Setting the Foundation for More Rigorous Ballet Training in a Fun and Engaging Way
Learn how Lee Ann inspires her young students as she prepares them for the Cecchetti method
Last week, we sat down with Lee Ann Stehle to talk with her about how she uses the Once Upon a Ballet Curriculum for her preschool and early elementary aged students. Lee Ann has been teaching dance for more than 20 years. She teaches ballet and other dance forms to tots through adults at Doxa Arts Academy in Benton, AR.
Whether she’s teaching her advanced pointe students, or her preschool dancers, Once Upon A Ballet Certified Teacher Lee Ann’s days instantly brighten when she sees her students walk in the studio. “They always come in with a smile, and I can forget about the stress of life and focus on them and their excitement and their happiness,” Lee Ann reflects. Having taught dance for over twenty years, Lee Ann has learned that to inspire students, she has to keep her energy levels high. But Lee Ann thinks that with the right classroom management tools and curriculum, inspiring and exciting students is much easier to achieve.
Having used OUB curriculums for just the past six months, Lee Ann has already begun to see changes in her students. “The kids are more engaged with the fairy tales versus what I was doing [before],” she tells us. “They’re much more engaged week to week and they look forward to the activity part.” Not only does Lee Ann see OUB curriculums as a successful way to engage and inspire students, she sees them as a foundation for more rigorous programs of study, like Cecchetti.
Lee Ann is currently working on a certification in the Cecchetti method and reflects that OUB curriculums feed seamlessly into it. “I want to take the kids up [through OUB] through [age] seven and then introduce them to Cecchetti classes around eight.” When asked how OUB helps prepare students for a curriculum like Cecchetti, Lee Ann stated that “[The curriculum is] not tricks and skills and all of the flashy things, it really drives home the point that you have certain skills and then you get good at those certain skills… You’re revisiting [them] over and over and the [curriculum] language keeps it really exciting and new.”
Alongside Lee Ann’s study of OUB and Cecchetti, she has certifications through Progressing Ballet Technique and Southern Association of Dance Masters. Having found dance at four years old, Lee Ann got her initial training at a pre-professional studio. She went on to compete in ballet in high school and studied dance in college. When she got her first studio job at 17 she fell in love, and she’s been teaching ever since.
“You can get stagnant or stale in your [teaching] methods, and I had been looking for about two years for different things to change up and enhance what I was doing,” Lee Ann reflects. “There’s YouTube resources, so that was helpful in some ways. But to see the [OUB] curriculum lay everything out… and have things that you’re really focusing in on… I really enjoyed having that plan laid out.” Now that Lee Ann has gone through the OUB training and is implementing it in her classes, she wants to take all of her upcoming apprentices through it who are wanting to learn how to teach. “I have high hopes of what these dancers are going to turn out like if they stick with the program and keep coming back, because they are so engaged and it’s so amazing.”
We ended our conversation with Lee Ann by asking her what her favorite part about being a dance teacher was. She responded with: “Seeing them grow. Knowing that you have a kid come in who has never had movement, who is uncoordinated, who is scared, and by the end of the year they’ve come out of a shell, they move with some grace… Knowing that you facilitated that growth in them is really gratifying. And not in a selfish way, but in an ‘I’m doing this right’ kind of way.”
Lee Ann is one of Once Upon a Ballet's Contributing Teachers and helping with our upcoming curriculum releases and updates. This article was written by Once Upon a Ballet Community Manager, Olivia Wickstrom.
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At Once Upon a Ballet, we want to help you teach dance in a way that sparks your students’ imaginations, keeps their attention, and has them leaving class excited for what’s next.
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Our complete curriculums for toddler and preschool dance and children’s ballet give you a full year of lesson plans for each age group. Our lesson plans are rooted in child development and teach dance through imagination and play. We strongly emphasize correct, age-appropriate ballet techniques for young children, as well as building self-esteem, creativity, problem-solving, and classroom skills.
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