Ms. Branch's Biography
Chelsea Branch is from Fort Wayne, Indiana. She attended Hope College in Holland, MI and graduated with a BA in Dance Education K-12 and a minor in English Education. Chelsea worked at Hamilton Elementary School as the dance and yoga teacher. During her years at Hamilton, she designed and implemented a PK-8 dance curriculum centered around National Arts Standards that created opportunities for student creativity and voices. Chelsea worked closely with classroom teachers to build arts integrated units in literacy, math, and science. Additionally, she assisted in leading SEL initiatives that greatly improved the climate and culture for students. Mindfulness is a core value in Chelsea‘s work with students and she was trained by Mindful Schools. Chelsea is passionate about sharing yoga and is certified in Yoga Calm, Rainbow Kids Yoga, and became a RYT 200 yoga teacher through Marianne Wells Yoga School in Costa Rica.
In her free time, Chelsea loves to read fiction and memoirs, cook (although she’s not very skilled yet), and is a professional dancer and choreographer. Chelsea co-owns The Rooted Space, a dance studio in North Center and serves as the Kids' Business Coach for Guppy Tank, a grant and mentorship program for young entrepreneurs.
Posts
Dance Technique students (6-8th graders) worked to create SMART goals for themselves this semester in one of three categories: strength, length, or dance skills. This week, we benchmarked so that we can visualize our progress in December.
2nd Graders were so thankful this week to have gotten their shoes sized! We can't wait to start our Ballet unit in them. While we were sizing them, we had the opportunity to watch clips of The Sleeping Beauty by The Imperial Classical Ballet.
Join Ms. Branch in a September plank challenge building our core strength to support the dance skills we are working towards! Students have the opportunity to record their times each week outside of Ms. Branch's door (either named or anonymously!).
Report Card Pickup Announcement
Visit each of the Essentials teachers during Report Card Pickup by dropping in to our spaces listed below.
PE (Cherry) - Gymnasium | [email protected]
Dance (Branch) - Dance Studio 101 | [email protected]
Music (Schmittle) - Music Room 114 | [email protected]
Art (Koreman) - Art Room 111
Makerspace (Petropoulos) - Please reach out if a conference is needed | [email protected]
Latin (Loris) - Room 111
The Latin room will be occupied with voting, so you can find the Ms. Loris in the Art room, 111. Ms. Branch and Ms. Schmittle will be working with students until 2:30pm. Ms. Petropoulos is conferencing with her homeroom so you can email for a conference for a different time. If you'd like to make an appointment for any of the Essentials teachers outside of the conference day, please send them an email. We look forward to connecting with you!
Can You Dance Like a Peacock?
THANK YOU to our PTA and Rekha S. Rajan for visiting our K, 1, and 2 grades to read your book "Can You Dance Like a Peacock?" Our students had the most energizing time dancing with you in our studio and appreciate that you took the time to sign our books!
A kindergartener explores dancing like non-locomotive seaweed in our ocean unit.
Primary took some time to decorate our studio entrance so that when our Author, Rekha Rajan, visited, she would feel welcomed by our beautiful artwork!
Thank you to our wonderful audience members who came to watch the culmination of the students' learning in our Winter Show: The Shape of Our Dreams.
The joy of scarves in kinder!
- Name
- Chelsea Branch
- Position
- Dance & Yoga Teacher, Restorative Practitioner
- clbranch@cps.edu
- Other
- [email protected]
