Dance Education Essentials: 55 Objects and Ideas for New Preschool-12th Grade Teaching Artists

Dance Education Essentials is a must-have for dancers new to teaching. This pocket guide is ideal for any new teacher and is a valuable addition to college dance education courses or dance education workshops in the community. Authors Jill Randall and Valerie Gutwirth, with over 40 years of teaching experience between them, provide easy and invaluable tools as you begin your journey into teaching dance with students ages 2-18. Short and concise, Dance Education Essentials highlights 55 ideas related to starting at a school site, logistics around set up and space, taxes, supplies, and self-care. Each page contains one idea with ample space below it to take notes and to use the book as a journal. This book is ideal for absolute beginners just embarking on teaching dance.

Jill Homan Randall graduated from the University of Utah in 1997 and has been teaching dance, or directing arts education programs, ever since. In the San Francisco Bay Area, Jill has taught in a wide variety of settings including preschools, community centers, dance studios, and public and independent K-12 schools. From 2004-2006 Jill was the Director of Education for the Lincoln Center Institute affiliate in Berkeley, California, and from 2006-2010 Jill directed Shawl-Anderson Dance Center. Jill currently teaches dance full-time at The Hamlin School in San Francisco. She has performed extensively with Nina Haft & Company and Paufve Dance. As a dance writer, Jill maintains three blogs on children’s books on dance, careers in modern dance, and the intersection of dance and technology. In 2013, Jill received the Herbst Foundation Award for Teaching Excellence. Valerie Gutwirth began teaching dance to children in high school. She graduated from Connecticut College in 1984, and received an MS in Early Childhood/Elementary Education from Bank Street College in 1992. She has taught movement, dance, and fitness classes to people from birth to age 80+, from Mommy and Me classes in church basements to Juilliard’s dance department, and everything in between. Valerie’s dance and performance experience includes companies in New York (1984-1991) and the San Francisco Bay Area (1995-present), most recently with Paufve Dance and the dance/singing/ body percussion group MoToR. Valerie has been thrilled, inspired, and challenged as a dance teacher in the Berkeley, California public schools for the past 16 years.