Tap Dance Teacher Blog

In my never-ending quest keep class interesting, for both me and my students, I tried something new a couple of weeks ago.  We had partner week. For warm up I pulled a student up in the front of class to be my partner (if there was an extra one to be had - an even number of students meant I was on my own).  We did a simple pattern like 4 toes together then I did two stamps and then my partner did two stamps.  The fun and interesting part is that it was all done on the fly.  I didn't go through which partner would do what part ahead of time other than some general guidelines: 1.  Sometimes you and your partner will tap together and then do separate parts (like I explained above). 2.  Sometimes you and your partner will do separate parts first and then tap together (I do step heel stamp, my partner does step heel stamp, and then together we do three step heels and a stamp). 3.  When reverse a pattern or switching to the left foot, the partner on the left (this was not me) wo

Every so often you see a student for whom everything suddenly clicks and like a rocket they take off to unbelievable heights.  I had the fortune of recently seeing this in not one, but two students at the same time. Often when a tapper reaches the top of the class I recommend they straddle classes by continuing to take the current class and also taking a class that's the next level up. The straddlers typical have a hard time in the harder class but are usually ready for the challenge.  What I almost never see is a straddler who takes the harder class and just eats it up straight away.  I recently had two tappers do just that.  For one of the tappers I could see this coming - she's been tapping well and has been very focused in class.  The other one has always been a good student but her amazing jump came out of nowhere for me. And Man is it EXCITING!  It's so fun to see kids suddenly make a huge jump forward like this.  As tap teachers we struggle week in and week out