Thread: Inexperienced teacher????

Hey everyone,

Okay, I admit it. I am TERRIFIED OF RESPONSES from fellow dancers from reading about disgust at a teacher who doesn't have any experience, having read other responses a long time ago. And I get anxiety attacks sometimes thinking about how much I DON'T know. I buy instructional DVDs and have over 15, and I try to learn as much as possible. My flaws as a teacher -I need the money as a college student -but note that I also LOVE the dance, and encourage female sensuality and self-esteem because the college environment can be so tough. I really do my best. I try to take workshops and lessons from other dancers around the area as well.

Honestly, I don't even know what my question is. I don't know if it's to ask if I'm not qualified, or if my behavior is bad for the belly dance community, or if I'm simply not fit to be an instructor.

Here's some info:

I teach belly dance at our the university rec center. It's free for students, and it's 5 times a week, an hour each. Level 1 and 2.

1. Bellydancer for little over a year, took about 10 actual dances classes my entire life. I think my background in hip hop really led to belly dance because basically anything that wasn't ballet (lol) I could do. When I see it, I could do it.

2. Been to a lot of workshops to continue education and encourages students to do the same. Will sometimes provide cultural tidbits here and there about the dance movement, rhythms, and sometimes lyric translations if we're doing a short choreo that contains lyrics. Always emphasizes posture -feet placement, relaxed knees, tucked tail, chest lifted, and chin flat forward.

EXAMPLE OF CLASS:

Start with warm-ups/stretches. Then proceed to ones specifically for the movement we're learning. Like we just learned a vertical figure 8 -likeinfinity sign, a combination of hip slides and hip lifts/drops, and oblique tummy movements. ***cut some specific instructions -text overlimit**

Basically, I'll say things like don't let the knees lead your hip lifts/drops, let them be a result of the your quads and glutes contracting. Premed student so sometimes gives students really detailed explanations of anatomy of the muscle groups/skeletal stuff.

So anyways,

Even though dancing for a little more than a year, and took workshops, I feel like I teach well enough, and I break down everything, do drills, give practice tips at home, create imagery for different kinds of learners. And I've been told I'm a really funny teacher. (yay!) I'll sometimes go around individually and checks each student's progress.

Gosh darn it!! I really feel that I'm a good teacher to my students. I work HARD and describe so many analogies and tips for all the different kinds of learners. But my non-existent "experience" makes me a possible target of disdain from others. I am faltering in my confidence at the thought.

What do YOU think????

Our teacher comes round every class to check individual progression! One of the most usefull things I would say!

Edit: You seem to have edited your post so my comment does not really fit in anymore...

I'm sorry, but I'm not going to say "This is OK".

Your lack of experience IS a problem. If you read bhuz for more than a couple of weeks, you will come across the phrase "6 Week Wonder", a teacher who has started teaching after only a few classes and watching a few dvds. And these 6 Week Wonders are Bad for our community, by teaching something of which they have no *depth* of knowledge, experience, training. Their students are getting a raw deal.

So why are you teaching belly dance and not hip hop, if that's your background?

I'm not sure what you're looking for as a response.

While I appreciate your enthusiasm for the dance, if you have only had 10 classes and have been belly dancing for a year, then you are not qualified to teach and should not be presenting yourself as an expert by doing so. There are reasons that experience is important. You are pre-med, but that doesn't qualify you to be a doctor right now. You took 10 belly dance classes, but that does not qualify you to be a teacher right now. You need a solid background and experience first.

If you are interested in belly dance and love it, then you should be taking classes from a qualified teacher and learning so that you will become a great dancer and may be qualified as a teacher later.

A background in another dance form does not qualify you to teach this dance form. It can help or hinder you in your learning process depending on the similarity of the movements and the correct execution of those movements, but the skills are not 100% transferable. It is a case of understanding what you don't know. For example, a hip circle in hip hop, jazz, hula, or belly dance are all the same shape, but are all executed differently.

I'm not sure what you are looking for from this post. Would you feel that 10 classes in hip hop, ballet, jazz, tap, or any other dance form would leave you qualified as a teacher?

Would it be possible for you to rearrange this as a social hobby club where you and the other members work together with a real teacher, dvds, and workshops? That would allow you to continue to share your joy of the dance with others, but would remove the pressure of actually teaching something for which you are not ready.

As to whether the current situation is bad for the belly dance community - the simple answer is yes. It is always bad when there are unqualified teachers in any field. You mention that the classes are free. In general, this would be considered undercutting which is a huge no-no in the dance community. If you are being paid by the school instead of the students, then as a teacher you must be receiving a fair wage. No matter who pays, fair pricing is part of professional behavior. Do you have insurance? If a person injures themselves in your class, you are liable and can be sued.

There are plenty of us who have other dance backgrounds, but they are not BD dance backgrounds. Just because I took modern dance for over 15 years doesn't mean I'm an expert at line dancing or clogging. No I would need to take lessons (and more then 10) in those dance forms, practice that dance form, perform that dance form for well over 1 year before I was remotely capable of TEACHING that dance form.

While it all sounds lovely on paper, you are not ready to teach BD it doesn't matter how many DVDs you own it has nothing to do with your ability to structure a class or lesson, it has to do with technique that simply can't be learned in 10 lessons.

What are you teaching in your level 2 classes? I don't mean to be a snark, but many teachers wouldn't even consider you a level 2 STUDENT with only a year's dance experience!

It sounds like you are a warm and friendly teacher, and that your students like your classes, which is great BUT personally I'd run a mile from any teacher with so little experience! At a year's experience, I'd bet most dancers don't even have a clue about how much they don't know about the nuances & subtleties of the artform.

I'd really recommend that you start taking some private lessons (if you aren't already) with a top level teacher and get them to assess your technique ASAP and work with you intensively to develop you as a dancer. Maybe you really are such a talented dancer and teacher that you are ready to teach so fast (which, without being a hater, would be practically unheard of!), but none of us here can see you perfom or teach, so in the interests of being non-judgemental, I'd recommend looking to the top dancers in your area for mentorship and guidance, as they are best placed to give you an honest assessment of your suitablity to teach.

I don't know what replies you're looking for here.

Yes, you will be disrespected (rationally or irrationally, I don't know because I have never seen you dance or teach) by many other dancers if you make the choice to teach quickly.

By all means use Bhuz as a resource: run ideas past people, ask for advice, dig deep into the issues of bellydance....don't compound lack of experience with being to afraid to get help. Who knows, maybe you'll be one of the rare people who starts super early but figures things out quickly.

But, consider the fact that many people on here have put in major time, experience, hard work, money they could ill afford, blows to the ego, painful reality checks and their hearts into respecting and studying (and teaching) this dance. Don't expect them to give you their blessings...and even if some people here do give you their blessings, it won't prevent the world of dancers who don't actively participate on Bhuz (or who don't Bhuz) from having strong feelings on the subject if they should encounter you.

This had me LOL - I can hardly believe it's for real. It's hilarious!
"I know I have no business teaching, but gosh darn it, I'm good enough!" wow!

It's difficult to respond to threads like this. Our compassionate nature creates a little tug on the heartstrings that makes us want to be reassuring 'yes, obviously you care deeply'

But we talk so often about the pitfalls of teaching without a strong background. And we've seen the unhappiness of many students who've wasted years of their time and buckets of $$ taking classes, only to discover that their teacher wasn't knowledgeable and they're way behind other teachers' students, or have to un-learn misinformation and poor technique.

We'd be hypocrites if we gave you any other answer besides 'no, sorry, you may mean well but you're stealing people's money.' And you're disrespecting our art form by presenting it as something that can be taught after only 10 hours of instruction and some video learning. What other subjects or art forms would you feel qualified to teach with that background? Any that you respect?

I like the suggestion of starting up a club. Taking people's money at this point is wrong.

Originally Posted by sandyw239

Hey everyone,

I teach belly dance at our the university rec center. It's free for students, and it's 5 times a week, an hour each. Level 1 and 2.

1. Bellydancer for little over a year, took about 10 actual dances classes my entire life. I think my background in hip hop really led to belly dance because basically anything that wasn't ballet (lol) I could do. When I see it, I could do it.

I don't think you can be that terrified or you wouldn't ask, you must already know what the answer is likely to be? It's only any good asking if you're prepared to really consider the answers and perhaps act on them .......

"When I see it, I could do it" - your quote. If you have only had 10 actual lessons who told you you could do belly dance well enough to teach it? All teachers need a mentor/teacher friend to help them when they first start - some one who will assess you competently and who will tell you no rubbish.

Just a few thoughts:

What happens when your students become better dancers than you are, which could happen quite quickly, and then think they are able to teach also?

You seem to have "fallen into" teaching, and many dancers find themselves in this position - there's no teachers around, people want teaching, you know a bit - so you give it a go. Kay Taylor in the UK has written extensively about this phenomenon. Maybe it's too late, or unrealistic to expect you to give it up, so here's my advice, for what it's worth:

Get yourself to regular classes with a good teacher, even better,two teachers (yes I know it's expensive but I have spent a lot of money on my dance classes/teacher training etc and so have most teachers before they teach). Teaching (any subject)doesn't just happen. Get their honest opinions on your technique. Find out what you don't know. Assess your classes and don't offer any more than you really know, and be totally honest with your students on your limitations, they deserve it.

Just because the classes are free, doesn't mean they should have an unqualified/inexperienced dancer taking them.

I say all this as advice, not criticism so I hope it's taken as such. You can do with it as you see fit. ..g.:

I, too, appreciate your love and enthusiasm. But it would be better for you, the dance community at large, and the dance in general if you weren't teaching right now. Because the more you know, the more you know you don't know. And you don't know enough to know you don't know enough. 10 lessons isn't enough, no matter how brilliant you or the teacher may be. DVD's are great adjuncts to help one round out their education, but they are never a substitute for real, ongoing training over a number of years.

Someone said:

(quote) But, consider the fact that many people on here have put in major time, experience, hard work, money they could ill afford, blows to the ego, painful reality checks and their hearts into respecting and studying (and teaching) this dance. Don't expect them to give you their blessings...and even if some people here do give you their blessings, it won't prevent the world of dancers who don't actively participate on Bhuz (or who don't Bhuz) from having strong feelings on the subject if they should encounter you. (end quote)

I agree. I, having had several years of ME classes founded upon several more years of training in the major dance forms, and workshops up the wazoo, have just recently turned my attention to the possibility of considering myself ready to teach beyond subbing a beginner class or leading a rehearsal. And not just because of knowledge and experience factors; teaching utilizes a separate skill set in and of itself. I pale at the thought of how great some of my teachers have been and how lame I would be as a beginner teacher.

If you love the dance so much, keep going with lessons.

You knew that the responses would be negative but it seems you care and that's a great start.
Yes try to find an experienced teacher to go to regularly, go to expert workshops. Get some "teacher/training/advice" and if you are insured and trained for exercise why not change to a general exercise class using belly dance music and rhythmns then with more tuition under your belt you go and teach the basics.
Reading your post,you have an idea of the basic necessities of exercise classes.
there is no reason why you should be part of a scheme to offer free classes if that is a college policy but you should get training and be worthy of pay.
There is no hard and fast rule about when you are ready to teach. Some dancers get competant well before others,some are technically great but crap communicators. The main thing is wanting to learn and pass that on and to carry on learning. Far too many teachers give up on being students!

someone with ten classes plus dvds behind their belt goes INto our "ongoing beginners", not teach it...

you seem enthusiastic and to mean well, but you are by far not ready to teach.

You sound like a smart girl so you must know within yourself that you are not qualified to teach. I think you should listen to your inner voice telling you this. And since you have much more experience in hip hop, you should teach that instead.

all the posters above have given great advice! but keep this in mind....yes, you should study more with a couple of experienced, qualified teachers (WORTH EVERY PENNY!), yes, you should continue to take workshops, yes, discontinue teaching at THIS point, only because you will reach a point where there will be nothing left to teach them, and for students that are as hungry and driven as yourself, it would leave them disappointed and disillusioned. teaching feeds not only yourself, but your students, so it's an incredible responsibility, so you DO have to think how FAR you can serve your students, and where you'll send them when they've surpassed....

the good news is, with the time and training, you will likely end up a very fine teacher and an asset to the dance community, but you said in your post 'i'm afraid of what i don't know' or somesuch....so you realize your limitations and what you don't know is quite a bit....what you DO know, regarding warm-ups, alignment, etc is a huge bonus, (and many six-weekers don't even know THAT), so you've got a leg up, but experience in another dance discipline doesn't replace ME experience.....

so take the very well meaning advice of all above, study with qualified teachers, SUPPLEMENT with DVD's, take workshops, and see if you can mentor with someone who is supportive and HONEST who can assess your skills and let you know when you're able to teach again....privates and mentoring are THE best ways to reach your goals.......good luck

Here's an analogy, and I think it works pretty well.

In Indiana (my home state) you can home school your child up to 4 years below your last completed grade of school. So if you finished high school (12 grade) you can teach your kid up to 8th grade. If you did 4 years in college, you can home school your kid up through 12th grade.

This is a decent enough GENERALIZATION for teaching somebody something. I can see how staying 4 years ahead of your students would give you a pretty good perspective on the subject itself. You might consider how far "ahead" ( in terms of information ) of your students you need to be in order to be an effective teacher. - ?

Now, since it's obvious that you've "Fallen into Teaching" as someone else phrased it, let's look at what you can do NOW to really do justice to teaching this art form.

Originally Posted by sandyw239

I buy instructional DVDs and have over 15, and I try to learn as much as possible. ... I try to take workshops and lessons from other dancers around the area as well.

Good. That's a good start. What I would recommend is to get REGULAR weekly classes with a local instructor. Nothing compares to regular classes.

Remember -- none of us are perfect. Our flaws, problems, and "issues" will be magnified 200% in our students. If we have bad hands; theirs will be AWFUL. If we have inelegant transitions, theirs will be awkward.

You desperately need a mentor, believe me. Things may be going fine now, but there isn't a teacher on this board who hasn't had some kind of trouble or issue that needed a live human support system. Your regular teacher can BE your mentor.

took about 10 actual dances classes my entire life.

MAJOR problem here. Get back in class. Seriously. There is so much more to this dance than executing a perfect pelvic circle.

I think my background in hip hop really led to belly dance because basically anything that wasn't ballet (lol) I could do. When I see it, I could do it.

I understand what you're saying, but let me ask you to consider something. I had a former life in ballet. While that dance training helped me greatly with the performance aspect of some things (turns, transitions, balance) it has done pretty much nothing for helping me interpret the music or develop the softness and relaxed-ness needed for Egyptian style dance.

Also, I want to stress how much this dance is MORE than just movements. We have, at most, a dozen actual "Movements" in our vocabulary. The "dance" part of belly dance comes from learning how to create different "textures" and feelings with those simple movements. Having good technique is just like the "state minimum" requirements for car insurance.

2. Been to a lot of workshops to continue education and encourages students to do the same.

Well how many is a lot? 3? 30? 300? Workshops are like trade shows. We all go to them. They're often more a social event than what I would consider training, but that also depends on how much work you put into them. But most workshops don't really offer a lot of individual correction, so you'll never get the ACCURATE and useful feedback you would from regular classes.

Will sometimes provide cultural tidbits here and there about the dance movement, rhythms, and sometimes lyric translations if we're doing a short choreo that contains lyrics.

Well this is good -- but where did you learn these cultural tidbits? If you truly understand the language, and the culture, and what the song is about, and what's happening in the music ... well, then you've done a lot of research and I commend you for it!

Premed student so sometimes gives students really detailed explanations of anatomy of the muscle groups/skeletal stuff.

That's good. That information helps me as a student, so it's good that you're sharing that.

But my non-existent "experience" makes me a possible target of disdain from others.

It's incredibly difficult to judge your teaching ability based on a posting, and it's obvious that you care about the dance and your own position as a teacher to ASK us, but I can't get on board with the idea of someone with only 10 classes teaching 5 times a week -- for many of the reasons others have stated. Get into class yourself!!! Seriously, you will thank yourself later for doing it. You NEED the environment where you can be a student.

deleted snarky bits

I don't say this to be mean, or even to be negative. Simple honesty. If you were in my class, you would be a Level 1 student. Slight possibility that you would be a Level 2, but my sessions are 8 weeks and the vast majority of my students take Level 1 more than once. But after 10 lessons, you would NOT be the teacher. I took classes for 5 years before I started teaching and to be honest, I started teaching too soon. I wasn't a very good teacher at the start (and I had a degree in education and 5 years of background). Now I've been teaching for 6 years, dancing for 11, and performing professionally for a few, as well. I am equipped now to handle the responsibility.

You knew the answer before posting- it's obvious in your post that you know what Bhuzzers are going to say. Of course you're not qualified to teach. You are at a point where you don't know what you don't know.

Most of us (who perform and teach)have many years and thousands of dollars invested in learning our craft. Please don't expect any of us to say that it's ok to bypass all of that and teach after 1 year and 10 lessons. It's not ok. Simple as that.

You obviously care very much for the dance and for your students. That's wonderful. Do everyone (your students, but most importantly- yourself) a favor and be honest- you are a student (a relative beginner, at that). You are not a teacher. Stop pretending and get some training.

Thanks everyone. I've actually quit teaching this morning. Already talked it over with my boss.

Yes, it's free to university to students who've already paid for their rec facility bill in their student payments. And they sign a waver. But I don't believe undercutting describes it. Thanks for the response and tips to improve & amend the situation! :)

Thanks for the suggestion to improve. :)

Originally Posted by sandyw239

Thanks everyone. I've actually quit teaching this morning. Already talked it over with my boss.

well, keep in touch, and keep reading bhuz, let us know how you're doing, and in a few years, let us know when you're teaching again.......

i never considered teaching until i was urged into it by an aquaintance, and i had been dancing over 15 years at that point.......

let us know how you're doing in your journey, you clearly love and respect the dance, and kudos for a realistic self-assessment (which many lack). you're going to have an absolute blast as you 'fill in the blanks' and learn new things everyday, for years to come.......

i'm confident we'll be seeing you as an excellent teacher in time, and look forward to it.....good luck and enjoy your journey!..g.:

Yes, I do believe in asking what I didn't want to ask. I think I had to take a big risk and be bold in doing so. And I hope the answers will lead me to improvement or suggestions of how to improve or amend the situation.

i also like the club idea.

I will admit that when i first started i had a dvd and no teacher, i didn't know how much i didn't know. i tried to teach some workshops to friends at school. luckily i kept trying to learn and realized i shouldn't have been doing it, and realized what i didn't know (for example, there is more to the dance than the moves, shimmies should be on beat, use the core muscles whenever possible instead of the legs, Shaabi v al Jeel v classics v folk, cultural notes, cultural notes.......)
after i'd been dancing for a year i still couldn't even tell the difference between good dancing and bad dancing when i saw it on youtube. during the past year it's finally clicked, largely because i found a competent teacher to regularly take classes from for the past few years, in addition to sessions with other teachers when i can afford it, workshops and watching and watching and watching.

see if you can restructure the group, i think if you bring in a teacher once a week and use the rest as a sortta dance study group, people will respect the strength of character it takes to admit you've realized how much you don't know.
i understand needing the money. im a grad student right now and my only income is from dancing at a restaurant once or twice a month (luckily my parents don't charge me rent ^_~) but you're not ready, and deep down i think you know that. maybe the college can keep you on as a paid club organizer, and you can hire a teacher from that, depending on how much it is

Wow, Sandy, good for you. Someday you might make a great instructor.

That's not what I said and you've misinterpreted my meanings. If you have nothing constructive to say, and only mock my words, then try to keep your fingers from tapping away. I hope your students don't have to deal with that kind of attitude.

I wouldn't say take people's money, that's a bit over the top description. But I agree with pretty much the other things though.

In your defense, without seeing you dance and teach, we don't really know how qualified you are or aren't. There are a few extremely gifted people out there who dance as if they must have learned in a past life because they are so brilliantly intuitive, graceful, and in harmony with the music. There are also a handful of lucky individuals who are blessed with the talent of being able to mimic whatever they see and learn physical skills very quickly. Some people are naturally great teachers. Is it probable that you are the elusive combination of all three of these? No, not really, but the possibility does exist.

As everyone else has said, it is quite unlikely that with the level of experience you are describing, you are ready to teach. For most, it takes years of practice and study to amass the amount of experience in dance, culture, music, and human physiology that one needs to be a good teacher. Some may argue that, within reason, some of the physiology stuff is not as important, since a lot of very fine Middle Eastern dancers don't know or care whether they're engaging their quads or their glutes to drive their shimmies. Obviously, we live in a culture where bad advice can result in a lawsuit, so it's not surprising that Western dancers geek so much on the musculoskeletal intricacies of posture as a hedge against malpractice, where an Arab dancer might think the entire conversation consists of "Stand up straighter." Frankly, a lot of Middle Easterners don't understand our obsession with the academics and codifying of the dance as a general policy. To them, it's just dance and too much thinking ruins it. Still, we have to be careful not to let the fact that they grew up with this and can afford to be cavalier about it turn into an excuse for our incompetence.

OTOH, the world has no shortage of belly dance teachers who sound great on paper, have been studying, performing, and teaching for years, took a slew of workshops with the best names, and still can't dance their way out of a paper bag with a sword. At least you seem to be conscientious and honest about your abilities. To me, the worst teachers tend to be the ones who don't know everything, think they do, and close their minds to the possibility of learning more, and you definitely don't sound like that scenario. In your situation, you do face the possibility that if you don't keep a good pace on your own learning, your students may catch up and surpass you, so it is extremely important that you ramp up your efforts and continue to aggressively pursue opportunities to train in person with more senior dancers. Let's be honest--our community doesn't have official standards to determine who is fit to teach and who isn't, and if we did, a horrifying number of dancers who think they deserve to be in front of a class today would be out of a job tomorrow. Are you ready to teach? Probably not. Are you the worst teacher out there? No, probably not that, either.