Sunday 16 October 2011

Writing a Bio....

Wow, it's been a busy week! Wanting to encourage regular blogging and commenting alas life gets in the way sometimes! Like Adesola says 'life is what happens to our plans'!

Stephanie Thomas made a good point in a recent post that the work we are doing for this qualification is primarily to benefit our own professional practise. It is not intended to make us stress or worry about not blogging this, or not updates that etc! Keep going everyone, lets keep motivation to pursue research and discussion on a high!

On a separate note, my practise is requiring me to create a snappy bio for some workshops I will be teaching next month. They are in ballet, jazz, modern and tap, and all with students I have never met before but attend a dance school local to me. They will have just finished their RAD exam period, so are looking for something different to syllabus work, but the lessons I teach must still be educational and valuable to their development. I have been asked to produce a bio to promote them, although I have a CV, one that I use as a standard base and tweak here and there according to whats needed, I have never actually written a bio before. It need to be quirky yet informative I presume, does anyone have any ideas as to where I could go for advice? Perhaps research some templates, or suggested guidelines.

Relating this to where we are in the module now, I suppose this is all part and parcel of what is required of me when making the transition into teaching. Regarding my professional inquiry on this topic, here I find myself in a prime example of a situation where I am needing to draw upon existing knowledge and experience, but also needing to gain more to create an effective bio. Although I am sure whatever bio I create for now will be a framework that I will need to constantly develop, I think I am highlight a key element in what is required of a dancer making a career transition. Easy access to various CV's and personal information that you have able to hand over to employees without delay. Professionalism plays a part here - surely an employee will favour the person who has impressive and concise paperwork to hand quickly more so?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

2 comments:

Nicole Carman said...

Hi Sophie- Here is a link to my bio on stagecoach website it might help to look at the other teachers too. I honestly felt rather ridiculous writing about myself but this in turn could get me noticed by other employers. I added in a bit of info on something fun I have been involved in like the radio- it is nice for parents to know about degrees and professional work, to show them you are an all round teacher ( I think you have had some issues with parents enquiring about your training) Mostly get your personality across- it is a mini you talking about how fantastic you are!! http://www.stagecoach.co.uk/romford/meet-our-teachers.html

Sophie Douglas said...

Thanks Nicole, very helpful! Yes, trying to say how amazing you are is not that easy is it! It's still a work inprogress, but you're comments have definately given me some stimulation as to how to go about it, thanks again!