LAUREN ALZOS-BENKE
Sunset Park High School
Lauren Alzos-Benke, 9-12
Sunset Park High School
Lauren Alzos-Benke teaches dance with a focus on choreography at Sunset Park High School in Brooklyn. She founded the program in 2009, after 7 years as a foreign language classroom teacher. Lauren believes that every person has a unique way of moving and students in her class discover more about themselves through risky, creative endeavors resulting in original choreography. She has partnered with the Center for Family Life, a community agency in Sunset Park, for 10 years in an afterschool program, Lifelines. In this program, students from the neighborhood create and perform a full-length, original, improvisation-based musical each spring.
Lauren Alzos-Benke (MA Dance Education, New York University, MS Social Work, Fordham University) grew up in Delaware where she was a student at the award-winning Anna Marie Dance Studio from age 3-18. She is the founding dance teacher at Sunset Park High School, where she has been the only dance teacher on staff since 2010. She has created a unique curriculum that includes a required 10th grade class as well as dance electives in Ballet and Choreography. Lauren started her teaching career as a foreign language teacher in Harlem in 2003. Approached by students to start a drama club, she helped them to found an after school club that put on several musicals and plays. A principal who served as her mentor encouraged her to pursue dance teaching and she is grateful that she did. Lauren enrolled in DEL programs to earn her initial certification in dance and got her professional certification through the master’s program in dance education at NYU. Now, combining her background in teaching, social work, and dance, Lauren brings dance to the community of Sunset Park through the high school and a partnership with Center for Family Life in after school hours.