MAHPERD "Voices From The field"
In this podcast, you will hear from educators and professionals in the field sharing their insights and experiences in the HPE (Health Physical Education) and allied fields. I hope you find this podcast informative, and inspiring. Learn about best practices and tools that you can implement in your teaching practice. We want to know not only what you do, but also the action steps you took to get you where you are. The Status Quo is not in our vocabulary folks, my guests are leaders in the field who are taking action to make an impact in their respective fields. If you have any questions or would like to be a guest on the show email mahperdpodcast@gmail.com
"If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got" Henry Ford
MAHPERD "Voices From The field"
Movement as Medicine: Dance PL3Y
Melanie Levenberg's journey from P.E. teacher to global movement educator is inspiring. She reimagined her relationship with movement, eventually creating Dance PL3Y—a program that has transformed physical education for over 4.1 million children across 13 countries.
What makes Melanie's approach unique is her philosophy. Rather than starting with technical instruction or choreography, she built her methodology around three core principles: be positive, be fun, be yourself. This philosophy shifts dance education from perfection-focused to expression-centered, creating safe spaces where students experience the joy of movement before worrying about performance. "The world doesn't need more people copying each other," Melanie explains. "The world needs more people finding their own style and sharing it."
During her research, she uncovered something education systems desperately need to hear: when schools prioritize health and physical activity as their primary improvement strategy, academic achievement significantly improves. This finding validates what many educators intuitively know—movement isn't just good for bodies; it transforms learning across all disciplines.
Through her Teaching Dance for Understanding framework, Melanie has systematized her approach into six phases that scaffold movement education. Unlike traditional methods that often begin with freestyle exploration (intimidating for many students) or rigid choreography (daunting for many teachers), her model starts with playful experience and gradually builds toward creative expression and performance.
Today, Melanie balances her professional mission with personal growth in the mountains of Whistler, British Columbia. "A lot of my life was lived in my head," she reflects. "As I'm now living more in nature, there's a really deep intelligence around me that I'm learning to trust." Her dual commitment to serving educators while deepening her own connection to natural rhythms embodies the integration she brings to dance—honoring both structure and freedom, planning and intuition, achievement and joy.
Resources:
Website: https://www.pl3yinc.com/
IG: pl3yeducation
Email: melanie@pl3yinc.com
Hello and welcome to Voices from the Field, a MAHPERD podcast where we talk with educators in the field to hear about their perspectives and experiences. My name is Jake Bersin, advocacy Chair for MAHPERD, and today I have the pleasure of speaking with Melanie Levenberg.
Melanie:Hey Jake, how's it going?
Jake:Good, how are you?
Melanie:I'm so good, so excited to be here.
Jake:Great to have you on. I'm just going to give a little bit of intro about you. So Melanie Levenberg has a master's in education, is a physical education teacher, international speaker, author, tedx presenter and the CEO founder of Play International. She was also named CanFit Pro's Fitness Professional of 2022. Her company, play, provides pre-choreographed programs to schools and teaches fitness enthusiasts how to launch their own businesses. Working as an external service provider to schools, her programs have reached over 4.1 million kids in 13 countries and her award-winning curriculum-based dance program, dance Play, has been taught in over 700 schools worldwide. Dance program dance play has been taught in over 700 schools worldwide. Welcome, melanie.
Melanie:Thank you so much. I'm so pumped. What a great intro. Every time I hear it, I'm like what ?
Jake:It's so exciting to be in this space with you. Thank you so much for saying yes to the podcast.
Jake:Before we get started what's making you smile these days?
Melanie:It's
Jake:summertime right now and I live in the mountains and I get to go out on these beautiful blue lakes in the mountains and paddleboard with my dog and my daughter. It's just magnificent, just quiet, no music, you know, just kind of being there with the water and the earth and the sky, and it's just so powerful.
Jake:Being with nature. That's awesome. That's awesome. So, melanie, tell us more about who you are and how you started your education journey.
Melanie:Well, I've always been an active person. I always loved movement and I always just love like enjoying life, and so I'm like I feel like you have those qualities. One of the most top jobs to have is to become a phys ed teacher, and that has always. That really was what I always wanted to be when I was a child. To me, the thought of teaching kids and moving my body every day and helping other people, you know, get to know themselves better and connect with each other and play, essentially was the best, the best. So I went to school for kinesiology, which is like health sciences in Canada, and I became a physical education teacher and it, it, yeah, I still, even to this day. I'm like you know, like we get paid to do this, like this is so much fun. I can't believe that this job exists on planet Earth.
Jake:That's fantastic. So can you tell me a little bit more about your work and research with the CSH model in relation to academic achievement? And the CSH model is a comprehensive school health right?
Melanie:Definitely so. My teaching journey took me on an interesting path that not many teachers have experienced. So I left the classroom to work in a public health sector and from there I started working with nonprofit agencies who promoted healthy living and active living and also advocated on behalf of physical education teachers. And unfortunately and I'm sure many listeners can understand we have to validate why it's important to have physical education in schools and why movement is important, and it's really sad that this isn't like an, of course. And so one of the research models that was out there was this comprehensive school health model, and in Canada we had an agency that had gone into schools and worked through this public funded like through public funding, and I can't remember the exact number, but I think it was 16 school sites decided to make the comprehensive school health model one of their main school improvement initiatives. So, instead of any other school improvement initiative out there, they decided to focus on children's health and physical activity, and so they researched this project and they got all this amazing feedback and published the research findings, but they had never linked it to academic achievement.
Melanie:And so I came into this non-for-profit agency and I had looked at it and I was like hey, have we ever looked at the impact that, when a school focuses on movement and health and physical education, like what actually happens to standardized test scores, which, unfortunately, again, we have to validate ourselves?
Melanie:If it's not affecting test scores, why are we doing it? Which I'm being sarcastic here because obviously what we do has so much more to do than you know improving grades, so much more to do than you know improving grades. So what I did is I did this as in my master's I did this kind of independent study, looking at the trajectory of the school sites before this health initiative was implemented and then the standardized test scores the years after they had started to focus on health, and there was a significant change in student test score, and so it was an observation. It was a piece of data, you know, but it was an interesting piece of data that showed that, wow, when we focus on the school as a hub, on movement being part of every, you know everyday life and health being valued in the school, that there is something transforms and that transformation also affects their scores. It's not you know that we're not doing it for that, but that there is this piece to it. So it was an interesting part of my journey along the way.
Jake:That's really interesting, just the impact that this CSH had and the research you did to really see what impact it had. Like you said, it's not just about the scores, it's a byproduct, but it's amazing that you were able to do all this and have this impact. What inspired you to pursue a career in your field?
Melanie:And I think that it was always that movement made me happy. And it's interesting because as we get older, back in the day when I was a child, did I have a sense that the world was disconnected as much as I. There was a part of me that knew that movement made me happy and it made other people happy and it was some of the most joyful connected moments of my life and I just wanted to share that with others. So that really was like the desire to share that and to have other people feel the power of community and movement and play in sports.
Jake:Great, so you wanted to share what you were feeling and what you were experiencing. In essence, absolutely. That's great. So on your website, it states that you have made an impact in over 13 countries and have had over 1200 instructors trained. Can you tell us more about that process or how that came to be?
Melanie:For sure. Well, so my story is that I was a physical education teacher that was actually terrified of teaching dance. Like it's not, because I grew up dancing, I grew up playing sports and I was hit in the head by a lacrosse ball, had a brain injury and I was told that I could never play contact sports again and it really shook my identity. I was like, well, who am I if I'm not an athlete? And that's what allowed me to go into the fitness industry and to start learning. How can I bring movement into my life if it's not going to be through athletic training and sports and achievement and winning? And I discovered aerobics and I discovered dance. But I was still teaching and working with teachers and I was like, well, dance is really complicated, so can we make this simpler? So I started, you know, working with teachers and sharing these ideas on how to make dance more simple so that students can experience the embodiment of dance versus the cognitive side of dance. You know, I want them to feel good, like not worry about the steps or left foot, right foot, like get them out of their heads and get them into their bodies. And that became a methodology. People like can you teach me how to do what you do. So I started running workshops on the weekend. And I would run workshops and teach teachers how to do what I do and they're like, can you just give us the resources, can you just create the dances for us? And so I started packaging dances that were pre-made and, and you know, giving it to teachers.
Melanie:And eventually that I kind of like stumbled my way into entrepreneurship, and so through that method, I created a certification program so that people could go through these online modules and back in the day it was in-person there's in-person training and so they could develop the skills that I had learned through fitness instructing and also through being a physical education teacher, so that anyone, if they were a teacher or not, they could learn the skills to lead children in movement.
Melanie:And so I created this online course and then I also taught people how to take these programs and actually launch a business doing this. So some teachers were doing this as after school offers where they would host these dance clubs, or they would just like go to the community center and host dance classes, and for others, it's people who are fitness enthusiasts who don't work in schools. They learn how to do what I do, and then they go to the school and they teach the dance unit on behalf of PE teachers. So I also it's kind of like I work with teachers in the schools and then I also work with people outside of schools to help them bring dance into schools. And so, yeah, I developed, yeah, this training system and so we've trained more than 1200 instructors and there's been programs in schools in 13 countries. But now that the internet's around, like I mean, we can see where our online resources reach and it's many more countries than that, but actually in physically happening, over 700 schools in 13 countries.
Jake:That's fantastic. It sounds like there's a lot of flexibility with this program and that's the model you developed. Like you said, you can go in after school. Before school, you're training teachers, you can do the training virtually and these modules are on that website play dance.
Melanie:Yes, that's right. Yeah, Dance play. If you go to dancecom, then you'll find your way to our online courses and certifications.
Jake:So thank you for sharing that money. I was curious can you tell listeners about the play philosophy and why there is a number three in the business name play? What does the three mean?
Melanie:Totally so. We always say play. People kind of stumble along. Play because it's spelled P-L, the number three and the letter Y, and the reason for that is because in all of our classes, the philosophy that I teach is that every child has to follow three rules, and this is how we introduce all of our classes. And the first rule is you have to be positive. And so that you know we teach kids, you know if you've already you've come into the room and you're thinking, oh, it's dance, I'm not good at dancing.
Melanie:Or many people are like have this vision where everyone's going to be moving in one direction, like left, and then they're going to be going right and it's going to be really, you know, embarrassing. And so we just kind of like address that and say, like all we're asking you to do right now, the rule is be positive. So that just means changing any thought in your head that thinks I can't do it or this is too hard to say. You know what? Just switch it to, I'll give it a try. Or switch I can't to, I can. Or, even better, switch I can't do it. You know what? I am awesome and just practicing talking to yourself from that, from that place and when you come at it from that mindset, so many more things are possible when it comes to learning and connecting with others and moving.
Jake:I love that, yeah, positive and I really sets the stage too, you know, psychologically, for them getting moving, because you go into a space and you're like, oh, I'm going to think of this experience as something that maybe I had in the past, but it's not like that. You're starting from a positive mindset, so that's really key.
Melanie:Exactly. And then the second rule and this is where kids get all get funny is I say the second rule is that you're not allowed to have fun, and all the kids are like oh, what, what? And say, well, the second rule is you have to be fun so you get to practice being the most fun version of yourself. And then the third rule is be yourself. So in this class, everyone is going to learn the same move at the same time, but the way that you're doing the dance move should look different than the person who's beside you, because we all have a different body. We've got different thoughts, different opinions and a different style to share with the world.
Melanie:So, like, don't just come to this class thinking that you got to copy me, because that's a copying class and the world doesn't need more people copying each other. The world needs more people finding their own style and sharing it with the world. So be positive, be fun, be yourself. And then that's kind of the context. So that applies whether we're teaching dance or yoga or fitness. All of our programs have this philosophy and that's why the number three the three rules are is linked in the brand name, and that's the three.
Jake:I love that makes a lot of sense. So what advice would you give to a PE teacher wanted to teach dance? You kind of just answered this. Maybe you know, use that philosophy, but but anything else sometimes dance is a content area where PE teachers shy away from, for whatever reason, but for sure, well, I can appreciate it.
Melanie:I can. I can appreciate it because before I taught the dance the way I teach it, I thought that a dance unit meant that I had to study all these resources which, back in the day before the internet, when I was a teacher before the internet, it's true Some of you listening might remember those days you go to the library and get resource videos and it was like there was two kinds. There was like the hip hop dance like, where there was like the person trying to make hip hop cool and it was just like they had all this baggy clothes and backwards hats and like all these really cool dance moves and I was like, well, I can't do that. And then there's also like the leotard lyrical dance, jazz teachers, where it's like they had to wear like this all black leotard and I couldn't picture myself being either one of those things. But mostly I couldn't picture myself remembering all the steps, and that's what the focus was. It was like, oh, if you're going to teach dance, here are all the steps to learn for this dance. Teach the steps, play the music the students, then they will do the dance.
Melanie:And so my advice to someone wanting to teach dance is just know that your own authentic experience with dance is the most important thing that you can bring to your students. So if you're someone who's like guys, like guys, girls, everybody I I'm not a dancer and we get to do dance, but dance is a really fun way that we can express ourselves. So I'm gonna be learning along with I. I'm excited to learn new things. Do any of you have anything you know like?
Melanie:If you're not the dancer, then it's an opportunity to have the ones who feel like they are dancers or want to have something to share to come and share the experience with you. If you have, if you're, if you are a dancer, you like following TikTok dances, you know you can share that. If you have this experience as a dancer, share that. But what I've seen the most beautiful experiences in schools be is when the teacher owns what like owns that they can or they can't do it you know and it dance, the students will know. But then when the teacher owns it and then they like learn a really simple move, the students go wild. And are we here to like teach kids how to be professional dancers? No, but are we here to teach kids to approach a new movement opportunity with an open mindset and with a little bit of fun and joy Like isn't that what physical education truly is all about? So that's the best advice that I can give that's awesome.
Jake:It's awesome be your authentic self, and this exactly see that the students will see that. So, melanie, in your work with stakeholders and other professionals, what are some common questions you get in regards to your program? Um dance play no-transcript.
Melanie:We're like okay, there's an offer for that, here's a package program that's for corporate groups, where we give you the training, we give you the material for everyone, and and then then you go. You know there's the individual who's like hey, I really want to teach dance after school at my kid's studio, cool. So here's a little. Here's a training for you just individually, and then here's a little business that you can run as an individual. You know people want to work with schools.
Melanie:A lot of fitness enthusiasts want to work with schools and some teachers actually are also like how do you work with schools without working as a school teacher? I want, to like leave my teaching job but I still want to work in schools, and so we also help former teachers learn how to learn our curriculum based program and then teach them a little bit of business skills so that they can then go back into the classroom or the, you know, the gymnasium, and bring movement to students during school hours, but in a completely different kind of like pay format, essentially, and it's flexible and it's. It seems like there's a lot of things, but at the end of the day, all roads lead to students experiencing positive physical education experiences that are founded in physical literacy. You know, this isn't just about movement for the sake of movement or dancing for the sake of what the new cool dance is. Everything we do builds fundamental movement skills, has a deep, purposeful connection to interpersonal skills and also to creative self-expression, and that's the point of what we all do.
Jake:Right, there's a purpose behind everything.
Melanie:Absolutely.
Jake:This question actually isn't on on the list, but I I want to, because in my research for this interview I came across the dance phases. Can you just quickly talk about the dance phases because I think, from everything you're saying, it's really important, uh, how you explain these dance phases. Can you just give it our listeners a brief overview of what these phases are and how it relates?
Melanie:to play. I don't know that. I know about the dance phases. Give me me a little, give me a hand here. I know about the elements of dance.
Jake:So so you know how. There's the TGFU phases, then there's the dance, the, the, the different. Maybe I missed it, you got it right. Oh yeah, no. For sure, totally. Oh yeah, no that's.
Melanie:That's another good question. So you're referring to the model teaching dance for understanding that has six phases, and that's a model that I created after learning about teaching games for understanding, because in teaching games for understanding you go through these six phases to teach students about sports without teaching it sports focus, you teach more about the strategy and the tactics.
Melanie:And so I took that model, I brought it to dance and so the six phases for that are first starting off, bringing dance as a playful experience, so allowing students to experience dance without worrying about the, without worrying about the rules, so taking the rules of dance away taking the left foot, right foot, taking the standing in lines, taking this there away, taking the left foot, right foot, taking the standing in lines, taking this, there's a certain set of choreography and we have to remember a certain sequence, throwing that out the window, and it's like experiencing dance from fun and joy. So once they have a great experience, then we can teach them something about dance. And that goes into the phase which is dance appreciation, so they might be learning about the style of music or the genre of dance and the cultural background behind it, or maybe where this dance move even started from. And this really has a big range. Now that we have TikTok and the internet, you know like students can study, like dance movements from viral threads. You know like back in the day we were like, well, this is folklore dance and this is the folklore story that it came from. It all, it all fits, and this is a chance for students to basically learn and study a little bit more the cognitive side of dance.
Melanie:And then the third phase is developing connections. So before we teach students how to like, package dance and use dance to communicate a message, more like a lot of what the dance methodologies teach, start with with that we're going to make sure that they can, that they have connections first connections to themselves and they make sure that the students know how to work well with each other because a lot of dance has group work in it and also make sure that they're connected to the stories and to previous knowledge that they could bring in. So there's these three phases dance as a playful experience, dance appreciation and developing connections. And then, once the there's these three phases dance as a playful experience, dance appreciation and developing connections and then, once the students have those three phases, then we go into the three which are more typical. So creative exploration it's like they're taking ideas and they're moving their body based on an idea or a sound. A lot of dance programs start there.
Melanie:So, like a lot of the resources that I used to read was like, okay, bring all the students into the gym and say, hey, everyone, we're not going to do any choreography, I'm just going to play music and you move however you want. And the issue that I had with that is that that was the equivalent of asking a student who only knew the letters ABC to write a paragraph about how they feel, about how they feel Like listening to music, having the confidence and the vocabulary to like, move and actually express yourself. Like that's, that's hard, it's a hard skill. So those first three stages kind of like set the context for creative exploration.
Melanie:Then, once students can create their own moves, then we have them working together and they're they're refining their skills and they're actually, you know, preparing a dance and the dance sequence or a performance of some sort that allows them to communicate something. And these are all directly linked with the curriculum. Each grade level has outcomes and standards that have to do with what students have to be able to communicate through movement and dance. So this is where each grade level has their own criteria. And then the final one is dance performance. So like, after all that, then the students get to perform and because they're performing and they feel super confident, then they're so excited to learn more and then they go back to the playful dance experience and the cycle continues.
Jake:It really makes a lot of sense to have them enjoy the dance and enjoy moving first, as opposed to starting with the exploration or the performance, which is sometimes that was my experience. You know here's the dance, you copy it and you're already performing without having any of this knowledge about where to move, how to move. You know jump, skip, all these different elements, so that makes a lot of sense. So it's like in sports right.
Melanie:We don't just throw students in like we're playing a basketball game and like you're supposed to know all the rules and like you just start blowing the whistle, being like you're not doing the rule correctly, like we want to make sure the students are building vocabulary, learning the skills, learning plays, tactics, and then you can apply it to the game. So like let's just back it up with dance and and simplify it and, most importantly, build positive experiences so that students feel confident moving.
Jake:Yeah the other classroom. So, as we're coming to a close of the interview, I had a final question what do you hope to see in the future? What goals do you have? These can either be personal or professional goals with nature through movement.
Melanie:You know so because I live in the mountains. I live in Whistler in British Columbia. I don't think I mentioned that earlier. Yeah, that's a personal goal for me is to deepen my relationship and to trust nature. I think, having been an athlete and having been a type A person who was a very successful teacher because type A people are really great teachers person who was a very successful teacher because type A people are really great teachers A lot of my life and I'm 44 now a lot of my life was lived in my head.
Melanie:You know like doing the things, trying to get everything right, and you know just like setting a plan and going and getting it. And as I'm now living more in nature, there's something, there's a, there's a really deep intelligence around me that I'm learning to trust. Like you can't rush nature. You know we planted a seed a few months ago with my daughter. She came home with these like sunflower seeds and I can't look at the seed being like grow faster. You know it's just like it takes time for something beautiful to emerge.
Melanie:And so learning to to kind of like trust that a little bit more and bringing that to my life has is is a personal goal that I have and then a professional goal is just to continue serving as much as I can and bringing programs and bringing services and helping people, whether it's physical education teachers, fitness enthusiasts, whoever it is that wants to get, get kids moving and who really believe in the passion. You know passionately that movement will heal children and movement will expand children. Movement will bring joy to children's lives and if people are called to doing that kind of work and they feel like I can support them in some way, then I'm just going to let Source whoever bring me to them and to keep supporting that mission.
Jake:Well, I appreciate you sharing that. You definitely inspired me and I'm sure you've inspired our listeners as well, so I really appreciate that. So, melanie, how can our listeners connect with you? Are you on? What type of social media you're on? And then, whatever you say, I can also link to the show notes if you have any resources you want to share.
Melanie:Beautiful. Well, I'm no longer on any of like the Twitter, like, I feel like Twitter disappeared. I was like big on Twitter, um, so now I'm on Instagram and, uh, people can find me, um, and I'll send you the. The link it's dance play or play fitness are my handles and, um, I also have my website, danceplaycom um, and through there you know I run the company myself. You know as much as we have a really broad reach. I answer the emails, so you can always just send an email to me and it is me and I will invite your listeners and anyone who might have any further questions. You know you're on this podcast and I've got this question what would you recommend? I will answer those emails happily and point you to resources. You know lots of things on YouTube. What do you think about this? What's a song? You know I've got lots of ideas and I love when teachers reach out, if it helps them feel supported in what they do.
Jake:That's fantastic. We appreciate that, and you have a ton of resources on your website too. I've actually taken a couple myself. You have some ones that talk about assessment and talk about physical literacy, so those are great. So I encourage the listeners to check out the website. So thank you so much, Melanie, for sharing your experience and expertise with us. It's really been great Listeners. If you have any questions, you can always email us at mahperdpodcast@ gmailcom. We will have this episode uploaded soon. Also, please rate and review the show, as it does help other folks find it. Thank you all for listening. Have a great week and we will be back soon. Take care, Melanie. Thank you so much.
Melanie:Thanks so much, jake, you are awesome.
Jake:Thank you.
