Pictured Above: Mrs. Barb Jackson, Mrs. Janet Venn Jackson, Myself, Mrs. Faye Foley, Mr. Brian Foley
As some of you know, on July 19th, 2018, I officially graduated from the Associated Dance Arts for Professional Teachers Training School (A.D.A.P.T. T.T.S.). For those of you who don’t know what this means, I have completed all three semesters of the teacher training program, and am now a fully certified A.D.A.P.T. teacher. I was also honoured to receive the “Highest Homestudy Average” award, indicating the highest grade point average among all of our written homework.
A little background on the program:
The leading dance syllabus in North America, Indonesia, and Hong Kong.
ADAPT is a certified “dance syllabus” offering yearly examinations in the dance disciplines of Jazz, Tap, and Ballet. We represent an elite group of dance teachers who follow the ADAPT Syllabus and enter their students in the yearly examination process. As leaders in quality dance training, we aspire to teach the love of dance and movement to those around us.”
This year, ADAPT proudly celebrates its 35th Anniversary. ADAPT is a fully certified dance examination program and is recognized by the Board Of Education in some Canadian Provinces as an External Credit opportunity allowing high school credits in Jazz and Tap dance.
Introduced 13 years ago, ADAPT also conducts a “Teachers Training School” program (T.T.S.) for interested dance teachers to become ADAPT Certified as well as an Assistant Teachers Training Program, introduced in the summer of 2014.
And we have grown. From five Canadian dance studios in 1980 (teaching the ADAPT Syllabus) to over 175 dance studios across Canada and Internationally today. ADAPT is also in the USA, Hong Kong and Jakarta Indonesia. And we are still growing!
Each semester of the training school consisted of 5-7 days of discussing and dancing the ADAPT jazz and tap syllabi, with each semester progressing to a higher level (junior, pre-intermediate, intermediate). What I appreciate most about this program is that it is constantly evolving to provide the tools needed to teach the next generation of dancers, while not compromising on a strong foundation. For any of you who are in the competitive dance industry, you know that the standard of dance gets higher every year, especially for younger dancers. To have a program that doesn’t compromise on technique, while still striving to get your students to those “diamond” results at competition is, as you can imagine, invaluable. Yes, I’ll admit that some parts of it are a little “old school,” and also that I don’t agree with absolutely everything that we learned at TTS (but that’s for another post), however, that’s where its up to us as educators to decide and filter what information going to be the most beneficial to our students.
Anyway, I enjoyed my experience at TTS. It was a lot of hard work, both physically and mentally (especially this past semester), but I feel like my teaching has improved significantly because of it.
If you’re interested in learning more about ADAPT and the ADAPT TTS, you can click here.
Thanks for reading!
