Welcome!
Welcome to my showcase of work throughout my career in the MAED program at MSU. Below you will find 9 artifacts or pieces of work that have stood out to me during my time in this program. Throughout my time in the MAED program, I have done extensive work in researching how to improve and expand upon the current structures for ballet pedagogy. Additionally, I have designed numerous professional development and training programs that could be implemented to advance the fundamentals of teaching in ballet for my specific school. I have divided these artifacts into two categories, Ballet Pedagogy and Program Design and Development. Utilize the buttons to explore each artifact for information regarding the courses from which each article originated from (coming soon) as well as a link to a pdf of each completed work.
Ballet Pedagogy
Learning to Read through Dance
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This paper discusses the proposal that ballet is a language with its own interpretations of phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, and comprehension. By examining how to teach the language of dance through literary processes including phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, and comprehension, we hopefully can gain similar results in improvement and progress from a physical representation of language.
A Constraints-Led Approach to Ballet Pedagogy
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In my paper, A Constraints-Led Approach to Ballet Pedagogy: Developing Dynamic Movement Solutions, I looked to restructure ballet pedagogy through a constraints-led approach focusing on each student’s unique learning experience whereby organismic, environmental, and task constraints interact dynamically to allow the design of task manipulations for the development of skilled movement. Through this project, I designed a Coaching Menu for teaching a specific skill in my sport, ballet, utilizing constraint adaptations.
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Restructuring Classical Ballet Coaching: A Motor Learning System Integrated Network of Individual Influences and Constraints
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This project stands out the most from my career at MSU in the MAED program. This paper provides a look into the beginning applications of nonlinear pedagogy through an ecological theory of instruction and the responding coaching strategies necessary to work with individual constraints to form a more comprehensive and effective instruction approach towards the learning of dance. I conducted a trial individualized coaching session which in combination with subsequent research, provided a comprehensive construct of reshaping ballet coaching. This comprehensive paper looked to future directions for my own research into improving and reshaping the ballet instruction perspective.
Position Statement: Practitioner Role in Risk Reduction of Eating Disorders within Ballet Training
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This position statement looks at the practitioner role in the risk reduction of eating disorders in ballet. I began with an evaluation of the prevalence and definitions of eating disorders within this field and a rationale statement that covers the need to address this issue among the dance world. I wrote a recommendation for a child-centered intervention focusing on motor development, sport psychology (faculty involvement and active guidance), exercise physiology, and sport sociology. Lastly, I discussed the role of practitioners, looking to call upon dance nutrition counselors and faculty education to help address the issue.
Program Design and Development
Restructuring a Learner-Centered Teacher Assistant Program |
The paper discusses restructuring the design of a loosely existing teacher learning program for ballet to become a more structured official program through a learner-centered perspective. This program, TAP, would be restructured to include a synergistic self-directed learning framework, allowing for transformative learning and considering the relationship between experience and learning through experiential learning. The use of cognitive apprenticeships through synergistic self-directed, transformative, and experiential learning in TAP could create an integrated experience leading to greater efficacy in classroom management for student teachers in ballet. This new design of TAP could connect the gap between educational strategy and ballet instruction.
An Active Learning Professional Development Training |
This paper discusses the implementation of an active learning professional development training, Child Development Relevance Program, within a professional school setting, to educate current teachers and TAP participants (see EAD 861, Restructuring a Learner-Centered Teacher Assistant Program) on relevant child development information in connection with teaching applications, within the specific context of participant personal experience. This paper reviews presentation, observation, and writing and reflection as effective strategies to achieving the active learning objectives of CDR. Additionally, this paper provides a look into active learning assessment of CDR as well as ways to combat identified potential problems with its implementation.
Child Development Relevance Program Proposal |
This written proposal is for the implementation of the Child Development Relevance professional development training program that I created to train ballet faculty and TAP (student teachers) on child development and its relevance to specific ballet coaching. This program proposal reviews the program background, objectives, discussions and training activities, a plan for assessment and evaluation, a follow up plan to contribute further to the project’s objectives, as well as an appendix listing program leadership and agenda.
Teacher Assistant Training and Professional Development Program |
This paper looked to discuss the revision of a teacher training program through active learning and reflection-in-action approaches along with inspiration from three different adult learning theories: self-directed learning theory, Rogoff’s guided participation, and Mezirow’s transformative learning. With this implementation and restructure, the program should begin to grow through a heightened specificity towards adult learning and instruction with a focus of self-directed learning, group collaboration, and reflection in action.
Implementing Positive Youth Development through Sports Program: SPARKLE |
Supporting Positive Activity by Redirecting Knowledge, Learning, and Education (SPARKLE)
This program is designed to increase positive youth development within the setting of ballet instruction by addressing teacher qualification and participation in student learning and progress. Proposals for program structure, staffing, funding, and an extensive program evaluation process are reviewed to maximize the potential effects of SPARKLE for the ballet school faculty, teachers, and students. By establishing training in four crucial areas of child development: physical, psychological, social, and cognitive; teaching philosophy; and teaching strategies, incorporated through community collaboration and communication within faculty and supervisors working with students, SPARKLE aims to maximize teacher influence and build stronger more capable mentors who can guide young children into both positive and productive people and dancers.
This program is designed to increase positive youth development within the setting of ballet instruction by addressing teacher qualification and participation in student learning and progress. Proposals for program structure, staffing, funding, and an extensive program evaluation process are reviewed to maximize the potential effects of SPARKLE for the ballet school faculty, teachers, and students. By establishing training in four crucial areas of child development: physical, psychological, social, and cognitive; teaching philosophy; and teaching strategies, incorporated through community collaboration and communication within faculty and supervisors working with students, SPARKLE aims to maximize teacher influence and build stronger more capable mentors who can guide young children into both positive and productive people and dancers.