teaching

Words, words, words

Hi all – Sorry for the long silence, though as many of you already know, I recently relocated from Boston to the San Francisco Bay Area. This post is one I’ve been meaning to finish up, but my next one – as promised to my students in Boston – will discuss the material I presented in my last classes at Arlington. Appropriately enough, I’m posting this Tuesday night, when I would normally be teaching… I hope you enjoy this blog, and please share it with other dancers! Thanks, Eric

The role of a teacher is not simply to share information, but to ensure that the information is absorbed, processed, and acted upon in the right way. Teaching, then, is all about communication – conveying a message in the appropriate manner so that the audience not only receives the message but understands it as it was intended.

A big part of communications is picking the right language to package and transmit the message. Good teachers know that students are coming into class with a preexisting understanding of the world, with preassigned meanings to certain words or concepts. For instance, students have a preconceived notion of what good posture is, what the word “connection” means, and even what it means to dance. To effectively teach the student, you must first understand what the student knows – and how s/he knows it. This is difficult for experienced dancers, given that they have the curse of knowledge.

Nevertheless, teachers throw around words like “frame” and “posture” and “step” without ever clearly defining what these terms mean in dance. It is particularly important to define terms for which the students may already have a preconceived notion or definition. When you ask a beginner student what he thinks of when he hears the word “frame,” odds are he will think of something like a hard, stiff, outside border. Unfortunately, this is contrary to what the student is aiming to achieve in dance – relaxed, soft arms.

Even worse, I’ve seen great dancers and admired teachers use words like “pull” and “push” to describe how to lead. Not surprisingly, I see the leaders in class use their arms to pull and push their followers through patterns. It’s not what the teacher meant, but because he used the words “pull” and “push,” and because the students already had their own meaning of what those words meant, the students interpreted the teacher in their own way. The result? Arms leads and an uncomfortable follower.

The trouble is that in dance we use certain words or phrases that have a meaning outside of dance, and if the two conflict, it is up to the teacher to help the student understand the meaning in dance – and how it differs from the standard definition. This is critical to the student’s ability to succeed, since how we understand the dance determines what we set out to achieve.

What words or phrases did you struggle with while learning to dance? What terms does your instructor use now that you don’t fully understand? Teachers, how do you ensure that your students understand what you say the way you meant it? What terms do you think teachers should do a better job of explaining to ensure the student learns properly?

Contradiction in terms

It happens more often than it should, to the detriment of the student, that two conflicting pieces of information are presented by two different teachers. This presents the student with a dilemma: in the pursuit of the “right” or “best” way of doing things, which one to choose?

I would argue that these types of conflicts are really simple misunderstandings. Contradictions are often either 1) two different ways of approaching the same fundamental idea, or 2) complementary rather than contradictory, usually a difference between technique and style.

For example, consider the notion of two centers. Skippy Blair is a prominent instructor who has done more than anyone else to create effective teaching tools for important technique and mechanics. Personally, I think she’s fantastic, and I think she has a gift for being able to communicate complex topics into easy-to-apply exercises (though I should note that I don’t always agree with the technique or ideas she teaches).

Skippy teaches that there are two centers: the Center of Mass (CM), located somewhere around the hips, and the Center Point of Balance (CPB), the point from which we move, located higher near the diaphragm. Like any good teacher, she helps the student to understand these concepts through practical exercises.

On the other hand, Mario Robau, an amazing dancer and an incredible teacher with a real gift for breaking things down into information people can readily digest, argues that there’s only one center, since, after all, it’s the center, which logically means there’s only one.

So who’s right?

I would argue that they both are. Mario is technically right: there is only one center to a given object, human or otherwise. And it is from this center that we move. However, we move from our center with forward pitch, meaning that our upper body is set slightly in front of our lower body (this is true both forwards and backwards). Thus, the two center explanation has great value as a teaching tool for people to mentally understand proper posture and pitch and translate it into a physical response. One teacher gave the straight truth, the other gave advice to produce a specific desired outcome. Both are being effective teachers in their own way.

Another seeming contradiction: heel first or toe first when walking forward. From a strictly mechanical perspective, as far as I’m concerned, this is a no-brainer: heel first. Why? Because that is how your body naturally moves, was designed to move, and how your body facilitates forward movement by rolling through the foot.

So why would someone teach toe-first? Simple: styling. Some people think it makes a nicer line to have a straight leg, others may think the music calls for it. The truth is that as long as you’re moving from your center and your feet are underneath you when you transfer weight, it doesn’t really matter whether you go heel first or toe first. They aren’t contradicting – it’s just two different ways of moving, one being the basic mechanics of walking and the other a stylization.

What other contradictions have you come across while learning to dance? Where does there seem to be a contradiction that is really two ways of approaching the same thing? Where does there seem to be a contradiction that is really the difference between fundamental technique and advanced style? Teachers, how do you reconcile the difference when asked about contradictions?

The mystery of frame

(Hi all – Apologies for the silence these past few weeks. My day job was eating up a lot of my time and I had to put this aside. However, I am now back and will post new entries more frequently, at least once or twice a week. Thanks for reading and responding! – Eric)

How many times have you heard an instructor use the word “frame” in a dance class? No doubt, plenty of times.

And how many times have you been told to “maintain your frame” or “don’t break frame” by an instructor? We all have at some time or another.

Now how many times have you heard a dance instructor actually give a definition of the word “frame” in a dance class? Think carefully. My guess is, for most of you, the answer is: never.

Think about what “frame” means to you, then post your best definitions here on this blog. What is the definition you know? What is the definition you use to dance? What is the definition of frame you use to teach? Share your answers here!

The Curse of Knowledge

I recently picked up “Made To Stick” by Chip and Dan Heath. The book explores why and how certain ideas “stick” and others don’t. One of the obstacles they cite to creating simple, sticky messages is the Curse of Knowledge: “Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it…. And it becomes difficult for us to share our knowledge with others, because we can’t readily re-create our listeners’ state of mind.”

I vaguely remember being a non-dancer (it was about a decade ago). I have this faint memory of watching people dancing in a swing class and thinking, “Wow, that’s awesome! I wish I could do that!” but I had no idea what exactly they were doing. I remember too the first time I watched top dancers and could actually identify what they were dancing: a whip variation, a tuck variation, etc. My perspective would never be the same again.

Oftentimes during my dance career I have taken pause – either out of frustration with my own dancing or the scene as a whole – and tried to recall why it is I started doing this crazy dance thing in the first place. I wanted to have fun, to express music with my body, and my objective with each dance was simply to make the follower smile. Ah, those were the days. Of course, with time, my knowledge changed, and with it, my perspective and my objectives. Nothing wrong with that – it’s part of the natural learning curve and evolution of any dancer – but now I have the Curse of Knowledge.

I’ve seen many teachers – usually fantastic dancers who don’t teach regularly but others too – who teach well beyond the level of comprehension of their students: a symptom of the Curse of Knowledge. They are so knowledgeable that they fail to see things from a beginner’s perspective, and they don’t speak in a manner appropriate for beginners. They assume their students have the same knowledge and understanding of the dance that they do and they miss the simple, basic points that the students need to hear and learn most.

We all have the Curse of Knowledge – and the curse cannot be undone: I cannot unlearn something I’ve already learned. Can you remember what it was like to be a beginner? What were your perceptions? What was difficult for you to understand? What do you think are the key ideas and messages teachers should be focusing on for beginners?

Teachers, are you really looking at your lessons from the perspective of your students? Do you get trapped by the Curse of Knowledge? (Don’t we all, sometimes?) How can you reshape your lessons to focus on just one or two simple, key messages in each class?

Raising the bar

I read a quote recently by Pixar co-founder and chief creative officer, John Lasster: “Oftentimes, it feels like Hollywood thinks of the audience as the lowest common denominator,” says Lasseter. “We [Pixar] always think that the audience is so smart they’ll be there for you – especially kids.”

This made me think about the way we teach dance. I find that many teachers – myself included at one time – teach to the lowest common denominator, oftentimes underestimating the interests and abilities of the students. They lower expectations, lower the bar, and lower the meaning of successful dancing. They say, “Oh, they don’t want technique” or “They won’t get it, but oh well” or “It’s okay if they don’t do it right, as long as they have fun.”

Naturally, your first thought is, “Well, but it’s just as bad to go to the other extreme, to raise the bar impossibly high or have unrealistic expectations.” And you would be right. Teachers who teach above the level of the student, who expect students to achieve goals inappropriate for their level, who get lost in technique, or who ignore the needs and interests of the student are just as dangerous. They either don’t care about the student’s progress or else don’t care about the student’s feelings – this is, after all, a hobby for most of us and it should be fun and emotionally rewarding.

What I am advocating is to raise the bar enough to challenge the students and then help them get there. To not teach to the lowest common denominator and abandon the others. To not doubt the ability of the student to do a move properly if shown how to do it. To not assume that the student will not like technique or will not care about doing a pattern correctly. (This last one is a huge one for me: students can understand and feel the difference in doing something correctly, if only you take the time to show them.)

We face many challenges as dance teachers, one of which is often teaching to a wide variety of skill levels in any given class. It is up to the teacher to assess the skill level of the class and determine the appropriate level of class content. In some cases, teachers may have to inform students that they are not yet ready for the given class. (I’ve done this on several occasions, and I have only received “thank you”s for being honest and helpful.) Yet if we as teachers hope to raise the level of dancing in our communities, we need to raise the bar a little and then help our students reach it.

Teachers, do you teach to the lowest common denominator? Do you teach at a level beyond your students?

And students, does your teacher challenge you? Does your teacher help you understand the dance or does your teacher speak way over your head? Does your teacher not seem to care about helping you do the dance properly? What do you want from a teacher, dance or otherwise?