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!