Hi, Tessa here. Since 2002, I've been writing advice articles for West Coast Swing from my perspective as a WCS Champion and 30 years as a professional teacher and coach. My mission is to help dancers #trainWCSsmarter and teachers #teachWCSsmarter, which we do thoroughly in our Swing Literacy training programs.
These articles are my way of contributing some free, bite-sized education to the community to help inspire and motivate with practical, actionable advice for your dancing & teaching.
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I highly encourage everyone to leverage these free resources by sharing them in your community groups and with friends you know who could use them. Enjoy!
A workshop weekend can serve to inspire your students, boost their improvement, and stimulate your community. Anyone can host one – it’s not difficult, but it is complex and there are many potential pitfalls. Here’s how to do avoid them and put on a productive, professional workshop that benefits the students, the guest teachers, and
Since dancing tends to slow down during the summer and winter holidays, it can be stressful wondering how you’re going to pay the bills before classes start up again. You also may fear losing the momentum and enthusiasm that you worked so hard to foster in your community during the regular season.So how can a
Teaching Snack #8Your struggleSometimes students resist when you try to introduce them to a method, process, or technique that they are not used to. Sometimes this resistance is disrespectful. It can be hard to stand up for yourself under pressure and take charge of your business, your method, and your reputation. An interesting thing happened at
Teaching Snack #7Your StruggleYou’re teaching new material, and the students are focused, motivated, and capable, but you find that they are confused and learning slower than you would like.One critical piece of the puzzleWe help students every day who are lost and confused. We help them step back and focus on the skills they need
Do your students pester you with questions? Do you you wish they would ask more questions?Do you wish you could always find the right answer to give them?Do they distract each other and then ask about something you just said?How a teacher handles students’ questions proves their credibility, their maturity, their empathy, and their trustworthiness. All
Teaching Snack #6Your struggleYou try your best to encourage your students, but you still wish they would practice more, show up to class more consistently, and focus on applying what they learned to their dance so they could grow.My storySee my little creeping ivy plant in the title image? He gets plenty of water and
Something doesn’t add up….How many WCS patterns do you think you’ve ever learned?Just calculate how many patterns you learn per week, then multiply that by how long you’ve been dancing.Now, how many of those patterns have you actually adopted into your social or competition dancing?Oof. That’s a big difference.That’s a lot of money and time
You get lots of people in the door for their first class. Yay! But getting them to come back? That’s another story…You managed to attract people to come to your intro class, or maybe even sign up for a Beginner series. But the enthusiasm of the first class died out quickly, as students started to
Teaching Snack #5 Your struggle You get people in the door for their first class. Yay! But the enthusiasm of the first class dies out quickly, as students bow their heads, staring at the feet, trying to remember if their foot is supposed to cross in front or behind, cursing themselves when they “get it wrong”. You
You want to attract more dancers to WCS, right? You need more bodies walking in the door, and then you need them to come back after their first class. Of course, the way you teach the class will make a huge difference: traditional methods are proven to be limited in their effectiveness, so you need to
Teaching Snack #3 Your struggleYour students have some stubborn bad habits:having bad posturelazy, shuffling footworklack of stretchpoor eye contactbeing rigid, selfish, or not adaptablegiving unsolicited feedbackrudely demanding or refusing a dancenot thanking partners after a dancebeing grumpy about dancing with lower level partnersbeing snobby when they reach a certain level Of course, some of these
Teaching Snack #2 Your struggle Sometimes you may feel like you’ve lost your raison d’etre (purpose) as a teacher. You go through the motions, collecting money and counting to 8. You forget what inspired you to teach in the first place, and you forget what a powerful impact you have every day on students who