Leap to Success
by Mia Florendo
Lauren Kato, a dance education teacher at Mountain View High School has dedicated her life to sharing her passion of dance with her students and has learned to recognize the importance of teaching the whole person. All her life, Kato has been a people pleaser with a bubbly personality, character qualities that positively influence the lives of her friends and students every day. As a dance teacher, she strives to educate her students about this most expressive form of art by emphasizing performance qualities, self-expression through art, and the foundation of the learning process, where students themselves can understand and value how to integrate people’s humanities into the practice of student-teaching. She also emphasizes the development of her students both inside and outside of dance. According to CASEL, Collaborative Academic Social Emotional Learning, “Social Emotional Learning is the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions”. Kato’s teaching approach is special: she creates personal relationships with students, making it easy for her to facilitate each individual’s process of improvement. By letting her students take the lead in exploring their own artistic abilities, Kato pushes her students to maintain a strong work ethic in order to achieve quality work. She often steps back and lets the student leaders figure things out, stepping in only when absolutely needed to get them back on track. Kato was able to develop the skills of her teaching style with assistance from her students. From the age of two, she has always been involved with community building and started dancing after being inspired by the Nutcracker performed by the Boston Ballet in Massachusetts. She fell in love with dancing and performing when she first began taking classes at her grandmother’s studio, and has continued to love dance ever since, according to her family. Starting at the age of three, Kato moved several times during her childhood but continued to dance with the people she loves. She’s been through many ups and downs throughout her life, as she tried to find what she wanted to pursue as a lifelong career. Reflecting on this experience, she believes that they trusted her abilities knowing that she had already danced with the president and vice-president of the program outside of school. At the time, there were only three classes, and if you did some sort of dance, including cheerleading or musical theater, you were typically considered an advanced dancer. Kato reflects, “I was really lucky that I got to be a part of it. I was one of two freshmen in the class and I loved it. I loved how when I was in there, I was one of the youngest people, but the upperclassmen took me in, showed me the way and modeled the way. I just felt safe there.” She saw the program as a safe and welcoming community where she could be around the people she loved and do the things she loved. freestyleacademy.rocks | Freestyle Academy Spring 2023 Vol # | 3