This morning’s discussion group had a focus
loosely around Knowledge and learning which also brought us to talking about
reflection, the significances of experience, longevity of teaching, and the
fluidity of knowledge.
I was interested in the space’ between our perception
of our own learning (where we are the learner and how we expect the learning
experience to feel, what we expect teaching to look like) and our perception of
our students learning (where we are the teacher what we expect our students of
absorb from our teaching and how we expect it to be absorbed).
Is there a disconnect between these two
perceived roles? How does one inform the other? Is our idea of how we expect to
learn different from how we expect our students to learn?
I often think about how much I am asking of
my students (particularly beginners) to put themselves in situations where they
do not know how to do something or it feels impossible. When I take a yoga
class I also sometimes feel it will be impossible to do – or I don’t know how I
will even have the energy to stand up to do it – I make myself remember and
recognise that feeling of impossibility and trust in ‘just doing one step at a
time’. This gives me more inspiration in my own practice because I see my own
feeling of overwhelm and subsequent pushing through it as a reminder of what it
feels like to be learning. I do not like to ask my students to engage in a
feeling that I am no longer familiar with myself.
In the PM group we talked about different ideas that people were toying with within their practices. See comments for links to blog posts on this. We also noticed that you might respond quite differently to an idea when you have your Professional Hat on (such as dance teacher) from when you have your Student Hat on. The interest is again in how you inhabit a space between these roles. How you bring together these knowledges and experiences to support the exploration of new ideas, new learning.
Have a look at the comments below to link
into what other people in the conversation felt…
Also, please comment below if you were not
in the conversation to keep the topic going.
https://someofdavesdancebrain.blogspot.com/
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for today’s lovely discussion! For me it was an extremely useful session as I ease into my studies. My comments are further explained on my blog too: https://marianelladesanti.blogspot.com/2018/09/on-knowing-and-learning.html
ReplyDeletehttps://marianelladesanti.blogspot.com/2018/09/on-knowing-and-learning.html
DeleteHi, thought triggering discussion this morning, on many levels.
ReplyDeletehttps://krabumbel.blogspot.com
Here is my blog, I will post it again on if there is a PM summary.
ReplyDeletehttps://someofdavesdancebrain.blogspot.com/
Hi guys I will be posting on my blog more about last nights Skype discussion. I would love for you to check out my blog so far thanks Tara
ReplyDeletehttps://warburtontara.blogspot.com/?m=1
Thoughts in general and on our skype yesterday:
ReplyDeletehttps://hannahlindsaymapp.blogspot.com/2018/10/research-week-1.html
Great talking with you all!
The two personalities of teacher/performer can contradict each other. Early teaching years despite feeling empathy for the children I was also preoccupied in how I came across and keen to impress as a performer learns to be in a competitive environment. I is only as you become older and much uglier that you don't care so much about the external image and other things such as the well-being of each of the children become far more important. You can see a bigger picture. It is worth reflecting on how a class must feel from a starting point and perspective of a young child and putting your 'self' to one side while considering them. Perhaps you can only do that when you have stopped wanting to be a performer looking for approval and you've started wanting to be a teacher for the right reasons.
ReplyDeleteI'd also agree with this in my early days of teaching id 'worry about how I was being perceived and seen its only with experience (and age helps) that I've become less concerned with this.
DeleteThis is something I've noticed from observations whilst carrying out I inquiry research, I've observed some younger teachers who id say 'gave' a lesson. I.e. I say you do. Then performed full out each time now yes it's important for students to aspire and visualise how the choreography/exercise should be. I couldn't help but think what the students were getting from it and looking at some less experience even more so!
As Adesola suggest I believe it's important to build trust and take one step at a time as rapport and student teacher interaction to allow them to develop and engage in a safe environment.
I think you both have a great point - when I started teaching little ones as a side job to performing work, I was constantly thinking about how I looked and appeared, not fully losing myself in the teaching of the children. Now I am not performing and I'm fully committed to teaching 16-18 year olds, I'm not bothered about what they 'think' of me, I don't try to wear a special outfit or do my hair - I simply arrive and aim to give them an amazing experience whilst I'm teaching them. And yes of course its good to demonstrate technique but its important for them to be able to sense in their own bodies whether they are doing a step correctly or not. That sense of self will lead them to have confidence in their technique, style and performance, rather than trying to just copy the teacher all the time. I think as well for me giving the students a chance to explore movement themselves without demonstrating all the time and going full out each time builds sense of respect between students and teacher as they are aware you are 100% committed to teaching them and improving their skills.
DeleteI disagree with this train of thought. My own experiences and the experiences of a few of my colleagues teach me otherwise. In my own experience I started the bulk of my teaching after a life altering injury left me in a wheel chair, and unable to demonstrate, or even look like a dancer. I felt ashamed of myself because I always would compare myself to myself as a dancer. Some of my colleagues never reached a high level of dancing themselves so they never felt proud enough of their dancing abilities to consider demonstration as a way of transferring knowledge. So from these ideas, I feel as though age isn't the main factor in how one decides how to transfer information from teacher to student. I would suggest that the factor(s) be: necessity, experience, and circumstance. I have t run my kid is screaming agaaaaaiiiinnn...
DeleteOh and also if you can teach these principles to your learners then they can also find the autonomy to dance without feeling continually judged by how they look, but respected for who they are.
ReplyDeleteBack. Teaching and performing are not contradictories, they are different professions, and anyone who thinks that a performer should be a teacher should not be a teacher. However if you attain a high level of a specific skill, and then learn how to teach it, and are highly interested and in love with the teaching as well as the craft, then your students will probably(based on historical accounts) attain a higher level of the perceived craft than those students that learned from a teacher of whom only a mediocre level of the craft was achieved.
ReplyDeleteNo disrespect but I am a performer and a teacher. I perform when I teach and I teach when I perform (T.I.E) but when teaching I have an audience who must be allowed to make their own ideas count that’s what I mean! The teaching hat feels different now.
Deletethere is truth in that, but there is a still a large difference in my opinion between the performance done in education, or even a religious service and the performance done for artistic indulgence,
Deletethis is all only my opinion based on my experience, culture, history, and ideologies, that are continually adapting. I would like to see how I think about this idea in a year or so.....
ReplyDeleteThat's a really interesting train of thought. I think you are right in saying teaching and performing are not contradictory, but I slightly disagree with level of dance practice a teacher attained = better teaching for students. I agree that teachers who can demonstrate efficiently and correctly will help students visualise and understand a movement and the mechanisms behind it, however the greatest dancer in the world may not be as good a teacher as a slightly more average dancer who is an excellent teacher. For me, teaching skills lie in the quality of transferring knowledge, be that as a visual demonstration or oral instruction, there is more to teaching that providing an excellent demonstration. Teachers need to treat students as individuals, and importantly for me in the performing arts sector is to keep confidence high and not belittle students training, as this can lead to future confidence issues if they head out into the performing world. We need to adapt to different learning styles and allow students to be creative and learn and grow from the inside as well. I think maybe the point we were getting at is sometimes if teachers are still performing the teaching can (not strictly speaking - I know plenty of performing teachers who don't do this) become a little selfish and not prioritise student learning and more prioritise what they want to practice. As I said - this isn't the case with all and I would hate to assume that it was. I was thinking as well, it also depends on who we are teaching - if we are training students professionally before they head out for auditions, that would be very different to teaching specialist populations (such as people with disabilities, young children or older adults) as they would have different learning outcomes to the students who were being trained for professional work. Their learning outcome might be - to be the best dancer I can be/in the world/get that job, etc. However for someone working with a disability or mobility issue it may be something more simple such as to be included, to feel less pain in the body, to make friends. I have done a lot of community dance work with specialist populations and from my experience they are not phased by a visualisation of a movement, but more the experience of the class as a whole. What are your thoughts on this? My thoughts are even changing as I write this and I love hearing everyone's different opinions on these ideas!
DeleteThose are very valid points I wasn't saying that just because someone is a good dancer they will be a good teacher, I have found based upon my experiences that the contrary is more frequently the case. There are rare cases though that you get an excellent dancer, and an excellent teacher in one person. IK have found that these individuals tend to far outshine even the most well thought teachers. again this is only based upon my experience, and many books that I have encountered.
DeleteI am also an advocate for learning as an individual journey. And teachers need to realize that. I also agree with the idea that there are too many teachers who are not yet ready to vacate the performer occupation, and enter the teaching occupation, this leads to damaged egos, taking out their personal battles on the students in the classes. Which is unfortunate. however until the public is more educated on different standards it will remain a problem in my opinion.
It would be so much better chatting over a coffee!
DeleteI love these debates, they so represent how we love to do what we do and how important it is to us!
The frustrated performer? The failed performer turns to teaching? The failed performer that turns to teaching and resents the talented learner? Yes, these situations are all too familiar and a great concern. So many occasions I have heard of teachers knocking their students down in order for them to bounce back up again. I would prefer to see a build of praise, encouragement and self-esteem and a business grown by support and nurturing. Is this idealism, says the cynic?
Well I was unable to join the conversation on sunday as I have been gripped by nora virus-very unpleasant. But from comments here I can see that I really missed a good discussion. My own opinion is that a great dancer does not automatically make a great teacher-in fact often the reverse, when dancers with a facility that finds the craft easy have no conception of why anyone should find it hard. There is also the issue of of ageing body-besides my own which has various age related aliments, this summer I was privileged to be taught by Dr Ross (formerly head at Rambert) His body no longer moves in a coordinated way due to 2 hip replacements and a knee replacement. He did use a beautiful young demonstrator to show his work, but I learnt far more from his immense knowledge and experience of his 40 plus years teaching than I did from watching this beautiful young mobile and extremely talented dancer. I total disagree with any notion of having to be an amazing dancer to teach. World ballet day yesterday had an elderly teacher taking class from the royal ballet school , not trying to out shine or belittle her pupils but giving gems of insight to individuals among a sea of motivation and a structure class of delightful enchainments of a very advanced level. No doubt at some pint this lady had been an amazing dancer, but nothing portrayed that other than her knowledge sharing and care of her students.
DeleteThat's a great experience to share. I think the whole topic of the experience = knowledge is so personal to everyone and on an individual level if someone as you say has no recollection of finding dance hard, they may be frustrated when they have students with less facility. On the other hand a teacher who struggled with training and perhaps struggled in the outside performing world may then want to 'protect' their students from this sometimes cruel environment, and not push them as hard as the other teacher, but they may be more nurturing. This is an example!!!! Not saying at all this has even happened anywhere in the world, just trying to look at individual perception and how our individual experience turned to knowledge provides us with all these different strands of thought, and equally brings different qualities to the classroom when teaching students. Whats great about dance teaching is there are many of us, with different skills, qualities, teaching styles, personalities and priorities. And I know as a previous student in training I have experienced teachers with massive egos, teachers who were cruel, teachers who believed in me, teachers who were tired and taught the same lesson again and again. And although if you asked me to pick a favourite teacher I could, through the years I have realised all these different types of teachers have taught me something anyway. Some have taught be that I DON'T want to be a teacher like them, some have taught me patience and respect for traditional Ballet technique, some have just simply taught me that teachers can sometimes be big fish in little ponds. So full circle back to the original topic - maybe it doesn't matter on a higher plane what we each think to whether an excellent dancer is a better teacher or not. (we each have our individual idea as to what we believe, which we've gained from our individual experience. Which then becomes our knowledge.)
DeleteEvery teacher will be an individual just as every student is an individual and they will learn in different ways. So some students may want to aspire to and copy the teacher, some students may relish in those little 'gems' of knowledge, some students enjoy being taught be someone mean who shouts at them constantly because it ignites something in them.
What I'm trying to say is that there is no right or wrong because we are not the people deciding it, the students are, and they are each experiencing a teacher's teaching in their own perception of reality too, so the experience for both a teacher and a student becomes highly individual. One student could class a teacher as excellent and another student pick an entirely different type of teacher as excellent. Does that make sense? My brain is swirling around with all these thoughts so apologies if it makes little sense, it kind of does to me :)
Of course demonstrating is performing and good demonstration provides technique and style for the child to aspire to and this is important. However my argument was based more on the mindset of a teacher feeling the need to impress which as a young teacher I did and enjoyed showing off my skill but this has altered with experience and now I believe more progress can be made when changing the focus of a class to not just dance like you but to learn their own way of listening to themselves and to develop as a person not just wanting to be like someone else but to be able to be them self. I don’t think a teacher who does this has forgotten how to ‘perform’ but has a slightly different hat on. Communication does differ depending on the age and group dynamics but I believe instead of compartmentalising groups and defining them in categories we can just look at case by case and individual requirements to suit. I just wanted to share my own early experience as a young teacher at age of 20yrs to that of teacher now at 51yrs eek! Even profession dancers gain from empathy, thinking from the inside-out comes across these things are so important not just external interpretations based on perfect form and technique.
ReplyDeleteYes I agree - its lovely to hear your early experience too! I like your point on changing the focus to internal learning rather than copying - I think that's a really lovely way to look at things, not only can it be good for students to give them a sense of themselves and their body, but also to grow internally as a dance practitioner in whatever shape or form that takes. I think as well going back to knowledge and experience drawing from each other, its interesting to see we all have different teaching experiences, and therefore have processed these different experiences as knowledge for us in our individual perception of the world.
DeleteA quick hello. Haven't had time to read anything yet. Rhoda
ReplyDeleteHere are some of the notes I took from the Sunday 30th PM discussion - http://dilinikandyandance.blogspot.com/2018/10/knowing-and-learning.html - feel free to have a read (especially the AM callers)
ReplyDeleteMy post will be available on the same site soon!
Having read all the above, I believe I am now obliged to comment. I am a singer who started performing, singing and dancing, as a child at the end of the 60s. I started teaching after being a parent for some time, so I think my approach is informed by that, especially when teaching young people. I have had some singing lessons, but my professional experience is far more useful. That was informed by one of my dance teachers and a drama teacher. I now mostly teach people who use Mental Health services. However, my attitude is always the same; music is work and the harder you work, the more fun you will have. My job is not to teach students to sing, rather how to work with the music and musicians. When to step back and when to join in. I draw a good performance out of them. Not by showing them how it's done, but by tips and encouragement. I almost never demonstrate. A person's voice is so intrinsic to who they are, that unless you're dealing with someone experienced who wants critiquing, you can easily alienate or destroy confidence. Carrot not stick. Honey not vinegar. I expect people to work hard and strive to be the best they can. The performance is about them. I get my own stage elsewhere.
ReplyDeletehttps://elizabethlintzerakou.blogspot.com/2018/10/knowledge-and-learning-today-i.html
ReplyDeletehttps://dilinikandyandance.blogspot.com/2018/10/better-late-than-never.html
ReplyDelete