Share:
House Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
House of Representatives
Session of 2021 - 2022
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | January 28, 2022 03:53 PM |
|---|---|
| From: | Representative Joe Ciresi and Rep. R. Lee James |
| To: | All House members |
| Subject: | Direct Path for Dance Teacher Certification |
| Certificates in dance education support instructors and students by recognizing and communicating excellence in teaching dance. While teachers have been certified to teach dance for credit in Pennsylvania since the 1990s, their certifications have come through other fields: Communications, Physical Education, or Vocational Education. Since these fields do not include any dance-specific content, this situation has limiting effects on dance teacher preparedness and continuing education. And in addition to being unrelated to dance, the various paths create undue confusion, promote work-arounds, and make it unreasonably difficult for dance educators to pursue certification within Pennsylvania. Our legislation would require the Department of Education to establish a direct path for dance teacher certification, requiring discipline-specific education in dance for new dance teachers. By aligning dance teacher training with National Dance Standards, we can ensure that we certify highly qualified teachers in dance just as we already do for other fields with direct certification such as music, visual art, math and science. Bringing this specialized expertise to dance instruction would benefit the thousands of Pennsylvania students served each year by dance programs in K-12 schools, ensuring quality instruction for a discipline already identified as one of four required arts disciplines under the Pennsylvania State Standards for Arts and Humanities. It would also provide a benefit for educators, with an essential recognition that dance instructors could use in Pennsylvania as well as in other states. The Pennsylvania Dance Education Organization (PADEO) is supportive of this legislation and produced a 2019 needs assessment showing both sufficient demand from school districts and capacity for teacher training at PA higher educational institutions for a direct path to dance teacher certification. Please join us in co-sponsoring this legislation to ensure specialized teacher preparation and training based on established standards for an important discipline in the arts. |
Introduced as HB2678