Joy Friedlander.

"Dance is a strong means of teaching anything, no matter the subject," says the National Dance Association K-12 Dance Educator of the Year, Joy Friedlander. "Our culture thinks of dance as fun--which it is--but it's also an educational pursuit."

In addition to seeing nearly 150 students a day as a dance instructor at the Philadelphia High School for Girls, Friedlander has also helped draft dance education standards for the state of Pennsylvania and a dance curriculum for Philadelphia schools. "Often, phys ed teachers teach dance without the proper background and qualifications, and sometimes schools drop it altogether," Friedlander says. "Now there'll be universities training dancers as teachers."

Prior to her current position, Friedlander, a native of Silver Spring, Maryland, taught at the Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre high school program, and Duquesne University. All along she's believed in incorporating dance history, aesthetics, and criticism into her technique classes. "My classes are student-centered, not command-style," she says. She holds degrees from Temple University and the University of California, Irvine, and wrote her thesis on dance curriculum reform.

Friedlander says Pennsylvania is nearing her vision for the ideal dance curriculum, though there's room for improvement. "I don't think we're more advanced than other states. Until this year I would have said we were lagging. Now things are definitely turning around."