Let’s get students up and dancing!
Dance To Learn
The Geraldine R Dodge Foundation partners with Young Audiences, Dance New Jersey, professional dance companies/ensembles/teaching artists, and teachers to promote the Dance to Learn experience.
With Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access (DEIA) at the forefront, Dance to Learn prioritizes equitable access to dance experiences for historically excluded and systematically marginalized dance styles, and student populations.
Dance to Learn is:
- a four-year interdisciplinary and inclusive dance curriculum with the goal to advance dance education in New Jersey schools.
- a model of dance education that meets or exceeds the NJ Department of Education Student Learning Standards for Dance, and the National Core Arts Standards in Dance.
The Dance to Learn curriculum is both arts-based and truly arts-integrated because it:
- encourages students to explore, internalize, and transform classroom learning and the elements of dance while developing their individual creative voices.
- offers opportunities for students to reflect, critique, and connect personal experiences to their learning of dance and in their classrooms.
- is a framework to guide sequential curriculum design for multiple dance styles and genres.
- provides an inroad to kinesthetic learning and connects to language arts, mathematics, science and social studies, physical education and music curriculums.
- offers formative and summative assessment and documentation tools to help measure the effectiveness of student learning and facilitator impact.
Become a part of the Dance to Learn community!
Together we can advance the frontiers of dance education.
Dance Companies/Ensembles/Dance Teaching Artists
The Geraldine R Dodge Foundation, Young Audiences and Dance New Jersey invite professional dance companies/ensembles/teaching artists to become a part of the Dance to Learn community!
With Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access (DEIA) at the forefront, Dance to Learn prioritizes equitable access to dance experiences for historically excluded and systematically marginalized dance styles, and student populations.
As a part of the Dance to Learn community your company/ensemble/teaching artists will:
- learn an effective way to integrate the Student Learning Standards for Dance education.
- be provided with professional development and mentorship to acquire the knowledge and skills needed to create Culturally Responsive Arts Education experiences, as well as identify and develop sustainable partnerships and advance high quality programming.
- be guided to create unique partnerships with New Jersey school communities that foster lasting impact among dance companies/ensembles/teaching artists, teachers, students, and families.
- be shown how to integrate a professional performance by your company as part of the curriculum.
“The training and implementation of Dance to Learn has transformed the capacity of Nimbus Dance Works. We are passionate about creative movement and are stronger because of Dance to Learn.”
Samuel Pott, Artistic Director
Teachers
The Geraldine R Dodge Foundation, Young Audiences and Dance New Jersey invite classroom and specialized teachers to become a part of the Dance to Learn community!
Dance to Learn offers teachers:
- the most effective, efficient, and affordable way of integrating Student Standards for Dance education into the school day.
- professional development and mentorship to integrate dance into their classes.
- a model for how to use kinesthetic learning to teach language arts, mathematics, science and social studies, physical education or music.
- access to Culturally Responsive Arts Education workshops.
- support to identify and sustain community partners.
“Dance to Learn has offered…a chance to take what has been learned in the classroom into the students’ bodies, it has helped build confidence in our students and our teachers love the dance classes.”
Anna Mae Stefanelli, Principal
“Having Dance to Learn in my music class gave me the time and training to expand my lesson plans.”
Micki Stuckane, Red Bank Charter School, Music Teacher
Dance to Learn, in partnership with Dance New Jersey, is made possible through the generous support of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.
