Believe Me, I'm Lying

When you teach bloody beginners they don't know you and there is no reason for them to trust you. That's why you might need to take additional methods to convince them. Eventually, you want to build trust with them though. Trust makes relationships a lot easier and for both students and teachers. As student there is a lot less inner resistance and and as teacher you will face more open students. It also makes for a leaning environment. This article tackles a situation I've seen happening and that is not only infringing trust but also tripping hazard to the learning process.

Flat Earth

Lots of teachers give their students rules, like "Your arm never goes beyond your body". I call those "beginner-rules" because you use them in the beginning to assist with some problem and eventually you have to throw the rule overboard, e.g. when you are teaching a movement when the elbow has to go past your body. It will be extremely difficult, especially if you have corrected them multiple times on "... and keep your elbows in front of your body". The reason is that this rule had implications. Your students trained to keep their elbows in front of them, and now they have to break their mindset and establish a new one. As a side note, Flat Earth teaching can easily result from strong bottom up structure.

Do you remember how long it took to go from flat earth to round? Some people died on the way. I'm glad that won't happen if you tell someone not every move starts with a rock step. 

Learning is connecting new knowledge to knowledge that the person already has.  Now if that old knowledge is absolute ("you always do x, y and r") you have to break that at some point. Usually this goes along with losing habits that you've trained hard to get in the first place. I've seen people dancing for 10 years and still facing problems that have to do with getting rid of habits they trained when they started, but were only rules for beginners.

When you teach a beginner-rule, you assume that your students can't handle the real way. They can - true story! The solution is simplification of the content of your classes instead of flat-earth-teaching. Simplified versions extend well. You can derive new truths while keep the existing beliefs and additionally go with the natural process of learning. For an example of simplification check out the math analogy in section Putting Technique Where It Belongs.

Another moment where you can make or break trust is when you mess up. It's not a sign of incompetence if you mess up, but a sign of humanity. So instead of hiding your mistake, acknowledge it and move on. It will increase credibility, because your students will see matching between what you say and what you do. Since we strive for harmony (...or), this will feel give your students a good feeling. Besides having other nice side-effects.

Not having to break any beliefs and seeing congruence in what you do and say makes you a lot more trust-worthy. Why should your students believe you, if you told them a rule in the beginning, that you break later? Why should they assume that what you are telling now is the real deal? Why should they trust you, if they see one thing and you say another? Be honest with your students right away, tell them what Lindy actually looks like to you, and not some phony version. It's worth it!

Nothing Rhymes With Unt

I'm convinced that more dancing in class and less talking will result in faster and more in-depth progress, if we need to talk though we should be aware of the consequences. The regular way to talk, when teaching, is to describe the desired outcome. We can enhance this by using images and analogies. A way more powerful kind of talking is suggesting. With this method, people think of what you would have said by themselves, and that's why the content sticks better.

The Benefit

I make a distinction between describing something and this way trying to make the student form a mental image versus suggestion. In the first option there is nothing happening unless the student tries to form the mental image. Suggestion on the other hand works without explicitly saying something but rather implying it and hence getting students to draw the conclusions more as a reflex or logical conclusion than an active action. 

But why is suggesting more powerful? It is because students think the thought, or create the mental image by themselves. To them it is a logical conclusion or ending to what you've been saying and it happens passively. Because it's logical to them, they will be remembering, what ever it was, better and also find it more convincing. They thought of it - it must be correct.

Suggestion can happen by accident, which I believe is most often the case, or used intentionally. An example for utilizing the power of suggestion intentionally can be seen in creative uncertainty. There we say that if something "is" something, the possibility of it being something different becomes excluded. We restrict the object to one purpose. If we say something "could be" an exit to a move, we imply and hence suggest that whatever we just showed, could be used differently. This is what enables people later on to use content of classes more creatively.

In the example above we suggest more possibilities and it's the way I use suggestion most, but with suggestion we can also limit variety of possible answers.

... or

If you have guests at your place and you want them to leave without saying so you could say "Somebody wants another beer or ...". They are very likely to decline and soon people will leave. By keeping the end open, people finish the phrase themselves. You suggest a yes-no answer, so they will conclude the phrase in their minds with the word "not". Humans strive for accord and that is what makes thinking "not" and answering "yes" difficult, that is why they will likely decline the offer.

The suggestion of the word "or" comes in nicely when you talk about coin-options, like yes-no, left-right, top-bottom, leader-follower etc. "So we can do this move on the left side or ..." .

... but

Take the word "but". This word suggests that what is said before is not really the case. Sadly, the word "but" is often, hopefully unintentionally, used together with positive feedback. "What you are doing is good, but keep your rhythm a bit more". All that sticks is "Keep your rhythm more". The positive feedback got lost. Positive feedback is a essential part of motivation, loosing it because of a three-letter word is such a waste. Throw the word "but" out of your vocabulary unless you want to negate the formerly made statement. If you have the feeling you need it, try figuring out what it really is that you want to say, and say that instead. If it is really both you want to say, - make it two independent phrases.

As a side note, verbally formed suggestion works best on native speakers.

The power of suggestion is a two-edged sword. I find it OK to use, just apply gently and be aware of what you are suggesting. Sometimes a limited amount of choices can help, sometimes the exact same can inhibit progress.

Share how you think how this could be used constructively in class in the comments below!

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.