"But I Don't Dance!": Building a Cross-Curricular Integration Workshop for K-12 Educators

The author arrives at this project in an effort to ease intimidation expressed by fellow K-12 educators regarding cross-curricular integration of dance in their classroom practices. These feelings of intimidation, paired with the author’s belief in the importance of and a commitment to embodied learning, led her to develop a K-12 workshop accessible to all teachers, regardless of prior dance background, experience, and/or content area. The author began by gathering current models, processes, and perspectives from published literature and arts organizations regarding dance and arts integration in professional development. With this information, she identified trends and important components to include. Additionally, she worked to define her own personal values from which to build the professional development workshop. This workshop was then designed for K-12 classroom teachers to introduce ways to integrate dance and embodied learning in their classroom curriculum without having an extensive dance background.