Audio Transcript
Hey, everyone. It’s Ruth. I’m here at your Silver Creek Clogging dance and movement center in Silverton, Oregon. It’s the home of Dance Classes that Make Kids HappyTM.
This is What’s Happening at Silver Creek Clogging the week of March 29th.
I’m so excited to see everyone back in the studio this week. Yeah!
I hope you enjoyed a lovely spring break and now I’m ready to see you all again, hear your spring break stories again, well… again… hear your spring break stories and dance, dance, dance with you.
It’s gonna be awesome to get back together. I missed you guys last week.
I have a couple of announcements coming up for this week.
First of all, just a quick reminder again for our competitors; please plan on competing in Nationals competition, which is May 14th and 15th. It’s coming right up.
We’ll have the sign-up forms going home with students, our competitors, this week. So, look for those to go home with your students.
Also, we’ve heard an update from America OnStage about scheduling and it sounds like they are planning on studio blocks, to avoid crowds. So, we don’t know yet if our studio block will be on the 14th or the 15th, but just plan on that. We’ll just have the studio block.
All of the other information is in your email and, of course, when we send out/send home the sign up forms this week, we will talk over everything with your dancers in class.
So, yeah, of course, please let me know if you have questions. I know a couple of you had reached out to me over spring break. I hope that we got your questions answered. If not, or if you have other questions, please let me know. Text to the studio phone or email and we will be in touch, okay?
We are gonna have a super fun thing this week, up through the end of next week. We’re gonna have a studio choreography challenge.
So, everyone in the studio is invited. It’s purely voluntary. You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to, but you are invited to come up with your own unique choreography of 8 to 16 counts of steps.
You can do it in any skill level so, if you’re in the champ class you don’t have to do a champ choreography. You could do something different, advanced or even novice. So, it doesn’t really matter the skill level. You could even try to do something a little more challenging. But, what we’re going to do is, if you want to enter; you’ll do your choreography, you’ll videotape yourself dancing your choreography, and you will send it to your instructor via the TeacherZone chat no later than Friday, April 9th.
So, you have this week and you have next week to come up with your choreography and submit it. And, the winning choreography is going to have their submission featured in this year’s all studio routine, okay? Yeah. So, get your wheels rolling. We’ll talk it over in class. You can bounce your ideas off of your instructor, if you would like. But, it does need to be your very own choreography. Don’t take something from some dance that you’ve learned and just kind of put it in there, because that’s not gonna fly. All right?
So, I want you guys to get your choreography wheels churning. Yeah. Should be fun.
So, we have an update on our instructor certification course. And, the update is that we’re going to delay the rollout of that certification course. And, here’s a little bit about why we’re doing that and what you can expect.
So, one of the goals that we have, as a studio, is to provide our students with the skills to succeed; not just in clogging, but in other areas of their lives as well.
We want our students to be able to excel both on and off the dance floor. So, we have been working, working, working towards that goal.
And, one of the things we’ve done is we begin to integrate some of those kind of soft skills into some of our classes. Things like leadership and teamwork, we’ve been talking about in classes and we’re working to formalize those things.
So, we’ve always, of course, we have our clogging skills and techniques. That’s always been part of that; we have a formal path of progression for that part of our curriculum. But, we’re currently working to integrate, to revamp all of our programs so we can integrate, some of those non-clogging skills formally into that path of progression for our students.
So, while we’re doing that, we want to make sure that that instructor certification is unified as part of that comprehensive curriculum; that comprehensive student path of progression.
So, that’s why we’re going to delay the rollout, because we don’t want to just piecemeal this. We want to make sure that students know what they’re looking ahead towards, what they’re working towards, what they can achieve, and try to minimize just popping this out here and there. Okay?
So, it’s going to take just a few months to just, to get that all cohesive.
But, don’t worry. We will have opportunities for students to learn and grow as instructors in the studio. We want that, we need that. We want to groom our own instructors to be the excellent instructors that our students deserve and part of that is teaching our instructors how to incorporate some of these soft skills into their teaching. So, that’s what we’re doing.
Don’t worry, it will come. It’s just going to be a few months down the road while we finalize these changes. We’re making some, kind of, overhauls to our program.
So let me know if you have any questions and we will be rolling out our new program/curriculum/path of student progression very soon.
Because, our students’ growth is super, super important to us and not just… we’re wanting to produce more than just great cloggers. Because, you know, not all of us are going to be professional clog dancers; but, we are going to be professionals, at some level, in the world. We are going to be… all of us have to figure out how to excel in life.
So, those are the kinds of things we’re working to formally integrate across our curriculum (from the novice all the way up to the pro level).
So, not just the clogging skills, but people/life/world soft skills, I guess you could say.
So that’s that. Please, again, let me know if you have questions.
And, next… student arrival at class. It’s starting to become a little bit of an issue, with students who are late to class. So, I just want to remind you guys that, right now with our covid protocols that are in place (with the check-in procedures), we just can’t have students being late to class. We have to have time to do the temperature checks, you know, ask the questions, get people in, get their shoes on, so that we can start class on time. And, per our COVID protocols, if a student is late, they may not be able to come to class.
So, just make sure that you are here, at the studio, at least five minutes ahead of your scheduled class time, so that you can do the check-in procedures and so that you can get your clogging shoes on and just be ready to get going at your class’s scheduled time.
We’ve been a little bit lax about that, here in the studio because, you know we’ve been bouncing back and forth in studio, out of studio, in studio, out of studio, and school’s been a little bit, you know, up and down. But, at this point, I think we’re all kind of… it’s time.
It’s time to get back to making sure that we are on time for class. So, just do that and just know that, per the COVID protocols of the studio, if you’re late you might not be able to be in the studio. We might have to, we might not be able to take… the instructors may not be able to abandon the rest of the students that are in class to come check you in, if you are late. So, heads up on that.
What’s coming up on the studio calendar? Coming up. Events.
This Friday is open studio. Yeah! 6:30 to 8:00. We do need RSVP’s. If you would like to come, you just need to let us know by Friday and… or sorry, by Thursday, the end of the day Thursday. And, yeah, attendance is limited to the first six students who RSVP, so the sooner you RSVP, the more likely it is that you’re going to be able to join in on open studio.
Next week, the week of April 5th, our student choreography challenge videos are due and they’re due by Friday, April 9th.
Then, the following week after that, the week of April 12th, it’s crazy sock week. We’re going to just wear crazy socks and dance around in our crazy socks. It should be fun.
Then, May 7th, first Friday in May, again, it’s first Friday open studio and we’ll just, you know, RSVP if you’re going to come, the week of open studio.
And, in May, May 14th and 15th, is Nationals competition; we’ve gone over that.
The week of May 17th, we’re going to have studio t-shirts, wear our studio t-shirts, and crazy hair. I want to see what you come up with for crazy hair.
And, then, the very last Saturday in May, May 29th, is our all-studio dress rehearsal and summer kickoff recital, at the Historic Grand Theatre in Salem.
And, the week after recital we’re going to have a little bit of a celebration. And, that celebration is different than what we have been doing post-recital, but it’s a little bit of a surprise, so just know that the week after recital we are going to celebrate.
And then, the following well… then that week, that week of May 31st, we have open studio on that Friday, June 4th.
And, the very, very next week after that, guess what starts happening… We start learning our clog down showdown routine. Yahoo! I’m… this is the part I always love; the clog down showdown routine.
So, keep those dates on your calendars.
That’s what’s coming up and that’s it for the week.
I’m excited to see you guys. I missed you last week. I kind of was a little discombobulated last week without you. So, I’m excited to see everyone back in the studio this week.
And, remember, you’re awesome and happy dancing.