Teaching by Jenna Vick Silliman

Teaching Children to Dance, Spring 2012

I am a teacher. I know that now. I am finally ready to admit it. After all these years of hiding behind the spiritual gift of encouragement—which is still a part of me—I am willing to say that my spiritual gift is primarily teaching. It is a huge responsibility to be a teacher. However, it is what I do. I just automatically start teaching. I go to Scandinavian Folk Dance (for adults) on Sunday nights at the Sons of Norway Lodge. One evening I tried to teach a young man how to do a certain dance and he said, “What are you, a school teacher or something?” (I don’t think he appreciated the lesson.)

December 2011 I volunteered to teach a children’s Scandinavian Folk Dance Class. February to June I taught the class once a week and I loved it. The class will begin again in September and conclude at Christmastime with a dance performance. I enjoy inspiring, enlightening, discovering, revealing, demonstrating, informing, communicating, and learning. I also love kids. They all seemed to love my class and were sad to see it end for the summer. One little girl cried when she found out it was over.

Dance class performance, May 19, 2012.

In high school when I took those surveys or questionnaires of what you would be good at doing for a career, mine came out teaching every time. I thought about public school teaching at the time. (I got married and had eight children instead.) Now, I’m sure I could have done that, but it wasn’t my destiny. I am a dance teacher. This summer I am going to Germany and will be helping to teach a dance workshop there!

Everyone's Favorite--The Teddy Bear Dance! Spring 2012

I enjoy writing and have the dream of writing a book and getting published. I am writing a book on dance. I have been housesitting for the past few days and I was happy to find out the Internet doesn’t work there, so I could not get distracted. It has been a perfect time to focus on writing. I really wrote up a storm—13,073 words! That’s about 25 typed pages, so far.  I already have a cover for my book too. It is a beautiful, original piece of art created by an artist I met over Facebook. When I asked him for permission to use his painting he immediately created a book cover with my title and subtitle and my name on there. It is beautiful! The colors are blue, gold, and white. It is print ready! All of this has happened in one week. At this rate I may be a published author by the end of the summer. What really got me excited was the thought that published authors get asked to speak. That excites me more than the book! Here is my book—a sneak preview. Anyone want to volunteer to proofread?

The cover of my new book--not published yet! Art by Todd L.Thomas.