Dance Teacher's Guide to Summer Thriving

Every summer, dance teachers face the same beautiful challenge: how to truly thrive during these precious months. After pouring our energy into students all year, summer offers that rare opportunity to both recharge and thoughtfully prepare.

But we both know that we can't stop teaching while we do that recharging and thoughtful preparation. Summer is a great time for students to intensify their training and supercharge their progress, and of course we want to be part of that! (Plus rent and groceries and stuff.) Being me, I have spent my fair share of summers trying to squeeze in fantastic student summer experiences, ambitious to-do lists for the next spring's big production, curriculum revisions, and professional development goals—only to find myself exhausted before September arrived. I'm definitely a time optimist, rather than a realist, but reality has demanded that I learn how to create systems that allow me to truly thrive during summer while ensuring my teaching career remains sustainable.

Creating Boundaries for True Rest

The most important lesson I've learned is that rest requires clear boundaries. Without them, work inevitably expands to fill all available time. I genuinely love what I do and often work feels fun all the way up to my breaking point. So I have to set my boundaries ahead of time and then hold myself to them.

Here's what works for me:

• Schedule "no work" days. I block these out on my calendar and protect them (mostly from myself) fiercely. Through this practice, I've learned that I had limited myself to only one creative outlet. Someone once told me that a strong structure needs multiple pillars of support—ballet can't be the only activity that feeds your soul. You might feel aimless on your first few "no work" days but that's okay. It's part of the process that makes these days so valuable.

• Physical separation from teaching materials. My ballet bag lives in a closet with a door that shuts. My laptop goes into a desk drawer on Friday nights and doesn't emerge until Monday morning.

  • Radical take: my phone lives in a drawer most of the day. The siren song of "what are other studios doing?" was too strong to ignore. Now everyone knows if they need me quickly, they'll have to call me like it's the 1980s.

• Permission to be unavailable. People don't need an instant response, just acknowledgment and a timely reply. For students and parents, I ask that they schedule time for conversations so I can focus completely instead of rushing to my next class. With colleagues, I communicate when I check messages and use the "send later" feature for those midnight inspiration moments.

  
  

At first, I really was afraid that these boundaries would lead to me getting less done. But by respecting my own limits, I have noticeably more mental, physical, and emotional energy. When I'm working, I'm excited that it's Work Time so I dive right in with focus and purpose.

Efficient Planning Systems for Dance Teachers

With boundaries protecting genuine rest, these systems make preparation time truly efficient:

• Begin with an honest review. Sure, my curriculum has progressions for vocabulary each month/unit but the dancers in the room are always more important than sticking exactly to a curriculum. So regular quick reviews are important. I keep a small notebook in my ballet bag for quick notes between classes like "level 4 is ready for harder pirouettes." That way, when planning time comes, the review is already done.

• Focus on frameworks before details. Map the entire year's technical progression before developing specific lesson plans to avoid getting lost in minutiae too early.

• Create repeatable templates. Are you saving your lesson plans? You should. I keep mine as cloud files and access them on my iPad during class. This approach ensures that you keep the genius combinations you came up with last year and focuses your attention on the parts of that lesson plan that need to be adjusted for this year's students. At this point, I love almost all my lesson plans!

  
  

When I follow these simple systems (and remember, systems are just effective steps you repeat), I accomplish more with less fatigue—the key difference between exhausting preparation and energizing preparation.

Finding Your Summer Thriving Rhythm

The dance teachers who maintain their passion year after year approach summer not just as a preparation period, but as a season of intentional thriving:

• They view summer as a gift of time rather than a task list

• They honor rest as essential professional practice

• They approach planning with clear systems rather than endless hours

My own summer thriving rhythm includes blocking out vacation time before I accept any summer teaching invitations, dedicated long-term planning only on specific days so it doesn't overwhelm all my bandwidth, and pausing before I walk into the studio to focus on the growth I'm excited to see that day.

What I'm continually learning is that thriving doesn't happen by accident—it requires the same thoughtful design we bring to our teaching. (Wait, the teacher deserves the same care as the student? Revolutionary but true.) The systematic approach that benefits our students supports our own professional flourishing.

I'd love to hear about your summer thriving routine! What boundaries protect your rest? What systems make your preparation efficient? Share in the comments below.

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