Drama Teachers Wanted!
When I first started Perform, one of my friends told me that “staff would be my biggest problem”. She had her own business and said that finding the right people was her main challenge.
In many ways, she was right. It is continual challenge to keep recruiting brilliant people and over the years we have experimented with different ways of finding our teachers. Nevertheless, the one thing I am resolute about is to use working professional actor-singer-dancers as Perform Teachers. We’ve tried qualified school teachers, child psychologists and those with childcare qualifications but realised quite quickly that it is only actors who have trained in the performing arts and worked in “the business” who have the skills and energy to deliver Perform classes. Read more »
The P Factor
On January 8th 2000, I opened my first Perform class. Me, a teacher and four children.
It went pretty well – all things considered. But, afterwards, when I was talking to the parents about my plans to eventually open Perform all over London, one of the mums said that my greatest challenge would be finding great people to run the classes. People who would do an amazing job every week whether you are there or not.
11 years,180 teachers and 4,000 children a week later, I agree!
The biggest challenge and the most time-consuming element of my job is recruiting. And that’s simply because it’s not just important – it’s the most important thing. Having fantastic teachers is the only way we can guarantee the standards of our classes.
Perform teachers have to be “triple threats”. For anyone that’s not familiar with the musical theatre term, that means able to act, sing and dance. They must be brilliant with children, totally professional, have staggering energy…and like getting up at 6am on Saturday mornings.
