Welcome!

Welcome tap dance teachers!  My name is Rod Howell and I've been teaching tap for a little over twenty years.  I started assisting at about age 12 and began teaching at age 14.  Teaching tap dance is what I do.  Day after day I'm in the studio either creating routines or teaching students how to shuffle.  It's an interesting and challenging career to say the least!

I was fortunate to receive excellent training from Gregg Russell and I wanted a way to give others a little bit of what I received.  I decided to do this through a website at http://www.unitedtaps.com.  There you'll find a free tap dance video dictionary and syllabus, free online lessons, as well many other resources.  It has taken me years of work to create, and I do all the work myself so I hope you enjoy it.

From here on out this blog will serve as a forum for me to share my thoughts on teaching tap dance.  I'll share the good and the bad and any great new ideas I come up with.  Thank you for stopping by and I hope you'll return again soon.

Rod Howell

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Summer Format or Tech Ketchup

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Prepping the Kids or Preventing Mutiny

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First Day Back or Here We Go........

Today was my first day back for normal fall lessons.  Luckily for me it was only two hours which makes for a nice easing-back-into-things start to the new season.  The kids were were attentive, eager, and in good spirits and who doesn't love to teach to that?  These classes are at a studio I'm relatively new to (just started there about 2 months ago) so the kids are still learning my terminology. I find the terminology a tough thing.  I tell the kids to learn and remember as many names to steps as they can because that way when they take from someone else they'll hopefully be prepared for their terminology.  However regardless of how hard I try to teach new students who have had other teachers my terminology, they tend to still revert back to the very first names they learned for steps. Anyone got a solution to that? Rod at http://www.unitedtaps.com
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