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Establishing rules for your dance classroom

This is an excerpt from Core Teaching Practices for Dance Education With HKPropel Access by Emily Enloe.

Rules can be defined as guidelines for behaviors and the evaluation of those behaviors as right or wrong (Alter and Haydon, 2017). When creating rules or expectations in a dance classroom, it is important to start with a small handful of broad rules, which can then become more specific. You also have to consider the age group of your students and how much time they spend in your classroom. A classroom of first graders you see for five days on an eight-week rotation is less likely to remember large amounts of rules for dance compared with a high school sophomore class of dancers who are in your room daily for an entire year.

Additionally, your rules and expectations may vary depending on the type of space you have. A dedicated dance space with specialty floors and mirrors may require more specific dance rules than a multipurpose room that also contains desks or physical education equipment along the sides. No matter the space, it is important to create clear, consistent rules for students of all ages to follow once in the dance classroom. There is no one correct way to approach the creation of classroom rules and expectations. Many ideas and suggestions exist for approaching classroom management, rules, and expectations. However, the dance classroom can be a unique environment compared with many other classrooms because of its open space and creative atmosphere. The open space and physical movement of the students in the dance room lend themselves to similar expectations as those for a physical education classroom. However, dance can also be like a visual art classroom, where students have time for creative exploration and individual expression. Combining rules for these two types of spaces into one requires a skillful approach. The following section contains ideas on how to set up rules for the dance classroom to help maintain this balance.

School or District Initiatives

It is helpful to connect classroom rules to school- or district-wide rules and initiatives when possible. This means you do not have to start from scratch; plus, the similarity of specific guidelines makes following the rules easier for students. Although the dance classroom may be different from other K-12 classrooms a student encounters, it is advisable to connect dance rules with larger ideas or themes. One example from my teaching is when our school, whose mascot is an eagle, used the acronym “SOAR” to represent four major ideas we wanted students to be mindful of throughout the day: safe, organized, accountable, and respectful. There were dedicated posters for the acronym around the school, outlining how students could “SOAR” in specific areas, such as the hallways, restrooms, and cafeteria. Each teacher also had a poster in their classroom. We took time at the start of the semester to discuss how each of those four words applied inside a dance-specific classroom. Although there was an overlap in some ideas, which could apply in any classroom, such as being accountable for completing your homework, this was a chance to focus on dance-specific procedures using the school-wide values. When we discussed safety, we talked about removing our socks before dancing because of the type of floor in our space. Removing shoes and socks is not a safety issue in other classrooms. In fact, it could be unsafe. However, it is a dance-specific rule that aligned with the school-wide values of that year. Use your school or district handbook to find these main ideas, or ask your administration to share their school values if you need a place to start.

Classroom Contracts

Creating classroom contracts, or classroom agreements, is another way to develop rules for the dance classroom. Classroom contracts are a set of behavioral guidelines that are developed collectively with each class. Through guided discussion with the instructor, students create a set of classroom norms and develop ownership of their classroom (Frey and Fisher, 2023). There are various ways to approach the creation of these contracts, and you can create them at the beginning of the school year and then revisit them throughout the year if they need updates. Research on classroom management and creating classroom rules provides some guidance on best practices for their development. According to Alter and Haydon (2017), rules should be stated positively, explicitly taught, and tied to positive or negative consequences, and an ideal number of rules is four items for students to remember. Figure 1.1 provides guidelines for classroom contracts.

Stating rules in the positive means creating rules without stating what “not” to do. For example, a rule such as “Stay in your own personal space” is clear and written in a positive voice. The opposite would be “Do not touch other people” or something that has negative wording with the use of no or not. By stating in the positive, you are enforcing the behavior you wish to see from students. With negatively worded rules, students often overlook the not portion of the statement and focus on the rest of the sentence. In the example provided, that would mean students hear the part of the sentence that says “touch other people” just as much as the words “do not.” By instead focusing on the behavior you do want to see, which is staying in one’s own space, you spend less time correcting this behavior.

To explicitly teach rules, teachers must provide time and scenarios for students to demonstrate how to put the rules into practice. It is one thing to recite the rules or have them displayed visually for students to read daily. The more important part is practicing how to demonstrate these behaviors in the classroom. Hemms (2017) uses the language of “correct” and “redirect” when discussing classroom management. Students need you to correct the behavior when they have not demonstrated it correctly. However, they also need redirection to know how to fix the behavior so that they can practice more self-management. This is also related to the need to tie rules to consequences. Whether positive or negative, students need to know there are consequences for following or not following the rules as agreed upon in the classroom. A positive consequence can be a simple “thank you” from you, or perhaps the class can earn extra free time at the end of the week by demonstrating correct behavior. Negative consequences can be severe, such as receiving a detention write-up or simply redoing a task until the student can complete it correctly.

More Excerpts From Core Teaching Practices for Dance Education With HKPropel Access

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