Last night marked the start of a new chapter in my life journey. With Doodle slung over my elbow, sleeping soundly in his car seat, I reentered the dance studio. At 25 days old, he accompanied me as I began teaching again, 5 weeks after teaching my last class and the first of many classes I’ll be doing this summer and what I hope will continue long into the future. Amazingly, I felt great. I didn’t do a lot of demonstrating, especially jumps and such, but I had no pain, soreness or discomfort of any kind which is a big change from the last time I taught and took class!
As a little girl, I wanted to be a teacher, elementary of some kind. As I got older and fell in love with ballet, I realized dancing was all I ever wanted to do. I also realized I was probably never going to make it into the highly competitive and selective world of professional dancing. That’s when I decided teaching dance would be the next best thing.
Throughout High School, I became more and more interested in dancing and less and less interested in everything else. I dropped orchestra after the first semester (I’d been playing the violin since 5th grade) and stopped taking honors courses my junior year until I was only taking the minimum required courses by my last semester. I replaced all the work I was doing in school with extra dance classes and also began student teaching under my long time ballet teacher.
I found I loved teaching dance almost as much as I loved dancing myself. I was fortunate to get an teaching job with my University’s after school dance program my 2nd year of college (I was technically a junior, though) and after completing my B.A. in Dance Education, continued teaching dance while in Oklahoma. When we relocated back to Florida, though, I didn’t pursue a dance teaching job, instead taking a high stress childcare job which I now really regret.
I started back teaching dance when Honeybun was 7 weeks old and though I was driving all over to teach at multiple places, I loved nearly every second of it. When we moved to Dublin, I had to give up teaching again. I was able to get a job for a few months as well as a residency where I got to teach classes while there, but nothing regular. Despite sending my resume in to numerous places when we arrived back in Florida last summer, I got no calls.
I’ve been really missing teaching and am thankful to finally have a job doing what I love. I look forward to the summer and working with new students. Now I just need to decide what to do with my kids. Poor Doodle is so little I feel the need to take him with me but I wonder if it would be less stress for both of us for him to stay with Daddy during the 4 weeks hubby will be home. Then when hubby goes back to work I have to decide whether to spend half of what I’ll be making on a babysitter for the three or if I should take them with me and put the girls in the dance camp and have Doodle with me. Guess we will just play it day by day and see how it goes then decide what is best for everyone!
