DEL Lab Schools Feature: Dr. Katrina Brown-Aliffi
We’re continuing to spotlight our 2024 DEL Lab Schools recipients. Join us in celebrating Dr. Katrina Brown-Aliffi!
Dr. Katrina Brown-Aliffi (MS, MA, EdD) is a dance educator at Harlem Prep High School and has been teaching within the Democracy Prep Public Schools network since 2017.
Brown-Aliffi is also a recent 2024 graduate of the Dance Education doctoral program at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research interests include:
- arts and dance education in charter schools
- context-specific pedagogical practices
- professional development for arts educators
- equitable access to high-quality arts programming in public schools and across school sectors
Brown-Aliffi earned a BA in Human Development and Family Studies from Samford University in 2013, an MS in General and Special Education from Touro College in 2014, and an MA in Dance Education from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2019.
Brown-Aliffi and her students at Democracy Prep Public Schools
At Democracy Prep Public Schools, Brown-Aliffi works with students in grades 6–12.
Since 2017, her students have:
- Produced 10+ school-level performances
- Performed several times for the entire school network
- Partnered with local senior centers on an intergenerational learning project
- Choreographed and taught a dance to advocate for school choice during National School Choice Week 2021
- Participated in a dance film by Theresa Lavington, as a peaceful protest to honor all Black lives lost to racist acts and police brutality
She has also created a Dance Teaching Assistant (TA) leadership development program and expanded her curriculum from Dance I-III to include a Dance IV — a course encompassing instructional strategies, curriculum, and assessment that seniors can apply in assisting with a Dance I/II class.
Brown-Aliffi’s students at Democracy Prep Public Schools
We asked Katrina to answer the following questions:
A. What is one of the biggest learnings or takeaways that has stuck with you from a DEL Course/Workshop?
Taking DEL Fundamentals, DEL Zoom Choreography, and DEL FIT reminded me how truly accessible and inclusive high-quality dance education can be. Specifically, I love the idea that anyone can create a “juicy” movement sentence and further explore what they’ve created. I am continually reflecting on how to honor my students’ embodied knowledge, and I appreciate that the DEL Model doesn’t emphasize a hierarchy of dance genres but rather allows the content to be applied across contexts.
B. How do you apply the DEL Model in your teaching environment? Tell us more about how you use what you’ve learned from DEL in your real life.
My approach to dance education is grounded in collaboration and context-specificity. Often, we start the semester with an inquiry-based “Dance Around the World” research project that invites students to become travelers within our own classroom. I find that inquiry-based projects intersect well with DEL’s emphasis on exploration, and I have found many authentic overlaps between our projects and the DEL Model.
Additionally, I appreciate the opportunity to engage students in dancemaking activities that are community-based, such as our intergenerational learning project, when students interviewed elders at a local senior center and collaborated to create movement phrases inspired by their lived stories.
C. At the center of the DEL Model is the Teacher’s Heart, which represents the core artistic and philosophical values and beliefs of every dance educator. Katrina shared:
Without a doubt, my Teachers’ Heart is at the center of my work. Yet, I would also say that my students’ hearts, interests, and dreams are equally important and help me to apply the DEL Model principles to lesson and curriculum design, culturally responsive pedagogy, inspired and inclusive teaching, and artistry and dancemaking. Specifically, I value hearing from my students and their families, and I spend the first month of each semester on a “listening tour,” calling the families of every student I teach and scheduling “mini-interviews” with the students themselves to listen and learn about their goals for dance education programming at school.
Beyond this, I am extremely confident in the powerful role of dance in helping students to express and motivate themselves, to critically think and create, and to work and collaborate with others. I hold an uncompromising view that all students can learn and reach their fullest potential if given a structured, positive, student-centered learning atmosphere that welcomes exploration, encourages inclusive participation in dance and the arts, and reinforces confidence and critical thinking.