Brynn Ogilvie, born in San Diego, CA and raised in Olympia, WA, has two passions in life: teaching youth and dancing. After graduating from Knox College with her B.A. in Elementary Education and two minors in Japanese Language and Dance, Brynn found a position teaching ballroom dance styles to adults. While teaching ballroom dance, she discovered nonverbal communication through dance and how listening to one another is important to dance gracefully and enjoyably. These concepts, she realized were important to understand as early as possible and wanted to bring that to students that were at a younger period in their life. To get her foot in the door as an educator in Washington, she applied and accepted a position teaching reading at Madison Elementary School through the Washington Reading Corps. For a year, Brynn implemented the nonverbal cues from ballroom dancing into her teaching practices to help students understand reading as well as how to interact with each other effectively. This position, while incredibly fulfilling in her teaching world, did not fulfill her dancing needs. Brynn wanted to teach dancing in public schools to have the best of both worlds but didn’t have the appropriate credentials to do so. That is when she began applying to graduate schools for dance. She was accepted into the M.F.A. program in Performance and Choreography at Mills College and quickly moved down to Oakland, CA to begin a new chapter in her life. Having just finished her M.F.A. program, Brynn is incredibly excited to work as a Support Teacher in Redwood at UMCS and hopes to spread her love of teaching, dancing and community to her students.