Hi everyone!

I recently applied for a job to teach acro at a studio in my city, Waterloo. The studio is fairly new - appears to be only two or three years old. Small classes, small team, mostly younger dancers. The owner/director seems to be only a few years older than me as it says in her bio that she was Miss Junior Dancefest 1999, so I'm assuming she can't be older than 24 (I'm 21, almost 22). Anyway, the studio does not have an acro program but are looking to build one. I applied for the job. Though I'm not certified in spotting or gym coaching, I have extensive acro and gymnastic experience and continue to train in acro.

Anyway, I was very excited to get a reply almost right away. They explained their situation and said that they would like me to come in and teach a "test class" next Monday. They sent me the ages and experience levels of the dancers, and I'm a bit terrified as the age AND skill range is HUGE. None of them have acro experience, but some have gymnastics experience.

Thus far, joining me will be:
- A six-year-old with no acro or gym experience.
- A seven-year-old with "some" gymnastics experience.
- A nine-year-old with no apparent gym/acro experience.
- An eleven-year-old with no apparent gym/acro experience.
- A twelve-year-old with "a fair bit of" gymnastics experience.
- A fifteen-year-old with "quite a bit of" gymnastics experience.

With such a huge age range, I'm a bit terrified as to which skills I should work on.

I'm going to start the class with a big stretch and try to get people to kick over out of their bridges, and guide the people over who can't. Then I'm going to do a warm-up for hand-stands against the walls that my own acro teacher does with us (it's to strengthen our arms). Then I was thinking to teach the two most basic holds: head stands and shoulder stands. I think it's fairly easy to teach those. Then I'll give dancers the option of trying elbow, chest and handstands, maybe?

For across-the-floor warmups, I'm mostly concerned with making sure everyone can do a PROPER cartwheel - the gymnastics kind, not the dance kind (I DESPISE the kind that dancers do where they just start from the side. FRONT-FACING! GRRR). Then maybe present the OPTION of trying walkovers? I would worry that the younger ones without gymnastics experience would just up and try them and get hurt. So maybe just ask them to bridge-walk?

I also think I should focus on jumps, which I realize aren't so much an acro thing, but my style of acro is very jump-heavy.

What are some universally transferable skills that all age groups and experience levels can adapt to? I'm seriously stuck here.