Chinese classical dance technique class at Shanxi Academy of Arts 

         





Teaching Artist Statement


​​As a teaching artist, I incorporate seven key attributes to my style. I build on my knowledge, embrace my creative self, orient my senses to a global view, understand individuality, work with technology, focus on improvement, and never stop learning. It is with this comprehensive approach, I am able to realize what it means to be a teaching artist both personally, and my students are able to get the best I have to offer.

A teaching artist should understand his or her students. All the students have their own learning style and individual need. Students are from diverse backgrounds with their own cultures.  Achieve students’ learning goals no matter the gender, age, race, and culture, and create the equal opportunities for student to succeed. Dance students are from different dance training backgrounds. The have their own learning style. The have their advantage. Understand them and help them to achieve their goals. 

Classroom management skills. Create a safe learning environment to meet students’ physical and physiological needs. Design effective curriculum and lesson plans to improve students’ learning experiences. Engage students in class to be successful. Build effective evaluation system for students, help students build a self-assessment system. Use technology to improve the effectiveness of teaching. 

Commutation skills. Be able to build good relationship with administration, teachers, and students. Dance teaching is a long term improvement process for the student. Building a good relationship with students can drive the student’s dance skill improvement.

Self-assessment system to understand the self-teaching performance, and effective teaching skill. Hear feedback from students, teachers, and administration. Understand the feedback to improve teaching. Analyze student assessment results and analyze self-teaching.  


Knowledge: As a teaching artist, I have the expectation to always improve and develop my personal knowledge and ability. In the past 15 years, I have studied Ballet, Chinese classical dance, Chinese folk dance including Tibetan dance, Mongolian dance, Uyghur dance, Korean dance, Shanxi Drum dance, and dance drama performance. I develop a connection from all the dance forms I have learned and apply my teaching to improve my students learning experience.

Creativity: As a teaching artist, I am a creative dancer; I lead my students to be creative. Learning is a process to build and develop individual knowledge. We live in a diverse society each student has individual needs. I give students space to develop their own knowledge, and their strengths. 

Global: With rich stage performance experiences working with a dance company and art institute in China, I have a global view of the dance career and I teach my students to start learning from the beginning with a global view. 

Individuality: Through my studies as part of my M.Ed Leadership program and experiences working with the Shanxi Institute of Art, I understand that students have their own learning styles and individual needs. Students are from many backgrounds with their own connections to culture. I create safe learning environments, on both the physical and psychological levels, to give my students the best opportunity to succeed.


Technology: I have an interest in the application of technology to dance. As a teaching artist, I involve technology in class to improve students learning experience, meanwhile giving students the opportunity to realize that there are many aspects to dance, not just personally performing, have an understanding of how to apply technology into dance.


Improvement: Teaching is an improvement process for both teachers and students. Through feedback from my students, fellow teachers, and administration, I am better able to understand my environment, my abilities, and my opportunities, and then I look to improve myself as a teaching artist.

Learning: Learning culture, I engage students, teachers, and the community to build a learning culture. Each personal has their unique strengths and building a learning culture empowers teachers to help each other, students learn from each other and supports achievement and our teaching goals.