by Lucy Vurusic Riner

I have had the pleasure of being the dance program director at one high school for 15 years.  I am an extreme creature of habit and had I not recently decided that I needed more room for my own professional growth, I would have stayed where I was at for another 15 years.  But as I leave for “greener pastures,” I keep asking myself the same questions about my life’s work: Have I made any sort of difference?  Did anyone learn from what I had to say?  Have I developed strong dancers? Do they love themselves and appreciate the arts?  Have I touched anyone’s life?

If there is one thing I have learned over the past 15 years it’s that I’m surely not responsible for any one students’ successes in dance.  I have met many teachers that like to pride themselves are “making” pre-professional dancers and sending them out into the dance world; taking much of the credit for themselves.  I have always felt that my role in my students’ development was a small fraction of what made them successful dancers.  They had supportive parents who believed in them (and gave them the money necessary to move forward with their training!), they had other dance teachers and choreographers that contributed to their successes by giving them a multitude of experiences and most importantly, they had their own drive and ambition to see what it is they wanted out of their lives and to go beyond just dreaming about it. [Read more…]