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Teaching Tip: Communicating With Parents

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If you teach dance, chances are good that you will have to speak with a disgruntled parent sooner or later. The good news is that there are ways to handle this type of situation smoothly. Here are a few tips that can be helpful:

Teaching Tip+ Avoid using language that sounds like an accusation. When you say something like, “What is it that you are so upset about?” it sounds harsh. Try framing things differently by saying, “I understand you are upset–how can I help?” How you say things matters just as much as what you are trying to communicate. Try not to make the parent feel defensive about raising a concern.

+ Stress that you are on the same side. Ultimately, the parent and teacher should both have the same goal–to help the student. When approaching a problem with a parent, point out that you can work together to solve the issue at hand. A team approach makes everyone feel like they have a part to play in the student’s success; which indeed, they do.

+ Listen carefully. What is the real issue the parent is bringing up? Try to hear them out completely before offering any input. That way they will feel that you are taking them seriously, and you will be sure to get all the details before answering.

+ Know when you can’t help. No matter what, there will sometimes be a parent you cannot satisfy, or a problem that you can’t do anything about. Hopefully these situations will be few and far between, but if you wind up facing something you can’t fix, you may have to just tell the parent it is out of your hands.

Do you have any good strategies for communicating with parents? A tidbit to share with your fellow teachers? If so, please share!

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Teaching Tip: When Students Are Late

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Teaching TipBeing late to dance class is actually kind of a big deal. Since warm-up exercises are designed to help the dancer’s muscles (and tendons/ligaments) prepare for the demands of class, late students should know what you expect of them when they arrive in the classroom so that they are not risking injury.

How you handle being tardy is up to you. Perhaps you just tell the student to do some plies and tendus before joining the class if it isn’t too far into the barre. If the student is more than a few minutes late, many teachers ask that they just sit and watch the class instead of trying to catch up.

If you have students who are late on a regular basis, it may be helpful to speak with the parents. As for deciding on make-up classes, it’s really a matter of what you are comfortable with. Do students just lose that class if they are too late to join? Or can they come to another class and substitute it for the one they miss? The important thing is to have a policy that you consistently enforce so that everyone gets the same treatement.

What are your rules? How do you handle a student coming late to class? I’d love to hear what various teachers are doing out there…

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Teaching Tip: Don’t Do It Wrong

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Teaching TipThis may be a hard tip to employ, but it is a smart one. Don’t demonstrate how to do anything the wrong way in dance class. Even though this can be a great way to get the message across to students, the fact is, you can injure yourself. Proper technique is designed in part to help you stay safe. It’s based on biomechanical principles, and when you alter them, bad things can happen.

As teachers, we are often guilty of not warming up properly, or not taking enough classes ourselves. This is another reason to avoid demonstrating things the wrong way. If you aren’t in tip top shape–injury can be a lot more likely.

You can verbalize the incorrect form, but stick to showing your students the right way to do things. It’s a lot safer.

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Teaching Tip: Keeping Things Fresh In The Adult Ballet Classroom

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Teaching TipIf you teach an adult ballet class you are probably already aware of how rewarding it can be. Adult students are typically serious about doing well and try very hard to improve. While this is great–as the instructor, it is up to you to remind them of how much fun dance can be as well. Try to keep things fresh so that your students maintain their enthusiasum and love of dance.

Here are a few ideas you can incorporate into the adult ballet class that can be helpful in that regard:

  • Periodically have a class where each student can pick something that they would like to work on in the centre. It can be helpful to announce this at the beginning of class to give them time to think about what they’d like to do.
  • Mix in some music from the big ballets here and there. Nothing is quite as inspirational as moving across the floor to a piece from Swan Lake or Giselle.
  • Pair them up. Rather than having students do their combinations alone across the floor, have them go in twos. This changes things up a little bit and can help break the ice between people in class–especially if there is someone new.

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University Dance Programs: Evaluating Students

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If you are new to the college or university environment, it can be difficult to know how to evaluate the students in your classroom. When I first started teaching at the university level, I had to put in a lot of extra time making sure that I was able to do this within the requirements of academia.

It was a little intimidating.

I wrote an article for Dance Teacher that passed on some great advice from people such as Mary Fitzgerald, assistant professor at Arizona State University’s Herberger College of Fine Arts and Larry Lavender, head of the dance department at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.

If you are going to be working in this type of environment anytime soon, it can really pay off to listen to some tips from those who have gone before you. And if you have anything to share with 4dancers readers, feel free to chime in here…

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