Monday 13 January 2014

Workshops

Last week I ventured into the world of education, not as a student, but as a teacher! Back in the autumn I was approached by a local college about doing some workshops for their dance students. They wanted me to talk about anatomy and physiology, nutrition, exercise and anything else I could think of that fitted with their curriculum. I, in turn, came up with a long, long list of possible topics and tried to work it into a 2.5 hour workshop.

In then end I had way too much stuff, but I expected that. Although I've been involved in preparing and delivering talks for many years, this was somewhat different and I could tell from the outline I prepared that we were simply not going to be able to get through it all in the time we had. But that was okay because the last thing I wanted to do was run out of stuff to do.

Overall i think the day went okay. Certainly from my perspective I was quite pleased with the atmosphere we created and how we managed to collaborate. Yes I'd do things differently next time. Mostly working out where to focus attention, but with enough room to explore the topics in ways that supported the student's learning objectives.

I thought I might struggle to build rapport with the students, but they were great. I tried to make the workshop as interactive as I could, and that helped.

So what's next? Well. hopefully, I might get to go back in at some point and revisit some themes and maybe do some stuff with next year's students. You never know, maybe I'll get other opportunities to similar projects. It certainly helps me to keep some of the things I've learnt fresh as I learn how to deliver them to a group. Mind you, I might need some training on how to use an interactive white board!