These past few weeks I have been directing a summer intensive at my school. The experience has been really good for me. I have been working with fellow peers from my past, and brought them together again for the first time in 10 years. It is wonderful to see how people have grown in the past decade, and still for some reason work together really well, even though everyone has drastically different experience, and now have been altered culturally from where they located to in the world since we trained together.
This has lead to many questions for me to learn about now such as; how can one teach a ballet class that includes many different cultures, languages, experiences, social classes (unique and different depending on their locations within the world), and also to teach students coming from such different dance experiences. Relative to my own experiences, and understandings as one example.
I also have realized that I am here to teach what I have come to understand, and that the students have also come here to learn my understanding for themselves, I guess they see a value of some kind within it. As well as to learn how my own experiences, and understanding pair with the understandings of my current colleagues teaching within the intensive, and to learn about the final product of this 4 week session.
Culture, experience, age, and education are extremely relevant to how one teaches and learns. (this is probably obvious, and there is much more to this other than the mentioned items, however I just am posting for my own record)
