Biography
Natalie is the founding dance educator at P.S. 56, The Lewis H. Latimer School in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. She is in her sixth year teaching at P.S. 56 and holds her NYS professional teaching certifications in Childhood Education, Students with Disabilities, grades 1-6, and Dance, grades PK-12. In December 2015, Natalie completed her Masters in Dance Education at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. She completed her undergraduate studies in Interdisciplinary Arts for Children and Dance while also completing the Childhood Inclusive Certification Program at SUNY The College at Brockport where she graduated summa cum laude.
As part of her studies, Natalie completed two semesters of full-time student teaching. During her graduate studies she interned in a middle and high school dance program and during her undergraduate studies she interned in third and sixth grade inclusive elementary classrooms. With this, Natalie has also completed practicum placements in New Jersey, Western New York, and New York City elementary classrooms and dance classrooms. She is also an American Ballet Theatre® Certified Teacher, who has successfully completed the ABT ® Teacher Training Intensive in Pre-Primary through Level 3 of the ABT ® National Training Curriculum. Natalie spent a year interning and assisting in Primary through Level 2 ballet classes at American Ballet Theatre Children’s Division at Mason Gross School of the Arts.
In the fall of 2016, Natalie was the first full-time dance educator at P.S. 56, The Lewis H. Latimer School. Since then she has been able to grow and expand the dance program to include annual winter and spring performances as well as an afterschool group of select dancers who perform at community events. Ms. Swan additionally facilitates dance specific field-trips, designs interdisciplinary collaborations with classroom teachers, and heads multiple partnerships with organizations and artists from around New York City. She has also contributed to the design phase and welcomed many dancers through the doors of the first dance studio at P.S. 56.
Natalie seeks to provide her students with a high quality, well-rounded, culturally responsive, and inclusive dance education program. She focuses her curriculum on including moments for students to collaborate with their peers, learn about diverse cultures, and express their learnings from their classrooms through movement. In helping students be successful Natalie has also found importance in routines, procedures, and classroom management techniques that help students have choice, feel independent, and the class progress seamlessly. Something special to Natalie is being able to see students grow not only over the course of the year, but from their first days in pre-kindergarten to their last days in fifth grade.
To provide a high quality and well-rounded dance education program to the P.S. 56 community Ms. Swan actively engages in professional development. She seeks opportunities to connect with and learn through the 92nd Street Y’s Dance Education Laboratory, the Office of Arts and Special Projects, and community organizations like New York City Center in efforts to further her understanding of dance pedagogy as well as develop as a dancer and choreographer.
Side by side Ms. Swan’s teaching work, she continues to perform, choreograph, and remain active as an artist. Highlights include performing at the NYCDOE Dance Educators Collective Concert in works choregraphed by artists in the Pilobolus, Limon, and Urban Bush Woman legacies as well as performing a self-choreographed solo in the 2018 Brockport Alumni Concert. In addition, Natalie continues to seek inspiration for her teaching by attending, and often leading school community trips to, dance performances at Lincoln Center, New York City Center, BAM, and the Joyce.
As an artist, Natalie’s love for dance began over 20 years ago and she has since then studied ballet, tap, jazz, modern, musical theater, and African dance forms. Dance has led her to an apprenticeship with FuturPointe Dance, perform with David Parker’s The Bang Group and William (Bill) Evans, attend Garth Fagan’s Summer Movement Institute, and become a counselor, dance and theater assistant at Blue Lake Fine Art Camp, Rutgers Summer Dance Conservatories and Camps, and Rutgers Kids Create Camps. From here, she has gone on to teach dance at Ashford Ballet Company, Front-n-Center for the Performing Arts, and Hochstein School of Music and Dance.
As a deep interest of Natalie’s lies in arts integration she has researched and investigated ways dance can lead and support early literacy skills and reading comprehension strategies. She was intrigued to find doing so draws on principles of arts integration, higher order thinking skills, content and active literacy. Another research inquiry led Natalie to look into the role of learning and remembering strategies in motor learning and how this knowledge can influence the ways in which we teach and assist our dancers in the learning and remembering of movement sequences.
Photo Credit: Anthony Johnson