Physical education teacher Bridget Taylor has been teaching dance at PCHS for 13 years. Taylor started dancing at age three, going on to receive a double concentration degree from Eastern Illinois University in PE and English with a minor in dance. She taught English at the middle school level for five years before becoming a high school dance teacher.
“It was probably 2004, and I was friends with Mrs. Giorgetti because we had taught together at Timber Ridge and at Drauden Point, and she had come to the high school first and told me they had a dance teacher position at the high school, and I thought that it would be perfect,” Taylor said. “I had been teaching language arts for five years and had no idea that the high school had a dance teacher position.”
Since then, she has spent years teaching students to appreciate dance and create a passion for it just as she did when she was her students’ age. Some of her favorite styles of dance are salsa, contemporary, and bachata.
“When I was a teenager, I did ballet, jazz, hip hop, and character; then, in college, I got more into modern dance and contemporary, then after college is when I got into salsa and ballroom,”
To add onto Taylor’s dance repertoire, she also competed throughout her teen and college years.
“When I was in high school, I did a lot of competitions. I was in what we call a dance repertory theater in college. It was more like a conservatory program versus competition, and I’ve done ballroom competitions.”
Beyond teaching just dance classes, Taylor puts her passion for dance into her family and friends.
“I’ve choreographed first dances for friends’ weddings and seen them on the dance floor at their wedding make it happen. It’s such a cool experience,”
On top of teaching dance, Taylor currently owns Tall Pines Camp in Perrault Falls, in Ontario Canada with her husband Ryan. When she’s not teaching over the summer, she runs the camp, which offers cabin lodging, fishing, boating and water activities. Taylor also teaches classes such as yoga on the boat docks. Taylor even went on to design the entire website for the camp, which she learned to do from online classes.
“When I started teaching the recreational activities class, I started teaching fishing, which I became very passionate about. My husband is an avid fisherman, so because of that he went to the camp as a birthday gift with a bunch of guys and found out [Tall Pines] was for sale and approached me about it. [Buying the camp] was the next step in our journey.”
Taylor plans to continue teaching the dance classes as long as students have a desire for the class. According to Taylor when she first joined the program, they had over 100 students, which has dwindled own to 13 with only one class period. This is the first year there won’t be an annual dance show, which showcased the dance classes along with other dance clubs in the school.
Taylor hopes more students will join the class in upcoming years.
“Success doesn’t come easy; you’ve got to work for it. You’ve got to put in the effort and perseverance, and don’t expect people to hand you things in life, you have to work for it,” Taylor said.