Being a Black Male Educator in the K–12 Dance Classroom
When I first started my career as a dance teacher, I was so focused on teaching movement. I wanted my students to learn technique, understand choreography, and perform well. I knew I was different from many of the dance educators students had encountered before me, but I did not fully understand why.
I was a Black man teaching dance—something that many of my students in my classroom had probably never encountered before.
Early in my career, I thought representation was about seeing someone who looked like you in a classroom. After more than 16 years as a K–12 dance educator, I understand that it is bigger than that. Representation is about expanding a young person’s imagination about who they can become and what they can achieve.
I have watched this happen with young Black boys in my classrooms and in dance studios. A student walks into the classroom unsure whether dance is “for him.” He sees me teaching, choreographing, and leading a dance program. Slowly, his posture changes. His body becomes less tense. Eventually, he begins taking ownership of the space.
Sometimes, the moments are much quieter. A student stays after class to ask about my dance experience. Another wants to know how I became a teacher. Another tells me that he has never had a male dance teacher before. It’s in these moments that I’m reminded that students are not only learning from what I say, they are also learning from what they see.
For many young Black boys, dance can come with assumptions about masculinity. I have taught students who love movement but hesitate to call themselves dancers because they are worried about how their peers or their communities might see them.
Having me as a teacher does not magically eliminate those barriers, but it gives students a glimmer of hope of being able to achieve something that they may have dreamed of all their lives.
I can say to them, without saying it directly: You can love this. You can be masculine, creative, athletic, expressive, and a dancer. You are seen, heard, and valued!
My own journey to becoming a dance teacher was not particularly straightforward. I came to dance through performance and training, before eventually making education my career. Along the way, I rarely saw people who looked like me in the places where I was learning. I remember having a Black male teacher for the first time when I was in college. That experience stuck with me because it made something feel possible in a way that I never felt that it could be.
It makes me think about what my students may remember years from now. Maybe they will remember a combination I taught or a performance. Maybe they will remember how loudly I cheered for them from the wings and how hard I cried when they danced so beautifully that it moved me to tears.
But I hope some of them remember something even bigger: Their teacher was someone who reflected possibilities that they may not have thought possible before.
When I began teaching, I thought my responsibility was primarily to develop dancers. Today, I know my responsibility is to develop people who understand that there is room for them in every space they enter.
I think more intentionally about whose stories we tell through choreography. I think about whose contributions are represented in our curriculum and in our culture. I think about the students watching from the back of the auditorium, trying to determine whether this space belongs to them. I think about the young men who may need permission from the world around them to express themselves.
Representation has also changed how I see myself.
Early in my career (and sometimes even still), I felt the pressure to prove that I belong in dance education. Now I understand that simply being visible is part of the work. I do not have to be the only Black male dance educator in the room to matter. But when I am the only one, I recognize the responsibility that comes with that visibility.
After 16 years, I have learned that students do not always need someone to tell them they can become something. Sometimes they need to see it or feel it. That is the power of representation.
As a Black male dance educator, I am not just teaching students how to move, I am helping them imagine what it looks like to take up space.
And maybe, just maybe, that is the most important choreography I will ever teach.
