts Department, drag queen wrangler, former classroom teacher, and emerging Action Researcher. She has not learned how to bake sourdough bread or make whipped coffee during the past year, but has watched her many students find moments of freedom and joy while dancing at home. She looks forward to a future where we can all dance together in person again. 

Connecting During Covid

Building and Maintaining student relationships, identity, and agency during a pandemic as a (digital) Itinerant Dance Teacher for SFUSD.  

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Berkeley, CA 94707

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