Become an active learner! Â Having a highly skilled teacher is awesome but not everyone has that luxury. Instead of relying on finding the best teacher, why not learn to be a better student? Not only will you learn more from the average teacher, but when you have better teachers, the combination will exponentially improve your dancing.
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If there are more leads than follows (or vice versa) in class… how could that be even better for you?
Let’s help each other out: Â 2 options… Â
1. Request Ideas: Add something that has happened in a class that you don’t see how to benefit from as a reply to this comment?
2. Offer Ideas: If you have an idea on how to benefit from any of the comments in this thread, reply to that comment and share your answer.
Examples below
What benefits can students gain from class starting late?
I can practice what I learned last week. Â This is especially important if I didn’t practice outside of class as I learn much more by trying to implement what I learned.
I can chat and get to know some of the other students. Â I find that as I get more comfortable with people my dances tend to improve with them.
1. Always carry a pen and notepad for notes, sketches, ideas, reminders. (They’re expensive, but I like the Rite In the Rain top-spiral bound notebooks designed for field use. They’re robust and don’t mind if you get sweaty. I go all the way through in one direction, putting a page number in the top right corner of each page, then at the end turn it over and continue all the way through on the opposite side. Easiest way to flip through by dates.)
2. The great thing about a group class is that you can learn from both good and not so good examples you see.
3. At every opportunity – you see something noteworthy, or the teacher is correctly or helping someone – ask youself, “Does that apply to me?” “In what way?” “To what degree?”
4. Often times it may be more helpful (especially for leaders) to focus on the *opposite* role. Their movement is what you want to produce from a corresponding movement in your own body.
5. Seek to derive general principles from specific examples. “Okay, they’re talking about this particular movement, and where else might that apply?”
6. During dances, while the teacher is moving about the couples, don’t hesitate to ask for a check out or help, out of some misplaced sense of pride or embarrassment.
7. In whatever way that works for you, create a record of the class/workshop to at least index the essentials: Date, Place, Teacher, Subject, Rating, Notes. Then you can start to develop a sense of what teachers you like, venues you like, subjects you’ve covered, etc.
8. Do you have a library of phone camera videos identified by nothing others than a string of numbers representing date and time? Yeah, it’s a pain, but faithfully review each class video, rename it something meaningful, and file it in a meaningful way.
Go to run now. Thanks for introducing the subject, Andrew.
 –David
David Phillips Great tips David! Â
Your tip #3 is one of the biggest reasons people take so long to improve their dancing. Â I was just taking a class this weekend where I was paying close attention to this and noticed several moments when I wasn’t applying this tip, which enabled me to apply and improve instead of waste that hour of class. Â
For tip #6, I would also say, don’t hesitate to ask for help because you don’t want to burden the teacher or hog the attention. Â Your questions will probably be questions that other students have too. Â Plus, a solid teacher will know if that question is not of value for the rest of the class and in that case, they will get the class working on something that is of value and help you when everyone else is already busy.