TEACHING ARTIST
My younger students call me "Mister Jordan". I am a Chicago-based teaching artist. I specialize in teaching House and Hip-hop dance, as well a variety of other street dance forms. I take pride in the way that I integrate social and emotional learning (SEL) and cultural learning into my teaching practice. I acquired my passion for teaching movement and youth empowerment within the martial arts, while teaching for the Illinois Shotokan Karate Club (2007-2015), one of the biggest Shotokan karate clubs in the nation. I have almost two decades of combined experience teaching movement and sport to youth, as young as 5 years old, to adults from areas within the Chicago’s south and west sides, as well as its suburbs. Some notavle teaching credits include: Everybody Dance Now!, RhythmHood Snipes Dance Studio, Creative Netwerk, TextureDance Studio, Dovetail Studios, Afterschool Matters, Chicago Publich Schools, Forward Momentum Chicago, Elevate Dance Experience, Benedictine University, Hip Hop ConnXion, Indiana University Xiphos Corps, Steps Dance Center, Dreams School of Dance, American Academy of Gymnastics, and more.
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MY TEACHING PHILOSOPHY
I believe that the arts and dance have the power to empower and change lives in the same way that Hip-hop turned the oppression of the Black community into “Black joy” and one of the largest social and political movements in recent history. A quality arts education and a quality teaching artist can foster future artists, and can impact a students’ GPA and college readiness, their learning ability and social and emotional development, as well as their overall long-term success, according to the University of Chicago. These are the stakes that I bring to my teaching artistry. As a grateful ally in Hip-hop and House culture, my teaching practice aims to foster artists with strong cultural competencies, values in social awareness and arts equity, and resilient self-management and self-expression.