Every one knows that I had been a full time school teacher for years before I started teaching dancing as a part time job ten years ago. The first day I taught dancing I already knew that a Dance teacher is not an easy career. Yes, and I say it a career not just a job.
I had known how teaching should be, and although I am not teaching in a classroom setting anymore, the teaching strategies, learning theories I had been learning and/or using for years had already been imprinted in my conscious. Therefore, during the teaching of dancing, I tended to apply my teaching skills. And I really had to say, my degrees really help no matter what I am about to teach.
As a school teacher, the subjects are students that must attend school and that they must follow the school rules. As a Dance teacher, the subjects do not necessarily need to learn dancing, they register because they feel like they want to have a try and if it turns out not a thing they can manage nor do they really like it as a hobby, they can quit, and they can quit anytime even it is the middle of the course. As a result, a Dance teacher need to concern more on the learning motions, learning process so as to retain the students.
No long after being a Dance teacher, I had already got the idea how to retain at least half of the class. That is, to adjust my expectation. Being a competition dancer myself, I always had high standard for myself and from my coach, and I did not often find moves or actions hard to execute, although I put in quite a lot of effort in practicing basic technique I never found it boring to do so. However, I needed to separate my own experience of learning dancing from my students' learning because they would never be me. I had to stop expecting my students to be enjoying doing just the basic technique just like I did.
Unlike the school students, they more or less share some common learning motive, which is to get good results and satisfy their parents & teachers (well I know that is not a healthy educational goal but in Hong Kong, yes, it has been so and it is still so). Dance students seldom have a common motive. Most of them want to have a hobby but do not know what it should be and so they keep trying different things. Some of them want to flaunt in their best dancing dresses but they do not want to pay effort to practice. Some of them want to make friends and wherever they can find the sense of belonging, they will stay. Some of them want to kill time, because they feel rather bored after retiring from job. People have many different reasons that drive them to the dance floor, so it is too hard for a Dance teacher to identify each of them and deal with it accordingly.
What should I do?
Focus more on the learning process.
What did I actually do?
I just did what I felt right to do. I taught with passion. I believed that my passion for dancing is infectious and people can feel it. But even if not, I would never doubt my ability of dancing and teaching. There was a time I kept reviewing my class and tried to find a way which would be easier for beginners, and well, you know what I found out? Praise them more, appreciate their efforts, assure them that they had done a good job as a complete beginner. That's not much different from a school teacher!
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