Welcome to 2025 at Turning Pointe Dance! Whether you’ve been with us for all 20 years or you’re just adding your first classes this semester, we’re so glad you’re a part of our Turning Pointe family. With so many new students being placed into the appropriate classes this month, and so many others looking ahead to promotion and placement from spring evaluations, it’s important to check-in with your progress—and understand how measuring that progress is part of experiencing the Turning Pointe difference!
We offer a carefully constructed curriculum that introduces steps and concepts at an age-appropriate pace to make sure our students develop their skills in a safe and healthy way. We believe that a well-designed curriculum plays a significant role in helping our instructors achieve growth in each and every student! But there’s more to it than that. This week, let’s take a closer look at how curriculum benefits private dance education and why Turning Pointe Dance is one of the best places to dance in Colorado Springs.
1. Our Curriculum Enables Students to Take Responsibility for their Progress
A curriculum provides knowledgeable and accessible pathways of progression so students don’t have to wonder what is required to move on to the next level. They’re trained in specifics for multiple, detailed areas of growth to focus on throughout the duration of a single level, helping to increase interest and direct motivation and initiative. A dance curriculum also synergizes level-specific dance ideas across all genres, giving students more repetition of foundational ideas from class to class, and allowing for greater practice in areas they’re working to master.
Did you know the expected duration of each level is 2-3 years? Think about it! Our most advanced classes are Level 5 for most genres. If you or your dancer enters the curriculum at Primary/Level 1 (age 6-7), that would make them proficient, masters of their craft by 11 years old! Instead of moving along like a school curriculum, our carefully created dance curriculum allows students to develop their skills according to five targets, showing growth and understanding in technique, performance, creativity/composition, history and etiquette. These skills and concepts are taught over the duration of that level, not necessarily mastered in one year. As we encourage each student to be empowered by the Holy Spirit in life, our curriculum enables them to take responsibility for their own growth and development in the classroom through clearly communicated expectations and measurable success.
2. Our Curriculum Supports Our Teachers
Curriculum acts as a guide, providing a foundation of clear and specific standards so teachers don’t have to redesign their class content on an annual basis. Our instructors serve as educators and experts in their field, but also as Godly examples, mentors, and Christian leaders to each student. A curriculum relieves the burden of preparing what to teach, and allows them to focus on how to teach each skill and lesson according to the unique needs of each class of students. It provides freedom through the boundaries in which instructional creativity can thrive. It also bridges the communication gap between teachers across multiple levels, removing the guesswork involved in preparing students for the next level or receiving students from the previous level with a different instructor. And if your class needs a substitute one week? A curriculum ensures another trained instructor can step in and continue appropriate development in any class.
3. Our Curriculum Unifies us as Turning Pointe Dance
Curriculum supports a healthy ecosystem at large dance studios like Turning Pointe by providing consistency and congruence for everyone involved across ages, levels, and genres. It infuses the promotion process with a realistic level of objectivity and publicly defines expectations for teachers, students, and families.
More than that, the Turning Pointe Dance curriculum is united in the glorification of God in the lives of our students and staff. Along with class content, our curriculum provides guidance for introducing the Gospel and Jesus Christ to students, and has been prayed over every step of the way. Our mission and vision are more than just words on a page. They are the heart and soul of everything we do, and our curriculum has been entrusted to the King of Kings to do His will and be glorified through it. Together, we use the curriculum to more fully consider how we can minister to our students—body, mind, and spirit.