Dance Teaching: How To Get Your First Job
It’s hard to break into any job field without experience, and of course this holds true for dance teachers. Dance studios like to hire dance instructors with teaching experience, but the question is, how do you get that teaching experience if studios won’t hire teachers without previous experience?
If you wish to become a dance instructor but do not have experience, here are a few things you can do to help ensure you can get hired anyway:
- Get a dance degree from an accredited university – This helps dance studios know that you know what you’re doing. A degree in dance education, which is provided by such colleges and universities as the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Columbia College and the University of Central Oklahoma, can show dance studios you are trained to teach dance. The only negative here is that getting a degree can 1) take time and 2) is quite costly.
- Get a dance teaching certification – You can get these from places such as Dance Educators of America, Dance Masters of America and Royal Academy of Dance, to name a few. This certification is a huge boost to your resume and can help make up for lack of teaching experience, but the negatives here are the same as the first option (it is time consuming and costly to get these certifications)
- Become part of the Dance Teacher Finder resume database – This is the only free (and quick) option on here. If you submit your resume to Dance Teacher Finder, dance studios can contact you for a teaching job. Now, once again, dance studios will probably contact dance teachers with experience first; however, I know as a studio owner that when you have a last minute cancellation and are looking for a substitute teacher you often employ whoever you can reach. If you become a substitute teacher and do a good job, then a studio owner might hire you for a regular dance teaching job. Even if this does not become a regular gig, then at least now you finally have dance teaching experience you can put on your dance teaching resume!
About Elizabeth Emery
Elizabeth Emery is a former dance studio owner. She owned Dancers Unite in Charlotte, NC for 6 years, where she helped run the studio as well as taught dance classes six days a week. She sold her studio to one of her teachers and now dedicates her time helping other dance studio owners as well as dance teachers with her new business, Dance Teacher Finder, which helps pair dance studios with dance instructors. She also holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, and double majored in Business Economics and Marketing. Elizabeth currently splits her time between Charlotte, North Carolina and Salt Lake City, Utah.