Great Moves!
"If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands!" I hope you sing and dance this song with your pre-school dancers on a regular basis, not only for their enjoyment, but for yours as well. Happiness is a choice and if you need ideas and ways to bring more happiness into your life as a dance teacher, sing this song with your students and watch the smiles and energy grow.
What if you need a little something more than a song and dance? Dancing is such an energetic business that it would be difficult for some people to comprehend that dance teachers get tired, bored, and unhappy just like everybody else. These emotional maladies are actual illnesses that can be cured with some simple "medicines." Fatigue is always due to overworking our bodies. Boredom is generally connected to monotony. Unhappiness is a symptom of dissatisfaction. Theses "pains" appear in a dance instructor's life to send a message. Happiness is a series of choices and one of the first choices is choosing to listen to the message of the pain.
FATIGUE
As dancers, we are used to sore muscles, minor strains and sprains, and low physical energy. These symptoms can all be traced to asking our bodies to go beyond the call of an average person's duties. When the artist's crayon breaks or the musician's instrument looses a part, they take their problems to be fixed. It's the same with your instrument, your body. Here are three ideas to bring more pleasure to your tired body.
1. Drink four to six ounces of tonic (quinine) water before going to bed. Hold your nose if you don't like the taste. You'll be pleasantly surprised by the fact that you won't feel as achy the next morning.
2. Get a massage. Deep tissue or relaxing Swedish style, there is nothing, including chiropractic or osteopathic manipulation, like the great and long lasting feeling after a massage.
3. Don't demonstrate in classes as much. Of course, you have to demonstrate new steps and review combinations several times, but letting groups of three or four students practice the steps while other students watch is an extremely valuable lesson. Students learn as much from each other as they learn from the teacher.
BOREDOM
"Repetition leads to boredom, and eventually boredom is a form of torture," says yoga teacher B.K.S. Iyengar in his book Light On Life. Repetition is the life blood of learning how to dance because it's how students create the motor memory needed to perform dance routines. Students repeat the same thing for an hour a week. You are most likely repeating the same warm-ups and dances in class after class, week after week. Boredom is easily cured by some simple changes.
1. Use different music for the same warm-up routines in each class. The difference in the music will keep your ear keen and your body searching its motor memory in a healthy way to respond to the stimuli it receives as you warm-up. If you've already done the warm-up with the 4:00 class, try calling out the moves to the older classes who know the exercises already.
2. Let students take turns doing fifteen minutes of warm-ups with the class then you finish up with exercises the student might have neglected. Create an alphabetical chart with the students' names on it. At the end of class, tell the next student it is her turn to lead warm-ups next week. Student assistants can also be helpful in leading warm-ups.
It's a good lesson to teach young dancers to safely prepare themselves for class and performance. If they are always following someone, they never absorb the movements or the correct sequencing.
3. If you are bored, beware, your students are probably bored as well. After preparations, do class routines in a different order than usual, play a game first then review dances, review combinations first then learn new technique, play rock music for ballet barre and classical music for jazz warm-ups.
UNHAPPINESS
Psychologists need something to do with their time besides tell everybody what is wrong with society. Thankfully, some psychologists have rigorously studied the habits and attitudes of thousands of happy people. Wait. How does one know one is actually happy? With the April issue of Dancer, I presented a springboard for dance teachers to actually test their happiness quotient. If you haven't taken the "Are You Happy Teaching Dance Quiz?" you might want to peruse the questions to see if any of them hit sore spots. While your quiz results may not be quantitatively valid, they will be qualitatively valid. Just thinking about the issues brought up by the questionnaire will cause you to face your opinions about the issues. This is what's known as a face-to-face with one's reality. Either you like what you're doing or you don't. Here are some tips for easing any unhappiness you might be experiencing in your career as a dance teacher.
1. Find an activity you enjoy that could also contribute to your work in dance. Maybe you sew or write or make incredible scrapbook pages. Find a way to incorporate these activities into your dance world and infuse the teaching with new enthusiasm.
2. Make a serious "Pros and Cons" list about your life as a dance teacher. Scratch off anything where you blame someone else for the problem. Choose one negative issue and address it head on no matter what the obstacles. You'll be amazed at how job satisfaction improves when you've resolved a problem.
3. Reflect on your history as a dancer. Start at the beginning and write your personal dance story. Take time out once a week to write a little bit about how you began dancing, what you felt about it, why you chose this career path, and so on. When the story is done, collect a pictorial history of your dance journey. Depending on how you feel about sharing, create a scrapbook, poster, or designate a whole "Me Wall" in the studio to give meaning and texture to your life as a dancer. The satisfaction from this process will catapult you into a serious happiness zone that will last for a long, long time.
No one can make you happy. Nor can anyone be totally responsible for your unhappiness. The choice of being happy is actually choosing to be proactive about your career and your directions. Respect your personal dance history and make conscious decisions about where you want to be in the future and your happiness factor will always be right where you want it to be. Then dance like you're happy and you know it.
Joy Held is a dance and yoga instructor and the author of Writer Wellness, A Writer's Path to Health and Creativity from New Leaf Books, 2003. Contact her at yogajoy@suddenlink.net.