Don’t Be Afraid to Just Dance!

In my experience, the word dance in physical education has been somewhat of a taboo. Many physical education teachers either choose not to teach dance at all because they do not feel comfortable with it or they struggle to find ways to teach it properly to their students. The teaching dance for understanding (TDfU) model completely changed my perspective not only on how to teach dance but also on how I can connect it to the physical education standards and make it meaningful to students. The TDfU model helped me break down dancing into more than just teaching specific dance steps to students. Using the TDfU model to introduce dance and get students comfortable with it helped lead to more meaningful uses for dance within the curriculum. After using this model, I was able to incorporate dance in different units throughout the entire school year and not just for a couple of weeks.