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[fusion_dropcap boxed=”yes” boxed_radius=”” class=”” id=”” color=”” text_color=””]C[/fusion_dropcap]an a ballet academy move its classes completely online? Yes! We were so inspired by Charlottesville Ballet and their co-founder, Sara Clayborne, we decided to interview her about the rapid and successful transition from the studio to Zoom during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Check out our video of the full interview, read the interview transcript, or our story below.
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The Charlottesville Ballet — a nonprofit organization in Charlottesville, Virginia that Clayborne and co-founder Emily Hartka started in 2007 — includes a professional company of highly skilled dancers, an outreach and engagement program, and an academy that offered 99 classes per week pre-pandemic and served about 600 students. When Virginia Governor Ralph Northam issued the Executive Order for businesses like the ballet school to shut its doors in March, to say that moving nearly 100 classes to Zoom was a challenge is an understatement.
“We immediately thought, How are we going to do this? We can’t just stop classes. So what are we going to do?” Clayborne said. “And like a lot of other arts organizations, we shifted to Zoom. Zoom definitely saved us. It was definitely a struggle in the beginning, but it was a quick shift because we didn’t have a lot of time to transition.”
The timeframe in which Clayborne and her staff needed to transition classes to an online platform was tight. “We had only told our parents we’re going to close for two weeks,” Clayborne explained, adding she felt that the two-week closure for schools in the state would actually be longer (she was right), making it necessary to transition the academy online. “So we had 14 days to get everything online, to get communications out to parents…to get the staff trained, to set up processes and procedures. We had, actually, less than 14 days because it took us a couple of days to figure out what platform we were going to use and to make sure we were comfortable with that.”
Clayborne and her staff worked hard over those two weeks to schedule the academy’s massive number of classes on Zoom. They supplemented this by using tools outside the video conferencing platform to effectively organize classes and communicate with students and parents. “We sent out Google Docs with those meeting links in them because lots of our students take multiple classes throughout the week. So, we had documents made per day with different links and sent out different passwords,” Clayborne explained.
Legal, security, and privacy matters were also important to consider in the transition to Zoom. “Immediately, we were pretty good about security use in Zoom,” Clayborne said. “We always had a waiting room that had a liability statement posted there. As students came into the waiting room, they would see and read that. We also had the teachers verbally say it again. And then, we always had a password for all the meetings that we made.”
“In addition, we required the kids to always have their video on…because we need to correct them and see them,” she continued. “They also needed to have their name on the screen so that would help us easily take attendance and a count, but [ensure] that it was the right student in the right class.”
Thinking about a physical ballet studio — with its hardwood floors, mirrors, and barres — made us wonder: how feasible would it be to replicate this environment on Zoom? And if replication isn’t possible, how could a studio manage to offer the same kind of experience to its students in their homes?
While it wasn’t easy, Clayborne offered some great ideas and insights, with testing the platform being key. “I had some family members come on Zoom from New York and test it out with me,” she said. “Okay, can you hear my tap shoes in the garage? Can you hear the music and the tap shoes? Can you hear me speak? We tested some things out before we then wrote it up in a manual, and brought that to our staff to share and say, ‘These are our best practices of what we think is going to work best.’ Little things about audio settings that you can fix in Zoom, background settings, things that will just make the dance experience easier, and easier to teach dance.
“We had a lot of teachers that hooked up to their TVs, so they had a bigger screen to see. And that’s really helpful when teaching dance and teaching multiple students to be able to see as many bodies on the screen as possible.”
Clayborne added that Charlottesville Ballet benefited from donors who donated large-screen TVs to the studio to use as part of their “hybrid” class approach they are shifting to as their doors reopen this fall.
“Because it’s Charlottesville and UVA is here, we created an ‘orange group’ and a ‘blue group,’” Clayborne told us. “And so the first week back, the ‘blue’ students come in person, and the ‘orange’ students arrive to the same class. They’re just joining in online. When those classes are really big, we’ll have an assistant Zoom teacher that is helping correct the students that are on Zoom. The teacher in the physical location is still the one planning the class and guiding the class, progressing them through the curriculum. The assistant is another teacher, but they’re correcting the Zoom students.”
“There are some classes where there’s less enrollment in those two color classes. So the teacher is both correcting students on Zoom and students in the classroom. So we call that our ‘hybrid’ approach.”
We were impressed with the academy’s approach to splitting up the classes and using an assistant as well, which can also come in handy when dealing with technical matters in the classes. (We at Online Video Mastery always recommend having a technical assistant in Zoom meetings when possible — get other tips on battling Zoom fatigue here.)
[bctt tweet=”Teachers did a great job teaching from home…they could really understand what the kids were dealing with. Some kids had parents cooking dinner in the background or a puppy dog running across the floor, and that was real life in the pandemic, being in quarantine at home.” username=”onlinevidmaster”]
Charlottesville Ballet’s approach to accommodating students and families of all needs and comfort levels is also commendable. In addition to offering socially-distanced in-person classes (where students are spaced far apart) and hybrid classes, the academy is also allowing students to remain 100% on Zoom if they choose.
Aside from the logistics and technical matters of taking a ballet academy online, perhaps the most challenging part of transitioning to Zoom is the associated fatigue. Clayborne reflected on the need to maintain a sense of connection between teachers and students.
“[The teachers] did a great job teaching from home because they could really understand what the kids were dealing with. Some kids had parents cooking dinner in the background or a puppy dog running across the floor, and that was real life in the pandemic, being in quarantine at home,” Clayborne said.
“The teachers sort of had the same thing. A lot of us that have children had to deal with figuring out childcare or quiet time for kids while you’re trying to teach. It was a challenging experience, but as a collaborative team, we all worked together. We had weekly meetings, which were very beneficial for the team, where we were able to share those tricks and tips, and then added those into our handbook manual,” Clayborne continued, adding that the academy’s staff manual is a living document online and is constantly updated.
With large doses of screen time also contributing to Zoom fatigue, the academy combats this by using class activities strategically. “In the beginning of our classes, I encouraged all the faculty, even for our littlest kids, to have just a moment where they could talk to them. So they would prompt them with a question of, ‘In this time where you’re stuck at home, can you think of one thing that you’re really grateful for?’”
[bctt tweet=”A lot of us that have children had to deal with figuring out childcare or quiet time for kids while you’re trying to teach. It was a challenging experience, but as a collaborative team, we all worked together. ~ Sara Clayborne #Zoom #Zoomclasses” username=”onlinevidmaster”]
Another activity has students leaving the screen and heading outdoors. Clayborne had a class of eight- to twelve-year-olds go outside and write down five things that they saw, which they would then translate into movements. “We all collaborated on that movement of those things and made a whole beautiful story of it,” she said. “I did get their consent to film them. We filmed in Gallery mode and it was beautiful to see what they all saw. First of all, they all lived in different environments. They come from different sorts of households — some very rural, some living in the city. And it was beautiful to see how they could collaborate, even with a screen. And I think just getting them away from the screen was helpful to reset their minds and reset how they were approaching the classes.”
Clayborne also spoke about how the academy offers additional free content to parents and students to continue the learning process in smaller, digestible pieces.
We at Online Video Mastery are so impressed with Charlottesville Ballet’s resiliency and ability to bring their organization to Zoom so quickly. We hope that this story inspires and helps other businesses who are adjusting to this challenging time.
To learn more about Charlottesville Ballet, visit www.charlottesvilleballet.org and follow them on Facebook and Instagram.
Do you have any experiences with teaching or taking classes on Zoom that you’d like to share? If so, please add them to the comments below.
Want more tips about combating Zoom fatigue? Download our guide below.
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