Teacher Training
Core Training Modules
Teachers affect eternity; no one can tell where their influence stops.
Henry Brooks Adams
The three Core Modules for each of the two tracks are designed to build upon each other. New skills will be added each time we meet, while circling back and strengthening those skills already learned. This outline is a guideline — we will add or change things to serve the group in the moment.
Teacher Training Payments
There are various payment options for Open Floor Teacher Training. All payments are made via the Open Floor International website and are in US Dollars.
Module 1 : Common Ground
In this first module, you’ll learn the basic skills needed to teach deep and engaging movement sessions. This will include:
- core movement resources that are natural to all human beings and human bodies, regardless of age, experience, culture, ability, injury.
- how to create teaching sessions using embodied anchors
- essential steps in a well structured class: from opening the floor to closing it
- musical skills, both technical and energetic, for creating evocative soundscapes
- hands-on practice with a wide range of movement vocabulary, such as tempo, direction, activate and settle, polarity, etc.
- how to move and include all aspects of embodiment: the physical, emotional, cognitive, spiritual experiences that arise on every dance floor whenever people move
Module 2 : Common Sense
Movement Teacher Track
Now we add more flesh to the bones. We’ll start adding depth and complexity, with special focus on:
- growing your skills, as both teacher and student, in emotional intelligence, mindfulness, and spiritual awareness on the dance floor
- creating movement scores that touch our essential human hungers for solitude, connection, belonging, spirit
- combining anchors to create more elaborate movement sessions
- integrating imagination, imagery and metaphor
- practice teaching with in-the-moment coaching
Module 2 : Common Sense
Therapy in Motion (Psychotherapist Track)
In this module, for practicing therapists, the focus will be:
- how to bring the language of movement to your individual, 1-1 work with your clients.
- how to take prominent themes that arise in psychotherapy (e.g., relationships, attachment, trauma, body image, sexuality, etc.) and explore them through movement, dance, sensate awareness, emotional embodiment and mindfulness.
This module will focus only on individual therapeutic sessions. In Module 3 (Common Good) those in the Psychotherapist Track will have separate sessions to learn the elements of setting up small therapy groups using Open Floor work.
Module 3 : Common Good
Here we take what we know, what we’re still learning, and make it an offering for others. This is about being skillful as we meet the world as a teacher:
- know your teaching style: how to make it your strength, how to move beyond it
- building quality relations with individual students, colleagues, and the community at large
- navigating the most common group dynamics a teacher encounters on the dance floor (resistance, power, sexuality, etc.)
- pulling things from your tool box in the moment: the improvisational art of teaching
- debrief your teaching experiences and get individual coaching: difficult students and situations, creative challenges, etc.
- build “fluid authority” and presence as you hold an unpredictable and wildly moving field
MODULE 3 New Zealand (Residential)February 5-11, 2018
at Mana Retreat Center, Coromandel, NZ
Trainees are responsible to pay their own room & board costs with Mana.
Reserve room: email: be@manaretreat.comMana Costs
Full room & board = $770 NZD (6 nights)
Camping = $530 NZDPay tuition fees separately & directly to Open Floor International : leah@openfloor.org
Core Curriculum Dates
As a school for adults with full lives, we are working to make our training program accessible and flexible. Therefore, you’re free to design a 3-module schedule that fits your time, family/professional commitments, ability to travel, etc.
Once accepted into the program, it’s possible to complete all 3 core modules in as little as 14 months. Elective study can be completed at your own pace, in many cases close to home. You can also choose to study slowly and take a full two years to graduate.
Your training fee keeps your enrollment current, guarantees you a place in any core programs you choose, and maintains your mentoring support for 24 months. If, for any reason, you can’t finish in a two year period, you can put your registration on hold for up to 6 months.
As Open Floor grows, dates will continually be added to the list, making this an ongoing international program on multiple continents.
Core Coursework Dates
(later dates subject to change based on venue availability)
Modules must be taken in order. All Modules are residential. Room and board are paid separately by each participant.l
MODULE 1: Common Ground
June 5-14, 2017 France, Europe
September 12-21, 2017 Watsonville, California
MODULE 2: Common Sense
February 10-19, 2017 Coromandel, New Zealand
April 6-15, 2018 Port Townsend, Washington, USA
May 31-June 9, 2018 France, Europe
Therapy in Motion
Aug 20-29, 2018 Port Townsend, Washington, USA
MODULE 3: Common Good
May 26-June 1, 2017 France, Europe
February 5–11, 2018 Coromandel, New Zealand
October 8-17, 2018 Europe
February 16-25, 2019 Port Townsend, Washington USA
Special Elective Program : Art in Motion
Art in Motion trains you to expand and exhilarate your movement classes, workshops and somatic therapy sessions through the integration of writing, visual arts and theater.
August 2018 Art Murmur, with Kathy Altman & Lori Saltzman, San Rafael, California (NR), plus a 2-day “Professional Day” workshop for teachers in training
