Rebecca was desperate to study dance for her degree at Edge Hill University. But it was only when she saw the power of the art to engage with children, give them confidence and develop opportunities that she realised that teaching dance provided a powerful way to change lives.
“I’ve been dancing since I was three and wanted to dance professionally for as long as I can remember. At 16 I won a scholarship to a dance school in London, but my parents wanted me to have some academic qualifications to fall back on. It was a trade-off really, I could study dance as long as I went down the A-levels/degree route. If they hadn’t encouraged me to do that my life would have turned out very differently.
I enrolled on the drama, dance and physical theatre course at Edge Hill but it didn’t have nearly enough dancing on it for me. Fortunately, the university introduced the single honours dance programme in 2005 and I was able to transfer to a course where I could literally dance all day!
I thought I knew about dance before I came to Edge Hill, but as soon as the course started I realised I had so much more to learn – and I loved every minute of it. I feel really lucky to have been in the very first cohort because we trialled a lot of different things that later students didn’t get to do – it felt like being in at the beginning of something very special.
At first I was only interested in the performance side of dance and only reluctantly took some modules about teaching. The idea of teaching dance didn’t appeal to me at all but, when we went out to primary schools to teach creative dance, I was suddenly struck by the power of dance to engage children and help them in all aspects of school life. I realised it wasn’t about taking a young child and training them to be a dancer, it was about building confidence, giving them opportunities to experience new things and seeing them change and grow through dance. I was completely hooked.
After a period as a freelancer, I took a job as a learning supervisor at my old secondary school where I trained to be a teacher. Dance wasn’t even part of the PE curriculum before I arrived but, over the past seven years, participation in dance has grown from a couple of after school cheerleading and hip-hop clubs to a department with 11 dance teams, which won three national titles last year, and a GCSE dance programme.
I’m now head of dance and encourage any promising students to look at Edge Hill if they want to study dance. It’s not just the facilities, like a working theatre to practice in – the course opens your eyes to different ways of thinking about dance and can even introduce you to exciting career paths you hadn’t even considered.”
• There are a number of different routes to training to become a teacher. Learn more about studying to teach PE at Edge Hill University, Or discuss your options with the course enquiries team.
