Two new Short Online CPD Courses for Dance Teachers are available for September 2015 plus one of the courses run earlier this year:
Learning and Teaching Dance: dance teaching ethics – an introduction – New
Learning and Teaching Dance: teaching social and leisure dance – New
Learning and Teaching Dance: tension and rigidity in dance
The dates are:
Start date: Friday 25 September 2015 Completion date: Thursday 15 October 2015 – please note updated completion date
The dance teaching ethics course aims to introduce dance teaching ethics and explore simple ways of encouraging ethical dance teaching practices. An important topic introduced in a basic, easy to understand, bite-sized format. Dance teaching ethics is a topic relevant to dance teachers across every dance genre and at every stage of learning and development. Further details about these courses will be available shortly on this site.
Teaching social and leisure dance, is a course for teachers of all the many forms of dance taught to people of all ages wanting to enjoy learning to dance. Some of the social and leisure dance genres include: Line dancing; Swing, Modern Jive, Salsa; Folk; Swing; Jive; Balletcise, Street dance; Tap and lots more, as you know. Dance as a hobby or pastime has grown enormously in recent times and along with this have emerged many teachers who may not have a teaching background but teach under a ‘learn as I do’ model. A short course like this one can help social dance teachers (with or without a traditional teaching background) to consider ways of teaching movement and dances that can help leisure dancers to learn quicker, more accurately and importantly safely. The importance of the social and fun factor in leisure dance is always considered when approaching teaching matters on this course.
The tension and rigidity course has proved to be a very popular course with dance teachers from around the world who, through taking this short course, have discovered many benefits from understanding more about tension and rigidity in dance, some of its causes and ways to avoid or reduce unnecessary tension in the dance class and performance.
This course has been enjoyed by dance teachers teaching a whole range of dance students from elite to social dancers and from children through to older adults.
General information about short online CPD courses for dance teachers
Course type: Each course is one of a series of short online CPD courses for dance teachers and trainee dance teachers created by Sho Botham.
Duration: 3 weeks
Time commitment: The time commitment for each course is 10 hours over the three weeks. This means that you have flexibility in when you study and prepare the weekly assignments to fit around your existing work and family commitments.
Delivery: Each course is delivered via short, online, learning activities that may include reading, presentations or videos to watch and practical tasks. Some learning materials or guidance may be provided as PDF files for you to download. A weekly email tutorial with your course tutor is an important aspect of how each course is personalised for you and your dance teaching practice. This provides opportunities for discussion, reflection and feedback.
Cost: Each course ONLY costs £49 (GBP) and offers terrific value for money.
Generic outline of courses
Week 1 – Guided learning and/or reviewing
Week 2 – Planning and application to practice
Week 3 – Reflections and thoughts for future practice
Each course offers an opportunity to apply the course development to your dance teaching practice through the planning of a class or session incorporating aspects of the course. Feedback is received on your teaching plan, via the weekly email tutorial, before you deliver the taught session. This enables you to incorporate any planning feedback for your taught session which you deliver in the third and last week of the course. Following this taught session your last email tutorial reflects on how your taught session went, identifying what went well and why and what needs further development and why. This email tutorial also enables you to consider your future dance teaching practice in relation to the course topic and development.
Writing: there is no formal essay writing on these short CPD courses. Any writing is in note form. This means that you can write about the topic and your practices and experiences on the course without needing to pay attention to formal essay writing protocols. The key focus of the courses is on incorporating the CPD development into your dance teaching practice.
Certificate of completion: a certificate of completion is sent to you following your completion of the course.
A sample completion certificate
Watch out for booking details to be posted on the site shortly. If you have any questions you can post them here on the comments facility or contact Sho via email on:
sho at cpdfordanceteachers.com (change the ‘at’ to @ and remove the spaces)
The following new course will be available to take next time:
Learning and Teaching Dance: developing proprioception skills
cpd for dance teachers 
Hi Sho
I am interested in your course Teaching Social and Leisure Dancing, I have no background or qualifications in dance and use the “learn as I do ” model, I teach beginners line dancing and have been line dancing myself for 15 years and was a school teacher /trainer for most of my working life ( am now retired). I am curious how this would work on line , never done a course on line before.
Gill Walters
Hi Gill
Thanks for getting in touch about the online courses. I started doing these online courses in order to offer dance teachers the opportunity to some development in a flexible way with personal guidance and feedback in the form of weekly tutorial emails. This model is proving to be very popular and I am delighted at the quality of engagement and development that has taken place on the courses so far. As you already have a teaching/training background then I am sure that you will be using the generic transferrable teaching skills and understanding in your Line dance teaching. As with all teaching we can develop the how, what and why of teaching a topic for the benefit of those we teach and this in turn helps us as teachers.
As mentioned on the site, these short online courses are delivered over a three week period. The first week is some guided learning/reviewing relating to the topic – in your case teaching social and leisure dance and you will focus on your own dance genre – in your case, Line dancing and particularly beginner Line dancing. The guided learning will take various forms. There are written posts on the courses site (part of the CPD for Dance Teachers site) which you access via password during the course and some video presentation that you watch on the site and so on. There may be PDF files to download for you to study when you set aside some study time. Through this guided learning you will explore the carious aspects of the topic that the course addresses. In week 2, you plan a taught session incorporating aspects of the course within the plan (you are given a planning sheet format to use) and this forms the basis of your week 2 email tutorial – your feedback from this tutorial will help you to tweak your plan before delivering your planned taught session (to your beginner Line dance class) in the third and last week of the course. Your last email tutorial enables you to send in your reflections on how your taught session went and so on and also your thoughts about to how you will incorporate aspects of the course in your future teaching practice. So it is a learn/review, plan and apply in practice, model focusing on your own teaching practice so that the course is relevant for you and your students/dancers.
So, you need to be able to access the site during the period of the course for course materials and video presentations and so on. You also need to be able to send and receive emails for the weekly tutorials. As I say, this is proving a really useful model for doing some dance teacher CPD. In Line dancing, very often teachers don’t have many opportunities to explore some of the aspects that can help and develop their teaching. This course offers a short time commitment but a lot of useful teaching stuff that you can continue to use and develop long after the course has finished.
I hope this helps to clarify how the course is organised and I look forward to working with you should you decide to take the course. Booking details will be posted shortly.
Hi Sho
Thanks for your reply and explanation of how the course works.
Sounds really good and I am keen to follow up, will look forward to receiving booking details.
Many thanks
Gill
Hi Gill
You are very welcome.
Booking details will be posted within the next 48 hours so do check back for them.
Sho
Hi Sho
Have not seen any booking details yet, am I looking in the right place?
Gill, you are looking in the right place but I have to apologise for late posting of booking details – I have been away and did not get them posted before going. They will be posted here by the end of today.
Sho
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