Wednesday, June 12, 2013

A Good Teacher Is An Improving Dancer

Many teachers are teachers because they are great dancers. Few teachers are teachers because they are great at teaching. If you are reading this blog, you probably count more into the second or at least want to become part of the second group. But great teaching alone doesn't cut it. Throughout all articles on this blog I advocate to do what you say. This applies to demonstrating at the same time as explaining, this applies to failing, and something we rarely talk about, the most basic aspect of teaching - continuing to progress. Here are three tips that helped me:

1. Train!

As simple as that - you teach your students to improve themselves and tell them to train. Get yourself access to a floor with a mirror on the wall and train!

2. Train with focus!

Just because my time for training is not all day, unlike before, I feel like I don't have time to waste, and thus train with goal. Train for a show, repeat class or workshop material or do the Total Swing Experience series. Training with a goal has drastically improved the quality and results of my training and I promise you will feel it too!

3. Train regularly!

A bit more than a year ago, I trained about monthly (hardly ever) - now I train a couple of times during the week. Together with training towards a goal, this makes training powerful!

As nice side effect to improving you will be more believable and motivating for your students.

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