After eight years of teaching choreography and combinations, longtime dance teacher Erin Cardinal is hanging up her dance shoes at JHop.

Cardinal, JHop’s Teacher of the Year for 2024-2025, is taking another job closer to her home in Tampa. This is her last week on campus.

In an interview with the JHop Times, Cardinal said family demands played a large role in taking on the new role. However, leaving JHop was not an easy decision as the school has become home.

She said that she will always have the memories that her dancers helped create during her time at JHop.

“Every year watching the eighth-grade show and knowing how they started as sixth graders and the artists they became and seeing their work on stage, those are really always good memories,” she said.

Cardinal said she enjoyed taking students outside of JHop and seeing them collaborate with other dancers, like at a dance workshop in Gainesville.

“Seeing them out with other dancers and exploring the world outside of this building and that was a very wonderful memory,” she said.

Cardinal added that building relationships with her dancers, other teachers, and families gave her the strength to make this move.

Students say that Ms. Cardinal did more than teach dance.

“I’ve had a lot of dance teachers, and I don’t think I ever had one who understood me and actually listened,” seventh-grader Eliza Dunning said.Cardinal also worked hard to help her students believe in themselves.

“She was the best dance teacher I’ve ever had,” seventh-grader Berkeley Anderson said.

“Even I didn’t really understand me as much as Miss Cardinal did because I used to really struggle in the beginning of the year and she really helped me on the things I really needed to focus on.”

Though Cardinal’s time at JHop has come to an end, she said that dance family is forever.

“You’ll always be my home JHop,” Cardinal said. “This school has grown a lot since I’ve been here. I know it’s going to keep growing. I can’t wait to see where it goes onward and upward with Hopkins.”