The Art Of Success

Learning fast is only possible if the learner takes risks and fails from time to time. Once people start taking risks and messing up, those moments have to be used constructively to get a learn effect. How can you support that as teacher?






There are two main ways we can handle problems as teachers. One is helping, the other one is letting the students solve their own problems.

Do It Yourself

I'm always positively surprised by how much students can solve problems by themselves just by trying a few times by themselves and sometimes a change of partners does it. I always start with letting the students attack the new material by themselves when I teach something new, because the more problems students solve themselves the more independent they grow and the bigger challenges they will be able to face and solve in the future. Also the sense of gratification increases.

And Round And Round It Goes

Usually, I let students try three times with their partner, rotate and let them try again. The remaining problems will need some attention. I advocate to not just provide the solution but show how problems get solved. This way,  students can add this new variable to their problem solving competences.

Problems or mistakes are usually already what we want our students to do just missing one or two ingredients to make the soup tasty. To solve problems one needs to learn to what one can pay attention to. So make them switch their focus onto the missing part.

In the very first classes my students usually watch feet, falling into the trap of thinking that dancing is feet, they don't ask me questions about where to place their bodies. In an advanced class the focus to solve a problem for a particular move or technique or visual might be the orientation of knees or their distance.

To change their focus, e.g. tell them to watch the free arm and then demo a bad and a good version and let them try again. Making them aware of a body part they didn't pay attention to will add to their repertoire.

Making them watch their own movement (by demoing what they do, without  mocking them) and then letting them find the error would be alternative to the first option.

Watch Out!

Problems can be dissected almost infinitely. I don't advocate this. Often, something that people see my body "do", is actually a result of of something else that I do. When solving problems, try find the real source, even if it might tackle some topic that was not mentioned in the question. A classic example for this is the free right arm of the leader during a rockstep. Yes it swings back, but I don't actively move it there. It's a result from moving back with my whole body.

Teaching your students how to handle mistakes and problems will turn their failure into success!

Thumbs up/+1 for success!


Read "The Art Of Failing"

Mixing It Up

Learning simplified is done in three steps. The first step in learning is perceiving information. Todays blog post is about how you can code your information and how it effects perception. The dual-coding theory states that information provided in two different codalities sticks better, since two different kinds of "memories" are involved. The two codalities are auditive (phonological loop) and visual (visual sketch pad). If we serve only one codality, e.g. auditive (talking), and the students resource to perceive this information is blocked by something else, e.g. talking to their partner, the information is likely to get lost. On the other hand, if you are serving two codalities, students might still be able to perceive the information in the free codality. 

Hands On 

One obvious one might be dancing and talking at the same time. It's definitively auditive and visual. Something to add here though is that you can serve differently here. You can say what you dance as in what your body does, you can count (might be actually distracting more than helping - unless the focus is counts) or trying to auditively add the feeling, by adding sounds like woo-wap, shi-baam, etc.

This can be used not exclusively for learning, but also for changing partners. If you accompany "Leaders change partners counter-clockwise" with the matching arm movement, you provide visual and auditive coding of the information. You will notice that changing partners will happen more fluently. 

Triple-Coding theory? 

Many people in different kinds of jobs, e.g. social engineers, salesmen and last but not least dance instructors, have experienced that there is a third variable that doesn't show up in the dual-coding theory. That is the kinesthetic part. It seems that some peoples best developed sense is feeling. Of course this raises the question why this is not part of the dual-coding theory. My personal guess is that first of all it's more work to test out three kinds of codalities, and find a proper environment to test all three variables. Probably more important though is that most test environments are not geared towards learning of physical capabilities. Nevertheless, my personal experience is also that feeling the movement helps a lot of my students.You can use this knowledge to add an additional perception layer to your information, simply by making your students feel, what you want them to learn. Might it be a connection or might it be simply the kind of bouncing you want your students to do.

Changing Partners: Or How to Benefit From Cognitive Overload

Changing partners has its reasons. But frequently I get asked about how to make people change partners, especially in beginner classes where new couples often want to stay together. This post is about the different approaches I've used or seen in beginner classes to facilitate partner changes.

1. The Discussion

Situation: You called for a partner change for the first time, and, despite your clear instructions on how to do so, there is chaos and some couples feel uncomfortable and start to debate with you. Now you'll have to spend precious class time explaining why they should change partners. If you are lucky, they'll agree and change. Or the situation could possibly end in a confrontation with your either forcefully calling "rotate!" or giving up and saying "ok, just stay".
Result: An often awkward situation, unhappy students, bad environment for teaching and learning
Better: Tell them to switch partners now and that you'll explain after class. This way you don't waste learning time.

2. The Explanation

Situation: Before you request a change of partners, you explain the pros and cons of changing partners.
Result: Either you get lucky and people change (but you still have wasted class time on it) or you end up at point one, "The Discussion."
Both have the downside that if someone doesn't want to change partners you're not going to get them to try it out without their being unhappy.

Experience shows, that everybody ends up changing partners anyway. So basically, you want them to try out changing partners without all the explanations and to figure out the benefits for themselves. To do so, I've developed two approaches.

3. The Houdini

Basically this is a magician's way of making people change partners. You shift the focus away from the act of changing partners. How? Well, like this, for example: (Students standing in a circle) "Ok, you still remember who was lead and follow? So, now there is a tricky part coming up and I need you to pay good attention.  Follows, you turn 90° to the left. Now walk over to that guy standing there. Everybody there?"  This way you've got people changing partners.  At this point they are still "at attention", so you'll need to "release" them. Now you simply say, "This is what we call changing partners."
Result: In the best case, the released tension goes to laughter, and you got everybody switching partners and being happy.

I used this tactic for a while, but it still took up too much learning time for my taste.

4. The Cognitive Overload

When I read about cognitive load theory, I wondered what would happen if you created an overload on purpose. And funnily enough, once people are overloaded it usually brings them into a mindless state. Once people are in that mindless state, they won't question (simple) instructions as strongly anymore.  A cognitive overload can often be created simply by combining two requests (using the word "and" as a connective). So, a simple "Follows, go to the lead to your right and say hello," will likely do the job effectively and you'll have more time for actual dancing in class.

Things to keep in mind:

• Make them dance with the new partner right away after the change. This gives them a more personal connection and reduces the fear of the new person.
• If students really don't want to change partners, you can't make them. The good thing about the last two options is that they'll try changing partners first before deciding if they like or dislike it.

Changing Partners: Or Who Is Next?

Changing partners has been a point of discussion many times.  At some point I was convinced it was only people new to the scene who don't believe in changing partners in class, but it turns out I was wrong. There are some Lindy hop schools that explicitly say that you don't need to change partners if you don't want to.

Most of the time, though, you run into this phenomenon in beginners classes, where new couples wish to stay together. This post talks about why changing partners in class is good.

Here is a list of various facts:
Firstly, problems solve themselves.
      Have you ever noticed that the couples who don't change partners in a beginners class usually have the most problems and also the most questions? Sometimes simply changing partners a few times solves problems, answers questions, and helps people succeed.

Secondly, Lindy hop is a social dance and changing partners is one of the the best ways to learn how to social dance.  With each new partner, you get a variety of requests/responses and you learn how to adapt.

Leading and following is much like a conversation. So, unless everybody already knows how to speak understandably, without errors and mumbling, as well as to how to listen and respond, there is a good chance that they'll miss parts of the conversation (or even the entire thing!).

What happens when you change partners?
What happens is that you can test your conversation capabilities by having the same conversation start with a variety of people.  This will give varying results and the easiest and clearest feedback to refine your actions.

Another advantage to rotating partners is that it allows students to get to know the "other half" of the class. This contributes to a more relaxed atmosphere, which is good for learning.