Attention and Focus Strategies for Dance Educators Online Course

Value: 12 hours of professional development (CPD) credit.

Attention and Focus Strategies for Dance Educators Online Course is a self-paced, interactive professional development course that provides dance educators with attentional focus strategies and tools to improve their delivery of dance technique.

Teachers will be equipped with effective cuing and feedback tools and learn attentional focus strategies to enhance their students’ technique, creativity, artistry, and performance.

Five Professional Development Modules
The self-paced course consists of five web-based professional development modules. Each module ends with a short “knowledge check” quiz, and a comprehensive quiz wraps up the course. Participants who complete the modules and quizzes may choose to download a certificate to submit to their administrators for up to 12 hours of professional development credit.

Each module takes 60 to 90 minutes to work through. Teachers can work through the modules at their own pace (access is granted for seven years), or district coordinators can deliver the course in a one- or two-day workshop, either in person or virtually. For those facilitating the workshop, there is a digital facilitator guide that offers descriptions, pacing, timing, and delivery recommendations for each module as well as module-specific tips, prompts for discussions, and optional further learning activities.

Upon completion of the course, teachers will have developed the following abilities:

• Be aware of the different types of focus of attention and be able to identify their associated physical and mental benefits.
• Know how to use a specific focus of attention to improve foundational movement skills.
• Be able to consciously promote appropriate attentional options as part of a systematic teaching strategy.
• Understand how to develop focus of attention strategies to support the delivery of social and emotional learning (SEL) core competencies.
• Know practical tools and complementary strategies to immediately apply to teaching.

Enhanced Learning, Immediate Benefits
As teachers apply these strategies, they enhance the learning process and promote creativity and artistry for diverse dancing groups. All students can advance their own physical movement abilities and develop focus, attention, and mental skills for enhanced performance. Many of the benefits students experience from these attentional focus strategies are immediate, promoting an instantaneous sense of success and fueling their motivation to learn more.

Seven Years of Access
Participants have seven years of access to the materials—setting it apart from many other dance education professional development courses, which are one-off distance-learning classes. With Attention and Focus Strategies for Dance Educators Online Course, teachers can revisit the modules and bring the practical applications and downloadable content into their classrooms after taking the course, which is aligned with the key requirements of the National Dance Society’s 2020 National Dance Education Standards Framework.

Exceptional Teaching Tools
Attention and Focus Strategies for Dance Educators Online Course provides dance educators with highly effective teaching tools to use in dance instruction for a range of skill levels and learning abilities. Through a series of practical explorations, the course brings theory to life as it helps teachers focus their delivery and instruction to develop the attention of their students and promote optimum movement outcomes and learning for all.

Audience

Resource for K-12 dance or arts coordinators, K-12 dance educators, freelance dance educators, studio owners and teachers, directors of education and engagement at professional dance companies, teachers of dance for all abilities and disabilities, and dance for health teaching artists.

Module 1. Focus of Attention—Exploring Focus of Attention and Its Role in Dance Practice
Module 2. Comparing Internal and External Focus of Attention—How an External Focus of Attention Can Support Learning and Enhance Physical Performance
Module 3. External Focus Teaching Strategies—Exploring a Rich Spectrum of Teaching Possibilities
Module 4. Applying External Focus of Attention to Enhance Performance—The Key to Unlocking Students’ Optimal Performance Potential
Module 5. Promoting Inclusion Through External Focus of Attention—Welcoming Diverse Learners and Skills Levels With the Support of an External Focus of Attention

Wrap-Up
Comprehensive Quiz

Clare Guss-West is a former professional dancer, choreographer, holistic health practitioner, and author specializing in the integration of holistic health principles and dance.

Her innovative work translates scientific research on attentional focus for direct application in professional, educational, and inclusive dance practice. She works with dancers, teachers, coaches, and health care teams of such companies as Houston Ballet, Finnish National Ballet, The Royal Ballet, Ballet de l’Opéra du Rhin, and Mark Morris Dance Group in New York and of educational organizations such as The Royal Swedish Ballet School, Opéra de Paris–Opéra Université, Pôle National Supérieur de Danse Rosella Hightower in France, and the Royal Academy of Dance (RAD) international CPD program.

Attentional focus theories are central to her adapted dance projects at Bern Ballet and Zurich Ballet. She also teaches this approach for the master’s program in dance science at University of Bern in Switzerland and for the dance, health, and aging program at University Côte dʼAzur in France.

Trained as a dancer and musician, Clare choreographed with composer Philip Glass and was resident choreographer and director at English National Opera. She created productions for Lyric Opera of Chicago, Los Angeles Opera, Seattle Opera, San Francisco Opera, Dutch National Opera, Royal Opera House, BBC Proms, and Opéra de Paris.

As cofounder of the Dance & Creative Wellness Foundation and chair of the Dance for Health Committee of International Association for Dance Medicine & Science (IADMS), she is an international advocate for the well-being benefits of dance.

David Leventhal is on the faculty of the Mark Morris Dance Center in New York City, where he has taught all levels of ballet and modern dance. In addition to numerous international educational projects, Leventhal has designed and delivered professional development workshops for K-12 teachers in the New York City Department of Education. He has taught technique and repertory classes for students of all ages at schools and universities in the United States and abroad, including Urbana (Illinois) School District, University of California–Los Angeles, University of California–Berkeley, University of California–Irvine, University of California–Santa Barbara, University of Illinois, Kansas State University, Mount Holyoke College, Tulane University, University of Michigan, Harvard University, University of Washington, American Dance Festival, Milton Academy, and the Governor's School for the Arts (Virginia).

Leventhal is also a founding instructor, lead trainer, and program director for the Mark Morris Dance Group’s Dance for PD (Parkinson’s disease) program, which serves as a model for classes in more than 250 communities in 25 countries. He leads classes for people with Parkinson's disease around the world and has trained more than 2,000 other teaching artists in the Dance for PD approach. He has co-produced five volumes of a successful DVD series for the program and has been instrumental in designing innovative projects involving live streaming and Moving Through Glass, a dance-based Google Glass app for people with Parkinson's.

View And Download The NDS's National Dance Education Standards Framework