Thread: New Term Suggestions?

Hello,(newbie teacher) I've been teaching a beginning bellydance class, at the local college. We had worked on a very simple choreography last term and the students seemed to love it. This term I will have some new students and new routines,but would like to keep the old one in the muscle memory of the returning students. How does one do this? Without taking up too much class time? Or should I ditch it all together and just move forward with new material?

Could you use it as a warm-up and let the new students follow along as best they can, while breaking down the movements later on in the class?

I always move forward with the new material during a new term. If the class is open to new students, then they should be able to fully participate in everything that happens during the time they paid for and all of it should be new-student appropriate.

I will often volunteer to stay after class with the returning students for a few minutes to run through last session's material. Maybe not every week, but occasionally during the term.

Even though they're learning a new routine, they should still be going over most of the same beginner movement vocabulary -- with some variations, of course. I always remind my students that they didn't sign up for class to learn 'a dance' they signed up to learn HOW to bellydance, to learn the movement vocabulary. I put the moves in order, into a simple routine, to make it more fun to learn and to give them a sense of how to move to music, but retaining the order of the steps isn't really the point.

When you've been teaching for a while, you'll have enough returning students to perhaps assemble a level 2 class. Then you can resurrect some of the older material & polish it up if you like!

Yeah, Lauren's idea is better, it might be off-putting or confusing for the new students to have to deal with the choreography. Maybe you could have them stay after class once in awhile to rehearse the choreo.

Originally Posted by dunyah

Yeah, Lauren's idea is better, it might be off-putting or confusing for the new students to have to deal with the choreography. Maybe you could have them stay after class once in awhile to rehearse the choreo.

Dunyah's idea of using the existing material for a warmup is interesting too, though... Maybe wait until a couple of weeks into the session, when they've learned the basic movements, and maybe repeating, say, 32 counts of material over and over so they can begin to follow along... then do a different bit of the material the following week? The returning students should recognize it & benefit from the practice, and the new students might be able to pick it up that way as well.

You could ask the older students to stay after a little while or come to an extra session periodically to keep the routine fresh. You could also take a hardline stance and tell them that, seeing as they're grown ups, it's their responsibility to figure out how not to forget the material. No other class reviews every single thing the teacher covers every lesson, and if a student can't make time to do something she should be doing anyway (practicing at home), she's obviously not very interested in making this a priority, and she can wait until it comes around again on the lesson plan to relearn whatever she's forgotten. The first method is preferable if you are concerned about drift and ingraining wrong habits, and you have performance opportunities on the horizon. The second makes more sense if this is just a class exercise that won't be performed for an audience, and it doesn't really matter if it rolls off the page.

I feel strongly about not mixing experienced students with new ones to do the routine this early in the process. The new students are probably overwhelmed enough trying to learn their own material, much less being thrown into the deep end of the pool with the older group's assignment. It's confusing. It dilutes the importance of learning and doing the routine correctly. It contributes to the "What the heck, let's just flail along and call it close enough!" attitude that creates too much bad student dancing already. Any beginner who'll get upset at the idea that someone who is essentially a class ahead of her is doing work she's not prepared to do is a "mercy flounce" for the dance community anyway

Letting students know that there's order to your lesson plan adds purpose and inspires respect. This isn't saying that students should be scared into feeling they need to be perfect before they attempt anything, but that progress has meaning, and yeah, you don't need to worry about performing when you're still trying to master the fundamental concepts. At any rate, it's a good idea to have multiple, different flavors of the beginner's class to keep the lessons interesting. If you keep re-teaching the exact material over and over without moving the more experienced students somewhere else, you'll either bore them or mislead them into thinking that's all there is. Let the beginners concentrate on being beginners, and let the previous iteration get some sense of accomplishment for being +1. It's a quantum leap to go from "nothing" to "something." Don't make your older students share their accomplishment (earning the right to do a choreography) in the first class.

I use combinations from old choreos in the warmup sometimes. I use it to check on technique at the same time. Have the arms got sloppy? Is the timing out? If so, I might add a review in the drills. Once every month or two, I'll throw in the old choreography near the end of the class.

Thank You, You've all had interesting input. I like the idea of throwing in bits of choreo in the warm ups. I also like the idea of occasionally keeping it in check. Since I teach only a beginning course, my short choreographies will always be geared towards newbies. There is another teacher, who works with the intermediate, and advanced students.