The Casual Dance Teacher's Podcast

Welcome to the Casual Dance Teacher's Podcast, brought to you by CasualDanceTeacher.com. I'm your host, Maia. No matter who, what, or when you teach, I'm here to share all my best tips and tools along with real and practical conversations with fellow dance educators to help you be the very best dance teacher you can be. Let's talk about it.

Welcome, everyone. Welcome back. We're here in season three, back from a little hiatus from the show.

And I'm so excited to be with you. I'm going to keep things super short and sweet today. I just have a couple of little housekeeping things to go over with you.

And then I'm going to tell you five things that I do before the start of every new teaching season, just to help you kind of get in that mindset, get refreshed and get ready to go with this new upcoming dance season. First of all, I did want to share an update on the status of the podcast. For those of you that have been long-time listeners or started listening in seasons one or two, the big change for season three is that we will now be a bi-weekly show.

So instead of coming out every Friday from now until April of 2027, we will be coming out every other Friday from now until April of 2027. There's numerous reasons for that. I've talked a little bit throughout season two about some of the life changes that I've been going through and reframing kind of how I approach being the casual dance teacher that I am.

So that sort of definition for me has continued to evolve and grow. And I've taken on all sorts of different creative projects that have fulfilled me in different ways. So while I'm super passionate about this project of producing the podcast and sharing amazing tools and tips and conversations with you that I think will help fuel your dance teaching journeys as well as mine, I also want to make sure that I'm leaving space for other creative projects that come my way.

So that's like the number one sort of practical reason. I also in the hiatus between seasons two and now season three launched casual dance teacher dot com. So that's a brand new website.

It does have all of the podcast episodes right there where you can listen or you can connect directly to your favorite streaming platform from the website. It's also a one stop shop, not only for the resources that I have already produced and published that go hand in hand with some of the podcast episodes, such as my curriculum planning guide, and my SWOT analysis for dance teachers, which are both completely free, by the way, but it also combines those with resources from some of the other guests that have been on the show and some of the partners of the show. And most of them are free.

So because there is a limited scope to what I can offer, I was really excited to partner with some of the previous guests of the show to be able to offer you more free resources that cover a wider variety of different topics, all relevant to dance teachers, but within different genres and different areas of dance education. And you can download all of those right on the site. It also includes curated playlists.

So if you are looking to learn more about a certain topic or a certain element of dance education, there are a number of playlists on there that you can explore that will walk you through all different facets of particular subjects. For example, if you're wanting to learn more about choreography, if you are needing more classroom games and activities to do with your dancers, if you're preparing for a specific performance or a recital, if you want to delve into techniques specifically and just listen to episodes about that. And then we also have playlists dedicated to dancers wellness, as well as dance teacher wellness and taking care of yourself.

So be sure to check it out. The other thing that's on the website currently are resources that I offer more personally. So you can check out some of the services that I might be able to offer you.

If you're looking for one-on-one consultation as a dance teacher, help with your own curriculum planning, with your own teaching and classroom management, choreography. If you're looking for a guest teacher, those are all things that I might be able to help you with. But there's a lot more detail about specifically what I offer and if and how I might be a good fit if you're looking into those things.

So I just encourage you again to check out casualdanceteacher.com. In addition to the casual dance teachers network on Facebook, that's our Facebook group and the casual dance teachers podcast on Instagram. All of the resources that have existed prior are still there. I'm now funneling energy into making the website as solid and as valuable a resource as it possibly can be.

And at the same time, got to look out for a number one and take care of myself and make sure that I am funneling some energy into my own personal projects, creative projects and things that I'm excited about. So those are all things that I'm working on that are leading to the podcast now being a bi-weekly show. And I think that you'll find that the quality of the conversations and the episodes is only going to grow from having that extra little week in between them.

So I really hope you guys enjoy and there's no shortage of episodes from the past couple seasons that you can go back and listen to or start to explore if you're a new listener. So please enjoy. With that said, like I said, I want to throw as much value at you guys as possible.

I always want the podcast to be totally practical and have really solid practical advice in every single episode that you can use. So here are five things that I do before the start of every season that I would recommend that you do as well to make sure that you are locked in and ready to go for the upcoming dance season. Number one, if you guys have been with me on the podcast, don't roll your eyes at this, but number one is I always plan my curriculum for the whole season before it even starts.

If that sounds really daunting to you, then you must not have listened to episode number one of the podcast that came out in season one, which is my curriculum planning episode. So I'm not going to beat a dead horse too much, but I am going to tell you go back and listen to episode one, season one of the podcast and go to casual dance teacher.com and download the guide that accompanies that episode. You too can plan your whole curriculum for the entire season.

Every single class, no matter what style, no matter what age level technique level, you can do it. Number two, and I kind of talk about this in that curriculum planning episode as well is I organize all of my classes that I'll be teaching in the upcoming season into a binder with dividers for each class. Now I've talked about this before.

It might be a little old school. You might have your own way of doing it, but long story short, I just like to make sure that I have lesson plans and choreography notes or notes on whatever I'm going to be doing in class separated by class and really, really easy to toggle back and forth between the different classes so that when one class is leaving and the next is coming in, there's no downtime of me trying to shuffle around and figure out what's coming next. So for me, it's a binder with dividers and I'll make sure that I have plenty of spare paper, plenty of notes and plenty of dividers for any of my classes in that binder.

Number three, and sometimes I'll do this at the end of the previous season. Sometimes I'm just so burnt out at the end of the previous season that I wait until the start of the next season. And that is to take out combos and lesson plans from last year's binder and pull them into this year's binder and put them into either the individual class divider sections if I know that I want to use a combo from last year or a lesson plan from last year with a specific class this year, or I might have a separate section behind a separate divider that's all past notes and past lesson plans.

And for me, this is a somewhat involved experience because my binders can get a little crazy throughout the season if I'm jotting down all sorts of crazy notes on the fly. So I really like to sit down and go through and some of it is going to be total trash and just like I'm never going to use that again because that was just mumbo jumbo that I wrote out. But if I have some combinations written out or if I have some choreography written out that I never used or I have a lesson plan or an activity that I jotted down from last year that I know I'm going to want to use again, I pull that over into the new binder because I do not want to be reinventing the wheel every year.

Yeah, all of my best stuff is definitely going to be coming back and being recycled. I just want to make sure that I'm freshening things up for this new group. And speaking of that, on to number four, refresh my playlists.

I don't do a separate playlist for every class, but I do separate playlists by genre. If you need suggestions, definitely visit the Casual Dance Teachers Network on Facebook because we've talked about this in that group and you can do a search and find my actual playlist that I've shared publicly. You can also listen to the episode of the podcast that I published in season one, which is specifically about how to refresh your playlist, how to use the algorithm to your advantage, how to do searches to generate creative new music choices for your classes.

So you can learn a lot more about that in previous episodes of the podcast. And number five, organize my dance bag. So that binders going in there, but there's also going to be a lot of other things to keep me going throughout the year.

I want to make sure it's clean. I want to make sure it's organized. Will it be after the first couple of weeks? Probably not, but I like to go in fresh and make sure it is nice and organized and ready to go for me.

And if you're looking for more tips specific to organizing your dance bag, I do have a what's in my dance bag episode that you can search on the podcast wherever you're listening. So those are five things that I do before the start of every season. Once again, if you feel like you are going into the season blind, or there's certain areas where you might have blind spots, check out casual dance teacher.com. There's a lot more resources that can help you there.

You can always hit me up on Instagram at the casual dance teachers podcast in the casual dance teachers network, Facebook group. I'm also on Reddit. I don't talk about that a whole lot, but I'm always lurking around on Reddit.

You guys at the casual dance teachers, you can find me there. Be sure wherever you're finding me, please leave a review. We grew a lot in season two, and I'm so grateful to all of you for that.

And if we could keep that momentum going and get some new fresh reviews and recommendations to other dance teachers, get the word out there, that would mean so much to me. Big shout out as well to GB mystical who wrote the theme music that we've been using since day one on the podcast. I don't think I will ever change it.

I love the theme music. So shout out to GB mystical for that. And with that guys, I'll see you in two weeks.