Announcements

How does dance education happen in your school? In many elementary schools, dance is a prep delivery subject, taught by educators who are often “prep fairies”, with several responsibilities for multiple grades. While data exists about how many specialist teachers teach the other arts (46% for music as of 2018, 16% for visual arts, and 8% for dramatic arts) there is no data about how many specialist dance teachers are teaching in elementary public schools (People for Education, 2018). When dance isn’t your passion, how do you program effectively?

Non-specialist teachers might be tempted to turn to YouTube and have students copy the moves on an instructional video. This practice may appear to be an easy solution, as it does not require the instructor to be a proficient dancer with any background or experience. The authors of this article, who are associated with CODE (the Council of Dance and Drama Educators) and AML (the Association for Media Literacy) are keen to encourage educators to critically examine this practice, understand the problematic elements of it, and recommend alternatives that benefit everyone involved.

We are pleased to announce that CODE will be revising resource materials to respond to the decisions and recommendations of the CODE Resource Review Committee. From 2016-2022, a team of reviewers conducted an equity review of the entire CODE catalogue of resources, deleting, archiving, and unpublishing some resources because their content no longer aligned with curriculum, with CODE’s understanding of teaching in a good way, etc. Some resources were worth saving but require significant revisions. CODE is dedicating financial resources to make these updates.

ETFO is hosting a live press conference on March 18 about alarming funding gaps in special education. If you are interested in the intersections between drama/dance and special education this may be of interest to you regardless of the panel you may teach in or the union you may belong to.

https://www.etfo.ca/news-publications/media-releases/etfo-to-release-report-on-alarming-special-education-funding-gaps-in-ontario 

You deserve a break! Check out this blog post for a round-up of materials that will help you take your mind off of planning for September, and look out for some integrated arts events coming in late August.