ALL ACCESS Guide to Dance Teacher Summit!

by on Jul 30 '17

We are so excited to head to Long Beach, CA next week to Dance Teacher Summit! If you haven’t seen it yet, the attendee schedule was just released! We’ve already poured over it and are trying to decide which classes to attend. It’s so hard to choose as there are so many amazing dance industry experts sharing their knowledge.

Hopefully you’re going to be there, too! If you are, we’ve prepared an ALL ACCESS, not-to-miss TOP 10 for next week! If you aren’t going to make it, this is a peek at what you’re missing and why you should plan to come next year!

Dance Teacher Summit here we come!

There are so many amazing dance industry leaders at this event, it was super hard to narrow it down to just ten! So, we decided to focus on speakers and events we’ve attended in the past. In addition to hearing these faves, we can’t wait to see what’s new this year!

#1: Studio Owner Session

Thursday, 3-7p.m.

This awesome session is held the day before the conference starts and is the absolute best thing to attend! It’s for studio owners only and you get to be in a room with so many people who are just like you! It’s a great place for learning best practices, gaining validation for what you’re dealing with, networking, building new relationships with other studio owners and so much more! If you are attending DTS and you are a studio owner, you do not want to miss this! GUEST SPEAKER: Clint Salter (see also #2!) will be speaking to the studio owners in a 90-minute presentation: Dance Studio Reboot! You definitely don’t want to miss this!

 

#2: Clint Salter 

Friday, 4-5p.m. (Facebook Ad Formula) and 5:15-6:15p.m. (Ramp Up Your Student Retention); Saturday, 2:30-3:30p.m. (Students That Stay)

Clint Salter is an incredible mentor, speaker and author, and you will not regret attending one of his seminars! We always leave his classes with a completely filled notebook of ideas, tips, lessons and actionable steps to improve our business. In addition to his Studio Owner session, he is also presenting three other classes. You should definitely plan on attending one (if not all three)!

#3 Kim McSwain

Friday, 11a.m.-12p.m. (Teaching from the Inside Out); 1:30-2:20 (Educating While Entertaining: Training Dancers Under 12)

If you’ve ever been in one of Kim McSwain‘s classes, you know you are in for so much good stuff!! She is so passionate about educating young dancers with positivity! Her energy is contagious, and we have been so inspired by taking her classes! If you work with young dancers, in a beginner or advanced setting, hearing about Kim’s approach to teaching is so important! We missed Kim last year at DTS, so having her on the schedule this year is a big highlight for us!

#4 Suzanne Blake Gerety & Kathy Blake

Friday, 9:45-10:45a.m.  (Suzanne: Lead Generation to find new students); 11a.m.-12p.m. (Kathy: Overcome Burnout); Sunday, 10-11a.m. (Kathy: Benefits of Program Tracks); 11:15a.m.-12:15p.m. (Suzanne: E-mail Marketing Made Easy)

If you are a regular reader of our blog, you already know how much we love and respect Suzanne Blake Gerety of dancestudioowner.com. She and her mom, Kathy Blake (Artistic Director of Kathy Blake Studios), are amazing, talented women who we promise you want to listen to and learn from. We are excited about all 4 of their sessions!

#5 Make Dance Fun by Yours Truly (Becca and Dani)!  

Friday, 8:30-9:30a.m. (Spark Your Creativity); 12-1:30p.m. (Ambassador Chat: Beginner Social Media); 5:15-6:15 (Insta-Flair)

OK, this may be a bit of a plug for our own sessions, but we really think you can gain a lot from what we will be sharing! Our goal is always to make dance fun, and we are excited to share our fun ideas with you!

*One quick schedule change: our Spark Your Creativity class and Insta-Flair classes will be flip-flopping so Spark Your Creativity will be held at 8:30a.m. on Friday! We are super excited about this class and really hope you can join us for it!

In Spark Your Creativity, we will go through our season/dance year and share some fun ideas to incorporate into your studio to inspire you and SPARK your creativity! We will include ideas for students, staff, and companies! Many of these ideas will include branding and marketing, our favorite resources and more! We want to help you find some common things you do each year in your studio and add some fun + fancy to them! Just adding a little extra touch will make a big difference! SPOILER ALERT: We are launching our new creative planner – spark.source (hoping to have it at DTS, if the printing gods are on our side) and this class was definitely inspired by our new planner, which will be a must-have for all Dance Teachers!!

In our Ambassador Chat, we’ll be reviewing some Social Media basics for those of you who are new to the scene and need some beginner tips. This session will be guided by your needs! So, if you need some help with some basics, come to our chat!

Our Insta-Flair class is focused on Instagram! We’ll share some fun ideas for content and an Instagram feed with INSTA-FLAIR. And, we’ll walk through one or two our fave apps with you to give you an interactive tutorial! It’s much easier to learn by doing than by just watching! We would also like to give a shout out to our friend Kim Hale who is presenting the Art of Instagram! Kim is amazing and can offer you lots of great advice and pointers about social media, so check out her class on Sunday at 12:30 p.m.

#6 Capezio ACE Awards

Saturday, 8-11:30p.m.

You definitely do not want to miss the Capezio A.C.E. Awards show! This show is always inspiring! The dancing, the choreography, the artistry…it’s always great to watch! It also includes a Fashion Show and Dance Teacher Awards. There are also other amazing shows to catch while you are there. The winners from the previous seasons have their shows during the Summit! We are especially excited to see last year’s A.C.E. Awards Winner Martha Nichols’ show! You can find info for all the shows and tickets here!

#7 Beat Street Exhibition Hall 

Friday: 2-7p.m.

Saturday: 8a.m.-6p.m.  (8a.m.-12noon – teachers only!)

Sunday: 8a.m.-2p.m. (8-10a.m. – teachers only!)

Every dance teacher and studio resource you can imagine will be in the Beat Street Exhibition Hall! Make sure you walk all the way through this expo for amazing inspo, resources, product demonstrations, samples and more! We especially hope you will visit the Confetti on the Dance Floor booth #469 (behind Beat Street Ballroom 1) to see all our fun + fancy products live and in person! We have LOTS of new fun products that you will be the very first to see, so make sure you stop by! Bonus Tip: Make sure you check your DTS Goody Bag for a fun dance poster from us! On the back of the poster, there is a code. Bring the poster by our booth to see if your code is one of 30 WINNERS of a fun prize!

This year, there will be two “teacher only” sessions where dance teachers will have the entire expo to themselves! These two sessions will be held Saturday, 8a.m. – 12 noon, and Sunday, 8-10a.m. Beat Street will be open other times for you too, but these are the times when you can peruse without students and parents also attending!

#8 Ambassador Chats

Daily

We also want to mention our amazing team of Ambassadors! We feel very fortunate to be an Ambassador with so many talented educators! New this year, there are 4 different Ambassador Chats. We love these informal sessions with Dance Teacher Summit Ambassadors. The sessions are small in size and very conversational. While each one focuses on a specific topic, the discussions flow naturally and you can really learn so much from the speaker and the attendees. In addition to our session for Beginner Social Media, you can also chat with Jody Phillips (Building Your Pre-K to 7-year-old Program), Carole Royal (Recital), and Carryl Slobotkin (National Competitions). Please feel free to find an Ambassador at any point during the summit! We are here to help and are always happy to offer advice or guide you to the right place!

#9 Misty Lown

Friday, 8:30-9:30a.m. (Financial Freedom), 1:30-2:30p.m. (Filling Fall Classes for 2017); Saturday, 3:45-4:45p.m. (Work Life Balance), 5-6p.m. (Marketing to the Millenial Parents)

Misty Lown has four amazing seminars this year and, for the studio owner, she is a must see! She is a truly engaging and inspiring speaker and motivator. We have a notebook full of great ideas from her seminar from last year! She has great ideas for marketing, staffing, scheduling and more. We are thrilled to see she has more seminars for this year and can’t wait to be inspired by her stellar ideas!

#10 Dance Classes

If you are going to the Summit to get in some amazing dance classes, these educators can’t be beat! Mandy Moore, Al Blackstone, Francisco Gella, Jackie Sleight, Denise Wall, Travis Wall, Randi and Hefa…the list goes on and on and on!! #inspirationstation

***

So, there you have it! Our ALL ACCESS Top 1o! This is by no means a comprehensive list. There are sooooo many amazing sessions where you can gain so much for your dance teacher life! The list goes on and on (see the full schedule here!), and that’s exactly why we send our staff to this amazing summit every year to grow and learn and experience!

We can’t wait to see you there! Cali, here we come!

Save


1 Comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

like what you just read?

sign up for our email list!