How did my virtual street dance classes go? - My Trip to Tanzania (Post 9) - Dance Saturday
Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,
As some of you may already know, if you've read last Saturday's blog post, over the past week between the 15th and the 19th of February I taught street dance to children aged 7-12 years on Zoom. Overall, it was a very valuable and interesting experience because although my parents both run small businesses and although I took business studies as a GCSE, I never really knew quite what went into teaching dance until I did it properly. I really enjoyed my experience and I was really lucky to have been joined by 11 amazing students who all worked really hard and gave it their all. However, there were some little improvements to be made that I will take with me when I hopefully do more street dance classes over Easter or summer to better my learning environment. Firstly, although it sounded good on paper, I do believe that the age range of 7-12 years, looking back on it, was a bit too vast. The oldest girl I had at my class was 10 years old and I found that she picked up the routine a lot quicker than some of the 7 year olds. I even made a few exceptions to my age ranges by allowing some children aged 5-6 to join in because their parents were good friends with my parents and I thought that the routine would be fairly easy. However, on good terms, some of the youngest students left a bit early because I think that they found it a little bit too difficult! Next time, I'll probably make one class for children aged 6-8 years and another for children aged 9-11 years. I was also really proud of myself for spreadsheeting everything like the students, the days, and the payments but I just need to remember to tick off the names of the people who joined in because there was a couple instances where some students forgot to join the meeting and because I didn't realise, I had to move them to another day. I also think that I was panicking way too much with the number of routines I was doing because for the whole 5 days, we only went through 1 routine and I had prepared 3. I think because people like to go over different sections I should have stuck to one routine but I guess it's a learning curve.
On the whole though, I'm quite proud of what I had managed to achieve. I was able to raise £84 on my Just Giving fundraising page + another £38 from the people who paid me directly so I raised £122 in total for Tanzania, which I think wasn't too bad at all for the 5 days. I'm also really happy that my sister was able to help out for all 5 days because although we bickered a bit, I do believe that we worked well together and formed a good partnership. I can normally be quite a reserved, mellow type of person but I think that this experience really challenged me on a practical level and forced me to come out of my shell a lot more. I'm normally not always patient with people but on a customer relations perspective, I think that I handled things well because I sent round an extra video of me doing the routine to all the parents so people could practise in their spare time if they were a bit stuck. Even for the students who stopped turning up, I sent round the video and I think the parents really appreciated that.
Unfortunately, I developed another small migraine after Friday's class because I think that the lessons were all quite full on. I'm fine now but I did take the entire rest of the day off because it was quite exhausting. I had to instruct classes whilst demonstrating the movements which was quite taxing and I had to make sure everyone understood what I was saying by speaking loudly and clearly which was quite challenging. However, I should have some free time to relax so I'm definitely going to take advantage of it and do no work whatsoever!
Thank you again to everyone who joined in. You all did fantastic! 👍Stay tuned for Easter's street dance workshop which will be coming soon!
My sponsored walk:) 👇
Here are some photos of me completing some miles of my sponsored walk! Me and my school friends are also hoping to virtually walk the distance of Lands end to John O Groats to raise money for our expedition to Tanzania in the summer of 2022. You're not obliged to, but if you would like to donate to help my part of the journey, the link to my Just Giving page is below where my cause is also explained in more detail. I would really appreciate it if you are able to donate. I will be posting updates of the distance I walk on the page, so please become a supporter. Thank you. 😊💜
Have you ever taught dance? Have you ever taught anything before? Let me know in the comments below and I'll be sure to reply to them. I ♡ hearing from you!
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See you next time,
Bye,
XOX, Juliette
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