Diane Rawlinson

Diane has been the dance teacher at Wheeling High School in Illinois since 1991, retiring in 2021 after a 30 year career at Wheeling. In addition to presenting yoga and Somatics practices to her curricular dance classes, she has been teaching a semester long yoga course for high school students as part of the Physical Education curriculum since 2011. The course is now available at other district schools. She holds a BS in Dance Education from Ohio State University and an MFA in Performance and Choreography from UW- Madison with a minor in Arts Administration. She has served on the dance faculties at the University of Akron, Northwestern University, and University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. As a contributing editor/writer/advisory board member for Dance Spirit and Dance Teacher Magazine (NYC) since 1997, she has had over 100 articles published related to dance, community outreach, curriculum, and teaching practices. She was a finalist for the NDA National Dance Educator and a 2007 UW- Madison School of Education distinguished alumni award recipient. In 2014 Ms. Rawlinson received Chicago’s Ruth Page Award winner at the Auditorium Theatre for her work as an educator, advocate, and mentor. Fall of 2019 Ms. Rawlinson received the Meritorious Award Designation for Illinois Teacher of the year. Diane has presented yoga and somatics based workshops at state and national festivals in addition to teacher training and mentoring for dance educators in partnership with a number of universities and professional companies and organizations. She has been a student teacher cooperating teacher for 7 different student teachers (from 4 different universities) with their mentoring experiences lasting from 8-15 weeks, teaching 4-5 classes a day. In retirement she served as Adjunct Faculty at Loyola University mentoring 15 different candidates in the Chicago Public School Dance and Physical Education Masters in Education candidates. She continues to mentor new and experienced teachers in dance, yoga, grant writing, and performing arts organization development and practices. In addition to her 300 Hour E-RYT status..Diane has additional certification in: Restorative Yoga, Kids Yoga, Meditation and Breathwork and Yin Yoga,