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Note: Listen to Blues Brothers 'Green Onions' while reading this.

You are nearing that time of the year when there is a performance assessment coming up and you hope you are prepared. To make sure you go through your checklist.

• Do you know the 10 assessment criteria?   Yep
• Have you included evidence that each of the 10 assessment criteria is covered?   Yes 
• Have you been practising regularly?   Sure
• Do you know your performance pieces?   Almost...will do by exam day
• Have you been performance practising?   Yeah...I have been going through my repertoire from top to bottom
• Do you know where the tricky areas are?    Of course, I practise those over and over again

You feel good about your answers, and think, 'that must be a good sign that you're prepared'. 

As the days go by you start to feel a little nervous, and excited over the prospect of completing this assessment. Some days you feel on top of everything, other times you feel a little overwhelmed. You have done so much wor...

Dancing was a big part of my childhood, and I have many albums full of photographs of me in colourful costumes performing with my dance troupe. Almost always at the back, because of my height! Of all those photos, why is this black and white picture so special to me? Simply, because it records a significant moment in my life.

If someone looked at this photo without any back story, what would they see?

They would probably see a happy, young lady, posing somewhat too gracefully for the costume she's wearing, in front of a mirror in a large hall, for a staged photo. They'd see confidence, success and maybe some sort of leader.

They wouldn't see that she had been crying, that her shoes were borrowed just for the photo, because she didn't own those types of expensive shoes, and she had been asked to stand out of the previous photos. They wouldn't see that there's about 10 children from her class and their parents behind the camera, with arms crossed, wondering why her photo was getting t...