Everyone has a passion or two in their life. Mine happens to be teaching and dancing. Lucky for me, I found a way that they can work together. As a dual major in Early Childhood Education and Special Education, I spend every single day learning how to teach each and every type of student. As an added bonus, being the president and teacher in the Boogie Knights — a dance troupe at Neumann University — has provided me with the opportunity to see how well they work as one.

As a team, we pride ourselves on fostering a welcoming and inclusive environment. In the field of education, inclusion is defined as the educational practice of educating children with disabilities in classrooms with children without disabilities. When it comes to Boogie Knights, we define inclusion as accepting every and all students and faculty members of Neumann University that are interested in being a part of the team, no matter what their dance experience is. We pride ourselves on our inclusive nature and our willingness to make sure that everyone who wishes to be a part of our organization feels entirely comfortable and welcome here.

In addition to being inclusive, we also use collaboration in a variety of ways similar to educators everywhere. In order to put together our annual recital we need to have numerous classes in order to teach all of the dances that our audience gets to watch. We collaborate with each other to choreograph dances and we also collaborate with the other dance organizations on campus, Praise Dance and Dance Team, to showcase them in our recital. As an organization we use yet another teaching method to make our team successful: differentiation. Differentiation is a major part of our teaching strategy. The teachers need to evaluate the skills and abilities of the dancers and make adjustments to their choreography depending upon where their students are experience-wise. There are many factors that need to be accounted for when teaching anything; by differentiating, we create the best environment for our teammates to grow and learn.

We don’t stop there, though. We use our educational knowledge in order to determine how to effectively teach content to our fellow dancers. To teach the dancers of Boogie Knights the choreography, we also use what educators call modeling. Modeling means that we show those learning exactly how to perform the dance move before they try the moves themselves. We also use one of our favorite strategies and the simplest to use: task analysis. This means that we break down our choreography into small steps and build upon them. Fortunately, task analysis goes hand in hand with a method referred to as the Gradual Release of Responsibility. As we teach our choreography step-by-step, the members of Boogie Knights progressively develop independence in doing the choreography on their own.

Despite all of the teaching that we do we are also students both in the classroom and in the dance studio. As future teachers, we know what the “teaching terms” are for how we learn choreography and why we chose to use those techniques. Learning a choreographed dance is a multi-sensory experience; it is visual as well as auditory. When learning the moves, it’s crucial to see them done first so that they are done correctly and how the teacher planned it; that’s the visual aspect. Hearing the music plays a huge part in learning a dance as well because without hearing the words or the beat the timing will be off; that is the auditory piece. In addition to the visual and auditory portions in learning choreography, there is also the tutoring portion. Believe it or not, we turn to each other for help with choreography once it is already taught. We clarify challenging moves and steps, we practice during our free time and we even videotape the teacher doing the choreography to have a reference during our impromptu practice sessions. Boogie Knights prides itself as a helpful, caring and welcoming environment for these reasons.

Being the president of Boogie Knights combined with an Early Childhood Education and Special Education major has helped me develop my teaching methods. With so many similarities between the two roles, I have developed a better understanding of how to teach a variety of content to students of all ages. When two of your passions coincide with each other, everything comes full circle.