22 - Leading With Kind Authority As A Dance Educator

One of the biggest things that I've learned over the course of my teaching career is to be excitedly expectant.

And what I mean by that is to communicate expectations and then be excited to watch the students work.

A big mistake that I made in my early days of teaching was, one, failing to effectively communicate expectations because I didn't want to come off, quote, too harsh.

And I don't even know what I was so afraid of because not communicating expectations just had the opposite effect.

And I felt like my students failed.

didn't respect me when in reality, I think they were just confused by what I expected of them.

And I hadn't laid out my authority appropriately, which sometimes just comes with age and experience.

So then I had to learn to pivot and lay out expectations clearly, but do so in an excited way.

And to me, that really gave off this energy too of kindness and joy.

So for example, after giving a combination and maybe reviewing a concept that we've been discussing in class, I'll communicate what I'd like to see happen and then express that I'm excited to see the students apply it.

Not in a way that's intended to place unnecessary pressure on them or that I'm looking for perfection in any type of way.

I don't even like to use that word in my instruction, but sort of in a curious, excited way.

Like, how can we take the X element that we just discussed and apply it to Y? Let's try.

And it opens the space for the students to explore something that they know you are challenging them to embody, but to go about it in a way that is exciting and curiosity-driven.

Like, let's try this.

Let's apply this.

So, for example, just yesterday I was teaching a ballet class that I was – A little thrown off by just because it wasn't quite the class I prepared for.

It ended up being a little bit more mixed level, drop in style than I was expecting.

And there was a great variety of age and skill level in the class.

And I needed to shift a little bit.

And we were doing a really simple pirouette combination across the floor.

I knew that I had some who had a lot more practice than others.

So I picked one main concept for them to focus on that got them excited to try because there were so many things that I could have talked about.

But I just picked one thing.

And it was about using their plie and sort of like building up the potential energy at the bottom.