The Casual Dance Teacher's Podcast

Welcome to the Casual Dance Teacher's Podcast. I'm your host, Maia. No matter who, what, or when you teach, I'm here to share all my best tips and tools, along with real and practical conversations with fellow dance educators to help you be the very best dance teacher you can be.

Let's talk about it. Hey everyone, thanks for being here with me today. If you're someone who was around for season one or have gone back to season one episodes and listened through them, first of all, thank you.

But second of all, you probably heard my episode about teaching classes with mixed age levels. Generally, when we're talking about teaching in a casual studio setting, classes will be divided up one of two ways. Either students will be divided up purely by their age with similar age students being in class together, or they'll be divided up based on level with dancers of a similar technical level and a similar amount of experience being grouped together.

In today's episode, I'm going to talk about teaching in classes where the students are grouped together by age, but that means that you probably have a range of levels in the class. And again, I know a lot of these bigger studios, pre-professional studios have a lot of different technical levels within each style of dance, and they are able to keep it really consistent where there's not so much variation between the dancers ages or between their technical levels. But at a lot of casual studios, especially in more rural settings, or just smaller up and coming studios that are still building their student base, you're going to see some variation because there's just not the staff, there's not the student body to fulfill lots and lots of different levels to place students in.

And that's totally fine. But I just wanted to share some tips on how to make this a little bit easier a little bit more streamlined without having hopefully too much pushback with students saying, Hey, like, I appreciate that I'm with other students my age, but I feel like I'm struggling so much to keep up with the class, or I feel like I'm way ahead, and then the other students are holding me back. And those are valid concerns.

But I think if you set up your classes in a way that you already have measures in place to make sure that you're attending to everyone within the level that they're coming into the class at, you'll be fine. So I'll start with the same exact note that I gave in the previous episode talking about teaching the mixed ages. When you're teaching a mixed level class, I always teach to the top level.

Basically, all that means is I'm making sure that I am putting content into the class that is going to challenge the most advanced dancer in the room. That doesn't mean that I'm just going to leave all the other students behind or if there's one student that has three years less experience dancing than some of the other students in the class, that I'm just gonna say, Oh, too bad, so sad, you just have to do this. And it's going to be a huge challenge, and you're probably not going to do it correctly.

But I'm building the course material around the top level of the class, then I make modifications to help the students at a lower level. I'm not going to build the class around the lowest level, and then try to make harder variations. I'm starting at the top, and then I'm working in modifications that can be made to make it a little bit simpler and to help break down the technique needed for those students that have less experience.

For example, if I have a combination, where there's a double turn, there's a beaded step, there's a long suspension, a long balance, or there's a very complex arm combination, I will build all of those things into the material. But then I will go back into that combination and say what are the areas where I can make modifications if someone needs it simpler. So take out the beat, do a single instead of a double or do just a balance in whatever position that turn is in instead of doing the turn.

You could take the arms out entirely and say, listen, if you're struggling with the footwork, let's focus on just doing the footwork, get the technique right for that, hold your arms in XYZ position. But you can still teach the arms to give that option for the more technically advanced dancers. I think it's really important if you're going into a class where you know there's some variation to the level of the dancer's abilities, that right out the gate when you first come into that class, come up with some sort of system where the students can communicate to you what it is that they need.

Because I think where you're going to create division and possibly jealousy or resentment in a mixed level class is if you are singling people out. If you say, hey, so and so don't do the arms, just do this because I want you to focus on or if you say, hey, so and so, I want you to do a triple turn, and everyone else do a single or a double. I'll throw things like that in here and there.

It's not that I will never single someone out. But it's great to have a process and a system for your sake as well as for the students sake to feel like they have some say in how they move through the material, whether it's, hey, show me a number of fingers, which variation you want to do, I gave you three options, you can do it with no arms, you can do it with a simple arm, you can do it with the complex arm, give me a one, one finger up, if you're doing the no arm variation, two fingers up, if you're doing the middle one, three fingers up, if you're doing the most complex one, give me one finger up, if you're doing a single turn, two fingers up, if you're doing a double, something like that, as opposed to like a thumbs up, thumbs down, hand up, hand down, because that, again, can kind of create an exclusionary type of narrative around, oh, if you're not doing the most complex version of this combination that I taught, then you're left out, you're behind, you're a thumbs down, we don't want that, right? Fingers up one, two or three, or that type of thing is a much more inclusive way of doing it. And I think it's important for dancers to be able to self identify where am I at and what do I need in this moment? Of course, if a dancer does three fingers up, I'll honor that the first time, even if I think that they should be doing the simplest version of the combination, say, okay, great, go for it.

And then I'll say, you know what, these are some things that I saw. But I think if you take those really tricky arms out of the combination, or, you know, I think if you went for just the jump in its traditional form, as opposed to doing it beaded, you will easily be able to fix these technical issues that I saw. If you do it a couple times like that, and then we'll add on those additional challenges for you.

But let's focus on this. So I'll kind of talk them down to where they need to be. But I let them identify that for themselves first, because as dancers, I think that's really important.

We need to know what we're capable of and what we're working on. So that empowers each student to kind of choose their own adventure, so to speak and go through the class at their pace. Now, if we're working on just foundational technical elements, I've talked about incorporating circuit training into dance classes before.

And I feel if you're working with a class that has students at various technical levels within the same class, you can do something similar to circuit training. But instead of having all students do all stations and kind of rotate around in a circuit, you can actually assign different stations for students that are working on different technical things. So for example, students that are struggling with their flexibility, might go to a certain station to work on some kind of flexibility training, while students that have great flexibility, but need to work more on maintaining their turnout, might go do some turnout exercises.

And then students that need more core strength are going to go do a core strength station. So you can assign students to stations, you know, this wouldn't be dividing them up for the whole class, but maybe for 10 minutes or so, you're kind of assigning them things that speak to what it is that they need the most work on. And then you as the teacher will just rotate around to the different stations to give a little feedback here and there.

But then everybody's working equally hard on something that's going to help them. But they don't all have to work on the same thing if that's not what's going to serve everyone. While I do definitely encourage acknowledging that different dancers can be working on different things or at different levels within the same class.

I think that's fine. I don't think we should shy away from it. But I did also want to mention that we should find opportunities in these mixed level classes to group dancers in a variety of different ways.

For example, if you are starting out with stations, you don't want to constantly be hounding on the same one little group of dancers for their flexibility all the time and be like, Oh, you really got to work on your flexibility and then another group always only picking on them for improving their turnout. You want to change it up and make sure that you are acknowledging their progress across those skills as well. You also don't want the same dancers to always be in the front sometimes with a mixed level class.

If they're students that just have less experience, I will put them in the middle or in the back at the start of the season because I know that it will help them to watch the students with more experience just to help them pick up the combinations and, you know, make sure that they're modeling proper technique. But I'm not going to keep them in those same lines all the time because you never know which students are going to excel more being front and center. Maybe that'll push them a little bit.

Maybe they just have a better view of you, of themselves in the mirror. Maybe they're less inhibited if they're not watching someone in front of them. There's so many different reasons.

So mix up the lines, mix up the groupings. Sometimes I will have students work in small groups and I'll put a student that has more experience is a little bit more technically advanced than others as like a leader of each group and have them work on a combination together and give each other feedback. And then other times I might actually group them by skill level.

So I'll have a more advanced group and I will give them more advanced variations of the combination or I'll just give them some more advanced technical things to delve into as far as the corrections that I give them and then sort of an intermediate group and a group that's working on just the basics. But I'm not always going to group them that way, right? So just change it up. I think you can totally acknowledge, "Hey, XYZ student, how long have you been dancing? Oh, five years? Okay. And, and you guys have been dancing for two years? Okay. So, so that's a difference and we're not going to be at the same place, but we're all in class together and we can learn from each other. So let's do this next one in groups where you guys work a little bit more on this and you guys work a little bit more on this."

And then the next combination say, "Okay, you know what my group that has been dancing for five years, I want you guys to help out the other ones. Let's do some, some partner feedback and you guys can work together in a small group and see what you can come up with."

And then put my two-year dance students in the front for the next combination, that type of thing. Just making sure that I'm not always catering to the same group so that anybody feels left out or again, resentful towards students that have more or less experience than them because they're getting more attention in the class.

Finally, let's talk about how to navigate student and or parent concerns when you are grouping students by age, creating variation in the levels of the dancers within a class. In this case, I do feel like it's very valid for a student or I feel like usually it's going to be a parent that's addressing you because the student said something to them or just, you know, parents have their own perceptions of their students sometimes. But I feel like it is valid if a parent says, um, hey, I noticed that so and so just joined the studio last year and she's in class with my daughter.

My daughter's been dancing here for several years. How is that going to work? Because isn't that going to hold my daughter back? How are you challenging her? How's she going to be, you know, that type of thing. So it is valid.

I think you should listen. Of course, I think you should listen to any concerns about that. And if you are the studio owner or the person who makes policy around the studio's placements, I do think you should really take that into account.

Like, is that the best way to group students to do it by age and understand that there's going to be some variation or should you be looking at having mixed ages in the class, which as I mentioned in the previous episode, which I'll link in the show notes, by the way, it's going to come with its own challenges. But I do think it is a much easier defense. If you have those challenges and those complaints with a mixed age level, like, oh, my daughter's so much older than the other students or my daughter's so much younger than the other students to say, hey, we go by technical level, your daughter's working on the same thing as these other kids.

And we don't discriminate by age, we're just putting dancers with the same level of technique in the same class together, it makes a lot of sense. And I do understand there's reasons why teachers don't want to do that. And I talked about that a little bit.

I think a lot of it is just bias. I think a lot of it is the influence of the school system, because the school system just goes purely by age. So a lot of parents expect that that's how students will move up through levels in dance class as well as just they just keep aging up, and they just keep moving up.

So if that's what you've chosen to do, just make sure that you have a strong policy about it, that is clearly stated in studio handbooks, studio policy on the website, you know, wherever you can make it public, and make it very clear to parents and communicate that with your teachers. So if you are casual dance teacher like me, and you are not the one that's setting the policy, a hopefully, if you're that person, you don't have to have those tough conversations, right? Like someone brings up something to you, you say talk to the studio owner, I'm not in charge of policy. But in any case, if you're having those conversations, make sure that you have a clear defense basically, lined up that says, Hey, listen, we want students grouped together by age, because cognitively and socially developmentally, they are on the same level at the same age when they're going through school.

That doesn't mean that they're going to be at the same level when it comes to dance experience. But we have modifications in place within the classes to make sure that everyone is being served, and no one's being left out and no one's being challenged too much, they can't progress. So that just comes down to training, communicating, making sure your policy is very clear, making sure that again, if you are the studio owner, each of your teachers is aware of how to make those modifications and accommodations to dancers of various levels.

So if you have any specific examples of this, you're like in this class, I've got mixed levels, I'm really struggling. I can't speak to every situation, of course, but I have dealt with this. And I would be more than happy to weigh in if you want any specific recommendations for your own classes.

I also could certainly try and point you to a teacher that might be equipped to speak to a different style that maybe I'm not familiar with. So feel free to bring those to me in the Casual Dance Teachers Network Facebook group. You can also always reach out to me through our Instagram page, which is the Casual Dance Teachers podcast on Instagram.

And I almost forgot, but I do want to thank GB mystical as always, who wrote the theme music for the show. I will close with a quote from Jim Henson that I thought was appropriate for today's episode.

"Kids don't remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are."