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2/19/2018

Adventures in Teaching

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I’ve been teaching since I was a young teenager. Really! Hard to believe, I know, but I started assisting in ballet classes as a young teenager and then, once I had my license, I would sub at my ballet studio and at other dance studios for Miss Gail, when she couldn’t make it. I had no idea what I was doing. I just took the vinyl class albums she gave me and went on my way and figured it out as I went along. I have no idea where I got the confidence to do that. The beauty of youth! I just didn’t know any better. I didn’t doubt myself. I didn’t worry what other people thought about me. I just did it, like a famous sneaker ad says.

Once I went to college, I quickly fell into Teaching Assistance positions and again was called on to sub in classes I had no business teaching. Step aerobics! What?! I was a ballet dancer, in a college modern (avant garde) dance company. I had taken a handful of aerobic classes in my entire life, but there I was…”Up, up, down, down, Reverse”.  I also taught adult beginner ballet classes. I was 19 years old and teaching people much older than I was. Daunting, but by then, I had my own vinyl albums! I no longer had to borrow them from my teacher. I kept a notebook with combinations in it. I planned every class to the very last moment, when we did reverence. I could do a ballet class in my sleep, but I still felt like I needed a plan. As the years went by, and I started teaching children in studios, I still made a class plan and prepared my choreography, but more and more I was able to “fly by the seat of my pants”. Now I have a monthly outline of what we need to cover and just make it happen. I know what they know already, what they need work on, and what can wait until they are older. That’s what over 30 year’s experience, and 10 years in one studio, gives you—ease and relaxation.

My point is that it took years (decades?) of experience for me to reach this point of comfort teaching ballet, of knowing my students and knowing my material, that I can do it easily, in my selected genre of ballet. I could not walk into a jazz class and teach with confidence, even though I took those classes for years. When I was called in to sub an adult intermediate jazz class for one of my favorite teachers and mentors, when I was in my late 20’s, I was initially crippled by a lack of confidence and scared to death of what the other students thought about me. They were very kind and when I lost my place in the standard warm-up (that I knew cold when I was taking class), I could count on one of them to give me a hint what came next, but it was shattering. I no longer had the same cool self-confident poise that I had as a teenager. What happened to me? What happened to that super confident young girl who could teach anything and barely think twice about it?

In my 40’s, it took me about 5 years and 2 Black Belts to get to this point of comfort with teaching karate, but that comfort only lies within my specialty of the novice belts. I cringe at the idea of teaching an entire class. I thrive on spending one on one time teaching basics and love coaching individual students as they work their way into the group classes.

​As I look toward my 50’s, I once again had to dig deep and find the confidence to take on a new genre to teach-Yoga. I had been doing yoga in one way, shape, or form for close to 30 years. I had been incorporating it into my teaching in small ways, from the way I coached people through stretching, to special classes that I taught my ballet kids as a reward after enduring long competition weekends. But walking into my first Teacher Training class was one of the scariest moments of my life. I had tons of teaching experience, so I was putting pressure on myself that it should be easy for me. I was projecting on my instructor and classmates, that they expected me to be good at it. I didn’t know any of them, and they didn’t know me. Our first weekend together, we were taught some poses and had to turn around and teach each other. “Oh My God!! I can’t do this!” I really thought this a few times. But, I reflected back on my teenage self and realized, I can do this. I can do anything. These people were also here to learn, not to judge me. By the final weekend of assessments I felt completely at ease in front of them, these friends who I had grown to love. It will be years before I have the same effortlessness teaching yoga, as I do with ballet, but I am so looking forward to the journey and finding my new, older, just as confident as a teenager, self.

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