Summer is the Time to Get Ahead
As dance teachers and studio owners, our summers are much different than the rest of the year. This is a time that we can get ahead, coast, or get behind. Although I am busy in different ways in the summer, I like to take time to get ahead on a few projects over the summer to help make my year more pleasant.
We do not want to just coast through summer and we don’t want to get behind, so getting ahead sounds amazing. You may be wondering what type of projects you could work on, as well as what types of jobs would help kick off your year.
I am going to share a few of the ones that I have been working on that I think would benefit the most.
Organization
Any area in your studio that needs to be organized to help you be more efficient is a great place to start. Throughout the year, things get tossed here and there and not
I recently organized my “SHOW ROOM” and it feels amazing to have it done. We cleaned out every bin, box, and shelf and organized everything we have for all of our different shows into clear totes and color-coded the labels according to where they go in the space. This took us about four hours, but now everything is all set and ready for a successful season of shows. It will be easy for anyone to locate anything they need for our shows and know exactly where it goes after they use it.
A few other areas that are great to get organized over the summer are: The preschool Prop cabinet, Classroom tool shelves, Stereo areas, front desk/reception area, and costume ordering area.
Projects
I love getting a jump start on projects over the summer too. The first three we jumped on this summer were the Recital playlist for next year, all things Nutcracker, and pre-planning social posts.
We are celebrating our 30th season this year, so we like to bring back our favorite songs and routines from past years, so my team and I got together and looked at past recital programs and watched past recital dances to select the songs we would be using for the upcoming show. On non-anniversary years, I love getting this done over the summer, so we are ready to unveil the theme at Open House and have all of the songs selected and prepared before we even begin the season.
For the Nutcracker project, I am setting all of the dates for rehearsals, events, and shows, updating the handbook and forms, creating cast lists, and prepping the lead auditions information. It is great to get a head start on this project. If you don’t have a Nutcracker, you could begin planning your Holiday show.
Pre-planning and scheduling your social posts is another excellent project to get ahead of in the summer. We start with scheduling all the faculty and staff birthday posts, then Holiday closings, followed by fun Did you know posts, and culture posts. This is a great project to get done over the summer so you don’t have to worry about doing this during the season. Once you build out your calendar for this, you can also delegate it to someone else. This year we have an alumni student that is home from college creating all of the posts. She knows our studio culture, cares about the studio, and is very creative. This took a load off of our plate and gave her a fun summer project.
Other projects that you could work ahead on are preparing lesson plans, updating your curriculum, planning your marketing campaigns, scheduling social posts, and organizing all of your competitive cast lists and spreadsheets to prepare for when registration opens.
Calendar Planning
One of my favorite plan-ahead activities for the summer is our calendar planning day. We have this in the first week of July. We come together as a team and plan the dates for all of the activities and events at the studio. We have four team leaders and they each come with their dates and ideas and
Once we have all of the dates for the season, we sit down and plan the communication for all of the big events. We talk about how we are going to communicate each big event and plan out the dates ahead of time that we need to launch something new or give it hype. This activity takes us about five hours.
There are many other things you can get ahead of in the summer. Get creative and schedule in some “get ahead” time for yourself. You will be happy you did.
