Teachers ’ Associations Conference

Left to right Deirdre Bark, Ken Martlew, Irene Bennett, Helen Russell, andDiRooney with FrankThomson behind Photo by Stephen Webb Di Rooney (Convenor of Education & Training) reports on the Teachers ’ Associations Conference held in association with the RSCDS AGM in Aberdeen. After the two presentations summarised below, Irene Bennett of Teachers ’Association Scotland discussed the new publication Jigs & Reels which she helped to develop, and Helen Russell with musician Frank Thomson gave teaching points for the new Diamond Jubilee collection of dances.

In 2010 Helen Russell introduced the first Teachers ’ Associations Conference for teachers committed to excellence in SCD to benefit from talking to each other, sharing good practice and finding solutions to common problems. Its success generated a request that this should become a biennial event. The second TA Conference was held the day before the AGM weekend, in the delightful Art Deco Beach Ballroom complex in Aberdeen. The spacious room set with circular tables for eight or ten delegates had a spectacular view over the North Sea bathed in winter sunshine, offering distraction for those whose concentration might have wavered! All four teachers ’ associations,TAS (Teachers ’ Association Scotland), TAC (Teachers ’ Association Canada), ATA (Australian Teachers ’Association), and SERTA (South East Regional Teachers ’ Association), were invited to take part and contribute a paper.ATA could not send a representative, but 44 people attended, from North America, continental Europe and the UK. After my own welcome and opening remarks, the conference began withTAC’ s Deirdre Bark from Ontario, whose presentation illustrated the way TAC supports candidates via the North American Exam Tour and at TAC Summer School. In earlier decades an Exam Tour could involve sixteen centres, last five to six weeks and include 100 or so candidates who were assessed by two British examiners. Today the Tours (which take place in the years alternating with the Summer School courses) are split into East and West, and candidates usually number 40-50. They are examined by a pair of examiners, normally one from the American continent and the other from the UK or elsewhere. Our second speaker was Ken Martlew from SERTA, a retired doctor better known as a musician who plays at St Andrews and elsewhere. In his entertaining and humorous presentation ‘The Age Gap ’ , Ken explored the gap between RSCDS technique as taught and the reality on most dance floors. He began by looking at the history of our Society, drawing attention to the PE students, Girl Guides, the younger and the fitter people who were dancing the simpler dances in the first half of the twentieth century. He contrasted this with today ’ s dancers and older beginners who have trouble when they are thrown into one of our modern, more complex dances. He offered no comprehensive solutions, but suggested that we should acknowledge the problem rather than ignoring it. He advocated teaching low impact dancing with the focus on rhythm, keeping in time with the music and being in the correct place when required; social programmes for less experienced dancers; and a ‘traffic light’ system on dance or ball tickets to identify easy, middling and difficult dances. We were all provided with so much food for thought that the ensuing debate was shortened only by the arrival of real food.

Jigs & Reels

Jigs & Reels, the new publication from the Education and Training Committee, was devised primarily as a tool for school teachers to introduce SCD to the classroom. However, as it is a progressive programme, it has a variety of uses, especially for classes of new dancers. In 2011 a selection of the dances was sent out to schools in a pilot trial, and a number of the suggestions from the schools were incorporated in the pack. The pack includes a book of lesson plans for 25 Scottish country dances and 5 party dances, two CDs of recorded music and a DVD illustrating each dance. Each lesson plan is divided into three sections: organisation, content and teaching points.The organisation section explains how to set up a class for each part of a lesson.The one on content is subdivided into warm-up suggestions, step practice, formation practice and the dance instructions. Each section has relevant teaching points. Although the programme is linked to the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence, the format of the book enables the pack to be used worldwide in many different situations with both young people and adults. Irene Bennett