The Teacher I Am Today Is Built on the Teacher I Used to Be

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When I first began teaching, I was passionate, enthusiastic, and eager to share everything I knew about dance.

I wanted my students to love ballet. I wanted them to work hard, experience the satisfaction of progress, and discover the beauty and discipline of an art form that had shaped so much of my own life.

I knew ballet.

But knowing ballet and knowing how to teach ballet are not quite the same thing.

Over time, experience became one of my greatest teachers.

Years in the studio taught me that teaching is not simply about knowing the steps, giving corrections, or creating a well-structured class. It is about understanding people.

Every dancer who walks into the studio brings something different. A different body. A different history. A different level of strength and coordination. A different way of processing information. A different relationship with confidence, fear, discipline, and success. And a different journey ahead.

The longer I have taught, the more I have come to understand that good teaching begins with seeing the dancer in front of you.

Experience Changes the Questions We Ask

Early in our teaching careers, we often focus on what we know.

What should I teach?

What is the correct technique?

What should come next in the progression?

How do I fix this mistake?

Those are important questions. I still ask them.

But experience has taught me to ask other questions as well.

Why is this dancer struggling?

Does she understand what I am asking?

Does she have the strength to do it?

Does she have the coordination?

Is the exercise developmentally appropriate?

Have I prepared her for what I am asking her to do?

Is there another way I can communicate this?

Sometimes, what seems like a lack of effort is actually a lack of understanding. Sometimes, what appears to be a technical problem is a strength or coordination issue. Sometimes, the correction is necessary, but the dancer is not yet ready to embody it.

And sometimes the teacher needs to change the approach.

That realization has profoundly shaped the teacher I am today.

I Have Not Become a Different Teacher

The teacher I am today is not a replacement for the teacher I used to be.

She is built from her.

I still have the same love for dance. I still strongly believe in the value of excellent training. I continue to believe that discipline, consistency, and hard work matter. I still want dancers to experience the incredible satisfaction that comes from pursuing something challenging and discovering what they are capable of.

But experience has given those beliefs a broader perspective.

I still value excellence, but I realize that excellence does not look exactly the same for every dancer.

I still believe in discipline, but I also recognize the importance of curiosity, joy, confidence, and ownership in the learning process.

I still provide corrections, but I think more carefully about why a dancer is struggling before deciding how to respond.

I still teach technique, but I increasingly see it not as a set of steps to master, but as a carefully developed process of building understanding, coordination, strength, artistry, and agency over time.

The foundation remains intact.

It has just become deeper.

Growth Does Not Require Us to Reject Who We Were

As educators, it is easy to look back on our younger selves and focus on everything we would do differently now.

And certainly, there are things I would do differently.

But growth is not about criticizing the teacher we once were.

It is about recognizing that she was also learning.

She taught with the knowledge, experience, and understanding she had at the time. She asked questions. She made mistakes. She discovered what worked and what did not. She learned from students, colleagues, mentors, research, successes, disappointments, and countless hours in the studio.

Each season of teaching added something valuable.

The teacher I was twenty, thirty, or forty years ago could not have had the perspective I have today. That perspective had to be lived.

Growth as an educator involves honoring the lessons that brought us here while staying open to continued learning.

The Best Teachers Never Stop Being Students

After decades of teaching, I continue to listen, learn, question, and discover new ways to communicate.

Curiosity has always been an important part of who I am as a teacher. Later in my career, after decades of working as a dancer and educator, that curiosity led me back to graduate school to study applied exercise physiology.

I wanted to understand more.

I wanted to better understand the remarkable human body God has given us and how that knowledge could inform the way we train dancers. I wanted to understand how the body responds and adapts to training, how strength develops, how fatigue and recovery affect performance, and how we can help dancers move with greater safety, efficiency, and effectiveness.

Because it is not just about the steps.

Behind every tendu, jump, turn, and extension is a human body. And that body belongs to a person.

The more I learned, the more connections I began to make between anatomy, physiology, pedagogy, curriculum, and what I had observed through years of teaching.

What I learn about the body changes how I look at training.

What I learn about pedagogy changes how I communicate.

What I learn about how dancers learn changes how I think about repetition and correction.

What I learn about curriculum changes how I think about progression.

And what I continue to learn from the dancers in front of me reminds me that no amount of knowledge replaces careful observation and a willingness to adapt.

Experience does not mean we have arrived.

It means there is more for us to consider.

More connections to make.

More to share.

And perhaps more responsibility to continue growing.

Turning Knowledge into Something Teachers Can Use

One of the things I value most now is the ability to combine different areas of knowledge—anatomy, exercise physiology, pedagogy, curriculum design, and years of classroom experience—and turn them into something a teacher can actually use.

Not just theory.

Not information that sounds impressive but stays disconnected from the realities of teaching.

Something a teacher can use on Monday afternoon when a ten-year-old dancer is having trouble with a skill and the teacher needs to figure out why.

Something that helps a teacher see past the mistake and ask a better question.

Something that helps a faculty understand not only what belongs in a level, but why it belongs there and how it prepares dancers for what comes next.

Something that helps studio owners develop clear systems and sustainable training practices rather than constantly putting out fires.

That is where much of my work is now heading.

Beyond the Steps

Ultimately, everything I continue to learn has to serve the person standing in front of me.

Not every dancer I teach will become a professional dancer. Most will not.

But every dancer who walks into the studio gives me an opportunity—and a privilege—to pour something into that person's life.

Of course I want to teach them ballet. I want them to experience the beauty of the art form. I want them to learn how to work with discipline, pursue excellence, and discover what they are capable of.

But I also know that the steps are temporary.

The pirouettes will eventually stop. The legs will not always go as high. The performances will end. Even for those who become professional dancers, a performing career is only one season of a much longer life.

So what will they carry with them?

Perhaps it is the confidence that came from accomplishing something they once thought was impossible.

Perhaps it is the discipline to keep working when progress is slow.

Perhaps it is a deeper respect for their body and an understanding of how to care for it.

Perhaps it is curiosity, perseverance, courage, or the joy of learning.

Perhaps it is simply the memory of having had a teacher who truly saw them.

That is why I increasingly believe that while I teach dance, I am always teaching people.

Ballet is the medium through which I have been given the opportunity and privilege to do that.

I want my knowledge of anatomy and physiology to help me train dancers more wisely.

I want my understanding of pedagogy to help me teach more effectively.

I want curriculum to provide clarity and thoughtful progression rather than simply a list of skills to accomplish.

And I want all of it to contribute to the overall well-being of the dancer.

That does not mean abandoning excellence.

It means understanding excellence more fully.

The goal is not simply to help a dancer do more.

It is to help a dancer learn, grow, and flourish through the process.

A New Season of Teaching

I am still a dance educator.

I hope I always will be.

The studio keeps teaching me, and students keep challenging my thinking. There is something irreplaceable about standing in front of dancers, observing what is happening, making decisions in the moment, and finding the words or exercises that finally make something click.

But I also realize that I am in a different phase of my career.

I am not just teaching dancers.

I am becoming more passionate about helping develop and support the teachers who will educate future generations of dancers.

That work matters deeply to me because teachers have an extraordinary impact on their students' lives. How we structure training matters. The language we use matters. The expectations we set matter. How we respond when a dancer struggles matters.

And teachers also need support.

They need more than combinations and syllabi. They need opportunities to understand the reasons behind what they teach. They need frameworks to help them make informed choices. They need space to ask questions, reflect on their practice, and continue developing their own teaching voice.

I believe experience should not just be a collection of stories we carry around.

I think it should be something we can offer.

Not as a formula.

Not as a declaration that there is only one right way to teach.

But as perspective.

As questions worth asking.

As knowledge that can be applied in practice.

As support for the educators who are doing the demanding, complex, and deeply important work of teaching dancers every day.

Built, Not Replaced

The teacher I am today is built on the teacher I used to be.

She carries the enthusiasm of the young teacher who could not wait to share everything she knew.

She carries the discipline of the dancer who spent years learning that growth requires patience and persistence.

She carries the curiosity that sent her back to school because there was still more she wanted to understand.

She carries the questions that came from moments when teaching did not go as planned.

She carries the lessons of thousands of hours spent watching dancers learn.

And she carries the understanding that there will always be more to learn.

Perhaps that is one of the greatest gifts of a long teaching career.

We do not have to become less passionate as we become more experienced.

Our passion can become more informed.

Our standards can become more purposeful.

Our teaching can become more responsive.

Our knowledge can become more connected.

And our experience can become something we use not only to teach the dancers in front of us, but to strengthen the teachers and training environments that will shape dancers long after we leave the studio.

I am still becoming the teacher I want to be.

And I think that is exactly as it should be.