Correcting Students

I have had 4 different teachers in 4 different dance styles. Each of them seemed to have a different philosophy on how and when to correct students. When I started teaching I had to decide how I would approach correction.

My first instructor was my ballet teacher. I was with her for 11 years and became quite accustomed to her style of teaching. She nitpicked at every little thing. She would occasionally physically intervene to help you, but mostly it was verbal corrections.

After I stopped ballet, I tried out some modern dance. This teacher was completely the opposite. She never corrected. Her style was about having fun. She was a very good dancer herself and still teaches in the Western Cape, but I found the lack of instruction so contradictory to what I'd become accustomed to that I lost interest.

I had a break from dancing but inevitably craved the movement. I started contemporary. This teacher was only slightly older than me and I had known her since I was a little ballerina. She had always been two levels ahead of me at the same ballet studio and she danced with my sister at the same contemporary studio as well. Her style was hands on. She had no problem physically correcting you at every step of the way. I learnt a lot in the short time I was with her.

Then I started belly dancing. This teacher was different yet again. She would always make a correction to everyone. She'd never say who was doing something wrong, she'd just lay out a general statement to everyone. This did not work for me. I got the teaching assistant to tell me what I was doing wrong. She agreed with me that it was confusing and infuriating to never get individual instruction but assured me that it was because our teacher was overly diplomatic and didn't want anyone to feel badly about themselves.

When I started teaching (giving classes for my teacher when she was ill) I was faced with a dilemma. How do I teach? Do I single people out? Do I physically correct? Do I diplomatically give everyone the same instruction and risk some over compensating? Or do I not care and make the class just about having fun?

Everyone seemed to be happy with the way I taught, BUT (there's always a big but) not everyone was happy. My sense of humour was not funny to everyone; the times I tried to help individuals quietly during an exercise was seen to be rude; when I tried the general correction, they were wondering who I was really talking to (just as I had); and when I tried to make the class fun, they thought I didn't care. I was only told this at the beginning of the following year when I started teaching my own classes. I suddenly felt very self-aware, worried that every thing I said may offend or displease someone.

Skip forward to a 2014...

I became more comfortable in my abilities and had found my own rhythm to teaching. I thought I'd found a good balance between correction, praise and fun. BUT (there's that word again) a handful of students didn't like me. They thought I was mean and scary. I found out via the grapevine and decided I had to reevaluate how I was doing things. I spoke to all the students about why I correct and the importance of correction, that I was doing it not to be mean but rather to avoid injury and make them the best dancer they can been, and I would never give them something I didn't think they were capable of. Some of the students responded positively to my talk, saying that once they got to know me then I wasn't so scary. But (yet again) others saw it differently. I won't go into details about how that ended (badly), but it transformed how I do everything. I make sure that praise for hard work always follows correction. I try to explain my reasons for correction thoroughly so the student doesn't think I'm just nitpicking at them. I admit my own faults that need correction, explaining how I struggle/d with certain movements or muscles, and how I overcame or am overcoming these difficulties.

Two things that definitely helped me reimagine my correction techniques are the lay-counselling course I took last year and being a mom of 2 very strong willed children. These taught me that praise is important (I had experienced much praise in my dancing career and I find I crave it now), correction must be explained and not just given (we don't throw things vs if you throw your toys as they might break or they could hit someone and hurt them), and everyone has something veiling their view of the world and you are part of that world (words can be interpreted in many ways depending on culture, mood of the person and their experiences in there life).

On a side note, it is always important to ask your students if you can physically correct them. Some people don't want to be touched and every person should have autonomy over their body. I still ask the students that I'm closest too if I can physically correct them.

I'll end with a funny story from a few weeks ago: One of our advanced students was leaning back in her pelvis and as much as I tried to get her to pull up, she wasn't getting it. I asked if I could physically correct her. I was trying to gently pull her out of the hips and lower back, when I accidentally put my one hands in a rather inappropriate place. The look on her face was priceless and my extreme apologises were hilarious to everyone else. We were able to laugh about it and still make jokes about it in class, but if it hadn't been a dancer that I was close with it would have been a very different story! Moral of the story - always be mindful of where your hands are!