Pedagogy: Reinventing Your Practice 

5 Saturdays @ The Floor 11:30 AM-5:30 PM
NOVEMBER 12
DECEMBER 10
JANUARY 14
FEBURARY 11
MARCH 11

 

About this Course

This course is intended for moderately to deeply experienced teachers who want to understand how to efficiently structure their material to work remotely, and who want to interrupt their habits and deepen their practices in the virtual or actual classroom. We will focus on some of the essential facets of skilled teaching, including:

Discovering and working from a personal voice and mission.

Using obstacles in the teaching process as opportunities.

Adapting to using new mediums, including digital and remote learning, to your advantage.

Developing a syllabus.

Finding the balance between planning and improvising.

Deepening the ability to meet students where they are.

Inventing creative imagery and accessing clear, non-violent language. 

Illuminating the ways in which our pedagogical lineage both supports and limits our thinking.

Writing about our work in a way that is evocative, clear, and compelling.

Creating structures for how we teach that specifically support what, where, and who you teach.

Strategizing ways to bring our full selves into the experience of teaching, including keeping our own needs in the room, and learning to find efficient recuperative systems to heal from the stress of teaching.

Class Description:

 

We will be moving, talking, writing, and observing through many lenses and participants will be teaching in small formats throughout the course. This course aims to help you find yourself as a teacher and to create structures that allow your students to access the material in the most efficient and joyful way.

 

Class will begin with a discussion topic, including:

 

Exertion and Recuperation: how do we find balance especially with online learning? We will examine how to create an ecosystem of effort, where you are balancing leading and following, speaking and listening, creating and honing, and finding an amalgam of instinct and analysis.

Inner/Outer: how do we find our voice, own our pedagogical inheritance, and develop an authentic, unique teaching methodology? We will consider what was handed down to us and how much of that aligns with our deepest vision. We will challenge ourselves to line up who we want to be in the world with how we are teaching.

Stability/Mobility: how can we foster a balance between what we lean into and what moves us? We will discuss the benefits of improvisation vs. planning, question power structures between students and teachers, and work on letting our content find its true form.

Function/Expression: how do we develop compelling imagery, de-code learning styles, and find the poetry of cueing? We will break down the 9 styles of learning and examine how to lead class in a way that includes different types of learners. We will explore the power of  language to ignite, calm, and unify our students.

 

Discussion will be followed by writing, creation and teaching around the  topic. There will be an optional discussion group online about the readings. This is a course in Pedagogy overall, though we will begin with a seminar and brainstorm session geared towards our current needs to shift rapidly to online teaching. While we will discuss methods for applying each of the topics to online models, this class is for teachers who are interested in examining their teaching practices as a whole, devising new strategies, letting go of givens and old patterns, and aligning the practices with their deeper vision.

 

About the Instructor

Hello, I’m Alexandra Beller. I am passionate about art-making through authenticity, clarity, and mindfulness. I am a choreographer and director, a professor, writer, and mentor.

After dancing with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company for seven years, I started my own Dance/Theatre company in 2002 (Alexandra Beller/Dances). I was always using both text and movement to storytell, but after getting my degree in Laban/Bartenieff Movement Studies (a certified Movement Analyst), I began to work predominantly in theatre. 

I have choreographed everything from classics to futuristic dystopian fantasy worlds, and have recently started to direct plays through a movement-centered, empathy-rich process. I’ve worked Off-Broadway, and regionally, for film and video, and have found each project to be a unique world requiring a mindful tuning, a learning curve, and a lot of listening.

My company became a place for education: helping choreographers find their voice, helping actors open their bodies to tell the story as much as, or more than, their voice. I help individuals sort themselves inside their art career, and teach Choreography and Contemporary Dance to people, who’ve often never danced before, at Princeton. I devise, curate, and run workshops, mentor individuals, teach at Universities, and teach teachers to bring their life vision to their classrooms.

My mission is to help artists find their truth and take action based on that inner knowledge, whether that is in their creative process, performance, personal life, or pedagogy.