I recently was reflecting with a colleague about her program at an independent high school and how she can further build the program. While reflecting, it is valuable to have a comprehensive view of your school, other classes on campus, and opportunities for outreach about your program. I hope that these questions will be useful to you as well. Please add more ideas to this conversation by leaving a comment below.

1. What is the GOAL here? Grow the program in terms of number of students or number of courses?

2. SWOT (for the program)

Strengths:

Weaknesses:

Opportunities:

Threats:

3. What is the place of dance in your school's curriculum? Fine arts elective? PE credit? What is the graduation requirement? If you aren’t a PE option, could that become an option in the future? 

4. Have you done a full comparison of the dance program in relation to the other arts classes? Can you look at class enrollment as well as gender breakdown in the classes? Can you also do a comparison with the PE courses?

5. What classes/courses happen at the same time as the dance classes?

6. Do you currently offer a sequence of dance classes, so that a student can grow and participate in the program over 4 years?

7. Can you get involved with the admissions process (tours, etc) to gain more facetime with prospective students?

8. Do all incoming freshman get invited to the spring dance concert?

9. What strategic interdisciplinary projects could get more students aware of the dance offerings at your school (ex. science and dance)?

10. How can the dance program gain more facetime/presence in general? 

11. Can you offer an intro workshop once a year for students currently at your school who might want to try dance the next year? This could be a 1-1.5 hour workshop.

12. What might be the top three reasons/factors that might prevent students from signing up for dance? If you don’t know, can you ask a few students for feedback?

13. Do you do a yearly survey with students about the program? Could that survey be open to the whole school community (online survey using a Google Form or Survey Monkey)?

14. What does the administration want to see in the dance program? What do they want for the future? 

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