on engagement, energy flow, and free thinking in a dance class

I love the experience of teaching a new group of students. My teaching days started in the wild, wonderful world of color guard where turnover is in the nature of the activity. Every season, color guard teams change, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. I’ve become really comfortable meeting new people and learning how to handle myself in the first days of being new. In this, I’ve witnessed the range of energy trajectories a class can take and how some energy lines are seen as more “successful” than others.

What is the sign of a successful dance class? More smiles, eye contact, energy, and spirit in the room? When I think of myself as a younger teacher I remember times I felt discouraged by (and often defensive about) non-enthusiastic student participation or unidentifiable energy flows. I followed avenues of thinking that believed in tough love, hard work, and securing a specific thought as fact. I believed a successful class was one with a slow bubble of discovery-fueled energy, ending in an epiphany of joyful realization. I still love the times that energy flows this way and recognize the lessons of working hard, but lately, I’ve connected to a new cloud of thoughts.

My students do not need to make me feel secure as a teacher. It is not their job to reinforce that I was telling them exactly what they wanted to hear (actually, I suspect that often I am not). I share a helpful thought as clearly as I can but from there, it is out of my control. A droplet of water hits the surface and splash...it is free. For each student, it can, and will, land differently.

Such is the magic of sharing a thought.

A great mentor of mine says we will never really get to know what our students are thinking. Do we need to? Maybe they are the only ones that need to know what they are thinking. The most careful part of my lesson planning is organizing thought-landing through reflection. Due to years of last-minute online discussion boards, the word “reflection” makes me shudder, but I’ve come to see it for the power that it has. Private, dynamic, non-hierarchical reflection is a powerful tool that can make a huge impact on all types of dance education. I emphasize non-hierarchical because I see reflection being used frequently to help dancers realize and fix their movement mistakes. Reflection can also be taking a moment to help our students to notice their own thoughts and feelings.

Dance does and can have codified, intentional, and glorious rules, but there is more to learn than what has already been made. Learning to dance is also learning to move our body freely. Free movers need to be allowed to be free thinkers. Free thinkers need to be able to slow down their thought cloud to understand what is there. Free thinkers need to be unbound from fear of having a wrong thought.

I like to consider the experiences my students may be having, just by reflecting on ways I have felt before as a student. They might have a slow bubble of thinking, they might feel defensive, they might get lost in an experience, they might be distracted, they may not like me, they might feel uncomfortable, they might having something more important going on in their life, they might have a different experience than I wanted them to, maybe even a different experience than would make me feel like I taught a successful lesson. What is happening in the minds of my students is completely out of my control, as it should be. What I am interested in is teaching my students to realize their thoughts so that they can decide where their learning can go. A lesson like this allows them to feel/experience/think any range of things, because the goal is just to bring attention to thought. In this kind of lesson, the energy of the class will flow differently every single time and will not be a reflection of whether or not learning happened.

These are things from my current thought cloud surrounding teaching. I can...

• Create informal time to let them gather themselves

• Create time for them to record their thoughts

• Prioritize their thinking time

• Recognize their energy without needing to change it

• See them as equal people

• Allow them to have unidentical experiences

• Say my thought clearly, not absolutely

• Ask questions without correct answers

• Create an experiment so that they may find the information to be true or false

• Allow them to disagree

• Allow for the possibility that I am wrong

• Accept that I might not see the “ah-ha moment”

• Remember that information sinks in over time. Time can be a matter of minutes, days, months, or years.

• Invite and encourage them to share their thoughts

• Allow them to work in groups of 1, 2, 3, 4+ (not each group needs to be the same size)

• Praise bravery

• Be more empathetic

• Ask them how they feel

• Learn more about them

• Be softer

Reflection, as a tool for clarity, is a valuable new addition to my teaching practice. Through reflection, I help each student learn more about their inner learning experience. By highlighting this experience, I am allowing energy to flow independently in each student instead of driving it through a pathway that seems like success.