Swing Des Moines serves as Artists in Residence at Western Hills Elementary

It's hard to say who had more fun - the teachers or the students - last week as Swing Des Moines served as the Artists in Residence at Western Hills Elementary.

Many of you may already know that one of Swing Des Moines' purposes is to work with area schools to educate students not only in the art of America's Folk Dance - Swing dancing - but also in the history behind the dance. We had another chance to do just that last week.

The week kicked off with an all-school assembly featuring Capitol City Swing, our performance troupe, showing the kids (and teachers) our hour-long presentation covering the entire swing era. The kids particularly liked the Charleston, the Shim Sham, and East Coast swing (which we danced to Great Balls of Fire). We ended the assembly by letting all the kids get up and learn a few steps as a preview to what they'd learn in their PE classes that week.

Then we had each class twice over the course of the next four days during their PE time. Students learned 20s Charleston - from Kindergarten all the way up through Sixth grade. They all seemed to just love it.

And the teachers seemed to have a great time, too. The kids were just so fun to be with - particularly the littler kids. A few of the kindergarteners preferred to hold hands while learning new steps. One of the first graders took a particular interest in helping Wally to get the steps right. Some of the older students developed elaborate group poses for Posin'. It was great.



Swing Des Moines owes a huge thanks to Mike Dennis and Kevin Spencer for taking on this project. Mike was at the school all four days, and Kevin was there for three of the four. They did the bulk of the work, that's for certain. Randy and I helped out on Thursday, but I feel like we did very little while we were there.

You can view our photo stream from the event here. I failed to take a camera to the assembly, and wouldn't have had time to photograph anyway. The pictures show the Thursday classes, and Kevin is missing because that's the one day he wasn't there. I'm sorry Kevin!! If anyone else took pictures at the event, please add them!

There is also a small write-up at the Register here.

Being the best dancer you can be

As many of you know, we recently asked Swing Des Moines members to participate in a survey to gather their opinions and thoughts. Several of the responses have made me do quite a bit of thinking about what we do here at Swing Des Moines and why, and a few of the responses have given me some food for thought regarding my own processes.

One of these responses was an answer to the question "What goal should Swing Des Moines be pursuing" and it was along the lines of "Make sure all your students are good dancers."


I've been pondering this during recent months, as I compare students to one another - something I don't normally do. Though I've never really defined my personal philosophy about this in words before, I came to realize that it's long been my goal as a swing dance teacher to help each student be the best dancer they can be. Not to help them measure up to anyone else, or to some standard of what makes a "good" dancer, but to be the best that they can personally be at that time.

This means that some students, I am ecstatic to see them come to Jive Junction and move their feet more or less in time with the music, because I know from watching them struggle that just doing that is an accomplishment to be proud of. A few months down the road, maybe I'll see them leading moves I know they've worked hard on, and even though those moves are not exactly smooth and seamless, they represent an accomplishment nonetheless. They are being the best dancers they can be. They might not measure up to anyone else's ideal of a "good" dancer, they might be awkward to dance with, but they are trying their hardest, they are really working at it, and they should be so very proud of their achievements.

Other students learn more quickly, dancing comes more naturally to them. The bar is higher for these students. Seeing them dance slightly out of time with the music and using choppy leads would be a disappointment, something I as a teacher would encourage them to improve because I know they are capable of doing better.

Each class brings us a mix of these types of students, and it can be a challenge to keep the class challenging enough for the faster learners without leaving the struggling ones in the dust, but our feedback shows that we do at least a reasonable job of this, which makes me happy.


I also want to add one final thought to this - we don't tend to compare one student to another in terms of ability or ease of learning to dance. Please don't compare yourself to others, either.

Self-Checking

A student commented recently that he was a little annoyed with the self-checking exercises we do in classes. "Can't you just tell us if we're doing it wrong?"

Yes, I can. And I do, definitely.

But I also like to teach students how to self-identify when they're doing something right or wrong, I like to give students the tools to continue to improve their dancing on their own.

So we do self-checking exercises. We ask the leaders "when you're doing the lindy basic, does the follower kind of lurch at you with great speed? you're pulling too hard." or "When you lead a tuck turn, how far does the follower go? If she doesn't go too far, there are two possibilities. Either you're not leading strongly enough, or she's got bad frame. To check that, keep an eye on the follower's arm and body. Does it all move together, or is her arm moving independently of her body?"

This makes it possible for students to go home and solve their own dancing problems. Otherwise, students have to wait until the next class to figure things out, or perhaps they just never do figure it out. Sometimes, they may not even know that they are doing something wrong.

I try to keep our students independent, and not reliant upon us. Self-checking exercises are just one of the ways I accomplish this.

Student Motivation

Where does motivation come from?

It's actually a pretty interesting question. Particularly as I'm a parent of a three-year-old, and motivation is a major point of contention among parents. As in, how do you encourage children to do...whatever it is you want them to do? Many parents rely on the old carrot-and-stick approach. Heap on the praise when a child does something you want, or just does something, and punish, reproach, or withhold affection when a child does something you don't want. (Example: "Oh, Johnny! You drank your juice! Good job! What a good boy!" and "What a pretty picture you painted. I love it!" or "Johnny, I can't believe you spilled your juice. What a bad boy. Go sit in the corner.") This provides a child with external motivation - they are concerned with your reaction to their achievements or actions.

Other parents try to encourage internal motivation. Instead of praise for things like a painted picture, they offer reflection. "Wow, Susie, there are a lot of colors in that painting." Instead of praise for an accomplishment, they offer reflection. "Susie, I see you finished your juice." Instead of punishment or reproaches, they offer reflection and encourage solution-finding. "Susie, I see you spilled your juice. You need to clean it up. Where's the rag?" This helps a child to develop internal motivation - they keep painting because they like to paint, not because painting gets lots of high marks from mommy. They clean up because it's just what you do after a spill, not out of fear of punishment.

Are these extreme examples? And not altogether realistic? Yes.


Why am I talking about parenting? Because I think how I parent really affects how I teach, and how I teach has affected my parenting. Not that I see students as children, but there are a lot of similarities between parenting and teaching.

I do not try to provide my child or my students with external motivation. The motivation's got to come from inside. My job as a parent is to help my child to develop his own internal motivation. My job as a teacher is to help my (adult) students utilize the internal motivation they already have.

Why do I see my job in this light? Well, two reasons.

First, all of my students are adults who are attending classes voluntarily. Nobody forced them to come, and so in theory, their motivation to learn is naturally high. (It's not like we're teaching traffic school where everyone has to be there.) My job should not then be seen as needing to provide motivation...but to instead capitalize on the already high sense of motivation and help it to remain high.

And second, I strongly believe that, in the end, it doesn't matter what I think about your dancing, or what I think about a child's painting. It matters what YOU think about your dancing, or what the child thinks about his own painting. Does it make YOU happy? Are you able to lead well, do you follow well, are you having a good time while you're dancing?

Why do I feel this way? I see many people who teach various things develop in their students a kind of dependency. The students need constant feedback from the teacher, they need praise, they can't feel good about what they're doing until the teacher says they should. Sometimes it even goes so far that a teacher is a little manipulative with students to keep them coming back because they feel so good with the teacher and the teacher's constant ego-stroking. And that's sad. It really is.

So you won't hear a lot of praise - especially false praise - in our classes. You will hear feedback, reflection. "You look like you're struggling." "You're getting it." "You look uncertain, but you're doing it just right." "That looked pretty good." "OK, it looks like we need to go over that a few more times." "OK, you're starting to get it now."

And this means that, when we do say "that's looking really good!" you can know that we mean it!

How to Learn Dancing

I've been thinking about this lately as we watch a new class slowly learn to dance. Some of the students will excel, coming back each week having mastered the material from the previous week and ready to learn more. Some of the students will founder, wanting more and more review as the weeks go on, never quite able to remember the steps from one week to the next. They will finish the class being able to competently peform the basics, but they won't remember much more than that.

The same thing happens to more advanced learners, as well. I can remember very distinctly learning a complex (or at least it seemed at the time) jazz dance routine from Frankie Manning's at-that-time teaching partner Debbie something. It took all day. It was fun. It was exhausting. I don't remember any of it.

So what's the secret? What's the difference between those who grow and excel at their dancing and those who founder and ultimately fall short of their hopes to become comfortable and confident dancers?

After teaching people to dance for nearly 10 years now, I've had plenty of opportunity to observe, and here are my thoughts.

1) Taking notes. Not mental notes. Physical ones. The students who do well generally write little notes to themselves to help them remember what they learned. Many of our students have requested that we provide them with notes, but I have decided that this is not in their best interest. The best notes, that will be the most meaningful to you, are ones you take yourself. You can write down the things you need to remember in a way that makes sense to you.

Sometimes, my notes have consisted of little stick-figure drawings combined with arrows and notes. Sometimes, just count-by-count descriptions of what happens during a particular step. Sometimes I like to make comparisons. "Just like jump charleston except..." or "Starts like The Dream, but then..." What makes sense to me will not always make sense to you.

2) Practice. Of course the best notes in the world won't do you any good without practice. I do still have my notes from the abovementioned jazz routine class. They make a little sense, but not enough sense to enable me to complete the routine. Practice helps develop muscle memory, which means that your muscles can do the step without you really having to consciously move your arms and legs to the right places.

Muscle memory is what enables me to sit down and play Fur Elise at the piano even today, though I haven't seen the music for a good 12 or 13 years and I learned it when I was in junior high (in the 80s!!). I practiced the song to death, but my muscles still remember how it goes.

Practice can be as simple as walking through the steps you have learned a few times during the week between classes. Or you can set aside a few minutes each day to dance with a partner. Of course, our monthly dance Jive Junction provides a perfect practice opportunity. I'll have more on practice next week!

3) Attitude. Don't underestimate the power of attitude. Time and again, I have seen students with absolultely no sense of rhythm or coordination, but who come in thinking "this is going to be fun and it might be challenging, but I can do it!" generally leave class able to dance fairly well. They are not only determined to learn, but they have also determined that they CAN learn it.

I have also watched students with excellent rhythm and coordination come into a class thinking "this is stupid and I can't do it." They are the ones who, when we are demonstrating a move, say "oh, man, that's HARD!" No matter what we say, their answer is "I can't do this." That attitude quickly become self-fulfilling. They have decided in advance that it is too hard, and so it is too hard. This is unfortunate, but there's little I can do as a teacher to change the attitude of a student in four short weeks! I can do my best to help them see the fun in dancing, to make them laugh, to lighten their mood, and to encourage their learning process, but I cannot fundamentally change someone's attitude - that's up to them!

4) Dancing socially. Those students who dance socially - that is, with more than one partner - tend to learn faster and learn "better" than those who do not. Even if it is awkward at first to dance with strangers, it is ultimately much better for your dancing. Dancing with different partners really helps you to become a stronger leader or a better follower, not to mention affording you the opportunity to learn from those who are more experienced dancers.

And there you have it - the secrets to learning social dancing. Take notes, practice, have a good attitude, and dance socially. Of course, it helps to seek out instructors who are enthusiastic and knowledgeable, and to take classes that are appropriate for your level and goals, as well!

See you on the dance floor! (or in class?)