Task 3A. Current networks

Having began to look at the different types of networking I used I began to realize I am not using them to my advantage as a starting out teacher, I still use them more purley for my performance side of my profession, when I now feel I need to tap into them much more from my teaching side of things.

            Below is a diagram of my current networking.

As you can see it is very much one sided leading towards my performance networks I feel I need to look at this and shift the balance more, There are a number of networks I have yet to access into, such as twitter, linkden, and establishing my own website.

            As well as this I feel I need to gear my current networks more towards my teaching work.

For example – facebook I could set up another account just for my teaching work, set up youtube with some of my teaching work shown, change my dancerspro and starnow accounts to be geared more towards teaching work.
            After looking at my networks I have realized people only really access them if they want something out of it. People advertise jobs people look for jobs ect, so I feel my best way forward to get the most out of networking would be to supply up to date and detailed information as much as I can.

            My future plan is to establish myself a website and have that as my main network with everything I would need on one page, however I feel this is the beginning of that so I need to take stepping stones, firstly by doing as previously stated and gearing my current networks more towards my teaching and also accessing the ones that I have not used yet.

Task 2D Inquiry

I enjoyed answering these questions as it was a moment to actually stop and think about all the different aspects of my passion and career and where I can go with it, your thoughts and comments would be much appreciated.

 What in your daily practice gets you really enthusiastic to find out more about?

Something that I find I am very enthusiastic about learning more about at the moment. Is the business world of teaching, as that is the path I feel im on at the moment so I want to learn as much about it as I can. It’s a different side of the arts world to me as iv never thought about it in the business sense before just the performing side. Im interested in learning the planning of what goes into running a dance school and the different aspects of it, classes, prices, shows, comps ect I feel like there’s so much to learn, but something that I am willing to spend time learning. Have you always looked at yourself as a business and your profession or does it depend of the job you are doing within your profession? Again I feel this relates to MEPLC (see previous blog) where no matter what we are doing we should be looking at ourselves as a business.

            A person who made the transition from performer to school owner who I admire is my old dance teacher, Rachel Catherall.
http://www.elsberdance.co.uk/
She performed for a number of years on cruise ships and uk tours and then came back to take over her mums dance school and turn it around, tripling its number of students and also introduction new styles of dance such as street and Irish.

 What gets you angry or makes you sad?

Something that gets me angry is the generalized statement ‘that all dancers are thick’ people in other professions don’t get grouped like that but it seems a common thing within the dance profession. I am bringing this up as it actually happened to me last week, I was out with my boyfriend and we met with some friends, one of them started to have a conversation with us about history and politics. He then stopped mid sentenced and apologized to me as he felt I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the conversation because im a dancer! I soon shut him up when it actually turned out I new more about the history of politics than most of the people there (As I did it for A level) just goes to show don’t judge a book by its cover! I just find it condescending that people can just assume because of your job description you are limited to only know about that one thing.With this one I did not find a specific person that agrees with me though I am sure there are a lot of you out there that have had similar experiences or views?

However I did find a good statement on a poll on yahoo;
Howard Gardners Multiple Intelligences Theory ("MI Theory") like me then yes. according to this, their are seven types of intelligence(1. Linguistic, 2. Logical-Mathematical, 3. Bodily-Kinesthetic, 4. Spatial, 5.Musical, 6. Interpersonal, 7. Intrapersonal).
Bodily-Kinesthetic include people who process knowledge through bodily sensations or body movements. They are often athletic, dancers or good at crafts such as sewing or woodworking
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080726103849AAH13t8

What do you love about what you do?

Within my practice I love the large amount of different jobs and styles you can have under one umbrella, ‘dance’ I love that with that one word it can mean so many different things. I find it really interesting that my focus is on one specific topic but that it can open up so many different paths to me and that I can learn so many different things within it. Within this profession I feel like a sponge and want to soak up as many different, styles, performances and teaching methods possible!

            An example of a person doing this is Natalie Constanti she teaches a number of classes at sunshine studios Manchester. She started off as a performer than branched out into the world of teaching dance and from there has gone onto zumba and Taekwondo.Just going to show how much dance can link to other things.
https://www.zumba.com/en-US/profiles/79754/natalie-constanti/
            I am interested in looking at dance in a variety of ways to see what new things I can do with it, where has the theme of ‘dance’ taken you?

What do you feel you don’t understand?

 
At the moment I feel chorography on a large scale is something that I don’t understand fully at the moment as its not something I have ever had to do. I enjoy putting together dances for classes or small school shows but looking on chorography of a full production show is not something I have ever come across doing before. I feel like it’s a lot more than just putting afew dance steps together that look nice. You need to think about positioning, lighting, diversity, entrances and exits, aswell as not just thinking about the dancers but all the other performers aswell. A person I admire who I met recently is Tracey Iliffe a chorographer I have just worked with on the u.k tour that I am doing. She completely revamped the show that we are doing and the thought process that went into it just seemed so much more than chorographing. How have you found chorographing?
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Tracey-Iliffe-Choreographer/116762805074571

Task 2c Reflective Theory

this is a task that i have been putting off all week as it was just something i found i couldn't focus on or grab my interest, however today i have been in a four hour car journey with my tour heading down south, so i thought i really had no excuss and needed to get stuck in! once i started it i found out that i did actually find the information i was reading up on interesting and something that i want to expand on and learn more about. So from now on i am going to try and take every task with an open mind, which i probably should have done straight away, but hey you learn from your mistakes and it is now something i can reflect upon. :)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1b6pvjTeRIy7Nke6ZzYGLfYaBn1fwO7v67lUq2aotHWE/edit

ME plc continued.

After reading through the booklet I posted in my previous blog I decided to create a SWOT analysis for myself.

SWOT

 

STRENGTHS Organization Project planning Teaching Multitasking Dance performance Teaching	WEAKNESSES Verbal communication Staying on target Focusing on long reading material Standing my ground Lack of confidence
OPPORTUNITIES Teaching Work Zumba Training Steady Teaching jobs	THREATS Performing taking up to much time People more confident. People better qualified

After completing the SWOT analysis iv learnt a lot about myself and its great to have it all wrote down in front of me to see the points that I am doing well and the points that I need to work on.

             After reading up on the term ME plc I have become more and more interested in looking at myself as a ‘business’  I am going to use what I have learnt from the journal tasks and use graphs and diagrams to document my weaknesses and see how I gradually improve them over time.
            I have realized at the moment I have not been marketing myself as a ‘brand’ but trying to stretch myself over a wide variety of skills to look approachable to all employers instead of focusing on key things that will get me the job I want. Instead of one that will ‘just pay the bills’
            Teaching is the job I want to progress with now so instead of trying to focus on still gaining performing jobs and having my teaching along side I feel I need to fully engage in skills that will make me marketable for teaching jobs.
             I found a quote on a business blog that I found particularly thought provoking and stimulating,
In light of this openly conducted and actively reported changing business landscape there is no excuse for us to be surprised when there are changes in the level of demand for our skills & knowledge. We can either imitate an ostrich or we can adopt the same thinking that businesses do in their quest to thrive, or survive. We call this concept Me plc.

CHANGES I HAVE MADE

-Created a purely teaching c.v
-opened up my networks to teaching links.
-joined websites with help and advice on teaching.
-Created a ‘list journal’ on teaching information I would like to read more upon.

These simple changes I have made to my day to day life I am hoping will make myself more knowledgably on the subject. Which in time will make me more valuable to the employers.

References

http://www.hybridge.co.uk/Blog/24716178317

Journal Writing Experience

After completing the writing task and experimenting with the different types of writing styles I learnt something about myself. Im a person that likes organization and structure and only really like doing a task If I see a productive outcome, so with the different writing styles I preferred the ones that were more structured and logical than more of the ones that delved into your imagination or emotions.
            I feel after using the different styles there are some that I will now incorporate into my weekly routine as I found it useful to have something down on paper of my outcome of the day and it’s something to keep a record of to see your progression.
            I liked the use of DESCRIPTION and LIST as they were quick to do and I just made a note of the key points of the day, I tend to write a lot of  ‘to do’ lists anyway so I found writing a list of my day was very simple to do.
            I also found the EVALUATION a very useful tool as I could take time to look at what worked well and what didn’t and keep a note of it for future reference. Using the GRAPHS and CHARTS I really enjoyed and got on board with, I wasn’t sure how well it would work at first but I really like it as a visual aid to see my progression in different aspects of my life over time.
            The ones that I found did not work for me were the ones which looked much more at your emotions or your imagination, I found I couldn’t really commit to writing to my full potential with the WHAT IF or ANOTHER VIEW as I couldn’t really seem to express myself that way, I can see the positives of them as they open you up to other peoples ways of thinking, but for me personally I don’t feel they work.

MY PLAN

I have decided to use the tools I have learnt from this task to progress with my own journal writing.

- I have decided to use the EVALUATION style for a weekly journal to document how I am getting on with my BAPPS program.

- the list style to make notes of key points of my day during the week that I feel I need to remember.

-the graphs and charts at the end of each month just to document my progress throughout the month and eventually the year.

ME PLC

ME PLC a term given to me by Alan Durrant, which I had never, came across before. So I decided I wanted to find out more about it, so I used my web 2.0 skills and got googling!  I found out it’s the main and popular topic at the moment of ‘making yourself a brand’

            I found a good definition of it  as ‘It's about being proactive and being able to seize opportunities as they arise. In other words identifying what your potential client (employer) needs, and how you can best provide that’

            I like the idea of ME PLC and want to look into it to make it work for me to use the method of ME PLC to expand opportunites within the dance profession.

Whilst reasearching the idea some more I came across this usefull download I thought I would share with everyone, it gives a simple guide of what ME PLC is and how you can start to use the method for yourself, looking at your strengths and weeknesses and what you can do to make yourself more employable.

 www.neln.org.uk/Enterprise%20Website/documents/meplc.doc

 Whilst beginning to fill the form in myself I realized that this is a topic I could start to critical think and reflect upon. Looking closer at how it has worked for other people and how it can work for me, what I can do to change the way I work to improve my business. The subject of ME PLC is something I am going to research on and include in my journal entry’s to find a way that I can make it work for me. Ill blog my out come in the coming weeks.

 References - Alison Ebbage The Guardian, Saturday 15 April 2000