Pep Talk for the Teachers

Welcome to the crunch time.  

If you are like me, you too might be wondering: How am I going to finish this semester?   

This happens to me most every semester. I start off strong, hopeful, excited (possibly deluded), and about 5 weeks from the end, I start to wonder what have I done? I am tired, overwhelmed and worried that time is running out.  Plus, my students are tired, overwhelmed and worried that time is running out.  A clear recipe for disaster.

I started explaining to my students the nature of an instructor's thinking process.

Optimistic Teacher experience:

 

Weeks 1-4  The teacher is filled with hope. She feels patient when students stumble because it is the beginning of the semester and they are "still learning the ropes," and everyone needs a break now and again when they are learning.

Week 5-9 The teacher is in the meat of the content, tons of information is coming out and the students are still grasping at straws trying to figure out what is expected of them.  Patience it still present because the students still have a chance to catch up!

Week 10-13 The teacher is feeling the pressure. The students need to learn this! Time is running out!  Patience is running thin.  The students should know better at this point.  

Week 14-18 The teacher is disappointed.  The students are making the same mistakes and the teacher’s patience has run out. Have they learned anything?  There is no more time to save this ship. Despondency hits.

Combine that with the Struggling Student experience:

Week 1-4 The student is filled with hope, ready for a fresh start.  The teacher is so nice and so patient.  I can do this!

Week 5-9  The student is settling in, but this is way more work than expected. But, it's still the beginning of the semester! What?!?  Time for midterms?!? We just started school! I haven’t studied. But, it is ok, I can make it up.

Week 10-13 The student is tired. The student has a hard time focusing because they caught a cold, and they have so much to do, they don’t know where to start.  Mountains of homework have piled up and the teacher is so demanding! She has no patience anymore! I am stuck!

Week 14-18 The student notices just how far behind they have gotten.  This is serious! They go to the teacher in hopes of figuring out how to put a semester’s worth of learning into 4 weeks.  She explains that is not how it works, and: no, she will not give you the notes from the lectures.  Student: I am screwed. The world is against me.

Somehow, I think I can change the nature of the student/teacher experience. But, I am realizing that maybe that is simply the inherent nature of the student teacher experience. 

 

But, the reality is that for every difficult student there are actually 10 lovely students who have learned so much!  Just this week I received this note from a Modern I student’s journal entry:

“Taking a dance class has completely changed my views on the activity of dancing, as a whole. "

However, we as humans are biologically build to remember and focus on the challenges. It is part of our survival biology. So, it is easy to forget the success of the many, when faced with the struggle of a few.  It is particularly hard for me to accept that students have the right to fail. I want them to succeed so badly that I forget that I actually have NO control over their choice making.  Those who want to learn will, and those who haven’t put in the effort will not.  No amount of convincing will change it.

And, remember that we are doing something right. We do care. We have given them tools.  We have shared information.  And, some have learned lessons that have nothing to do with the content, but have everything to do with their future lives. 

To all teachers: This is YOUR pep talk.  We give pep talks all the time, but around this time, it is we who need a little uplift to keep us in good spirits. 

Learning takes time. And, a semester will never be enough time to learn it all.  And, that is ok.  Students will struggle because humans will struggle. My Zen teacher reminded me today that “We are all ordinary.”  No one is better or worse. No one is closer to enlightenment than another.  We are all simply ordinary.  We learn the lessons as they come to us and as we need to learn them. Students and teachers: we are all learning life. 

As instructors we get to be reminded of this every semester. 

Learn and let learn.

Beth

Time: Your Most Valuable Currency

I have recently become extremely interested in how we document all that we do. 

I am fascinated with our current cultural practices with social media in which we continually post pictures of our experiences, achievement, and questions. And, I have noticed a new practice for the way I post.  I ask myself: what do I value and how is my post supporting the things I value?  

For instance, I recently attended a beautiful dance concert in at ARC Pasadena. It was important to me to come home and immediately write up my review.  Even though I wasn't feeling particularly prolific at the time, I wanted to demonstrate just how valuable I felt the experience was by using my time and skill to support it.  The blog post offered the community two things: the face value of the performance review as documentation, and, on a more general level, proof that this event was worth writing about. In other words, it was worth my time.  By giving my time and attention to the art (in the form of a review), I was modeling how dance is worth putting in the extra time.

As tempting as it is in the blogging world, I try not to use my reviews to elevate myself or my opinions. Instead, I am concerned with the documentation of current dance practices in LA (and beyond) and how written reports and reviews support current dance artists.  Speaking as an artist, I can share that the post show stream of "Great job!", "Fun show," and similar comments of Twitter or Facebook feel good. They feel good because it is feedback that someone took the time to give.  But, they do not offer the much needed reflection dance deserves.  In fact, much of a dance performance's value could come from the discussion and sensations afterward. If we only experience dance for two hours and then leave the theater without a second thought, have we really gotten all we can out of the art form? 

When we see a movie, we often deepen our experience when we then discuss it with our friends afterward, or read reviews of it by trusted sources, or watch the feature commentary by the director and actors.  In other words, our post-show time is important.  It gives value to the art experience.  And, this is what I am coming to realize is lacking in the dance world.  We see a show and often we don't have post show experiences that take us deeper into the art work.  Just as sport show commentators break down all the plays to better understand the twists and turns in a game, dance critics should be breaking down a dance work to identify its inner workings, strengths and weaknesses, innovations and traditions.  This can afford those interested but unfamiliar with dance an inside look to the dance experience, while challenging veteran dance patrons to pin point the value of what they love so much. 

As I wrote my recent review, I was concerned with three things. 
     1. How can I deepen the experience for someone who has seen the show?
     2. How can I document the experience for posterity?*
     3. How can I best convey the reward of the dance experience?

I gave my time, because my time is the most valuable currency I have.  It is a limited resource that I am very aware of day in and day out.  If you haven't guessed already, I am pretty busy, some might say over committed (haha!).  I don't have a lot of "free time," that time is precious to me. 

So, what is worth my time?  What is worth taking my time to document and reflect. What is worth your time?  How are you canonizing your life? One Instagram at a time? One twitter post? One Facebook update?  What is that affording you? What does documentation afford us?

Are your giving your time and attention to the things you truly love? I find that scrolling through my Vine feed (for instance) affords me little more than a distraction.  I have also noticed, my quality of life seems to go down when I get too invested in following my Facebook news feed. Not because I don't have good friends with interesting posts, but because ultimately, very little information is life changing.  And, it uses up my most valuable resource all too easily. 

I understand that you are taking your time to read this blog post.  And, I am honored by your choice.  I hope that I afford you something that you will take with you as you go along your day or week.  I hope that this read is ultimately worth your time because you either love dance, the arts or entertaining vague questions about time and value. 

There is a great book by Tim Ferris called "The 4 hour Work Week." While I am not interested in changing my life to that degree, he does bring up some important points about time management and the value of our time.  Perhaps reading that book last spring planted the seed for this blog.  But, in the end, Ferris is right about one thing.  We choose how to use our time.

So, are you using your time for the things your love? To support the things you love? To honor and deepen your understanding of yourself and the world? Or are you getting caught in the white noise of empty information?

Beth


* Side note: the definition of posterity is "for all future generations."  What are we giving our next generation?  How are we making real what we experience as life through our documentation of it?  Are we getting to the nitty-gritty of it all?  What will people know about me when they look back at my Twitter feed?  Am I giving them a complete experience of who I am? Or would entering my world be like entering a house of hoarders?