End of Year

The end of the school year is just around the corner, which makes me think as always, how can next year be better. Scheduling?, different faculty?, is it possible to pre-plan, and pre choreograph the next years classes already? how much time do I need to allocate to this task if it is decided to be implemented? During this year I have come to the realization that everything can always be improved upon, and even more so if you are ale to find correct sources of others that have been doing what you are trying to do. Learning from others experience is as vital as learning from your own experience. So my plans over the summer are to continue writting more AOL because I chose not to submit the ones I have until I have a whole bunch to submit, and make it into one giant package, and to read as much as I am able to. And upon that, see how next year will be better!

Sunday Discussion May 06, 2018

Skype Session.

What we talked about today in skype.
 we talked about what we are all doing, and letting everyone know where we are in their places

The first topic we discussed was about teaching methods, in particular verbalization vs. demonstration in the dance class setting.

While there where many different opinions about Demonstration Vs. Verbalization in regards to different methods of communicating tasks in teaching. This discussion led to people not officially  changing their minds about different teaching methods but did lead more to the conclusion that people will learn differently at different stages in their training. Age, ability and individual learning styles are also factors in how people learn. There is no one way of teaching, teaching is a 'liquid' art.

The next topic we talked about was MAPP experience itself, most importantly the emotional portion of the MAPP. There was discussion about why different individuals embarked on the MAPP, and the different stresses, and enjoyment they have been experiencing as a part of the MAPP. I personally felt that the main outcome of this topic was that the MAPP is intended as an enjoyable learning experience for everyone, focusing on a deep understanding of ourselves as teaching professionals.

The third topic of the discussion ended up being how dancers are perfectionist, and how as dancers, and dance teachers it affects our performance within the MAPP. For example as mentioned above the stressful part of embarking on the MAPP and the concern about evaluation, and the ideas behind what constitutes as evaluation. Dancers are always trying to make sure that they do everything perfectly, therefore in situations when dancers are giving tasks that are not necessarily  clear, and achieving outcomes upon completion of these tasks that we are unable to understand how to evaluate. This lack of understanding leads to stress.


We then talked about different teaching strategies that people have learned on the MAPP for example democratic learning, and inspired learning. Authoritarian leaning etc. And there was much discussion about the importance of examinations, and participation in different dance competitions being necessary for evaluation of the students and teachers. There were many differing opinions about the importance of examinations, and discussions, however, there was no conclusion reached in the overall discussion, with the exception of how are we ourselves being evaluated on essays that we are writting? What does true evaluation entail?

The 5th topic discussed was about the process of the MAPP and how it has effected us in our professional practice, what changes have we been able to identify within ourselves. One of the individuals in the discussion has noticed a drastic change within herself as a teacher since beginning the MAPP vs. before she had begun the MAPP. From what I was able to observe this was mostly emotional differences before and after, as well as teaching approaches before and after. There was a mention that she would have never been the teacher she currently is if she had never started the MAPP and it was my own understanding that she before she had learned about learning that she wouldn't even have believed she would be able to teach, and transfer information to her students in the ways she is currently using previous to the MAPP.

Overall this discussion was supposed to be more about where we were personally within the MAPP and the processes of how and what we are learning. I am not sure if we reached the goals of that discussion, however, I am sure that everyone had much to think about, and reflect upon once the discussion ended.

Thank you everyone for your thoughts and insights. I have more thinking to do myself within my lifetime now. I look forward to it.

Dave.

Blog entry 6 Festival adjudications

“The teacher’s speech must always be vivid and alive and express his thoughts exactly. If the speech is not cultured, this will remain in the future dancer’s memory and will go on stage with him.” -Nikolai Tarasov, Technique for the Male Dancer, p.45, (1985)

              Today I watched my students perform in the Greater Victoria Performing Arts Festival. While listening to the adjudicators give their feedback, it opened an opportunity for myself to think and reflect upon an idea that I came across while reading Technique for the Male Dancer (N. Tarasov, 1985) where Tarasov mentions that when working with different children, boys or girls, it is a good idea for a young teacher to take speech lessons so that they know how to appropriately communicate with children (students) of different ages. Today, I felt I received a strong example of that thought. 

              While observing the adjudications, I watched the guest adjudicator (who has excellent qualifications in my opinion) ruin a potentially good adjudication because she didn’t convey her thoughts with appropriate choice of words and the length of time it took her to explain specific corrections. This adjudicator works a lot with university level dance students, and it really showed when she was giving her adjudications to much younger dancer students. She would speak to 8-year-old dance students with words such as “articulate and impetus “. I realized that none of the students could understand what she was saying to them and that they would still just “smile and nod” rather than take initiative to ask for clarification to the fact that they couldn’t understand what was being said to them. I also realized that the adjudicator would speak to the students for extended periods of time so that she lost most of the student’s attention because she didn’t or couldn’t understand the level of concentration these students could maintain relative to their ages. 

              After the performances and adjudications were completed, I had the opportunity to speak with my students in private.  I asked them for their thoughts on what the adjudicator had said. This is the feedback I received; “How am I supposed to remember what she said? She talked so much I can’t remember half the things she said!” 

This was a good learning moment for me. It gave me strong reason to reflect on my teaching methods, on when I have been invited to judge, and on adjudicating competitions and festivals. Do I speak appropriately to my students when teaching them? Do they understand what I demand of them? Do they have questions that they would like to ask me, but my body language makes me not approachable? These are just some of the questions that I have decided to ask myself about my own mannerisms when I am in different situations where I need to express different levels of communication. 

Does anyone else have any similar experiences they would like to share? Please comment below!

Skype Session April 08, 2018

Skype sessions today

So today we talked about learning, processes of learning, the Plasticity of the brain, and Analysis Vs. Assessment.

I am not certain where we were going with the plasticity of the brain, nor am I certain about the analysis vs. assessment.  

We talked about memory, and different ideas around how people memorize

We talked about experience, and obtaining knowledge through experience, and how through experience we become the teachers we are, whether we started as dancers (learning through touch, music, feeling, imagery and instruction) and then teachers, and choreographers.

We discussed how we got to where we are through reflection, and looking at ourselves, and seeing where and what we have learned, and the immense amount of information and experience we have accumulated through our experience as teachers, and dancers, and choreographers, and also our lives, and what we observe, and experience daily, through normal activities (I am adding to the discussion in some areas We only had an hour to discuss, and with 14 people that doesn't allocate much time to be thorough.) 

We then touched briefly on the sorting of this information into different AOL's and "where people are at" in their Module 1 (approach)AOL's, or module 2 (inquiry), or module 3(critical review), and what enhances their practices. (I am still embarrassingly  lost but I am optimistic that I will find my way.)

We Talked about taking breaks, to help enhance learning, "Sometimes students won't retain the information until their mind has had tie to relax and process the information during a given break."

I guess this would be me experiencing the concept of "taking a moment" in between the learning and the output, or the discussion and the summary, as I have taken some moments to think about something completely unrelated to the discussion called breakfast, and now I am reflecting on the morning skype discussions, and have a much more clear image of what was discusses than I did in the minutes immediately following the discussion. I am suggesting that this is an example about the break taking, in time and space we discussed today. 

I enjoyed the idea of positive psychology in the learning process. this is directly related to the "emotion" part of learning I have been reading about so it was very nice for me to observe other professionals dabbling in similar topics.

There were many other topics mentions, however I believe due to the limited time, that we were unable to address them, I take the blame for this because learning is such an intense, and in depth topic that everyone has input, and discussion related to this topic.

Please  continue discussion below, and we will be able to address more than in the discussion!

Learning about myself

“We do not reflect on the route to the bus-stop, or how to do a simple arithmetical where there is an obvious solution. We think it through or plan it. However, we might reflect on whether or not to complain about something when the complaint might generate difficult consequences. In addition, the content of reflection is largely what we know already.”

A Handbook of Reflective and Experiential Learning Theory and Practice – J.A.  Moon

I have been reading the above book day after day, and each chapter is more interesting than the last. I am starting to identify what I do daily now, in my own private research/work and teaching.

If I could label myself a specific type of learner, I would now label myself a “deep reflective theorist”. It explains why I take so long to understand something; however, once I understand the something, I understand it more than most people are capable of. I spend most of my day, every day, visiting and revisiting thoughts of processes of developing new movements, concepts, choreographies, and ideas for my students. And reflecting every time I teach the same movement about how am I teaching it. Am I able to teach it more clearly today? Did I read enough about the movement yesterday? Did I read anything new about the movement before class? What is the new something that I observed while watching other students perform the same movement in an examination situation before my own class? All these questions lead to experiential and reflective learning. I visit these thought processes every day. How many other people do that? And are they getting the same experience out of it as I do? Do they come to the same conclusions as I do?

I often observe students who are having a difficult time understanding and/or applying a correction that they have received from a teacher, even if it is a long term on-going issue, and I have observed many teachers respond to students with these issues by giving a “knee jerk” reaction of “they are just lazy”. I normally ask myself:

“Did I describe to the student in enough detail what they could do better?”
“Did something happen to the student today on an emotional/physical level that I am unaware of?”
“Is there an at home issue that I am unaware of that is affecting the student’s ability to listen, and understand?”

“Was there something that I did that failed to deliver the message to the student?”
“What could I do to make a difference so that the student does understand, and apply what is necessary?”

These only a few of the thoughts that I ask myself at least 10 times a day.  Is this common? I can’t tell I am only in my own mind, and body.

 Just things that I have been thinking about after reading today! Please share your own experiences below!

Reflections this week

Thoughts while reading the first chapter of “A Handbook of Reflective and Experiential Learning Theory and Practice” by Jennifer A. Moon.

I just finished reading the first chapter. It was a very intimate experience reading about learning, particularly where it mentions how dyslexic people can display an “output of their learning”. I was originally going to talk about adult ballet students because I hadn’t started reading the book yet. However, since I’ve started to read the book, I think I will take the opportunity to talk about what I have just read, and what I was going to write about as a weekly topic without any influence from external sources. My reading of the first chapter has made me think more, so I must include them together as one entry.

Adult Ballet Students, and Chapter 1 of the Book

Adult ballet students: how do you motivate them do to the movement properly when they don't want to do the movement properly because they don't like their muscles to ache? or something seems impossible to them, when really, they could just put in more effort. How do you motivate them to listen, and to not just copy other students?  If they all copy each other, then nobody does anything properly, and they then expect the teacher to demonstrate the combination and they will copy the teacher, but this will not accomplish any learning, or development. So, how as teachers do we fix this problem?”

These are all questions that I have formed as a result of self-reflection leading to “internal learning” that I just read about, that comes from “external learning” as my “field trips” into the ballet studio daily. Now I have even more questions that I need to ask myself as a teacher of these students: “what are they learning?”, “how are they learning?” “what internal and external learning are they doing themselves?”, and “what internal and external learning am I getting as a result of their learning process?”

Did anyone else feel the same after reading this chapter? And what other “reflections”, and “internal/external” learning are you aware of now that that you know this terminology?

Please comment below and discuss!

Refections this week

"Of course, talented and obedient students are pleasanter to teach, but it is the difficult students who shape the growth of the master of teaching. In short, the new teacher must observe the activity of the psyche, learn psychology and, in general, aid the pupil to develop his personality." - Nikolai Tarasov

Reading, “Technique for the Male Dancer”, by Nikolai Tarasov has been really interesting for myself. I could have read this book as a young teacher and not really obtained very much from it, but having read it now, having gained many years of teaching experience, the book is much more meaningful to me. This book is also a reflection of where and what I have learned throughout my own experiences as a dancer, and now teacher, which shapes me into the teacher I am today.

The above-mentioned quote couldn't be more true. I teach many adults as well as students who wish to become professional dancers at some point in their lives. With these two groups of students, I have met some of the most challenging situations that I have ever come across while teaching.

Adult students: why do they dance; what life experience has this mind and body seen thus far in its existence; and why can't this student just do what they are told? These are just a few of the complexities of adults that I have been working on and trying to find the answer to as a teacher. I have come to realize that everyone has their reasons, and as a teacher I can't expect every student to give the result that I ask for and when I ask for it. Different people take different amounts of time to apply and produce, or even understand the task given to them.

Professional Students: "So you would like to become a dancer and with this body? Do you love it enough and understand what you will need to put yourself through to become what you WANT to be?" Sadly, the answer most of the time is "yes". That leaves me and other teachers the difficult task of having to figure out ourselves how to make this human being into a professional dancer. There are no cookie cutter dance bodies and in Victoria, B.C., Canada, it’s very difficult to find a 10-year-old who has been instilled self-discipline from a very young age as it may be in other parts of the world. There are few families that are the two parents-children unit.  I see many split families where the parents are too often fighting each other instead of looking out for the child’s best interest. With inconsistent boundaries given at a very young age, by the time the children understand that they want to be a classical dancer, it is too late for us the teachers to instill discipline into the child. Or we have to waste too much time and energy teaching the student basic skills to navigate society by understanding social cues, discipline, and empathy, that we never end up being able to teach the students what we are really supposed to teach, which is how to dance. Some teachers tell me that I shouldn't bother teaching the students the life skills that they need to survive in today's world. However, I have learned through experience that dancers need to be human in order to be able to communicate human emotion to a human audience. So, N. Tarasov was right, the most difficult students are the ones who can really teach the teacher how to teach, even if they don't mean to, and neither the student nor the teacher will ever be able to predict what learning will come from the experience, but we can all be certain, that learning will happen.