Best Practices for Finding Quality Preschool Dance Teachers

In this episode of the Dance to Learn® Podcast—the Preschool Dance Teacher’s Podcast—host Jessica Strong introduces the show’s brand-new format, which centers around real questions and stories from the dance teaching community. This week’s episode features a listener question from Kristina C: “Where do you find good preschool dance teachers?” Jessica shares her firsthand experience hiring teachers for her mobile dance program and offers practical strategies to help studio owners and directors find the right candidates for preschool and recreational dance classes.

Listeners will hear community-sourced tips, including how to write effective job descriptions, where to post listings, and how to connect with local colleges and dance programs. Jessica emphasizes the importance of hiring intentionally, targeting the right talent pool, and being upfront about the position to avoid high turnover. She also shares her success using platforms like Facebook community groups, the Nextdoor app, and in-person job fairs at local colleges.

At the end of the episode, Jessica invites listeners to submit their own questions for future episodes and teases a follow-up exclusive episode for Dance to Learn® members. In that members-only podcast, she’ll dive into the most common hiring mistakes studios make—and how to avoid them. Tune in to learn how to build a strong, passionate teaching team from the ground up!

👉 Want to go deeper? Join the Dance to Learn® Membership to access exclusive Dance EdVenturist Podcast episodes filled with actionable strategies and classroom tips.

📎 Links Mentioned:

• Join the Membership: https://library.dancetolearn.co/pages/join-us
• Join the Facebook Forum: https://www.facebook.com/groups/preschooldanceteachersforum
• Email your questions: podcast@dancetolearn.co
• Learn more about Dance Dance Hooray: https://www.dancedancehooray.com

Thanks for listening — and until next time, Happy Dancing!

Transcript

Welcome back to the Dance to Learn® Podcast — the Preschool Dance Teacher’s Podcast! I’m your host, Jessica Strong, and a big thank you to our Season 6 sponsor, Dance Dance Hooray!

In today’s episode, I’m answering a listener's question! Before I dive into that, I want to talk about the new format of the Dance to Learn® Podcast.  My goal for the Dance to Learn® podcast is to elevate real voices from our dance teaching community — yours! I want to hear your stories, answer your questions, and address your challenges, and help you feel more confident in your classroom. This is a new layout for the podcast, so it’s going to take me talking about it for the first few episodes to get the word out! I’m so excited to answer a listener's question today. 

Do you want to be featured on the show?
 In order to do that, you will want to join the Preschool Dance Teacher’s Forum on Facebook, where you’ll find our weekly Ask the Pod post every Friday. Drop your questions there through Monday evening. Then on Tuesday, I open Pod Talk, a chance for your fellow teachers to chime in with their tips and advice.

If your question is selected, I’ll feature you using your first name and last initial — or you can remain anonymous by emailing me at podcast@dancetolearn.co and I’ll post on your behalf.

Be sure to check the show notes for the link to the Forum. I can't wait to hear from you!

Let’s get into today’s Listener Question!

This week’s question comes from Kristina C who asks, “Where do you find good preschool dance teachers?” 

This is such a good question, and it is such a challenge to find quality dance teachers for those younger years. Honestly, they need to be some of the best teachers - they are hard to come by.

We did have some other listeners provide some feedback for Kristina, I’ll share that in a moment, but first let’s hear from our Season 6 Sponsor, Dance Dance Hooray! 

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Thank you to Corey at Dance Dance Hooray for creating our library of Tap Dance EdVentures for our Dance to Learn® Community! 

Let’s get back to Kristina’s question about finding quality preschool dance teachers. 
Damian B had this to say, “I usually ran ads in the local area on Facebook with a very clear message on what we are looking for in a candidate and give them easy to follow steps to move forward if they want to be considered.” 

That would be my first word of advice when finding any teachers. Is to make sure your job opening is clearly defined. It needs to have a job description, list of expected duties, personality traits of an ideal candidate, knowledge and training requirements (do they need a degree or a certificate for example), the location of your studio, a range of salary or pay expectations, and the expected length of the contract as well as class type and schedule. Try to paint a clear picture of the job so any potential candidates can determine if they would be a good fit. 

When first starting out on facebook, I wouldn’t recommend starting with a paid ad right away, test out your community and where the best candidates may be located. When I was operating my mobile dance program, I was operating in up to 65 schools at a time sometimes with 2-3 classes at each site. I needed a large team of people on staff to cover all these classes. What I did was create my own Community Job Board for dance teachers on facebook. It’s a facebook group called Colorado Dance Teacher Jobs. I allow dance teachers to post their resume and studios to post job openings. 

The decision to open your own local community group needs to be measured on your current needs. Do you need a lot of teachers to cover classes? Or just one or two? If you only need one or two and you don’t have a large turnover, this may not be necessary because it does require time to approve members and moderate the group. In my situation I always needed teachers and then I needed back up teachers for anyone who didn’t complete our training to be sure I always had a fall back person for classes. So this strategy of opening my own facebook group worked for me. 

There are so many groups on facebook. Look for the groups in your community with the largest following. Some of the best groups I found were “Word of Mouth” groups. I would post that I was seeking dance teachers and asked the group to tag anyone they knew who may teach dance or be studying dance. I’d send a private message to anyone who seemed interested to learn more about the opportunity with a direct link to our job posting and application. Not everyone applied - we were looking for a very clear talent pool that not everyone could meet. For example we were honest in our job posting that candidates would be teaching beginning dancers who have never danced before. Therefore dancers who enjoy teaching and working in the competitive side of the dance industry would probably not be a good fit for the position. That weeded out those candidates right away. The last thing you want to do is waste time on people who won’t be a good fit, or who may think they want the job but then quit before the end of the contract. That’s where that detailed job description comes in. 

Also, the Next Door app is great to limit your reach to your neighborhood. There may be some hidden gems living in your town. Posting there is another great way to make some connections in your area. 

Beyond Facebook and social media, I had a lot of luck with my community colleges. Do any of your local colleges and universities offer a dance program? Some may even offer clubs. Such as a cheer club or a dance club. The community colleges in my area always ran an annual career fair and we would attend. They would list all the companies for students beforehand so they could find the job booths that they were most interested in. We would have applications and conduct on the spot interviews. I gained quite a few teachers from these events. For some of the larger schools where it was either harder to be considered for a job fair or more pricey to participate, I would reach out to the professors and teachers. I would introduce myself and my company and ask if they had any students that may be interested in a potential teaching opportunity. I would describe the position and sometimes they would have students in mind, other times they didn’t. I even got invited by one professor to speak and host a presentation for a class about teaching in the schools and I gained a couple new teachers from that opportunity. 

So if you haven’t already, try to reach out to your local community colleges and universities. 

In addition to the dance departments at the schools, I would also reach out to the Student Life or Services team and email a copy of a job posting. It would include a qr code that led to our application and asked if it could be posted in the student lounge on the community board. I would resend it every few months. 

Lastly, you can also try larger job boards such as Indeed and Linked In. Now I always found that with the larger job boards, I would get more throw away applicants. So beware of that. Also, I wouldn’t recommend paying to boost your job postings for such a niche job. We are looking for such a specific talent pool - that I often found I was throwing money away to boost. 

Honestly, I think local facebook communities, the Nextdoor app, and making a connection with your local community colleges and universities are the best places to find applicants. 

Kristina, I hope this information helps you! If there are any other listeners who are also struggling on where to find the best preschool dance teachers, I hope you also found this helpful. 

If you’d like to have your questions answered or challenges addressed on the show, join us in the Preschool Dance Teacher’s Forum on Facebook and look for the #askthepod and #podtalk!

I also wanted to share that I’m going to record a sequel to this episode exclusively for my Dance to Learn® Members! Over in the Dance to Learn® Community I host the Dance EdVenturist Podcast, an exclusive podcast for Dance to Learn® Members.  In the sequel I’m going to share some common mistakes that are made when hiring and what NOT to do when hiring teachers for your rec and preschool aged dance classes. If you would be interested in the continuation of this episode I invite you to join us in the Dance to Learn® community! I’ve shared a link to join in the Show notes!